Entrepreneur | Chasing Rabbits When You Should Be Hunting Elephants

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to hear 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’re here. We started from the bottom, and that’s what we’ve gotta do. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show, your daily place to go to learn how to start and grow a successful business. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, in your ear, sent here to teach you the stuff you need to know to make your wallet grow. And today, I’m super excited because we’re talking about this topic that is so wealth repelling, so income killing, so dangerous. It could be none other than this concept of chasing rabbits when you should be hunting elephants. I mean, if you want to make a big income, you can’t get distracted by doing small, dumb stuff that does not generate revenue for you. And so to help kind of marinate on this idea, to help really teach these examples, to help provide that next level of first-hand experience, we have a guy on the show today who actually grew a company from two people to 450 people. I’m gonna repeat it in a slower, kind of a stranger voice, so you’ll remember. He actually grew a company from two people to 450 people with his bare hands, the hands of a bear. No, I’m just kidding. He and his partner did this, and they ended up selling the company for over $100 million. The company is called Tax and Accounting Software Company. The man, his name is Tim Redmond. He’s inside the box that rocks. Tim Redmond, how are you? It is so good to be here again, Clay. We are ready to rock and roll for an awesome show. I can’t wait to cover this material. And we brought in a guy who’s definitely not chasing rabbits. He’s out there hunting elephants. He came here for the Thrive Time conference. We kept him a little bit, we sequestered him, we kept him through the weekend, we sequestered him on this glorious Monday. It is Mr. Brian Zimmerman, all the way from Colorado. What’s up man? Hey, how’s it going? I’m glad to be here. Hey, where in Colorado are you from? I mean, whereabouts? Actually, Cassarock, Colorado. It is about 30 minutes south of Denver. 30 minutes south of Denver? Oh yeah. Really? Oh yeah. We have actually stayed there. We’ve skied in Colorado. Is this true? Is this a skiable area? No, no, no, no. It’s not. But we have stayed in a house in Castle Rock, a huge mansion, and then we go out for about an hour, go out to one of the big four peaks there, come back. Just love Castle Rock. That’s where classy people live. Brian, can you verify that Castle Rock is in fact a place in Colorado? The show’s all about the fact checking, and I don’t have this on my show notes. I want to verify. Is this actually a place? Do you live there? Oh yeah, that’s verified. You guys haven’t colluded on this story? I think he’s accurate. All right, now Thrivers, we’re going to get into this topic today again. It’s hunting elephants, don’t chase rabbits. There’s four scams. There’s four rabbit scams that you want to avoid. So I’m going to start off with a notable quotable. And Tim, I’m going to have you unpack it. This comes to us from a man who’s an Oklahoma State legend. He personally has totally reshaped Oklahoma State University’s history. It’s T. Boone Pickens, the oil guru mogul. He says this, he says, when you are hunting elephants, don’t get distracted chasing rabbits. I know it’s a boonism. I know he talks in kind of that farm logic kind of mindset, but what does that mean? Well, I mean, consider the size of an elephant. Okay. And then consider the size of a rabbit. I think some rabbits can be big and important rabbits. Yes, I’ve had some dreams where I’ve had huge rabbits that are ravenous. Yeah. But elephants are the big deals, the big stuff you want to go after in life, and so when you chase these little bitty things that are hard to catch, actually, you spend all your time, all your energy trying to chase these little bitty things that don’t amount to much, versus going after elephants. You tell me where you’re going to end up. Now, I, Dr., you know, on our show, typically Dr. Z is inside the box that rocks. He’s out expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire. This time he’s doing it from Arizona. And the one thing that he tells me over and over, and I love it, is he says, Clay, you know, like the lion, you know, the lion is one of the, it’s the king of the animal kingdom. You know, the lion is a big animal. And he says, if the lion were to run around chasing small rabbits and those kinds of things, it would literally be unable to feed itself because of the energy. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s like a human eating celery. You know, you burn more calories chewing celery than you actually consume when you eat it. I’m on a salary diet. That’s the move. So the thing is, Thrivers, is that if you’re an entrepreneur out there, you can’t get distracted doing things that don’t matter. So I’m going to get into the first rabbit scam that I see so many people getting screwed up with in their entrepreneurial game. This is, if it seems too good to be true, it usually is. So I see many, many entrepreneurs who are good people, and they go, Clay, I want you to know, I read a blog last night and it said if I pay them $4,000 up front, I can get to the top of Google immediately. What do you think about that? And I say, was it sent to you from a Nigerian prince via email? I got one from them, too. Well, actually, I don’t think it was from Nigeria, but I think it was from India. It seems all right. And it constantly happens. It constantly happens. I talked to a guy just today at 4 o’clock today. If you’re listening and you know who you are, Brian, do not say who he was. But he goes, some lady told me for $10,000 she would help me just exponentially grow my business. It’s up front. And he said, how many deals did he get from the 10,000? Zero. So Tim, I want to ask, you’ve worked with entrepreneurial clients. You’ve worked with entrepreneurs and business owners all over the planet. Just kind of think deep into your coaching past as a business coach. Have you ever seen a business owner that you know that they are buying into a it’s too good to be true thing? Oh, it happens every day. We get bored with our businesses, Clay. We get bored with the every day. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and so we’re busy chasing rabbits. I say we have this squirrel itis that we want We see something bigger. We see it looks exciting and so we put heart and soul into it We use this saying it’s just hilarious how often I say this now I’m gonna read you thrivers an example that blew my mind when I discovered it two years ago But there’s a guy named Charles Ponzi you ever heard of the board Ponzi scheme. You know the Ponzi scheme There’s actually a guy by the name of Ponzi. I’m going to read this to you. He says, I wrote this. This is my book, Jack Assery. It’s a book called Jack Assery, where I tell you about dumb things that I got involved in earlier in my life. You can get it on Amazon. But it’s wild. But here we go. Charles Ponzi told his investors that they would earn a 50% return on their investment dollars within a very short window of time. Sounds reasonable, by the way. That right part sounds reasonable. He was able to actually pay out huge returns to his initial investors because he was paying his past investors with the investment dollars of new clients. He would then use the testimonials of his early investors as evidence of his success as a solid money manager. But when people started to sense that Ponzi’s promises were maybe a little too impressive and they began to investigate his plan, things got badly quickly. Ponzi didn’t have the funds to pay out when his investors called for their money. His scheme was exposed and he went to jail. Now this is a thing, I’m just telling you, this is a deal. Now this guy was ahead of his time because I’m telling you what, a guy came in years later named Bernie Madoff. Remember Bernie Madoff? And in 2008, home he was busted, okay? Bernie Madoff, and he swindled his clients out of $65 billion. Oh, it’s ridiculous. Billion dollars. He tried to Madoff with the deal. So here’s the deal, Thrivers. If you’re involved in the world of business right now, and you can think of something that’s too good to be true, it probably is. So I have a story that I did that was kind of a dumb thing, and I’m going to tell you the story. So here we go. So years ago, I’m setting up for a DJ show. And these guys pull up in a van. And these guys, it’s a true story, these guys are from the Double Tree Hotel. And they say, here’s the deal. We have these speakers that apparently the customer over-ordered. They had too many they ordered. And so we have these extra speakers. And it looks like you’re a DJ. If you want to buy right now cash, I mean, they’ve already paid for them and they don’t fit and we can’t refund it and it’s a whole thing. So if you want to give us $200 right now, we’ll give you these Sirwin Vega. Now Sirwin Vega subwoofers are massive. And I’m like, no way. And he goes, yeah, seriously. He’s like, we’re just, we’re just, we’re doing a delivery right downtown. Anyway, long story short is it’s not going to fit the custom job we were doing and they’ve already prepaid. And if you want to take them, it’s great. We don’t want to ship them back. It’s too expensive. The cost to ship them back. You see, that’s the issue. It’s the cost. They see that I’m starting to get into it. They say, the cost to ship them back is too much. And I go, $200? They go, well, it’s per speaker. You got to buy all eight, though. And I’m going, what? And they go, here’s the deal. If you want to wire the money right now. I’m like, 21. And I’m like, so I wire the money right now. They go, look at them. They’re right here. So they unload the speakers, and I pay them. And they drive off. And when I go back to the show, I DJ the show, I load the crap into this vehicle, I get back to the office, I discover they are basically faux speakers. There’s nothing there. There’s no meat. It’s just a box that doesn’t rock. There’s no real power to it. It’s totally like the Chinese off-brand deal. I mean, drivers, have you ever gone to vacation in Cancun and you ever bought yourself some Oakley glasses for $8 or some Nike shoes for $7, and then you discovered they weren’t real? I mean, I think we’ve all at one point… Tim, have you ever bought something that was totally crap? Oh my goodness. I have done that. I’ve got too many times of jackassery that has littered my life. So I hate to even think about it. I’ve spent a lot of money on counseling to try to forget about this, but thank you. Brian, do you have any example that you would like to share? You don’t have to share. I mean, you’re obviously a thriver here. I am the source of deprecation. It is my job to expose my psychological nudity on the air for the benefit of the listeners. But have you ever engaged early on in your life in some serious jackassery, get rich quick kind of deal? Oh yeah, for sure. Courses online, media courses online, all kinds of different things. So like $12,000 to learn the magic system? Oh yeah. You’ve done it? Oh yeah. Oh wow. Offshore investing. Get this. Offshore. Buying into currencies. Yeah, currency buying. Getting the stuff that nobody else really knows about and the people that control this, we can’t even let you talk to them. Well, there’s a guy named Kevin Trudeau, and if you Google him, Thrivers, he’s a fascinating character, but he wrote these books called like, 48 Things That The Government Doesn’t Want You To Know About, How To Get College Grants That No One Else Wants You To Know About, Three Things They Don’t Want You To Know About The Food And Drug Industry. And he’d write these things. Well, he’s in jail that I don’t want you to know. No, I’m serious. But he has all these books. I’m just saying, if you’re listening right now and you’ve ever bid off on one of these crazy seems-too-good-to-be-true deals, that’s okay. I mean, it’s okay. We’ve all made a mistake. But what we’re trying to say is if you’re listening right now and you’re like, I am about to do that, I think he’s talking to me. I’m going to give you a very specific example. We had a Thriver who was listening to one of our early auditions of our videos. If you go to Thrive, if you go to YouTube right now and you type in Thrive15 and then the word investing, you can watch the video that we made about this scheme. But he’s in New York City and he finds himself in a seminar and the guy says, here’s the deal. If you qualify, we have an investment deal we’re doing right now that’s going to be we’re buying some duplexes. And if you qualify, we’ll allow you to put $15,000 in. That money will be what we would call put into a controlled environment so that it can make a, you know, what we do is we’ll then give you what we would call an exponential investment payout. You’ll be receiving $15,000 back in about 60 days. And then what you’ll do is that money will then be put into an account and you’ll be updated but you don’t have to take it out because we want to steamroller this so we have the inside look on these houses that the government does not want you to know about. And he was watching one of our Thrive videos. On YouTube, if you see Thrive 15 and then go to YouTube and type in Thrive 15 and investing you can learn more about this. Long story short, he calls me and he goes, dude, I am about ready to do this and I’m so glad I watched that video because I’m going, I almost did that if he hadn’t watched that video. And so Thrivers… In real life. No, this is true. He’s in New York City. He’s in New York City. True story. This really happened. It was a crazy deal. But Thrivers, if you’re listening right now, what I want you to do is I want you to write down a list of some things that are too good to be true that you’re about ready to invest in and quit doing it. Okay. Now Thrivers, we come back. We’re going to get deeper into this concept of hunting elephants and how to avoid hunting rabbits. Okay. We’re going to teach you how to avoid hunting rabbits when you’re out there trying to hunt those elements. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com to learn more. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to The Thrive Time Show, your daily audio dojo of mojo, and the place that you go to get into the know about how to start and grow a successful business. Typically, I am joined here with Dr. Robert Zellner, but today he is out expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire, this time from the great state of Arizona. And so inside the box that rocks today, I wanted to bring in some people that are in the know, some great people that really are a joy, they’re a big add-on to the show. It’s kind of like a bonus to the show. You know, sometimes you bring someone on the show and you say, this person is a quality individual, we’re happy to have him on the show. But other times you say, what we have here is we have a bonus to the show. So this is the sound effect we’re going to have as we introduce them. First off, we have Mr. Tim Redmond, a legendary business coach and consultant who grew a business from two people to 450 people. That was tax and accounting software corporation. That is Mr. Tim Redmond. Tim, welcome to the show. Oh, it’s so good to be back here. Oh, I see you’re sounding like this old bonus right there. There you go. There you go. Every time Tim talks, we’re just going to do this, and I’m sure it’ll never get annoying. So and then we have Mr. Brian Zimmerman. He came, he flew in here all the way from the Colorado area. Denver, Colorado. Did you fly in from the Denver International Airport? Did you fly or ski? I snowboarded. Snowboarded, dude. Straight out of Denver. Okay, so you flew out of Denver, but you live where? In Castle Rock, Colorado. Castle Rock, Colorado. You came out here for the Thrive Conference, our two-day, 15-hours of power conference. We kept you, we sequestered you through the weekend, and so here you are. And Thrivers, I’m excited to get to know more about this. Hey Clay, did you know that Brian Zimmerman is one of these military guys that Thrive reached out to and initially scholarshiped here? Okay, wait a second, I didn’t know about this. Go ahead and talk to us about this, Brian. Walk me through the whole military thing. The guy is a stud among us! So when did you serve? I served from 2000 to 2005. Okay, for everybody who’s listening right now, we have Thrive set up where it is free for members of the military. So if you’re in the military, thrive15.com is free. It’s a scholarship program. Is that how you signed up? That’s exactly how I got started, yeah. Awesome, man. I did not know that little boom there. Thank you for serving, man. Absolutely, appreciate it. I’m excited. That’s an exciting thing. This is a great day. This is really cool. And we actually connected. I think you heard, didn’t you hear some of the videos there? We reached out. We actually talked a little bit. He was actually, he was in a business that he was launching that was picking up dog poo-poo. How do you say it? Yeah, dog waste and dog washing business. We know what I’m going to have to do in honor of you serving in the military. Let’s do it. In our great country, what happens is we now get to do, we have freedoms. We get to do what we want. We get to start and grow a business. We get to decide if we don’t want to start a business. We get to do all that. And one thing we get to do is we sometimes in our country get to make bad decisions. And today’s show is all about, you get the privilege to make good decisions or bad decisions. We’re trying to teach you how to not make bad decisions, such as chasing rabbits when you should be hunting elephants in the game of business. And so in honor of you and the freedoms you’re giving us, I’m going to play a bad decision on the air. Let’s do it. This was Carl Lewis, our American athlete who was a gold medal winner in the track and field. And he decided, he said, hey, I would like to sing the national anthem. And they go, are you good? He goes, oh, I’m good. I’m a very good national anthem singer. I’m going to go ahead and do it. And this is what Carl Lewis did. He had the freedom to do so. So here we go. Here we go now. Here we go, Brian. This is for you. This is beautiful. It gets better. I’ll make up for it now. Here we go. He’s got it. But he was a very fast runner. Oh, well. It got better. It got better. It got better. And the free. But he was a very fast runner. Oh, well. The guy can do it. So anyway, so Thrivers, that right there, you can have the freedom to make decisions, both good decisions and bad decisions. But we’re getting into some of the good decisions that you want to make in the business game. We’re teaching you how to kind of vaccinate yourself against the dark force, the dark wealth destroying force called Jack Assery. So this is scam number two that you Rabbits so you can focus on chasing elephants. This is beware of the secret investment that no one else Knows about so Tim. I’m going to and I have found out a bunch of those that nobody knew about So here’s one that Forbes talked about this is Forbes, okay, Forbes Magazine you know this is if we always quote Forbes a lot because they’re a very reputable organization And they have kind of a little bit of a Tulsa connection. Steve Forbes, you know, who’s the guy who owns Forbes and runs Forbes, he is the co-author of a book with Mr. Jim Stovall, a Tulsa native. There’s a new book called The Ultimate Productivity that’s coming out there. I believe it’s called Ultimate Productivity. I will fact check and see exactly the name of it, but I just got that book mailed to me by Mr. Stovall. I got a pre-hit-the-bookshelves copy of it. I just finished reading it and that’s Steve Forbes with Jim Stovall and Jim Stovall’s a Tulsa guy But this is Forbes magazine. This is what he says. He says the dinar scam takes on new twists This is the Iraqi dinar reevaluation scam has entered a new phase Well untold thousands continue to hold the troubled security the US Securities and Exchange Commission or what are those guys know, recently filed a complaint against Joshua J. Hansen, 34, of Logan, Utah, for attempting to swindle investors in a dinar scam. Hansen allegedly was offering securities that invested in dinars, which were sold to investors with the promise that the Iraqi government would revalue the currency at a much higher value. So basically people were buying the Iraqi currency with the hopes that it would somehow double or triple in value, and they kept being told via email, it’s one step away. And people were like, it’s one step away. I could double my money. So good people were buying tons of Iraqi currency. And Tim, we’re not going to mention names, but have you heard about this in the city of Tulsa? Have you heard about this? Oh, I’ve heard about it. I have been descended upon by many leaders of this cult. Okay, now Brian, in Colorado, did that scam make it out to you, or was it just unique to Tulsa? Oh, it was going on when we were in Iraq. Really? Oh yeah, guys would come up with loads and tuffer bags full of dinar, and then they’d bring it back to the States and try to sell it. And they said, hey, let’s come up with an idea. Why don’t we try doing this? Let’s sell it like it’s… I want to make sure I’m getting this. You served in what division of the U.S. military? Marine Corps. So you’re in the Marine Corps and you guys are getting it done. You guys are out there and you’re out there helping free the Iraqi people. There’s a lot of violence going on in the background. There’s explosions everywhere and some guy goes, hey here’s the deal. We gotta buy this Denari for like ten cents because it’s gonna be revalued and it’ll be worth millions. This was happening? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So how much did you buy? How much did you buy? Did you buy any? Well the problem is it became worth nothing. It became worth nothing. So a lot of us had, I mean there’s guys with duffel bags full of it, but they kept on, you know, they held on to it. Now Tim, one of the things the Bible talks about, I know some of you are listening going, the Bible? I mean this is a Bible? Is this a Bible shop? B-I-B-L-E. What is it? If you gain wealth through basically folly, through hastily, okay, the actual verse here is Proverbs 13, 11, and it says, wealth gained hastily will dwindle. That doesn’t feel good. So it’s saying like if you scam your way to success, it’s all going to dissipate. And so one of the things you have to do, Thrivers, is you have to vaccinate yourself against jackassery. Because Jackassery, we all have part of us that we want to get rich quick. Because no one wants to know that, you know, example, we all want to believe that the hamburgers at McDonald’s that are 99 cents, we want to believe that all the animals are organic, there’s no chemicals used, there’s no steroids, we want to believe that. And then we watch the super-sized movie. We watch these shows and we go, oh, no. They use steroids. Obviously. How can it be so cheap? They got to grow a cow super fast. It’s not a good thing. So Thrivers, when we come back, we’re going to get into more specific examples of how you want to vaccinate yourself against jackassery and that secret investment that nobody else knows about. Thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. It’s the Thrive Time Radio, your place to go to learn how to start and grow a successful business. It is also Tulsa’s only local business radio show. We can now be heard in Chattanooga. We can now be heard in Bentonville, Arkansas. We can now be heard in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We can be heard in Owasso, Oklahoma, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. If you’re hearing me right now, you can hear my voice. We can hear you, too. This is the Thrive Time Show. We are so excited to be here with you. And inside the box that rocks today, I’m honored to have Mr. Tim Redmond, a legendary business coach on the program. He actually grew a business from two people to 450 people. He did that whole American Dream thing, and now he helps teach business owners how to grow a successful company. And we have Mr. Brian Zimmerman, a member of the Thrive15.com community and a former member of the U.S. Marines there. And I guess in the Marines you never retire from the Marines. You’re a Marine, always a Marine. So at any point, if things get rowdy, he’s going to defend us. So I feel safe when he’s around here. Oh yeah, he’s kick-ass. He’s all the way. A Marine! We almost had to censor the guy. We almost had to censor the guy. We’ve got a guy flying off the handle here. Very hoorah-ish. Okay, so here we go. I’m in the marine. And we’re talking about, Thrivers, we’re talking about this idea about don’t chase rabbits when you need to be chasing elephants, okay? So we’re talking about the four scams that are always trying to take your money and your energy, these rabbits. And scam number two is beware of the secret investment that no one else knows about. Now Proverbs 13, 11, from that controversial book that some people don’t want to read. It’s called the Bible. It says dishonest money money dwindles away but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow. Let me read it one more time. Dishonest money dwindles away but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow. So I’m going to read to you from my book Jackassery because I think it’s something you need to know. So it says over the years you’re going to personally witness countless close friends and family members who get caught up Caught up you ever know somebody’s been caught up Tim caught up They get caught up in this I get rich quick deal you ever seen that before I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it I’ve been the main star of that show unfortunately, okay So they get caught up in a get rich quick investment scam that doesn’t make sense the con men the snake oil salesman Will look great at first and always drive a nice car They have a nice family and all the right answers to your friends questions. And when people visit the homes of these con men, they’re going to find Bible verses framed on the walls, fresh baked cookies in the oven, potpourri in the bathrooms. The con men and their families will seem like great quality people. These men will be able to quickly convince your friends that their investment deal is related to a rare short term loophole recently discovered in the system. This loophole is something that very few other people know about. Which is why they will tell your friends that they need to invest $20,000 right now. You see, these con men will encourage your friends to keep the information to themselves to avoid the scrutiny from others who are too narrow-minded to understand. And you’ll see your friends, over time, lose it all as they decide to exchange their long-term success for the promise of short-term, ludicrous returns on investment. When you see these con men coming your way, run away. Do not let the inner jackassery and the naivete and that lust to get rich quick talk you into spending even a moment with these people. Thomas Edison says this, success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Preach it. Perspiration for reach it so that’s it you’ve worked with businesses You’ve helped local businesses businesses all across the country grow, and I’m just gonna focus on search engine Optimization as an example optimization if you want to get to the top of Google You’ve got to have a Google compliant website, and you have to have more content than anybody else grind Talk to me about when you talk to a business owner, because I’m going to brag on Steve Currington. He’s the one I’m going to brag on. But talk to me about when you see a business owner and they want to scam their way to getting the most content quickly. What are some of the moves you’ve seen people try to do? Well, I’ve seen them copy huge, vast amounts of copy from books or whatever, and then paste it onto their pages and reverse the text so as if nobody can see the text. And this is the thing, Thrivers. You can’t get rich quick in Google. Check it out. Google says whoever has the most original content will be top in Google. They said they will be. They’ll be top in Google. Now here’s the deal. Is to be top in Google, it has to be original, relevant text. So you’ve got two ways to do it. One, write it. Write it? You mean time? Investing my time? Or two, you could do a radio show or a podcast or some kind of activity and what you could do is you go out there and transcribe the words you said. So for example, this show produces about 16,000 words of content per show. What happens is some people don’t like that concept of actually writing the words and so what they do is they say well, I’m just gonna copy content from other websites and Tim Google has a tool They use by the way, Google’s a multi-billion dollar company. They’re very they’re very smart They’re very smart people and there’s a thing called copy scape which will show you when plagiarism occurs on the internet And then there’s another guy who says I’m gonna get rich slow and I’m gonna brag on this guy. This is Steve Steve Currington. Stevecurrington.com, Tulsa’s number one mortgage banker. I’m going to tell you what Steve Currington did. Steve said, what do I need to do to be top in Google? And I said, you need to have more content than anyone else. And he goes, okay, so I need to write it. I said, yep. He goes, what’s my other option? I said, you can record a podcast every day and we’ll transcribe it because every hour you’ll produce 8,000 words of content. He goes, I’m in. So that man came in here. Have you seen this? Well, you can videotape it too. Now you’ve got video as well. Exactly, he came in here Brian, he recorded every single day. Recording, recording, recording. He came in here on a weekly basis, a daily basis, and when he recorded his 100th podcast here in the Thrive15.com world headquarters and transcribed it. Here’s a sticker right up there celebrating that. Yeah we actually bought him an ice sculpture with the 100 on it. He is now top in Google. If you type in Tulsa mortgages, there he is. So if you’re looking for a mortgage right now, you need to use the guy. And by the way, if you didn’t, if you say, I don’t like your endorsement, just Google Tulsa mortgages and you’re going to find him. And you know why he’s there? Because he sowed the seeds. Check it out. He tilled the soil. He sowed the seeds. He watered the seeds. And then they grew. And I’m going to repeat. He tilled the soil. That seems like work. He sowed the seeds. That seems like work. He watered the seeds. That seems like work. And they grew. But the thing is that God set up these principles into motion, and just because we have a digital world now, it doesn’t mean you can hack your way through life and not do the work. So Tim, what would be your encouragement for somebody who’s listening right now who, maybe they say, okay, I’m an insurance salesperson, and I know I have to make 100 calls to book 5 appointments to close 2 deals.” And they’re going, there’s got to be an easier way. And they just keep looking for ways, and days go by, and they keep avoiding the hard work. What encouragement would you have for them? Well, I would say get in front of you what it is you want. If you want poverty, then continue to hide behind the fear, the call reluctance, the, it’s so hard to do this, everybody’s going to say no. You’ve got to just get over that. Get your vision for the joy set in front of you, for the vision in front of you to say, I am willing to pay any price it takes to make those calls. I 100% agree with what you just said, but I really want you to hammer home on that because you just said some profound things. You’re saying be willing to give up whatever it takes to get there. Get into that. Oh gosh. You and I were talking about this just the other day. I said, Clay, for you not liking vacations, I love vacations with my family. She goes, I cannot afford to love vacations right now. It’s a distraction for what is in front of me now. Now, you know, we understand here there’s some unicorn type of characteristics that flow out of your mouth from time to time. However, I’m telling you when you get really clear with what you want, you’re willing to pay any price to get it. Now when we come back, I’m going to ask Brian about the process of being trained to be a Marine and what kind of trade-offs you had to make because that had to be hard and there’s no way to kind of fake your way into the Marines. The sacrifice, the training, it’s unbelievable. Stay tuned. Thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrivetimeshow. Some people want to talk about getting rich quick. I want to talk about guaranteeing your wealth slow, okay, because you could go out there and chase those rabbits and get distracted. And this is what we’re talking about today is don’t get distracted chasing rabbits. Focus on hunting elephants. Whatever it is that you seek, don’t look for ridiculous, unrealistic shortcuts. Am I saying don’t look for efficiencies? No. I’m just talking about don’t look for smoke and mirror answers when you know it’s not plausible. And so inside the box that rocks today, inside the thrive15.com world headquarters, and inside the center of the universe, which is inside the great state of Oklahoma, we have Mr. Tim Redmond, a legendary business coach, and Mr. Brian Zimmerman, a Thriver, which means that he is a member of the Thrive15.com community. And because he honorably served in the United States Marines, he earned a hand up, which means he has a free membership to Thrive15.com, which means that he has a special place in my heart, because it means that I could not, you could not, we could not even enjoy the freedoms we have today. You couldn’t start a successful business in a country that doesn’t have safety and security. We couldn’t do it. And I’m telling you what, the sacrifices that he made to create the freedom that you and I have is profound. It’s awesome. Brian, I thank you for being here on the show. And I want to ask you about this because when you go to the Marines, you can’t really fake your way through the Marines boot camp. So walk me through. What is day one of the Marines bootcamp? You remember that, I know you probably blocked it out of your head for psychological reasons, but what was day one of the Marines bootcamp like? So you arrive in a bus and all of a sudden next thing you know you’re standing on yellow footprints. And before you know it, drill instructors are coming out screaming at you, telling you to get on line, get on the line, so there’s massive chaos and they try to disorient you for a lot of different reasons. And so after you do that, you go through a series of what they call processing. Processing. Which is razors through your head. Are you kidding me? Oh yeah. Get your cammies on. That’s called the process. And they start to de-civilianize you. De-civilianize. I don’t know. I strip every amount of humanness away from you. What happens there? What do you mean? So basically what they want to do is they want to take you and start molding you into a marine. And so in order to do that, they have to take everything that you’re used to, the way you talk, the way you walk, the way you dress, and start from scratch. So they have a clean slate. Okay. This doesn’t sound like a good thing. They wipe the slate clean. Do they do that? Do they do some kind of electromagnetic thing on your brain? Pretty much. I mean, psychologically, human-wise, right? So, when they’re doing that, their purpose is to remold you. It’s almost like what we have to do as business owners, right? Right. Wow. Now let me ask you this. Let’s say day 30. Okay, now you’re in there. What kind of crazy stuff is your normal? What time are you waking up when you’re in the Marines boot camp or Marine boot camp? Yes, you’re waking up around 5 o’clock, but you’re already kind of awoke, you know, waking up by then. So 5 o’clock, you’re getting up. Yep, you’re getting up. How do you start the day? To banging, yelling, screaming. Get online, get online, get online. Okay, so the yell, you get online. Yes, get online, get online. I want to start using it in the office. That sounds efficient. Yeah. Okay, so they say get online, and then what happens next? So from there, they break you down literally from the numbers. The early parts of the Marine Corps boot camp, they walk you through to getting dressed and everything. So, it sounds like something like, put your left leg in your pants right now. And then so everyone puts their left leg in their pants. Put your right leg in your pants right now. You’re putting on your right shoe right now. Put on your left shoe right now. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You should be done. So after you go through this process, when does the fun stuff start? When are they going, guys, we’re going to have cake? When do they do this? When do they go, well, Brian, how do you feel? How do you feel? That’s never a question asked of a Marine. Unfortunately, it’s getting weaker it seems like because of politics, but yeah, it wasn’t up to that. You know what you want if you’re listening right now, Thrivers? We want a weaker Marine. We want to have a Marine that feels good, but they still yell at you a lot when you went through. How many push-ups were you doing at one time? You’re doing more than push-ups. They make up things. Like what? Give me an example. Jump up in the air, twirl around, jump on your, and then land on your stomach without catching yourself and then do a push-up. That’s a push-up. They get you to a point where you know you can’t do any more, then they ask you to do more. Isn’t that right? Yeah, exactly. It’s pushing the limits. It’s about being pushed. It’s about systems and processes with everything that they do. Before you know it, you asked me earlier, what is it like after 30 days? You really start seeing the transformation of what it looks like from scratch to really what you can accomplish with right systems, tools, and processes and people in place. Just same thing. Amazing. Now, here is the next fun segue. We’re going from super diligence into again getting back into this whole concept of don’t chase rabbits when you’re hunting elephants. Don’t get scammed. This is scam number three. I’ll just interrupt real quick. There’s a cadence. Speaking of what you just brought up, there’s a cadence that’s popular in the Marine Corps, especially in the boot camp. The words of it is, don’t let the green grass fool you. Don’t let it change your mind. How would you do that? Go ahead and do it for me. Don’t let the green grass fool you. Don’t let it change your mind. That’s what they do. Yeah. Really? That’s the cadence. That’s hot sauce. I love it. I love it. Yeah, because they know that when you leave boot camp, you’re going home for seven days before you go into your next training. And they know that so much can happen during those seven days. Oh, wow. Don’t forget your roots. Don’t forget. Now here’s the thing Thrivers. Let me tell you this. Someone’s listening right now and you need to hear this scam number three. This is my favorite scam of all the scams because it’s so prevalent. This is the deal. This is the, I’m going to invite you to a hotel room and I’m going to teach you about the secrets of success. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to celebrity name drop. I’m going to browbeat you with some random celebrity appearance, and then I’m going to present you with this unbelievable immediate key to success. If you do this in 30 days, in 60 days, I’m going to totally transform your life.” And so people are like, I do want to transform my life. And then they say, so here’s the deal. We’re going to teach you the 67 steps. So you go to a seminar and they teach you 21 steps. And so you’re like, is your name Ty Lopez? It is Ty Lopez. And so you’re now into the system. I knew you were refraining. Jackass. Anyway, so there’s the thing. So you’re now into the seminar and you’re now signing up. And you now, because he’s taught you 21 of the system. He’s my friend. You’ve learned the 67 steps. He’s going to teach you 21 today. And he teaches you and he leaves you with a cliffhanger. And so now you want to know the secret system because you have to know the secret system. You can’t, it’s a cliffhanger. So if we’re watching like a TV show right before the apex, the climax of the show, it’ll cut to commercial. So you want to watch it, right? So what happens is drivers, you’re at the seminar and they’re going, and so what you need to do is, well, and the thing is now we only have five availabilities. And so what we’re going to do is if you qualify, we’re going to allow you to sign up in the back of the room. And it’s very selective. And then they, by the way, they pay plants who are in the seminar to stand up and to begin walking back. And you’re like, I don’t want to miss out because they said there’s only five and now there’s already two people standing up and you’re like, ah, and then you just run to the back. Oh no. And you sign up and then you’re listening to the Thrive Time show. You’re just trying to enjoy your lunch at Oklahoma Joe’s. All you’re trying to do here, Thrivers, you’re just trying to enjoy a great lunch at Oklahoma Joe’s. You’re trying to enjoy the world’s best baked beans. You’re trying to enjoy an afternoon because you’re going to go over to Oklahoma Joe’s. You’ve got it all mapped out. Then you’re going to Regent Bank to enjoy those baked beans in the lobby of Tulsa’s number one business bank. You’re over there and you’re going, why did you bring that up? I blocked it out of my memory. I did spend $47,000 on the Get Rich Quick. And what happens is, Tim, there’s a certain time of night where things like this seem reasonable. So it’s like 10 o’clock, you know? They have worn you out. Your wife went to bed, and you’re now at 10. You can’t sleep. There’s emotional stress you’re dealing with, something stressful. Somebody’s just died. Oh, because I want the success. I want the success they’re offering me. Somebody just died. Somebody is sick. There is something going on that is a stressor in your life. You cannot sleep. What you’re doing is you’re sitting there and all of a sudden the sweet old man begins to show up on the TV show. He says, if you donate to this you could feed a kid for like 50 cents a day. You’re going, I don’t know that I want to do that because that’s a lot of money. So I’ll switch the channel. So you switch the channel and now you’re on a different station. And now you see a guy going, 60 days ago I was struggling, but no money down, now I’m living in the Bahamas, life is good. And you’re like, that doesn’t seem reasonable. But then there’s testimonial after testimonial. And they say, and for a limited time, if you sign up, the next 10 callers, and you’re going, this isn’t a good, this is a scam, I’m going to get some ice cream. So now it’s 2 in the morning, and you’ve watched the same infomercial for the 14th time. You’re preying on your emotions. And you have two questions. Are you going to sign up for the beef jerky machine where you can buy your own machine that makes beef jerky? Are you going to sign up for the eight minute abs workout? Or are you going to get in that real estate get rich quick program? And so you make the wrong choice, which is any of the choices, and you sign up for that program and now you’ve found yourself in a bizarre seminar where they’re upselling you. Now, Thrivers, guard yourself, protect yourself. When we come back, Tim, we’re going to be talking about scam number four. Scam number four is very dangerous. It’s a dangerous scam that will teach you, it will totally pull you off the tracks. I’m telling you, it is a wealth-destroying thing. If you do scam number four, your success is a definite not going to happen. You’re going to be distracted, and you’re not going to have any success. So stay tuned, Thrivers, to avoid scam number four. Do not chase rabbits. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. We’re talking about how to start and grow a successful business as always. And specifically today, we are getting into this concept of don’t try to get rich quick. Don’t go out there and chase rabbits when you’re really hunting an elephant. The idea is that you don’t want to get distracted from the main thing, which is your main vision for your life, and be deceived by all these scams that are out there. We’ve been talking about all the different scams. There’s four main scams we want to get in today. Dr. Z is gone today. He’s out today expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire, this time from the great state of Arizona. Inside the box that rocks today, I’ve tried to bring in the rowdiest friends I could possibly find. I’ve tried to bring in these guys who are just… I’ll tell you what, it’s like a dodgeball league in here. Seriously, we brought in some great Tulsans, some great Oklahomies. We brought in Mr. Tim Redmond, the guy who helped grow a company from two people to 450 people called Taxon Accounting Software. Tim, how are you? I am doing awesome, and we are going to rock this box. Now, I’ll tell you what, now batting third, we have Mr. Gary Schotton. This is a local Tulsa manufacturing CEO, also a guy who’s really discovered that his life has a big purpose and the business just helps fund that purpose. The business isn’t just the end of itself, but he has a very successful company. Gary, how are you, sir? I am wonderful. You know, I have this habit, and that habit is missions, and that business funds my habit. I love it, man. Missions. That’s right. Okay, now we have another guy on the program today this guy formerly known as armadillo jim he’s sort of a big deal people know him jim schmidt jim how are you i’m great i’m ready to talk with and to the thrive audience i mean i’ve been listening to your show and i i’m so honored to be on this show we’re we are pumped up today and tim you said something off the air that i thought was we couldn’t miss it the thrivers can’t miss this because I did read a Bible verse to you and some people are going, the Bible? Why do you always go with the Bible? I’m not a Christian. This is not a Christian show. I just didn’t want to listen to politics. Okay. I’m tired of listening to Rush Limbaugh. I don’t care about the wall. I don’t care about the, you know, the Democrats and Republicans. I don’t care about the recounts. I’m tired of the Twitter, the Twitter updates. All I want to do is learn about how to grow my business. And then you go bring up the Bible. But I did read a Bible verse to you from Proverbs 13 11 and I would encourage you to accept it as a universal truth, even if you don’t believe it as a biblical truth. It says this dishonest money, dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow. Tim, what was your response? That was your thought on that. Yeah, there is a concept in success called little by little. Little by little. And when you’re faithful in the little, you’re faithful in much, as a wise man once said. And so what happens here when you’re doing it little by little, it’s the skills you develop and who you become as a person. I say this to my coaching clients all the time. It’s like we are going to move the needles in your business here, but who you become become in the process is the real prize in this journey and what you’re investing in. So when you think about the six Fs, I was going to say the five, but the six Fs here is who are you going to become to embrace and fulfill those six Fs? If you’re new to the Thrive Time Show, Dr. Z and I, we argued for a while about the five Fs or the six Fs, but really we encourage everyone in 2017 to make your goal list with these Fs in mind. F number one, what are your faith goals? Two, what are your goals for your family? Three, what are your goals for your friendships? Four, what are your goals for your fitness? Fitness? Well, what if you have a bunch of money but you die early? That’s not good. The fifth, what about your financial goals? And the sixth, as he says, you have to have must-set goals for fun. And the thing is, Tim, you mentioned as you’re pursuing these goals, you have to transform into a greater version of yourself in order to accomplish these goals. What I am so excited about, something that really excites me about having Gary on the show today, is Gary is all about these faith-based programs that you bring into the workplace that helps your people to become better people. They have statistics that show, I’m going to argue with him in just a minute. I’m going to argue with him and Jim. But they’re saying that when you coach your people and you develop your people and they become better people, they actually perform better at work, they make you more money. So even if you’re a pragmatist and you’re going, I just want to make as much money as possible, then they’re saying, hey, this is actually faith-based programs in the workplace actually work. And since you’re talking about faith-based programs, I will be the devil’s advocate. Not that he needs one. But here we go. So Gary, talk to me about these faith-based programs. What are you talking about? Well, first of all, thank you for being here. Second of all, I’d like to comment on what Tim said there. Starting step-by-step, growing step-by-step is something I’ve experienced. I’ll tell you what, I came here in 1982 and I had no job. I had a career. I had three kids. I started a moving business. That’s moving furniture with a horse trader and a number of dollars. With your body? With my body, and it was step by step by step by step. And through that process I employed a number of people and I still employ about 50 people now. And so you’re right, Clay. If those people aren’t there producing and feeling good about themselves, they are concentrating on other things. They’re not concentrating on their job. We make metal parts. We have about, on a normal day, we’re about $50,000 in sales a day. We’re about a million a month. And we have to have people that will put out these parts and we have to have people that are happy working there. And different things happen in life. Things happen in people’s lives, whether you’re Christian, any background, any race or color or gender, those things happen. And so what do we do when those things happen? Well, in our company we found that it is best to have no trick, first of all. Our people have to trust me, the boss, have to trust the company. They know whether I’m paying my bills on time. They know whether I’m honest with them. They know up front. We don’t lose our employees. They stay with us. And some of the things we’ve done in particular, a lot of guys in our business, you know, I mean, we’re guys with tattoos and I’m sorry, that’s the stereotyping, isn’t it? No, but we’re guys that are absolutely men’s men. Bro, I just got a tattoo on my neck. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’m showing my age here. I’m sorry for that. But these guys have never had a Bible. They’ve certainly had a Bible with their name printed on it. I’m going to, real quick, I’m going to take the behalf of the Thriver who’s listening right now because I represent him. I have a man who I don’t… Thriver I talked to the other day and he called me and he says, hey, my father recently passed away and I’m struggling to stay motivated. I told him, when my father passed away, it did not decrease my motivation at all, nor did it impact my work performance. My advice to you would be, one, you need to find somebody who can encourage you, who can maybe be a counselor to you, somebody who can advise you. I am not him. I am going to teach you how to optimize your website. You know, that kind of thing. And so if I’m listening right now, I find a lot of entrepreneurs I know, a lot of entrepreneurs I know are very pragmatic. They’re just very driven. They’re very motivated. And so it’s hard for them to sometimes even understand, you know, that. But you’re saying, hey, listen, buddy, the majority of your workforce is going through the ups and downs of life, and you’ve got to slow down and mentor people. So say if I had an employee right now who is going through, they’re grieving, how does your company handle it and how would a faith-based program handle it? And I want to get Jim’s take on this. Very good question. Well, number one, I’m CEO of the company. I own the company. And there is something you’ve got to be careful with that you, in my opinion, you can’t actually get too involved personally. There’s issues that start coming up. So I’m not one, you ask me point blank, I’m not one that I start digging in and all of a sudden become a perfect marriage counselor. I’m not one that dives in and makes sure, oh, I know how to raise teens. I frankly don’t. I know how to make money. I know how to make parts. So we have found a different group. It’s called Marketplace Chaplains. And we make that and we pay for that. And they come in. I don’t like delegate that, like this is not my job. No, this is the best way to handle it. Because how can you actually be not accused of maybe being fair or unfair to someone when it comes time to a raise or somebody gets fired, somebody gets disciplined. The assumption is because you’re their buddy, that’s why they got the raise. No, we’ve got to keep it distant. So Marketplace Chapions is a non-profit. It’s all over the United States. They’re not paying me to promote them. I just tell them I’m answering your question. Another thing we did is that when we were coming up to the deal, everybody in life, they basically, I don’t care if you’re making $150,000, $500,000 a year, most people spend just a couple more dollars than they made that year. So the issue is how do you handle the money, not how much money you make. So Dave Ramsey, can I match the skills of Dave Ramsey? Look at me, would I know how to actually explain what Dave Ramsey has all of his life done? Do you want me to describe to the radio audience how you look right now? Is that what you’re asking me? No. I’d say as far as material, I don’t have it. So why wouldn’t I hand it to the editor? He’s a beautiful man, Trevor. He’s a beautiful man. I was going to say, I see beauty when I see Gary. Sorry there, Gary. Back to you. So there are certain things you can do. I’ll tell you what, just respect. I mean, just respect. Now I would say, and people who might be listening not know our company. About a third of our company is just on fire deacons and elders of their church. About a third, if you ask them and press them, they will tell you finally that they’re a Christian. About a third are like, I’m going to watch these guys. We’ll be careful. Well, something’s going to happen. Something’s going to happen in their life, and it’s not like we pounce on them. But when that happens, hey, I go forth. I come up, and then I come in. I go visit people in the hospital. I go talk with them at that point. I don’t just like every day pound, pound, pound, pound, pound. They’re going to run away from me. Now Jim Schmidt, I want to ask you this, my friend. What do you have to add to this? You have a kind of a burning fire here you want to address. I do because I’ve heard about the faith-based companies or companies who embrace it, like Tyson has 144 chaplains. The chicken people? Yes, among their 18,000 employees. 144 chaplains? Yes, most of them are workplace employees, but some are from the outside, like Gary said, marketplace chaplains. In their independent studies, they found that employee retention was highest among a company, and it was Tyson specifically, because of their chaplaincy program. Exactly. So they’re not chicken about faith-based. They’re not chicken, I like that. Okay, but you’re saying that because they’re bringing this faith-based organization in, it’s actually bringing out more productivity from the employees? Is that what you’re saying? Yes. More higher productivity, greater loyalty or employee retention, greater respect for the company. You can offer a security guard at the front gate, which makes them feel secure. You can also offer them a chaplain who might come by and go, I heard your mom is in the hospital. I’m going there today. I heard you’re doing overtime. Can I visit for you? That causes employee retention. One of the other things I wanted to share, you were talking about grief. $75 billion is lost annually in the grief index according to the Grief Recovery Institute of California. And we do grief recovery for children. Tim, you know that through our not-for-profit. And so I did a study on the grief index on children affected in the workplace. Say a single mom lost, or a child lost maybe their dad, and the single mom’s working at the place. Well, now they have to take time off to go to their school because the child is grieving or they have to take off to get a different babysitter. So these indexes affect the bottom line. So it’s productivity that’s affected. And that’s $75 billion. It’s 8% annually of lost time just on grief. Now, drivers, for those who are listening and you’re saying, and Gary, I want to get back to you in just a second, I want to bring this up. For those of you who are listening and you’re going, this seems like a lot of wasted time. I could be selling some stuff. I could be making some stuff. What am I doing? I will just say this. Again, we have guests on the show to bring a different perspective and a different view. I will just say this as a pragmatist. I’m probably the most pragmatic man on the planet. I would say this, is that when we have a sales team in our office, I can’t just hire sales people and then be frustrated they’re not producing. I hear this all the time. Someone says, well, my sales guy is not producing, so I’ve got to hire another guy as soon as possible because he’s the one guy that’s not producing. I have to invest time to train and equip people with the job skills they need to be successful. But we also have to invest the time needed to help people be successful in the game of life because if not, they won’t get to work. And if they’re not at work, they can’t do their stuff. And so you’ve got to find that balance. When we come back, Jim is going to get into it a little bit more, some more detail here. Gary is going to get into a little bit more about the importance of having a faith-based program, why they feel you should have a faith-based program in the workplace. And Tim and I are going to be warning you about the dangers of scams because everybody listening, we all have it inside us. You the listener right now, you have it in you, I have it in me. We all are like, well, I mean, getting rich slow seems kind of good, but getting rich faster would be better, right? That’s the idea. And at a certain point, that greed and that desire to make money makes things that are unrealistic seem plausible. And at that point, you start buying a lot of Denari, you start getting a lot of MLMs going, you start buying a lot of weird stuff and next thing you know you’re auto shipping soap and trying to sell it on eBay. Drivers, stay tuned. We’ll come back. Thrivetimeshow.com. Alright Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show. This is the place that you go to learn how to start or grow a successful business. And for many of you, this is kind of the place you go to to learn that specific, practical knowledge that oftentimes they don’t teach in college. And so my name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year in your ear, and I am joined here inside the Box That Rocks with a cast of characters. We today brought on three dudes who know what they’re talking about. And you’re going, why aren’t you bringing on any ladies? What is your deal? We’re going to bring on ladies for future shows. We figured if we’re going to get some testosterone inside the box that rocks you might as well Just go all out Let’s get all the testosterone inside the box that rocks at one time and then we’ll get a balance out balance it out So we have a lot of more female guests coming up on future shows. So calm down. So here’s the thing We have Tim Redmond on the show today Tim Redmond grew a company from two people to 450 people is called tax and accounting Software he’s here to talk to us about business and how to avoid the get-rich-quick scams and schemes that are out there We also have mr. Gary shot in the CEO of a local Manufacturing business and we have mr. Jim Schmidt. He’s a legendary entertainer. He’s a consultant. He’s a guru He’s kind of a beautiful man here on Facebook live. You can witness the beauty so Tim here we go We’re getting into the fourth principle here. Oh the scam number four this is this is I think this is my favorite one I’m so glad you wrote about this one. Okay, somebody should definitely have to take some note. I’m going to cue up my George Michael music so we’re getting the right mood here. Here we go. Alright, drivers, you want to avoid the time wasters. The guys who, they want to get bro-mantic all the time. You’re saying, hey, Billy, you need to make the calls. And Billy goes, but can we talk? I want to talk about why I need to make calls and who needs to make the calls and what’s the motive of the call. And then you’re like, Billy, you’ve got to make calls. So you, at Tax and Accounting, when I started there, working with you, I was an intern for you. I was like 20 years old-ish and my job was to make calls and receive calls by accountants, hundreds of calls per day. How do you balance the idea of if somebody wants to talk and really kind of, you know, take a lot of your time as a leader versus caring and being compassionate. Where’s the line Tim? How’d you do it? Well, we we would we would encourage those people that want to talk to go get their counseling degree and Get paid for talking to people But we would what we would do though Clay every day is we would look at the stats the supervisors and the managers at work and reported to me, had to look at the phone stats on a person-by-person basis. And we could see the outgoing calls and the incoming calls. And then we found out that some staff would call their girlfriend and rack up all these hours of talking, talking to the wrong people. There’s, you know, to track to see what people did with their time is the first thing that we did is just try to get rid of the time wasters. Go ahead. To your point, this week I fired a guy on Monday who made seven outbound calls and claimed he made 100 outbound calls and 93 of those calls were to people that he knew. And it was just the same call over and over and I just pulled the call log and I’m gone. But then let’s say I’m a loyal person. I’m working hard. I’m doing my job. I’m doing my job every day And now I’m going through something. I’m going through something. There’s something going on I’m there’s you know, I’m you don’t know what it is, but you say clay. How are you today? And I say And I’m doing the lip the lip quiver move And you’re going no, but seriously, how are you? It’s fine. It’s just the printer won’t print. It’s a spot I’m a brat and you have been normally a pretty stable guy and you’re like, are you okay? Yes, the printer won’t print it. You see how bad it is. I don’t want to talk about it. When do you get in there and you empathize and you connect and you coach? When do you do it? What was the line? How did you do it at task? I just want to know. Someone’s listening right now and they’re like, I don’t know what to do. Give me some advice. Yeah, yeah. Gary was talking in the previous episode about grief. So there’s some people that have these really amazing, just wow, huge catastrophes that come to them. And so sometimes we would want them to be removed entirely from the environment so they can kind of patch themselves up. But if they’re in here, it’s not like we ignore them, but we would push them more towards the lunchtime or coming before. I would many times, I would have on a regular basis, I’d be talking to my managers or even I’d always mentor and train two levels deep. So I’d be talking to supervisors and like, hey, how’s this guy going? Seems like he’s heavy hearted. Let’s get up a plan where he’s got some time to speak to somebody outside of the rush of the day. And so we try to push it towards the lunch or before or afterwards, but let’s get done. And many times it would help people to overcome their depression or overwhelmingness by just getting busy doing the work. You’re right. Now I want to ask this Jim Schmidt. Okay, Jim Schmidt, you guys have a great event coming up here. This is going to be on January 25th. It’s on Wednesday, January 25th. And what it is, is you have a Lunch and Learn about faith-based programs that enhance the company profitability. So you’re saying, you know, hey, if you have a business and you’re trying to mentor your staff or maybe you’re curious about is it a waste of time, you’re saying come to this Lunch and Learn on Wednesday, January 25th, and we’re going to teach you about how a faith-based program can actually enhance your profitability. What are you talking about, my friend? Well we like to call it a Lunch and Learn because you are going to enjoy a wonderful culinary meal at Nathan Hale High School, which that’s our showcase this year. They want to get that into the community. But to your point, we will have different businesses like Gary Shotton’s Auto-Turn, and he will do a one-minute shout-out about what has been effective, a faith-based program that’s been effective at work. We’ll have another business person, somebody like Sean Copeland, who will share his daily devotional. Sean Copeland, the CEO of Regent Bank. By the way, if you’re listening, Regent Bank is one of our great sponsors. And if you’re looking for a business loan or a business bank or a place to deposit your money, a place to process your credit card, just a business banking partner that can grow with you, you want to go to Regent Bank, go to bankregent.com to learn out more about them. Jim, what time is this event and how do I learn more? All right. You can, the event is called the Go Work Plan. Go Work Plan. Everybody knows what a work plan is. I know Tim does. He was just talking about the efficiency of a program. And Go was just moving the Great Commission through work. And the Great Commission was really sharing the gospel. And the gospel is all about work. When you think about it, these guys were in the marketplace. They were all over the place working when they heard the good news. So this is the Go work plan. All these businesses and our speaker is coming in, is a vice president of distribution from Walmart, one of the world’s largest companies. Walmart? The big Walmart? The big evil Walmart? Yes, and you know so many people from that part of the country, so many corporations embrace it. There is a conference there called Work Matters. They have 2,000 people at it. Now, we can’t handle 2,000 at the culinary school at Nathan Hale, but we’ll take whoever can come. I had a question. When you were mentioning the website to go to to learn more, I was trying to finish my Oklahoma Joe’s baked beans from the lobby of Regent Bank. That’s my routine. I go over to Oklahoma Joe’s, I buy my baked beans, I bring those in to Bank Regent, and then I go on Zip Recruiter and I start recruiting people. That’s just what I do. That might just be because I have a lot of great sponsors of the program that I have to talk about, or it could be because that’s just my normal routine. So I was unable to hear what website you mentioned. What website was that? GoWorkPlan.com. GoWorkPlan.com. Okay, now Thrivers, if you have ever struggled to stay focused on the diligent path of success. You see Proverbs 10.4, it says that God blesses the hand of the diligent and it punishes the hand of the slackered. When we come back, Tim and I are going to be breaking it down about how you stay focused on a daily basis because we’ve got two guests on the show, okay, and life is a marathon by the way, it’s not a sprint, okay. So we have Gary Schotton on the show, he’s got a very successful business career, Jim’s had a very successful business career, Tim has had a very successful business career. How do they, on a daily basis, stay motivated? How do they stay the right course? I mean, how do they avoid temptation to get lazy, to not stay focused, to not put one foot in front of the other? And if you’re listening right now and you’re going, my New Year’s resolution was I was going to do this or that. And about four days into it, you started doing nothing. If you’ve noticed yourself drifting, we come back, we’re going to talk about how these guys practice daily diligence in the workplace. Stay tuned. All right, welcome back. Welcome back. We were just listening to some Michael Jack and some 80s for the ladies on the Thrive Time Show here. This is your place that you go to learn how to avoid get rich quick scams and schemes. How to quit chasing rabbits when there’s elephants out there that we could be hunting. And so today inside the Box That Rocks we have a local CEO and success story, Mr. Gary Schotton on the show. We have Mr. Jim Schmidt, the guy formerly known as Armadillo Jim, an entertainer and a consultant for, he’s had a very, very successful career in the Tulsa area. And we have Mr. Tim Redmond, a guy who helped to grow a business from two people to 450 people, called Tax and Accounting Software. And now, what do you do after doing that? He became a business coach, or some people call him a business consultant, and he helps businesses grow that are perpetually stuck. And Tim, I was asking before the break, and I want to get into this, how do you, on a practical level, how do you stay focused on a daily basis on your big goals and not drift? What do you do? What’s your daily process? It all begins really the night before. What time I go to bed. If I get an early start, Clay, if I don’t get an early start, I’ve got to have an early start in order to really make this thing. My time and meditation and prayer is the start. Then I get real clear with what is my wig. It’s a wildly important goal. What is my wig? What is your wig? My wig! I have an issue though. I have an issue I want to go off on for a second and maybe I’m the mean guy, but I don’t care. So here we go. You know, I see a lot of people who act like it’s impossible to wake up at 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and they just always say I didn’t have time. It makes me crazy. That makes me nuts. I don’t get it. I seriously do not empathize. I’ve never turned in something late in my life. I don’t get it. I don’t understand the concept of oversleeping, staying up late, watching random shows. According to the research that’s thrivers, do not trust me. Type in Google, how much TV does the average American watch? And when you take that, or how much social media does the average American consume per day? It’s getting close to five hours a day for the average person. So someone you’re listening right now and you’re like, I don’t do well in the morning. Yeah, because you didn’t go to bed until the morning. You got to go to bed. So if you’re an adult, find a way to do it. Taser yourself, unplug the TV, whatever you got to do, get serious. Because Tim, seriously, on a practical level, you cannot have success if you just can’t. And I’m not saying you have to wake up at 5 a.m. I’m just saying you’ve got to allow yourself enough time in the day to get stuff done. Right. Yeah. And for you to be creative, for you to create results, the first phase of creating is planning. Planning. And so during that planning time here, it’s really an hour of power. It’s just a powerful, powerful time. It is the hour of power to get to the top. The hour of power. And so it’s all about getting really clear with who you are, who you need to be, and where you’re going. I look at my wig, the wildly important goal is from Sean Covey’s 40X, the four disciplines of execution, great way to look at it. Look at the wig and then what do I have to do today to make sure I move that wig forward. I want to ask Gary this because Gary, the one thing that I do know about you is you have a great reputation in Tulsa and a reputation as a result of what you’ve done over an extended period of time. We all have a reputation, good or bad, for things. I have a reputation for firing a lot of people because I fired a lot of people. So that’s my reputation. And Gary, you have a reputation as being a good guy who runs a great business and you also care about people. So I want to ask you, how have you stayed the course and put your faith first in business? First off, how many years have you been self-employed now? How many years? Oh boy, you’re going to get to my age, aren’t you? You wouldn’t believe it. I’m 65. So I’ve been in business ownership for 35 years, and 10 years before that I worked for the big oil company. And you know, I knew all along that I wasn’t going to work for the big oil company all my life. I’m going to own the business. I’m an entrepreneur. So what do you do on a daily basis to stay focused now that you are an entrepreneur? Because a lot of people are entrepreneurs and they begin to drift. Just going to be honest, okay? I don’t have this firmly fixed regimen. I will tell you that I’m passionate about what I’m doing. And I’m telling you, passion for me just exudes over what I’m doing. And so sometimes I stay up a little late because, man, I’m working on some things. Believe it or not, at my age I can actually do some things like help on the website and do some email, send out a weekly email. You know, I’m pretty good on that email. So basically, I’m not that formulated. You’d be formulated. I respect that. But I am passionate. And when I’m passionate about it, it seems like not every waking minute I’m married, our kids are all grown, I have grandkids, all that stuff. But I have to be careful. I have wife time. I’ve been married 43 years. Okay, that’s important. And I’m going to have wife time. But then I’m going to have passion time on what I’ve got. And my calling is to help entrepreneurs start, grow and excel in their business all around the world. So I’m on that. I’m into it. I’m thinking about it. Yeah, I have balance. I went to the basketball game last night over here. How are you? We have fun. I have a lot of fun. How do you not drift? Now this is what I want to ask you. This is what I see. This is what I see. I see this all the time. I see a guy, let’s say he’s a doctor, he’s a dentist, whatever. He’ll call me and say, could you help my website? I get him to the top of Google. This happens all the time. So I have a guy, like in a specific example recently, I have a guy in Vegas. I get him to the top of Google and he says, I didn’t call my leads. I’m like, how could you not call your leads? He says, well, I just got busy. And then it’s like this drifting. And then you notice in every area of his life, it’s just, I didn’t pick up my kids from school. I didn’t return the call. And there’s just this drifting. For somebody who’s drifting, if they want to get help here, how do you do it? Because you’ve been doing this for a long time. How do you hold yourself accountable, man? What’s your move? Well, again, you’re kind of looking for a formula, and I honestly can’t give you a formula. I can make something up, but I’m not going to do that. I’m telling you that the passion that I have, I wake up thinking about it. I go to bed thinking about it. We’re working on how do I help businesses start in Uganda? How do I help businesses start in Myanmar? I’ve got friends all over the world. I’ve been in 35 countries. I go on four major trips a year. I like to find other entrepreneurs in other countries, and I help to raise them up and show them that they’re the voice in their community. I’m passionate about it. So again, I can make something up, but I’m not going to. I’m going to make up something for you. Go ahead. You’re saying that if you know your passion, you’re going to be locked into that. Yeah, and I’ll tell you, at my age, I am only getting more passion and more passion when I watch. I was at the restaurant and I see a guy, and nobody will know who this is, he’s on a downhill slide because he has no passion. Oh, I know who you’re talking about. There’s no passion. There’s nothing in their life that fires them up. So you can work on that. My opinion is, again, I do like structure. I like other people’s structure and I don’t have that. But Gary, what you’re doing is when you’re saying passion, you’re thinking about your wig. You’re thinking about this thing. All the time. So a lot of it has to do with clay that keeps from drifting. It gets super clear with what is most important in your life. When you think about it. Well, CNN Money did a study where they showed that, you can Google it, just Google the American dream is not possible and you’ll find it. They found that 59% of Americans believe that the American dream is not possible. But then when they asked them, what is the American dream, they said, I don’t know. So it’s like, oh, okay, that makes sense. So again, survivors, you’ve got to find that passion. You’ve got to find that passion. Now Jim, what do you do on a daily basis to keep yourself motivated or encouraged and focused? Well, you started out the show by talking about faith and family, and those two things are my motivators. You know, you want to provide for your family. Obviously, you’ve got to bring home a paycheck. In the realm of faith, my passion for others to receive that at their own time, at their own pace, is what motivates me. And so, like Gary talked about passion, he’s passionate about bringing faith to the workplace, so he’s been a sponsor of the Go Work plan that we’ve been talking about. I’m passionate because I’ve seen the results. I hear when Gary talks about, we did the Dave Ramsey program for all of our people in the workplace and several of them came up and said, Gary, you saved my marriage because finances were killing it. And then I see the statistics of how many millions and billions are lost in marriage. Gary saved his company. When we come back, we’re going to talk more about having a faith-based program in the workplace to help coach up your employees, to help mentor your employees, because today, management is mentorship. So stay tuned. Thrivetimeshow.com, Thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Thrivers, welcome back to the Thrivetimeshow on your radio. My name is Clay Clark. You want to make money fast, so I’m going to talk slow, break it down like fractions, teach you what you need to know, and teach you those actions, because so many of us, if you’re listening right now, you have a passion. You have a passion for what you’re doing. You have a passion for what you’re doing. You have a passion for what you’re doing. so many of us, if you’re listening right now, you have a passion. You have something you’re passionate about and there’s two kind of controversial ideas I’m going to start off with here. We’re talking about not getting rich quick, but not getting distracted by scams, how to actually focus on building sustainable success. There’s two paths you can take right now if you’re listening. Path number one is you can say, I am passionate about something. So I’ll give you an example. I am not passionate about men’s hair. I don’t care. I wear a hat when possible. I get my hair cut wherever. I don’t care. Another example. I have a photography company that I’m still part owner of. I just sold it, but we are the largest wedding photography company on the planet. And I do not, I’ve never touched the camera, not one time. I never look at the photos. I have committed to not participating in meetings or to doing any new innovation. All I want to do is be the most profitable. My entire focus is just for the money, and then I use that money for things I’m passionate about, like my wife, my kids, burritos. I love burritos. Love burritos. So the thing is, if I’m listening right now, if you’re listening right now and you go, so you mean you started a business you’re not passionate about? Yeah, absolutely. I don’t care at all about either one of those two things, men’s hair or photography. But I’m passionate about my wife, and I’m passionate about my faith and my goals and so that those businesses exist to serve that. However, old school back in the day, I started a company called DJ Connection where I was passionate about DJing. And I only started it because I loved DJing. I thought it was great to be a DJ. And so I thought I could do what I love and quickly I discovered that that is true. You can do what you love and get paid to do it. So there’s a balance. Now the Thrive Time Show is my opus. It’s all I ever want to do. I would love to be with you guys all day, every day. I have no desire to go outside. I don’t like to travel. I like to be with my kids and do the Thrive Time show and that’s it. So the thing is, if you’re listening right now and you’re going, I don’t know what I’m passionate about, go buy a franchise, make it successful, use all the money to do what you want. Or, if you know what you’re passionate about and people are willing to pay you for it, you know, if you want to do finger paintings of ducks and the world won’t pay you for it, just make a bunch of money so you can fund the paint supplies needed for you to become the world’s best duck finger painter that no one buys. So that’s a thing you could do. So Jim is on the show here, and Jim is sort of a unicorn because Jim, you were known as Armadillo Jim back in the day. And I want to ask you, what in the heck does Armadillo Jim mean, and how did you get known as Armadillo Jim? Well, I have tame pet armadillos, and I saw that my passion, love of children, and helping them go on a straight and narrow got me into public schools. You can train armadillos? Yes, ours are able to make it across the highway without getting hit. How did you learn to train armadillos? Really? Training armadillos? You would know that because I met your children who are grown adults now. I know, but I’ve never seen your show. I dropped my kids off with you, but I didn’t stay with you. You train armadillos to do stuff? Yes, because back in the urban cowboy days, I came off the farm. I came off the farm. I saw urban cowboy chili cook-offs and all those things, and the niche was they were a popular animal. They were kind of like a Western. There was an armadillo world headquarters in Austin, Texas, all of this popularity. So I said, I think I can train some armadillos, and we started doing some armadillo derbies, and then I got a Branson-type show with a clown, and then we have seen two million children in Canada and America, in over 30 states, with a message called, Put on Your Armor. What are some of the shows you’ve been featured on as Armadillo Jim over the years? Some of the things, some of the media features. What are some of the bigger name drops where you go, I cannot believe that this career took me to this place? Well we’ve been on most of the late night shows. We’ve been on a lot of the talk shows. Regis and Kathy Lee had us before there was ever a Regis and Kathy Lee. There was Regis and then there was Regis and Kelly. Most of the national conventions that came to Texas, any major shows, movies that needed an armadillo to raise, well, over the years we raised $12 million. We worked with Comdex, you would know that, and we went there eight years, and each company paid $25,000 entry fee to be an armadillo jockey. This right here, Thrivers, I have to just… Bill Gates? Yes, he did it. I cannot… I mean, this is unbelievable. So if you’re listening right now and you’re going, I’m passionate about rower skating and I want to turn that into a full-time career and I want to find a way to become a quad skater, I want to bring the quad skates back and I want to become a master of the dice game and make millions doing it, you can. Armadillo Jim did something that was just unfathomable and turned it into a thing and you raised money for a lot of people. But I want to get back to this concept here about daily diligence and focus in the workplace. If I am a daily diligent kind of guy, I run a business and I do well. So well I hire a second guy. Then we do so well I hire a fourth guy. Then a fifth guy. Now I’ve got 20 guys. And now people are starting to, the morale is starting to lose. The culture is getting kind of weird. People are having problems in the workplace. Why do you encourage a faith-based workplace program? What does that mean? Because people integrate into the workplace from several walks of life or ways. One of it is they want enrichment as part of their life, and faith-based programs bring enrichment into their life, into the company. They have their value in ethics, and when they can look at an employer or their company as being ethically sound, they have a feel-good takeaway from that company. Gary would know about some of those kinds of things. And then their experience. They want to know that their experience was valued, and they were valued as a person growing that company. And part of that is related to your faith. It really is. Who I am, how I’m created, what is my job, what is my purpose. So those are part of them. And I think the enrichment is probably the greatest part for most people. If I’m listening right now and I’m over at Oklahoma Joe’s and all I’m hearing right now is there are a bunch of mystics, there are a bunch of hippies walking on hot coals motivating people, enriching people. When I was a kid I never got motivated or enriched. I walked uphill both ways in the snow and my father would beat me and I would tell him thank you for giving me the attention. What would you say to a cynic who says faith-based programs in the workplace are a waste of time? I would say you are totally wrong. I tell you by my not just experience, but repeatedly over and over and over again. First of all, money by itself is not the answer. Money is a byproduct. It’s just a tool. It’s how you use that money. And I have found that as I place the importance of taking care of the details that we’re talking about today, that actually it’s a case of not even trying to get bigger or not even trying to get more rich or more wealthy. It’s taking care of what you’ve got. And then as you take care of what you’ve got, it continues to come to you. I did a deal, a working run deal, not multi-employees or anything, but people come to me now and I’m actually a multi-revenue stream guy, not like some of the other people you know in town, but in the same way that I’m comfortable with, and these things come to me. I’m telling you it’s not a pie in the sky deal. I’m telling you I am totally convinced that God gets involved in my business, brings me business. Hey, 2009 was not a good year. What? 2009 was not a good year. Okay. I went from 65 employees to 24 employees. And you know what? The best thing about that, the first thing that ever happened, you know what I said? Best thing that ever happened. That’s foolish. No, it was the best thing that ever happened because it caused us to get better, more efficient, fix things, get rid of some people that we didn’t need there anyway, and it was the best thing that ever happened. And so I look at challenges as if they are the things that are bringing us to be a better company and we work at that. We look at that. We develop systems. We make sure we are working on systems. I’m gone a lot. I’m the only salesperson. I’m gone eight full weeks a year only because we have systems in place. Now Thrivers, if you’re listening today and you’re going, I might have missed the earlier part of the show. I want to hear more about that. What you do is you go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You go to Thrivetimeshow.com. And when you get there, you can download today’s archived radio show. It will be saved in podcast form for you to hear. If you subscribe to the podcast, you can just get an instant update on your phone every time we put out a new one. We have a brand new motivational series that’s coming out soon. It’s going to be a game changer. But Tim, for anybody listening right now who goes, okay, I’m listening and I feel like I need that one-on-one coaching experience. Give us just an overview of why one-on-one business coaching is so powerful for the people that you work with in your career. Yeah, well, the best get better because they hire a coach. My good friend Bill Gates said everybody needs a coach. Eric Schmidt said the best business decision I ever made, ever made, was hiring a coach. That’s the CEO of Google. The CEO of Google. Yeah, so it’s a big thing. It is a big thing. And so when you have somebody that’s skillful in the business processes, looking at your business with you, and moving you along and keeping you accountable, helping you take that little by little. It’s a very powerful principle, not just in the Bible, but just in life and success, the little by little. We can just help move somebody just 2% every week. In a year’s time, we’ve moved them 100%. Here’s the deal, Thrivers, if you’re listening right now, we have three options for you. If you’re listening right now and you have one dollar in your pocket, one dollar, and you say, listen, I’m in a tight spot, but I have a dollar. Well, check it out. You go to thrive15.com, thrive15.com. It is the world’s best business school, and you can now set your own price. We suggest $19 a month, because when you do that, we give a free hand-up scholarship to a member of our U.S. military, reserve, active duty, other families. We do that. But if you can’t afford it, you can set your own price. It’s a dollar, five dollars, six dollars, whatever. We want to help you. The second thing is we have these interactive two-day Thrive Time workshops right here at the left coast of the Arkansas River inside the thrive15.com world headquarters. Go to thrivetimeshow.com to learn more. And the final thing, Thrivers, if you’re listening and you want that one-on-one business coaching, go to Thrivetimeshow.com to learn more about it. This Wednesday, go over to goworkplan.com, goworkplan.com. One more time, goworkplan.com. Three, two, one, boom. 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. All right, so the question I would have here for you, if you could take like, I don’t know, 10 minutes or less, and see if you could save 3000 bucks 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 ten 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 didn’t understand how you said the website. This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Griswold family Christmas. Now, that’s clear. OK, so that can be true. So I would encourage everybody to check out thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. What would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save $3,000 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 $3,000 every 10 minutes and they’re like, nah, that’s not worth my time. Hello! We getting there, everybody! We getting there, everybody! There’s probably some, someone out there. Okay. They would think that. 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 thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard. Because you can compare rates, you can save money, and 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. Conditioner is better. I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool? Really? Stop looking at me, swan! Let me tell you a good story here real quick. I actually years ago compared rates with this company here called IPS. It’s Integrated Payment Services. And I scheduled a consultation. 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 twenty thousand dollars a year. Holy crap! Wow. Which is, you know, 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 10 minutes needed to compare rates to save the $20,000 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? The brand name of the clock. It’s an elegant from Ridgway. It’s from Ridgway. 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 10 minutes or less. We’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, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest Alarm company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. So 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85%, and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one-and-done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process, and that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals 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, 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 been a big blessing in our lives and also, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business and we were in a rut. The last three years our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, and 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 pediatrician. 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 percent 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 turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, 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. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockrell, head of Disney, with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. Think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. In the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every 6-8 weeks he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every 6-8 weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from start-ups go from start-ups to being multi-millionaires. Teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system, critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. And that’s what I like 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. And Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company, or navigating competition and an economy that’s, like I remember, we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey, guys. I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right? This is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd. We’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big, get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses? Or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same system that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s gonna be the best business workshop ever, and we’re gonna give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. You 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 their call. it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s 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 100% growth every year. 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 plan 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. 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 Turns into sales. Well, I tell you, you know, it’s 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. 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 100 calls. We make 200 to 300 calls a day per rep. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day on that script. Somebody out there is having a hard time. 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 you bought 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. 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 mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. Working here, 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 and 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’s 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.