Business Podcast | Best-Selling Author of Traction: Get A Grip On Your Business, Gino Wickman | The Successful Entrepreneur’s Mindset + “Clay really helped us w/ his systems, doubling our size, double our incomes.” – Ryan Wimpey TipTopK9.com Founder

Audio Transcription

Hi, I’m Ryan Wimpey. And I’m Rachel Wimpey, and the name of our business is Kip Top Training. Our business is a dog training business. We help people with behavioral issues and teach their dog how to listen. When I was learning to become a dog trainer, we didn’t learn anything about internet marketing or advertising or anything at all. Just dog training. And that’s what’s so great about working with Clay and his team, because they do it all for us. So that we can focus on our passion, and that’s training dogs. Clay and his team here, they’re so enthusiastic. Their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment. Spirit thrives. We’ve been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35%. Clay’s helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, scripts for e-mails, scripts for text messages, scripting for everything. How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are awesome. They’re so effective. It’s worth every minute. Things get done. We’ll ask for things like different flyers, and they’re done before our hour is up. So it’s just awesome, extremely effective. If you don’t use Clay and his team, you’re probably going to be pulling your hair out, or you’re going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game and producing your own flyers and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You’re really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it has a real sense of urgency and actually knows what they’re doing when you already have something that’s your core focus and you already know how to do it. You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team. We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business, not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily. So, and no one has a marketing team, too. Most people don’t. They can’t afford one, and their local web guy or local person that they know probably can’t do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months. There’s a definite sense of urgency with Clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people, really, I mean really ride them to get stuff done and stuff is done so fast here and people, there’s a real sense of urgency to get it done. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards, it’s pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which, you know, we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, so the humor definitely helps, it breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts, and it’s very interactive, you can raise your hand, it’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak, you know. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. You’re definitely, it’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars. So you’re missing the thought process of someone that’s already started, like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information, but just getting in the thought process of Clay Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches, getting in that thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses, to me, just that is priceless. That’s money. Well, we’re definitely not getting upsold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where it was great information and then they upsold us like half the conference and I don’t want to like bang my head into a wall and she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like, it’s good information, but we’re like, oh my gosh, I want to strangle you. Shut up and go with the presentation that we paid for. And that’s not here. There’s no upsells or anything. So that’s awesome. I hate that. It makes me angry. So glad that’s not happening. So the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business. And I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. The information that you’re gonna get is just very very beneficial and the mindset that you’re gonna get Snicks yeah, yeah boss. Yeah, I need you to get me click-clock. All right. Yeah right now do it boom I’m gonna do it disappoints. I know it’s like boom. I just gonna go get him right now I’m gonna do it. You know I’m like I am I know a guy you know I am I am I am I am the guy. I do the guy. Sneaks! Shut your face! I don’t think you meant what you just said. What? What? Let’s go get Coy Clark. Right here. I’m gonna wait here. I’m gonna do it right now. I’m gonna talk to him right now. He disappoints me. Boom. I’ll go get him right now. Just go ahead and get him. I’ll be like, you know, boom. Quit talking about going and getting him. Just get him. Surrounded by idiots. I just want to talk to a person who has a sound mind. I just want to talk to a person who has a sound mind. I just want to talk to a person who has a sound mind. I just want to talk to a person who has a sound mind. I just want to talk to a person soundbite uh… so smalls as nix said you want to see me out what’s up at this very moment very disappointed you were to book overworld’s top five was coaches well quick quick note check holes who wrote the best-selling book, The Ultimate Salesman. I know! Who was one of the best business coaches of all time. He has died. You should have booked him. And Bill Campbell. You should have booked him. Who was the business coach for Steve Jobs. And the good folks that started Google, Larry and Sergey. I know! Bill Campbell is dead. Excuses! So, Bill Campbell is dead. Excuses! And Chet Holmes is dead. So it’s not actually possible to interview either one of them. Excuses! They’re not even alive they were dead I wanted excuses okay I would have what what did it’s just that doesn’t make any sense so there are only two other business coaches I want you to interview I want you to interview Michael Gama I just did so it all of the emus book series I just interviewed him last week I want you to interview he was on the show best-selling author of the book tracks Gino Wickman I will do it on the podcast Gino Wickman I want him on the podcast I want him on the podcast now stat listen just because you cue up mafia music and sound like that doesn’t mean that you’re my boss I met you for the first time last week at the Italian restaurant after they finally lifted the COVID-19 restrictions and allowed you to serve as a bartender again for the first time. Book it! Calm down! I’m gonna get Gino Wickman booked on the show. It’s gonna be great. He’s gonna love it. I promise you it’s gonna happen. As the godfather of the bar that you visited since the reopening, I with the power bestowed upon me to hereby declare that I want to hear audio confirmation that Geno Wickman did in fact love his appearance on the Thrive Time show or I’m gonna… You’re a bartender! No longer serve you a beverage! You are something else man, I mean it is so good, holy cow man, there were belly laughs going on during that one. Bringin’ some wisdom and the good looks As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s C and Z up on your radio And now 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we in Yes, yes, yes, and yes, Dr. Z It’s always ecstasy when you are next to me But today’s show, there’s something super going on today’s show You see, Z, years ago you invested in a bank. You invested in a bank. I bought a bank with some buddies, yeah. You bought a bank with some buddies, and the bank was called Regent Bank. This is true. And I was sitting down with one of your banking buddies, you know, as banking buddies often do. You guys were milling around the lobby looking for free suckers and, you know, stuff like that. Toasters that weren’t handed out. Whatever, you can grab ahold of. Just free stuff, free popcorn, whatever. Sure, sure. And I’m talking to your partner, Sean Copeland, who was, I believe, the CEO of Regent Bank and the Secretary of Commerce for the state of Oklahoma. I know, he’s kind of a big deal now. And I said, Sean, in this vast lobby of Regent Bank, and in your vast office, and in all the things that you, all the resources for entrepreneurial education that you have at your disposal, all the resources you have, what is the number one book that you would recommend to me? And Sean says, Traction by Gino Wickman. I thought to myself, self, I should write that down. Then you and I traveled to Oklahoma City where we met Peesh Patel, who built a huge company called Digital Tutors, which he sold for millions and millions of dollars. And you and I, we asked him, we said, Peesh, we were at Charleston’s, and we said, Peesh, what book should we be reading? And he says, you should be reading Traction by Gino Wickman. And so now without any further ado, Gino Wickman, welcome on to the thrive time show. How are you sir? I am great. What a great opening you guys and be still my heart on that story when you share that story about the book I’m reminded of the 31 times I got turned down by publishers for that book so that’s really awesome to hear well Let’s talk about this here. You have this idea that’s been in your soul for a while? It’s this concept of the entrepreneurial leap. Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? When did you first start having this idea? When did you start wrestling with this idea that was later manifest itself in the book form? It was exactly 12 years ago when I was 40 years old and building EOS Worldwide and I said when I turn 50, I’m shifting my energy to the front end of the entrepreneurial journey, and I’m going to help entrepreneurs in the making get a huge jump start on taking their entrepreneurial leaps. That’s awesome. I think I teared up a little bit there. So tell us the title of your new book as he tries to get it back together here emotionally. The book is called Entrepreneurial Leap. Do You Have What It Takes to Become an Entrepreneur? Okay, now I have actually gone through your book and I have a lot of notes here and if it’s okay, I would like to read out a few of the essential traits that are in the book. I certainly won’t share all of the traits that are in the book. See, I’m the kind of guy, I’m going to share just enough to make our listeners get to a place where they can’t stand it. They can’t. You’re going to let them get their beaks wet is what you’re going to do. Right. It’s a no-brainer. You’ll have just enough content. They’re going to say, I want to come back. I want to buy the rest of it. So here we go. Essential trait number one, you said here, the visionary, ideas, connect the dots, the sixth sense. When we’re talking about the six essential traits of an entrepreneur, talk to me about this essential trait number one, the visionary. Yeah, and so that is a trait that you are absolutely born with, as are all the other six traits. It’s a very debatable topic But somebody that has this trait in them They just see the world a different way than most people their brain is always working And as you said they connect the dots and so they’re seeing all these moving parts in the world And they just put those dots together. They have this sixth sense They’re able to see around corners and again, so they just put things together and come up with great ideas that ultimately manifest into Businesses that make a nice impact on the world. They don’t see dead people do they or is that a different? Okay, I was I wasn’t sure you know, I didn’t know you know, do you know I have a sixth sense I’ve had a lot of success in business and I see patterns and this is not a political show, and I’m going to throw out an idea, Z, to you. Gino’s not saying this, I’m saying this. I’ve noticed that if you want to go to a large gathering of people right now, you have to bring a brick. You have to bring a brick, yes. And we continue. Or a bat. Or just have a protest that’s peaceful. Can you go to a restaurant yet? Can you do restaurants yet in Michigan right now? Can you do that? Literally yesterday, thank goodness. Yes. They just opened. Yes. Yes. Woo! Yes. Get your burger. Yes. I want to hug somebody. I want to do it. Okay. Go Lions. Okay, so here we go. Now, essential trait number two, passionate. You’ve got to be passionate for your products, your service. You have a strong belief to fill a void. Talk to me about this passion, because I see a lot of people that want, they want to be an entrepreneur, but there’s no passion. Talk to me about this, Gino. Talk to me about this passion. Yeah, well, sadly, it’s just not going to happen if you don’t have passion. So typically, again, that passion, as you said, is around that entrepreneur’s thing, whatever that thing is, the dent they want to put in the universe, the product, the service, the void they want to fill. And so they have this undying passion that as they keep getting their ass kicked and knocked down for 10 years as they’re building what they’re building, they just keep getting up. And the only thing that’s ever going to get you up that many times is that incredible passion for what you want to do in the world. Now, Gino, I don’t know if you would agree with this. I have made a list of the eight traits to be an unsuccessful entrepreneur. Okay? And I’ll just read off a few of them. One is have no vision. Two is have no passion at all. None. Zero. And I’m going to skip through. I have one more final tip I’m going to queue up. This is a tip for being not successful as an entrepreneur. Here we go. Probably my best tip is tip number eight. Always keep bags of your own poop. Collect it throughout your stay and just have it ready. Would you agree with that? Is that a pro tip for not being a pro entrepreneur? Gino, do you agree with that? I’m going to plead the fifth on that, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Gino, I’ve got a question for you. I’ve been trying for a few weeks. There’s so many people that come up to us and they say, listen, we want to be an entrepreneur. We love your show. We love what you’re doing. Rah, rah, rah. And then how would someone do a… What are some questions someone can ask themselves that they would know whether they have passion or not. Because you ask everybody, most people would go, well of course I got passion. I got passion. I mean, I got passion. I mean, you know, every Saturday night there at the house, we got a little passion going. I mean, what are you talking about? So, do you have some like, I mean like you, perfect example in the intro, or before the show started, you were talking about 31 times you’ve been rejected by your first book, Traction, which put you on the map, which is huge. It’s more than 30. And so, that’s the definition of passion. You had to go to your 30s. I mean, how many people would have given up after 10? Most people. 15? Most people would have given up. 25? Most people would have given up. Most people. And so what are some other little things you have seen that kind of help define passion? Because I think a lot of people think they want to be an entrepreneur, but they don’t really have their head wrapped around whether they have the right stuff or not. Does that make sense? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I’ll give you a couple of thoughts. I’ll just kind of riff a little bit and in here will be a few nuggets and so you know first of all it’s it’s what gets your blood pumping what gets you out of bed every morning what is the dent you want to put in the universe what is the legacy you want to leave and and not everyone has an answer to that you know so I would suggest that you know most people aren’t passionate and I’ll split the difference and say half are and half aren’t. But when you ask that series of questions and make that series of statements that I made, half the world is looking at you scratching their heads. There’s just really nothing they’re totally passionate about. With that said, you know, it doesn’t always have to be necessarily business-focused, but we’re talking about entrepreneurs, so there are people that are passionate about sports and maybe they’ll never start a business around that. That’s a whole different ball game than this ballpark that we’re in around entrepreneurship. That’s a good point. Now you point out the essential trait number three is you have to be a problem solver. You have to create a problem, problem solving, setbacks, optimists. I mean, when you guys took over Regent Bank, which at the time when you guys bought it, it was called the Bank of Nowata. They just rebranded right before you bought it, as a matter of fact. And all banks pretty much lend money from the government, am I correct? You all, basically at the end of the day, banks rent money to people. Correct. That’s one way to say it. It’s oversimplified, though. You know what I mean? You get some money from the FDIC, you rent the money to other people, whatever. So there’s a lot of regulations there. And there’s a lot of bankers I run into who say, you just can’t grow a bank in today’s economy. Now, you guys bought the bank headed right after you bought the bank the recession happened. Yeah, good timing. Right. That’s a not- But a lot of people would have just given up, Z. So I want to get Gino’s take on this. Gino, I want to get your take on this. Problem solvers. I see a lot of people that aren’t entrepreneurs, they get overwhelmed by problems and they just go cry. Where entrepreneurs are inspired to take action. Talk to me about the problem-solving trait that you write about in your book. Yeah, and you described it pretty darn good there. And remember, we’re talking about traits that you’re born with. And so as your listeners are thinking, you know, they’re scanning their body right now with each one of these traits we’re talking about and saying, you know, am I a problem solver? Do I have this trait? Well, you just have to look at your life and look at your history. And the way you’ll know this is, you know, have you always been kind of a creative problem solver? Do you tend to see solutions where other people are seeing problems? Do you love solving problems? When you get hit with a setback, do you tend to lean into it? Are you more of an optimist by nature? And if all of those things are yes, yes, yes, as you look back with every little bump and hurdle you’ve run into, then odds are you are probably a problem solver and you probably have this trait. Z, again, I see a lot of people that are overwhelmed by problems. At the optometry clinic, I mean, we’ve been dealing with the shutdown. You’ve been dealing with… We actually had a peaceful protest where I would say 85% of the people that I could tell seemed to be very peaceful. Then you had 15%… You had the Yahoo friends that showed up right in front of your Optometry Clinic. I know. We were all over the news. Right in front of the mall. The news was out there. It was crazy. How do you process solving problems? Do you tend to hide a lot? Do you jump right into solving problems? How do you handle it? Oh, I love solving problems. I mean, I think that, you know, when Geno was talking, I mean, he was like reading my mail. I mean, obviously, I mean, you have to have that thing of, and that’s what bothers me right now with the current status is so many people are talking about the problem, and every time I hear that, I just want to scream at them and go, what’s the solution? What’s your solution? How are you going to fix it? What are you suggesting? I mean, we get it. We have a problem. Okay, enough. Now, let’s work on solutions. I have a pro tip. I have a pro tip. You have a pro tip? Here’s my pro tip. If we lay on the train tracks and wait for the train to see if it runs us over, I have the hypothesis, I have the belief that we’ll probably get hit by the train. And I believe if we keep our economy shut down, the economy will probably stay shut down. This is my take. This is my pro tip. This just in. This just in. So I think we should hit the open button, but that is my controversial take on that, Z. Well, I think… Yeah, let me throw one more thing in the mix. Yeah, go for it. This will be a great indicator as to whether your listener has this trait. And so I’m thinking of the leadership teams I work with. You know, three to seven people running a company. We’re locked in the room. Well, my very entrepreneurial leadership teams, when we’re in that full-day session and they’re staring at that whiteboard of 40 issues, they get motivated, energized, and just attack that list. Oh, yeah. Where my teams that are not entrepreneurial, they look at that list of issues, and the energy goes out of the room, and they’re exhausted, and they’re scared. And so, when you get energized looking at a list of issues pretty good sign that you’re a problem So there you go see I tell you what I was overwhelmed I was looking at the questions for today’s show that we put together Yeah, because one when I read Gino Whitman’s book. I recognized there’s two things were happening one He is smarter than I am Too I recognized that I I probably need to stop the talking into the box fan And I probably just start writing some questions as a result of reading this great book. Well, you see, that’s why you’re a problem solver. I was just sitting there looking into that fan drawer. It took you a little while to get going, but you finally… I was overwhelmed. You geared down, though, and you got her done. I read the book. I went through it. Okay, so we talk about the essential trait number five of being an entrepreneur. Did we skip four? I’m skipping… Come on. Oh, we can’t give them all to him. I can’t give them all away. I can’t. I’ll skip number five and I’ll move to essential trade number six. I’ll do that. Wow. Oh my gosh. Sorry, sorry drivers. Risk taker. Don’t freeze. Rebellious. Willing to fail. What are you talking about, Mr. Geno Wickman? Yeah, and so this one is a good one from a standpoint of when we’re talking entrepreneurship and someone sees this trade, they’re thinking that the risk we’re talking about is the risk of starting a business, of taking the entrepreneur leap when truth be told, that’s one of a thousand risks you’re going to take over the next 10 years building your company. Risk taking is the fact that you don’t freeze when it comes time to make a tough decision. Being an entrepreneur is all about tough decisions every day, every week, every month, every year, and you lean into that decision, you make that tough call. A risk taker tends to be rebellious in nature, and so you’re the kind of person that a stop sign is kind of a suggestion to you. You’re willing to fail, you don’t intend to fail, but you’re willing to, you know that that’s part of the game and then you tend to err on the side of begging for forgiveness than asking for permission. So if that describes you out there, then you probably have this trait of risk taker. Z, I got to tell you this. Can I tell you my pro tip? You mentioned that I’m a terrible driver. Oh, you’re the worst. You’re the worst. You mentioned that you’re an entrepreneur if you perceive a stop sign to be potentially a suggestion. Gino, I would like to confess to you a pro driving tip that I have been busted on, on two occasions, no ticket, thank you to the officer. What I’ll do is I call it the it’s you know when you know did you play basketball you play basketball. I did not. Okay well it was Magic Johnson made this big up there in Michigan. You know it’s the no look pass right. So I do is if the traffic is where I don’t want it to be what I’m going to do is I’m going to signal and I’m going to go into the parking lot of the gas station and look as though I’m looking for gas. I think I want gas. You know those people who look for gas, but then they go, no, no, the gas is two cents cheaper four miles away. Sure. I act like I’m that guy. So I’m like, oh, I know. I’ll keep going. And I look away, but the whole time I know where I’m going. I’m cutting through that parking lot. But I look away. It’s a no look. It’s a no look drive. And I’ve been pulled over twice for this move. And the one time the officer pulled me over, woo, woo, is in the Hummer with the Kim Jong-un wrap on it. Oh, it’s beautiful. And he says, do you recognize you’re driving a Hummer with Kim Jong-un wrapped on the side of it, and I see you do this often? And I’m going, doing what? He says, the thing where you act like you’re going to get gas, and then you don’t get gas. I’m like, I’m indecisive. And he’s like, get out of here. Stop doing that. That happened. That was a thing. That was a thing. So anyway, that’s the move. I also do the shoulder move, Z. Whenever… You know it snows, Gino, does it snow a lot up in your region of Detroit? Or are you in the snow-free zone of Detroit? Oh, it snows. It snows. I grew up in Minnesota, and you know how snow rules happen? Once it snows, people all of a sudden are like, you know, stoplights. Kind of a suggestion now, because it’s snowing. Gino, does that happen up in Detroit when it snows like several feet or several inches? Do you have snow rules? It doesn’t get that deep, so no. I’ve never heard of that, so I have to say no to that. Well, Z, we’ll educate Gino. In Oklahoma, we have snow rules here. When it snows, even an inch, people are going, well, I might not be able to come to a full stop, so I’m just not going to try to stop. So you just drive right through the red light if there’s no other cars And I’ve been busted doing that move with like an inch of snow Sir, yeah hummer. All right. This is a powerful amount of snow. He’s a sir. Do I do it? Do you know I pulled you? Yeah, I went through a red line. Why’d you do that powerful amount of snow a lot of moment? Funny so okay we continue so we now we know about the traits of an entrepreneur But some people want to learn more about this book where can they buy the book or where can they learn more about your book if they want to get into all the essential traits? Yes, well all major retailers certainly, but the epicenter of all things Entrepreneurial Leap is my website, e-leap.com. You can certainly order it through the site. That will take you to the major retailers, but there’s also nine free tools, a lot of robust content that is free there on that website as well. Now in your book, you talk about eight critical mistakes that entrepreneurs make. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to tee up a mistake, and I’m going to tee up one of your mistakes, and then Z, after we interview you about it, Z’s going to chime in with maybe a funny story about this. So Gino, tell us about this. Mistake number one, not having a vision. An entrepreneur opens up a business, they clearly don’t have a vision. Why is this such a big mistake? Yeah, so it’s a mistake due to lack of clarity, lack of communication, chaos. And so what you typically have is you’ve built this organization to a certain size where there’s just no clarity. Everybody joins you because they fell in love with your passion. You wrangled them in, and everyone is just not aligned around a vision. And to the degree you have a vision, you will align everyone around that vision, you will get there faster, you will solve issues quickly, and you’ll weed out a person or two that’s really not in alignment with your vision. Zohan, you’re an optometrist. Yes, sir. And you know my wife is a beautiful lady. She started working for you at the age of 18 years old there. Yes. And then her creepy boyfriend came around. Right, and I was able to wrangle her away. We’ve been married now 20 years, but you have year by year. No, that was you were the creepy boyfriend. Oh, I’m sorry. Sorry. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. Truth. What’s the danger of not having a vision? You see business guys all the time not having a vision. It kind of cracks me up sometimes. A guy will, and I see this over and over and over, he’ll have a little bit of a vision and open up his business. And then, I don’t know if he bores, I don’t know if she bores, I don’t know what. Next thing you know, they went from having a donut shop to now they’re going to sell sundry goods over here in the foyer. Then they’re going to open up a med spa. Welcome to Al’s Garage and Donuts and Med Spa. And Med Spa Donuts and Sundries. You want to take a shower? We have a shower unit now available and a gym out back. We’ll open up anything you think you need. I know a guy. I know a guy is the name of our store. I know a guy dot com. They just keep rolling with other ideas and just when you think they got something kind of settled in, they’re settled. They just seem so unsettled. It’s like, next thing you know, they’re trying to do something else. You’re like, dude, just stay in your lane and do what you were doing and do it with excellence. I mean, perfect that before you run by a replica of Ronald Reagan because we sell those too. We have a clay model or one of those 3D printers. It’s unbelievable. It’s out in the back. I know a guy. I tell you what, you prop that up in your house. You think it’s a great thing. Gino, you see people like this, I’m sure, because you’ve done consulting and speaking and coaching. I mean, you’ve interacted with entrepreneurs for years. Do you see that, where the entrepreneur just keeps adding on one more idea while never gaining traction with any idea? Oh, for sure. I’m sitting here laughing because you’re spot on. And then you’re dipping into mistake number six, which is not staying true to your core. Oh, there we go. Because that’s exactly what happens. They start trying to sell and be all things to all people and get away from what brought him. And unfortunately, they tend to go out of business or at least struggle and flatline forever. So mistake number one is not having a vision. Mistake number six is not staying true to your core. This just in from our home office. I see that a lot, a lot with politicians. I see that a lot with business owners. Politicians though are the easiest ones to spot usually, because they’re like, I am in favor of capitalism. I’m down. This is me talking about it. I love it. I love it. Free market. I know. You buy things. Give me to the capital, because I love capitalism. That’s what I’m into. Yeah. But now that I’ve been elected, I could see the merits of socialism, and that’s what I’m going to do. Yeah. I mean, you see that a lot. And we all see it. It’s the pressure that makes you clarify your vision. Now mistake number two, hiring the wrong people. Gino, have you ever hired the wrong person, ever? I have. In my first business, that’s where I learned it, and I got really good at solving that problem and did not make that mistake again in the second business. Have you ever hired a person that had a magnificent resume and really, really was confident in their skills, but they ended up not being what you thought they were. Gene, have you ever interviewed the really good interviewing guy with the really white teeth and the great resume? It’s like a polished resume. It’s leather bound. His dad is a senator, and then he’s just a disaster. Have you ever hired that guy? Too many times. Well, I interviewed that guy. Fortunately, I was smart enough not to hire him most of the time, but definitely made that mistake a handful of times. The leather resume, that was a tip. This is actually an audio tape, Z, of I think one of Geno’s worst hires early on in his career. Really? How’d you get that tape? Let me wrangle it up real quick. How’d you get that tape? Well, and then actually, sorry, this is Geno’s personal assistant interviewing one of his worst hires. Geno, I’m going to play about 45 seconds of it, and then you can tell me if this was the actual audio, because I’d never know. I mean, who are we to vet the audio clips before we play them? Here we go. Oh, hello, Catherine. Good to see you. I didn’t know you were dropping by. You asked me to come over. Did I? Are you reading the dictionary? You caught me. I like to break a mental sweat, too. Grab a chair. Sit down. I’m going to sit down. I’m going to sit down. I’m going to sit down. I’m going to sit down. I’m going to sit down. I’m going to sit down. I’m going to sit down. I’m going to sit down. I’m going to sit down. I’m going to sit down. This guy interviewed well. That’s me taking the bull by the horns. That’s how I handle my business. It’s a metaphor. I get it. That actually happened though. It actually happened. All right, so have you ever hired a guy like that? And what do you do for the listeners out there who’ve hired somebody who they thought they’d be the greatest manager ever? They claim to read the dictionary in their free time. They claim to literally take the bull by the horns. They bring in their own paintings of them doing so. What do you do when you’re stuck with that guy? Well, you don’t hire him Wrong clip But what if you did get stuck with them you’re never stuck with them and I think that’s the takeaways you can you know How do you fire people in Detroit? What do you do? What’s the move? Good yeah, well, here’s what I would suggest because that’s the easy part. The way that this dynamic shows up, for anyone thinking about taking their entrepreneurial leap, is what tends to happen is that entrepreneur starts their business, reaches some level of success, sells a few things, generates some revenue, and they need a body. And so they grab the closest body to them, which is their brother, sister, significant other, mom, dad, aunt, uncle, throw them into the business, business continues to grow, and they keep doing that. And two, three, five years into it, they find themselves surrounded by a bunch of people that really shouldn’t be there. And so the point is you’ve got to hire people that have your core values, hire people that have the skillset to do the job, slow, higher, quick fire. And so once you realize you’ve got the wrong one, the firing part is easy, assuming they’re at will employees. And we’re not going to get into the legality of that, but the firing part is easy. It’s avoiding that mistake on the front end that almost every entrepreneur makes. Now mistake number three, not spending time with your people. I think a lot of people believe in abdication, not delegation. They get it confused. They hire somebody who’s the golden… See, this guy, he is the golden baby. Oh, Jesus. You look at him and you say, this guy’s going to be the golden baby. Oh, yeah. 24 karat. And your partner says, the golden baby? No, this will be, look at the golden baby. I don’t even know what that means. Why are you saying, I’ll tell you, he’s the golden baby. He’s the chosen one. And then you put him in a room and you don’t train the golden baby. And you wonder why he’s not getting it done. Talk to me about this. He’s golden. Why can’t you just hire a golden baby and not train him? Hench the name, Goldman. So I have no idea where you’re going with that. Here’s what this is. Thanks to us. Is the hard charging entrepreneur with this idea, again, build the company with people. And these mistakes all stem from my clients when they come to me somewhere between 10 and 250 employees having made all of these mistakes and we hear every single time is communication. And communication is just simply the root of it is that entrepreneur is not spending time with their people and the formula and remedy is a simple solution. It’s meeting with your team weekly, meeting with your team quarterly, and giving feedback often. That will solve 90% of your communication issues overnight. Do you have to schedule an actual meeting with your team on a consistent basis, maybe for those weekly meetings and those quarterlies, or do you recommend entropy and just sort of having an apathetic look at the world and just seeing if we drift into a meeting at the same time and place? We 100% prescribe same day, same time, same agenda, every single week preaching every single quarter. Oh, can you say it one more time? I blacked out it was so good. Say it one more time, please We highly recommend we actually every client does this every meeting has got to be same day Same time same agenda every single week every single quarter that right there is so profound because, I’ve been doing consulting now since 2006, and I can tell you nothing is more frustrating, Z, than playing phone tag with a successful person because they don’t answer a number if they don’t know who it is. Or they’re always doing something productive with their time. So you miss them, they don’t check voicemails, they call you back from their mysterious bat line and you don’t answer the phone because you don’t know the numbers. And it just goes round. Have you ever played an epic game of phone text? Oh yes. Oh, it’s just so fun. I love it. I love having the weekly meeting at the same time every week. Now your meetings don’t go on for four hours or nine hours. Gino, how long is the longest we should possibly have a weekly meeting? 90 minutes every week, max. Not a minute more. You can’t solve every issue. You just need to solve the most important ones, and the rest will wait until next week’s meeting. Okay, now again, this stuff we’re covering right now is in your newest book. This is a great book, but your legendary book, Traction, is also available. Talk to me about this mistake number four, which is not knowing who your customer is. Does that mean you’re allowing people to buy things from you and you don’t recognize their face? What does it mean when you say, not knowing who your customer is? The issue here is that entrepreneur, that business, is taking a buckshot approach to selling their wares. Your marketing efforts, your sales efforts, your branding efforts, they’re just kind of, like I said, taking that buckshot approach and doing a drag net and dragging in whatever they can when the remedy is knowing the demographic, geographic, psychographic, who they are, where they are, what they are, how they think, and targeting your sales and marketing efforts on them so that you have a very focused effort and you maximize all of your resources, time, energy, and money. Can we talk more about Golden Babies? I think we should. I wish you would. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, the GOLD member! Do you put golden diapers on there? I have pro tips. Can I give you some tips? Gino, I’ve had some, for about a decade, I think, I’ve wanted to interview Gino Wickman here. This is sort of an answer to prayer. And so, Gino, I have some pro tips I want to give you, and feel free not to implement them. It’s fine. He’s doing well. Things are going well here. I mean, apparently. I think he’s doing all right. So, feel free to one-up me, but these are my tips. One, I think moving forward you should insist that people introduce you as Geno Wickman. I think that sound… I think it’s hot. And I think if you become the kind of man that would correct people that say Wickman, you go… For example, you met me for the first time today, and I would say, Geno Wickman, pleasure to meet you. And you could say, no, no, no, it’s Wickman. It’s like Prince, where Prince had that constant friction with everyone. Because people are like, hey, good to see you, Prince. And he’s like, no, it’s a symbol. You see what I’m saying? Oh yeah. Think about that. It’s hot. It’s hot sauce. Oh yeah, I’m writing it down as you speak. I’m not. I mean, this could really create not traction, but friction. Not to be silly, but I think you have traction with that. Yeah, it’s a good idea. I mean, your newest book could be called Friction, Keys to the Golden Baby. I like that. What do you think about that? What do you think of Friction? And people would go, I don’t… He’s written three books, four books that make sense. Kind of like how you get a baby and they spray paint it gold and then take a picture of it on the cover. I don’t think that’s harmful. How many books have you written at this point, Gino? This is number six. So if you wrote Friction, the Golden Baby, people would buy it almost like a mercy purchase. They’re like… It’s like some of Prince’s music got kind of weird there for a while. And people are going, I don’t know if I even like this music, but it’s packaged in a glass sphere of some kind of gold. So I’m going to buy the golden baby. I’m going to drop that down a notch, Gino. Clay always shoots, he’s always swinging for a grand slam every time. Me, I’m good with bass hits. Keep up the momentum. You’re a benevolent man. You’re a kind of person. So, I think instead of doing a whole book cover on that, I challenge you in your next book to somewhere in there, get the phrase, Golden Baby. Somewhere in the book. Golden Baby. Golden Baby. We’ll know it’s for us. That’s your challenge. It’ll be just a little love nugget and we’ll have her shed a tear. Hopefully we pop some shit. You can use it. We’re somebody now. You can use it in your perfect level 10 meetings. In your level 10 meetings, you can just kind of say, now guys, as an example, a golden baby would do this. So Gino Wick, when you talk about your mistake number five, is not charging enough. As an example, you didn’t charge us enough to have to put up with the personal hell of being on this show. Talk to me about not charging enough. That’s a good point. Excellent point. Yeah, so the classic mistake here is undercharging for your services. And so it’s literally a psychological issue. It’s an insecurity. And so almost every entrepreneur, when they take their leap, for some reason they charge less than they should. And most startups, they’re literally a 10% price increase from being profitable or having a loss. That’s good work. And so there’s two great disciplines here. First of all, there’s a great TED Talk by Casey Brown who goes right to the psychology of this. But number two, Dan Sullivan, one of my mentors, talks about when you’re pricing, think about the number that scares you the most and then add 20%. And that will force you to kind of break through that insecurity, but it’s just a common, classic entrepreneurial mistake, and it’s the difference between staying in business and going out of business. And Gino, I want to add to that. I want to pile on. Pile. The other thing too is the drift. In other words, you know, the drift. Cost goes up. You keep your… You guys there? Did I lose you? No, no, we’re here. We just did a bomb. Can you hear me? What I was saying is, can you hear me, Gino? Hello, hello. Hello, Gino. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Gino, you there? No. Gino! I’m calling you back He’s still he’s still there he’s still he’s there this is a fake he’s there There I think golden babies. Hey, are you back? Oh, I knew you offended him when you were talking about Thank you, baby. I know I thought he’s gonna hang up on you any moment I knew it passive-aggressive BAM Bob is piling on Gino and that is not only day one Do you get aggressive and you price things accordingly? But also you have to watch the drift. In other words, there’s a restaurant here in Tulsa, true story, and they had the best lasagna in town, and they had it priced accordingly. And then every time they got a new chef in there, he’d be like, I can make this thing a little better, put a little bit more meat, a little more chili, a little more bears, a little bigger peas. You know, pretty soon, they didn’t realize but what they were charging for the lasagna was actually less than what it cost them to make the lasagna. And everybody loved the lasagna, that’s why you went to the restaurant. It’s as good as a Geno Wickman book. I tell you what, that lasagna is so good. I tell you what, I can’t make it, I don’t know how they do it. I mean this is crazy. They must buy in bulk or something, I don’t know. Geno Wickman would love it. And I want six orders to go too. It’s not profitable, but I want a lot of them. I want a lot. Let’s make a little. And I guess it’s kind of like the truck driver that says, I lose $1,000 on every run. They go, what are you going to do about that? He goes, well, I’m just going to get more trucks. I’ll tell you what, I’ll make it up and, you know. Gino, this is a problem for people. Pricing is a huge problem. Exactly right. That’s why I’m calling it out before you take your entrepreneur at least so you don’t discover it five years in. Now, Gino, do you charge money for your services? I do. Unethical. How did you figure out… It’s just unethical. He’s a pirate. He’s a pirate. He’s a pirate. He’s out there plundering people. He said, I’m going to make a profit in exchange for goods and services that I offer. I have a lot of people, Sean Copeland swears by your program. Pesh Patel swears by the program. Are you still doing the thing where you work with people for free forever? What’s your hot offer over there? No, that’s unfortunately not my business model. I get it. Seriously, if people out there want to hire you, what do they do? What’s the process look like? Are you even available at this point? Your books have sold just too many copies. Yeah, unfortunately, I’m not available, but the good news is we have 374 other EOS implementers that are available all over the world. So I can connect you to any one of them, certainly. Okay, now let’s talk about this. Mistake number, I’m going to go with mistake number seven. I’ve got some other questions I want to get into. Mistake number seven, not knowing the numbers. A lot of people, they go, I have a great product, woo, great lasagna, woo, it’s the golden baby, woo. And then they say, I don’t know if I make any money. Talk to me about the dangers of not knowing your numbers. Yeah, hear, hear. And sadly, somebody that has all six essential traits typically is not great with numbers. It’s actually a weakness of most visionary entrepreneurs. And so the beauty is, it’s a very simple remedy, because what’s happening is these companies are flying blind, going with their gut, guessing that everything’s going fine. The way you solve that, three simple things. Number one is look at the five to 15 most important numbers every single week. Number two, look at a monthly P&L every single month. And number three, manage a budget projected to actual every month. And if you don’t know what those three things are, just implement it and you’ll figure it out in about two months. You know, what I’m going to do here, Z, is I’m going to queue up. There’s that show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Who Wants to be a Millionaire? And it kind of creates a suspenseful atmosphere. I’m going to queue up the music here. And what I want to do is we’re going to come in rapid fire with questions for you, Gino, okay? We’ve got about 10 questions from Thrivers all over the nation. All over. And I’m going to fire out the question, and if you can give us the shortest, most concise answer possible, are you ready for the lightning round, sir? Ready. Okay, let me cue it up. Let me try. Have a kick. This is intense. Here we go. All right. I think this is the right music. Here we go. Question number one. When consulting with a business owner, how frequently do you need to have the awkward talk with them that the… How often do you have to have an awkward talk with them when consulting with business owners every single session in the first year really every single session of my music radio next question this is from a lady by the name of Amelia what do you tell business owners who get bored easily the ones that cannot commit to doing the same things day after day, week after week. What do you tell them? Get good at it. Learn how to have fun with it. Stay focused. Okay. Question number three from Luke writes, what do you say to clients that get stuck on website edits, updates that don’t matter, products that they don’t sell, things that don’t matter? What do you say to clients like that? That one stumped me because that one seems obvious. Pull your team together, decide what needs to go, decide what needs to stay, make quick decisions and go forward. Where can people learn more? We have a listener who writes, where is the best place for our listeners to learn more about your level 10 meetings? Two places. Purchase the book Tractions or go to EOFWorldwide.com. Z, get ready for your tough questions. He likes to ask inappropriate political, geopolitical, religious questions. So get ready for that. Here we go. Here we go. Next question. This comes in from Sean. Sean writes, what would you say to a business owner that does not yet see the value of accountability when working with a consultant such as the EOS team? Well, number one, I wouldn’t work with you because accountability is the foundation of the relationship with all of my clients, and I fear for your future and your people if you don’t believe in accountability. Next question from a Thriver by the name of Sean writes, can you talk about the process of training business owners to prioritize the stuff that matters as opposed to focusing on the things that don’t matter, like a golden baby? Ha ha, so the approach that we take and I take is we work with the owner and their leadership team. And so those are the three to seven people at the helm of the organization. And together, those three to seven people need to list all of their priorities and then choose the top three to seven for the next 90 days. And don’t walk out of the room until you 100% agree on what those three to seven priorities are. Andrew writes, what happens when an employee does not do their action items after your level 10 meeting when it’s time for the follow-up two weeks in a row? What say you, Gino Wickman? Rule of thumb, 90% of all to-do should be complete every week. If you have an employee that doesn’t do that, you sit them down, have a conversation, and that is strike one. If it happens again, you sit them down, have another conversation, that is strike two. If it happens again, that is strike three, and you’ve got an epidemic, and it’s time to make a people change. Julia writes, how do you equip implementers, or how do you personally navigate the emotions of an artist slash expert entrepreneur that thinks they know it all, but does nothing? Well, that one’s a little more difficult. So we’re able to solve that, and I’m able to solve that probably half the time. Some mini interventions, some group therapy in the sessions with the leadership team. The other half of the time, it’s a deep psychological issue that stems back to when they were seven years old, and they need about seven years of therapy before they’re ready to ultimately solve that issue. Oof. Oof. Z, it’s time for you to ask your offensive questions, as you often do. Z, your questions… Z is known to ask questions that are so offensive that our listeners, our guests will just hang up. Z, it’s happened. I mean, we don’t have any audio of it. It has? Well, we don’t have any audio of it. In theory, it could have happened. It could have happened. I know. Okay, go back 20 years and have a meeting with yourself. If it could turn back time. What would you say to yourself? What would I say to myself? Let your freak flag fly. Whoa. Lower your guard. Be 100% you, and don’t apologize for it. I love that. So you know what I would say to my younger self? You want to hear? I pre-recorded it for today’s show. I just thought I would say to my younger self. I just thought I would return that. I don’t know what happened. That’s what I would say to my younger self. You know what they say. See you, bro, to get that booty, yack. Lay her down, and smack them, yack them. Smack them, yack them. That’s what I would say. That’s about 20 years ago. That was about you. Okay, two more questions for Gino Wickman. Gino Wickman, America’s golden baby of consulting. What’s next for you, Gino? Are you on a beach somewhere in the winter? On the beaches of Detroit? I mean, probably a snowbird. I mean, what’s next for you? Are you buying the lions? You’re building a big beach house somewhere in the Caribbean. You can’t tell us the exact location. And you’re ordering a bunch of umbrellas for your drinks and all that kind of stuff. What’s next? Yeah, far from writing off into the sunset, I’ve got many decades of work left to do, but this next 10 years is focused on Entrepreneurial Leap and impacting one million entrepreneurs in the making over the next 10 years. I love that. That’s awesome, buddy. If you say, listen, have you picked a time in the future where you say, you know what, that’s my goal, and when I hit that age, I am rolling up the sleeves, peacing out, and saying, see you later, alligator. Far from it. So this next 10-year goal will take me to 60, and then there will be another 10-year goal at 60, and another one at 70, and another one at 80, until I keel over, I’m going to die in the middle of a project. I love that. Okay, my question I have for you, this is the one I sincerely want to know the answer to because this is one that I get asked this question so much by our listeners. They want to know, Geno Wickman, how do you organize the first four hours of your day? What time do you get up and how do you organize the first four hours of your day? Because you’re a very productive man. How do you do it? Yeah, so my advice to the world is when you go to bed, go to bed knowing your plan for the next day. Do not go to sleep without knowing your plan for the next day. And so what I do somewhere between 5 o’clock and 11 o’clock is lay out my next day. So when I wake up I hit the ground running as opposed to what most people do getting distracted by emails, phone calls, et cetera, and let the world take over. And so those first four hours, I wake up at various times. It’s not always the same time. But I wake up, I typically have a morning routine, which is some thinking, writing, and some light exercise. And then I hit the ground running with whatever that first item is on my list. My days are very, what’s the word i’m looking for a very uh… each day the bit different somebody by the fashion some data doing podcast like that but whatever that first thing is on my schedule uh… attack that first work my way through my plan for the day what’s the average time you wake up on average i would say six thirty six thirty is a fair time if it’s a thirty six thirty seven do you do you talk to a lot of people during those first hours of your day? Or is it more of just you time? Yeah, I’m typically talking to people as early as 7.30, I would say. And it depends. If I’m driving, I’m always scheduling my calls during drive time. So if I’m in the car at 7.30, I’ve got a call or two scheduled for that drive time. Gino, I appreciate you being on the show so much, and I encourage every listener out there to check out your new book, The Entrepreneurial Leap. Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? I really do appreciate you making the poor life choices needed to end up on today’s show. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yeah, it was a blast. You guys are absolutely nuts, but it was a true blast. We are flying the freak flag. Listen, whenever you get that package delivered from probably UPS or FedEx, open it quickly because it’s probably going to have a golden baby in there. So just… A golden statue. So leave that on the board tomorrow. We went to the golden baby statue store. Yeah. It’s an extension of… Is that going to be a live one? I thought you were going to say live golden baby. It’s an extension of Z’s Optometry Clinic. It’s off in the back. There’s a room where he sells the golden babies statues. It’s a big hit. Thank you, Gino. Thank you, Gino. Thank you, guys. And now, without any further ado… Three, two, one, boom! 3, 2, 1, BOOM! Boom. Boom. Boom. Why does this still keep happening to me? I don’t know whose prayer I’m breaking into, but I’m breaking into somebody’s prayer, saying, Lord, why do I keep going through the same things over and over again and the Lord sent me here to tell you the problem is with your default until you change your default you will always go back to being who you were before because you have never changed your mind you change your friends you change your address you change your phone number you change the songs you say you change everything else but you didn’t change your mind there’s nothing as powerful as a change in mind Boom! Nothing as powerful as a change in mind, boom! Better get yours cause I’m a take mine, boom! Leave em where they at if they ain’t ready Used to have a lot of homies now they dropping like a belly, I’m like boom! We taking over it’s our time now. All you ain’t know, we about to thrive now. Big, overwhelming, optimistic, pro, mental, A-Class. Back, back, get em, go get em, then. Hurdle every obstacle, trying to do the impossible. Turnt my whole life around, haters thought it was comical. Had to make some moves, beating me, it seemed logical. Quarterback to play, man, I had to call him out a bit. Drop back, stop back, rearrange and switch it up. Only got my life within its grasp, and she gon’ dip it up. Faker ain’t an option, ain’t no way that I can give it up Ha ha, hey now let’s go and pick it up Nothing like your posse, look poppy, you cannot top me They watch me and try to copy, like Rocky you cannot stop me Corrier than ever, we grinding off on the weather We shining because we better get with us, we boutta shatter Once I change my mind, dog, trust me, ain’t no going back Coming for that top spot, I’m feeling like they owe me that Time for us to level up, I feel like we been holding back Throw your hands up, say it with me, if you’re going down Nothing is powerful as a change line Boom, better get yours cause I’m a take mine Boom, leave em where they at if they ain’t ready Used to have a lot of homies, now they drop em like a teddy I’m like boom, we taking over, it’s our time now Boom, oh you ain’t know but we about to thrive now Big, overwhelming, optimistic, no gentle I can see that, anything I think of in my mind I can achieve that I can make a million if I want to, I’ma keep it real cause I want to Other women try to holla, girl I won’t too, and disrespecting white people’s what I won’t do your dance If you really wanna change, gotta have a plan Even when they sit down, I’ma take a stand Throw your hands up, say it with me, you already know it man So these become your thoughts, thoughts become your actions So be intentional about the way you passion It’s focused, there’s no hocus, we only live once man And you know this, you can’t press the rewind But you can make a beeline, to the next level Like you’re headed for the treeline I was born in Minnesota, moved to Oklahoma, incorporated both into my rhymes Now it’s time to show ya how a former stuttering student can turn out to rap With a lyrical miracle flow in the cash to match I’m imported, a Minnesota refugee, but I’m consistent as can be As I rap on hip-hop beats, bringing rappers to tax Even though that I’m white, I can play that folkin’ music, but I ain’t vanilla I, here we go, here we go, here we go, full steam 3, 2, 1, dynamite on the scene Boom! Nothing is powerful as a change mind. Boom! Better get yours cause I’m a take mine. Boom! Leave em where they got it if they ain’t ready. Used to have a lot of homies, now they dropping like a bad deal. Boom! We taking over, it’s our time now. Boom! Boy you ain’t know, we about to thrive now. Big, overwhelming, optimistic, whole mental. Boom! And the Lord sent me here to tell you, the problem is with your default, you will always go back to being who you were before because you have never changed your mind. You change your friends, you change your address, you change your phone number, you change the songs you sing, you change everything else, but you didn’t change your mind. Hear the rest of T.D. Jakes incredible life-changing and mind-altering sermon nothing as powerful as a changed mind today by looking up T.D. Jakes on YouTube and typing in nothing as powerful as a changed it all right and now it is your honor bring up of my good friend uh… ryan wimpy market for right with the and his dog uh… olden this dog up has the the ability to eat me some sort of concerned a past like you know you can have your own mic if you want, whatever you want, Odin. Okay, I’m a little bit afraid of Odin. Hi, I’m Ryan Wimpey. And I’m Rachel Wimpey, and the name of our business is Kip Top Training. Our business is a dog training business. We help people with behavioral issues and teach their dog how to listen. When I was learning to become a dog trainer, we didn’t learn anything about Internet marketing or advertising or anything at all. Just dog training, and that’s what’s so great about working with Clay and his team, because they do it all for us. So that we can focus on our passion and that’s training jobs. Clay and his team here, they’re so enthusiastic, their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment, spirit thrive. We’ve been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35%. Clay’s helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, scripts for email, scripts for text messages, scripts for everything. How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are awesome. They’re so effective. It’s worth every minute. Things get done, we’ll ask for things like different flyers and they’re done before our hour is up. So it’s just awesome, extremely effective. If you don’t use Clay and his team, you’re probably going to be pulling your hair out or you’re going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game and producing your own flyers and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You’re really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it has a real sense of urgency and actually knows what they’re doing when you already have something that’s your core focus that you already know how to do. You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team? We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business, not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily. So no one has a marketing team, too. Most people don’t, they can’t afford one, and their local web guy or local person that they know probably can’t do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months. There’s a definite sense of urgency with Clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people, I mean really ride them to get stuff done, and stuff is done so fast here and people, there’s a real sense of urgency to get it done. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot. We’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, so the humor definitely helps. It breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts. And it’s very interactive. You can raise your hand, it’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. You’re definitely… It’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars. So, you’re missing the thought process of Clay Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches, getting in their thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses, to me, just that is priceless. That’s money. Well, we’re definitely not getting upsold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where they upsold, where it was great information and then they upsold us like half the conference and I don’t want to like bang my head into a wall and she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her like it’s good information but we’re like oh my gosh I want to strangle you shut up and go with the presentation that we paid for and that’s not here there’s no upsells or anything so that’s awesome I hate that it makes me angry so glad that’s not happening so the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business. And I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. The information that you’re going to get is just very, very beneficial. And the mindset that you’re going to get, that you’re going to leave with, is just absolutely worth the price of a little bit of money and a few days worth of your time. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right? This is where we used to live 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 house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing. And this is our new team. We went from four to fourteen. And I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past. And they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016, we 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 systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. Oh, look at this cute baby. What a great baby. Quality baby. That’s a healthy baby. All right, Dave, Sean, today’s show, I’m very excited for you to hear this success story about this wonderful couple that, Sean, I would describe them as they are killing the game in the most nonviolent way possible. They’re killing the game in the most nonviolent way possible. They are blowing up in a good way. Folks, I’m telling you, these folks are really growing their business, and what makes them great is they’re really kind, hardworking, diligent people, and we’re honored to serve them. We’ve got Jenny and Mike here joining us. Jenny and Mike, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you two? Hi, thank you, good, we’re doing well. Okay, now I’ll start with you, Jenny, because frankly, Sean likes you more, no, I’m just kidding. So, let’s start with you. So, how did you first discover us and the business coaching that we provide? So, I was listening to different podcasts about business. I was starting up our business, and so you were the first one to pop up on our podcast on Apple. I think Apple is what I was on. And so I started listening to you. I got on your website, and I was just a little girl starting a business, and I said, I’m going to ask this guy to be my coach, and I don’t think I’m going to get a shot. But sure enough, within a week, you called me. Now who is this cute, cute child here? But Micah, who is this cute kid here? It’s uh Len Rose she is about to be 10 months old. I hate to do this to you but can you kind of hold up the baby to the camera a little bit? This is probably look at this cute baby what a great baby quality baby that’s a healthy baby. So so Mike can you tell us what’s the name of your your website there? I think people want to look you up and verify you’re real people that don’t just happen to have a cute baby. Yeah, our website is newconcept.healthcare. newconcept.healthcare. So newconcept.healthcare. I’m going to pull it up right now folks so we can all verify that they’re not just a couple who’s taking advantage of the cute baby they have to get a podcast here. This is a real couple. I’m pulling it up here. So this is the website. It’s newconcept.healthcare. And can you tell our listeners, what services do you guys provide at newconcept.healthcare? So we offer more functional medicine. So we offer IV therapies. We offer hormone replacement therapies. We also do acute care. We do pretty much everything, but we’re very much alternative. So we believe in medical freedom and that’s what we offer. And you guys, you reached out. Do you remember that initial consultation there? Do you remember, Mike, that initial consultation? Do you remember what that was like? Yeah, it was actually pretty overwhelming that we started in this business with absolutely nothing and we had the opportunity to work with a five-time share. Well, you know, the one thing I always try to do is, you know, my father, great guy, may he rest in peace, he worked his tail off like so many people do, and there was no real economic result that was achieved from it. There wasn’t any, you know, he had a college degree, he’s working two jobs. I remember he’s late 30s, he’s working at Domino’s delivering pizzas, working at Quick Trip, he worked at furniture stores. And I always try to look at every new client we have as though I’m talking to my dad, you know, because like, what would my dad, you know, what could he have learned at the age of 37 that could have changed the financial trajectory of his life? You know, I try to look at it that way. And so you guys, I paired you up with Sean. You’ve been working with Sean, I believe, Sean, since October of 2020. Is that correct? I think that’s when they started their business. It wasn’t until about April of 2021. So April of 2021. point from that point to now, Sean, how much growth have you guys achieved from 2021 to now? Do you know that number? Yeah, I mean, we’re sitting at 2023 revenues were 821,000. And there in October of 2020, like they they only had a few months, they made about 95,000. And we continued to grow there ever since, all the way up to where we’re getting close to the million dollar mark at this point here, just like three years in. Jenny, how would you describe the growth? Would you say you’ve doubled? Are you at five times larger? How would you describe that? Oh, no, I definitely feel the growth. There’s been some growing pains, and you guys have helped us through that too. So it’s been amazing. It’s been amazing to help people because that’s what I’m passionate about. And you guys have really helped us expand and tell people what we’re about. So step one here, we do this with all the clients. I’m going to walk people through the steps. We really needed to nail down your branding. And that’s a big thing because branding is to humans what clothing is. So as an example, you know, you wake up today, folks, if you run around and you’re streaking through life, you’re probably not gonna get a lot of conversations started. So we all have to be intentional about, you know, what are we gonna wear? Are we gonna wear a tie? Are we gonna wear a polo? Are we gonna do makeup? Are we not? So people, they judge us based on our appearance. And so we really had to get a website built. We had to optimize the online brand. Jenny, we do it all included for our clients, so we don’t refer you to another vendor. We do it all. Can you talk about the impact that that has made on the business? Oh, for sure. Just the website itself, it looks so great. We would have never been able to make it look that great. The way y’all optimize everything and keep us with Google, just where people search us and we’re the first people that come up. And that’s actually how we’ve established our business and started offering some of the things that we offer is because of the tags that we have. I didn’t originally start off as doing IV therapy, but due to people Googling, you know, health care functional medicine, I had three phone calls in a week that said, hey, do you offer IV therapy? And it was very interesting. And I was like, well, no, but I can. And so it was because of you guys that that kind of snowballed and took effect. So yeah, there’s a lot that you guys have done for us. Now, Sean, we’re working with these wonderful clients here. I’ll pick on Mike here. You know, you always say great things about Mike and Jenny. What makes them good to work with? Because I want to make sure for anybody out there, if you go to thrive timeshow.com, I consistently offer a free 13-point assessment. I’ve been doing that since 2005. I do it without reservation. There’s no obligation. But there’s usually about one to two knuckleheads a week that will fill out the form and probably 20 really great people that fill out the form. And then we only take on 160 clients. And so I don’t want anyone to waste their time. What makes Mike so great to work with? Well, Clay, I mean, you, when I first started coaching, you taught me about these, you know, these two types of business owners. There’s the happy hopers out there and then there’s the diligent doers. I think these guys are a great example of the diligent doer. They continually apply effort to work on their business, not just in their business. They consistently show up to their meetings. They track all of the critical numbers of their business, and they’re aware of what’s going on with all of their employees. They’re paying attention to all the little things going on. They’re keeping all the plates spinning and they ask great questions. They actually really do make a great effort consistently to apply our systems and help their business grow. It’s been working. So step one, we get the branding nailed down. That’s the website, the print pieces, the logos, the business cards, but then you have to develop that online reputation. Now that could be a tough thing to do, Jenny. And I’ll just, I’m not, this isn’t a backhand compliment. I’m just saying, but for people that are humble and very kind, of which I would put Jenny in that category, sometimes asking for reviews is more difficult because you almost feel like you’re self-promoting. I’ve never had this conversation with you, but when you, has that been difficult for you to ask people to give you video reviews and Google reviews after you provided the service, or was that easy for you to do? It was not. It’s not easy. It still isn’t easy. Okay. It is. It’s difficult because you feel like you’re begging for something, even though you know you did the right thing. Yeah. So it is. It’s difficult for me. It’s just my personality type, but we get it done anyways. I’ll find this for the diligent, kind customers we work with, it’s very difficult sometimes to ask for those objective reviews from real customers. And I find that from my clients I’ve worked with that are sort of like self-described barbarians. I had a guy years ago I worked with, I won’t mention his name or his industry, but I’ll just say he’s obsessed with physical fitness. And he told me, he says, I’m kind of a business barbarian. You tell me what to do and I will slay the dragons. And I’m like, okay, you need to get Google reviews from everybody you’ve ever worked with. And he’s like, oh, I’m on it. And this guy’s just shamelessly calling through his phone and just lighting people up going, give me a review. Come on, give me a review. Why would you not give me a review? I’m like, go ahead, dial it down a little bit. So again, you guys are humble, diligent doers. You’re the ideal person here. So I appreciate you sharing that. The next thing we had to do is we had to create a no-brainer. Now a no-brainer is an offer so good, so amazing, that people simply cannot say no to it. Now I won’t mention the name of the company, but I worked years ago and I still work with this company. They’re a medical company, they’re doing well now. And for whatever reason, they put on their website, first initial consult, 497. And he went to one of these like borderline spiritual motivational conference things where Jesus isn’t described, but they kind of talk about metaphysical alignment and getting your woosah, getting in your groove, alignment, no friction. And he came back and he’s like, Clay, I believe in the seventh number of completion. I go, I agree. He says, four is the number that’s urgent. I’m like, okay. Not, and I go, what? He’s like, I don’t want tire kickers. So I’m gonna do 497 for my first consult. That way I don’t deal with the tire kickers. And I’m like, doc, I love you so much. You’re a doctor, I love it. You don’t have any customers though. That’s why you came to me, you don’t have any customers. So why don’t you do a first free consult? He’s like, I’m not gonna do it. I’m gonna kick out Sean the tire kicker. So I’m sure you’ve never seen this with a client. Oh, never. And so, now what makes it worse is his wife also went to the Metaphysical Alignment Motivational Jackassery Festival, and she was like 497 is the number. I had a dream about it. I’m like, yeah, you probably talked about it all weekend. You probably are subconsciously thinking about it. You’re probably creating a neural pathway related to 497. And so anyway, after about a year, he finally says, okay, I came to your conference and I saw a person that did the first consult for a dollar, I’m gonna go with that. And now his business is blowing up. Could you talk about your no-brainer, your first consult for a dollar? How has that helped you having that no-brainer offer? Yeah, so it gets people in. And so when we get people in, we know that we’re doing a good job and we know that we’re trustworthy and our healthcare is superior to most. So just getting people in for that dollar, because a lot of people are, you know, they’re nervous about going to the doctor or they don’t trust healthcare system. And so they know that they can come in, they’re only gonna spend a dollar, they can figure out whether or not they trust us, figure out whether or not we’re the place for them. And we know 100% of the time we will be. So it’s really helped us just get people in and get people to trust us more. Now, once somebody fills out the form, folks, again, there’s a linear pathway here. I’m trying to give you a visual here. So you establish your revenue goals. You figure out your numbers to break even. You figure out how many hours a week you’re willing to work. Even though you have a cute baby, you got to figure out how you’re going to get it done. Step number four is you define your unique value proposition. What makes you unique? And that’s something you and Sean have worked on together. You improve your branding. Now you’re coming in contact with humans. Business is a contact sport. I love this part. That’s when you start marketing. You launch your marketing. You have your online ads. You optimize your website. You begin to come up top in the search results. You start to get leads. Do you remember what it was like, Jenny, when you first got your first online lead? Do you remember the first one where you’re like, it’s working! Do you remember that moment? Yeah, it was almost like we wanted to, well, we did celebrate because it finally had happened. And then as soon as the first one came in, the second one came in. And like I said, it was almost a growing pain experience. We’ve had so many leads so fast. So it was great. And we still celebrate every lead that we get. Now, Mike, the next step is you have to make sales scripts. We recommend to every client that the calls are recorded for quality assurance. You have a sales script, call the calls are recorded for quality assurance. You have a one sheet that tracks your pricing, you have pre-written emails, you begin tracking. Sean’s always bragging about you guys with tracking. Mike, how has it helped to have tracking in place where you can, you know, how does that help you? Well, it’s really a good benefit because, you know, at the end of the week, you know what your income was, you know what your leads was. So wherever we’re lacking in, we can quickly adjust and make that adjustment to make it work for the next week. Now when you, if you don’t have tracking, folks, this is a true story. It’s kind of a sad story. So I’ll speak in generality, Sean, I talked to a guy the other day, this terrible story, long time client and he got motivated. He set up a trade show. He didn’t tell me he’s doing it. It’s fine. You don’t have to tell me, but he set up a trade show. I think he was going to try to surprise me with the fruit of the trade show. So he set up the trade show and he gets on the call. His energy is kind of off and I’m like, are you okay? Yeah, dude, fine. What’s wrong? Hi, just, I don’t know. I’m like, your lead sheet, we’re getting 10 to 15 leads a week. It’s very consistent. Revenue looks good. He’s like, yeah, I’m in a tight spot. We are in a tight spot. We’re in a tight spot. He says, I did a trade show. You did a trade show? Yeah, I got roped into four. I did a thing where you get the billboard, you get the trade show, you get the magazine ad. And I did the trade show and we got no leads. And I go, what kind of trade show did you do? And he says, well, I went to the whatever trade show. And Sean, what I find is that there’s the emotional excitement about being on the billboard, being on the magazine cover. And he got called by one of these kind of scam, I call it a scammachery or jackassery. They call you and they go, hey, is this Sean? Yeah, this is Sean. Sean, yeah, we noticed that you have an incredible health care company and we want to honor you by giving you the yada yada of the region award. It’s the yada yada, it’s a regional, it’s a prestigious award. We’d like to meet with you. Can we meet with you? Yeah. So now I meet here. Now, Sean, again, I’m not, we’re on the phone, but I still like the phone voice here. So now, Sean, so because we’re so honored, you know, we’re inviting you to a plated dinner to honor your, just your honor, your honoredness, your greatness, your humbleness. And it’s gonna be $1,000 a plate for you and your wife. And did you want four seats or eight? Because most people do eight. Oh, I guess just four. Four would be good. And that does include a glossy magazine feature in, we’ll just call it like Missouri local top doctor, Jack Assery. It’s a great magazine. And you’re also on the, you’ll be on a billboard. We’ve teamed up with the billboard. It rotates through your thing. Hey, don’t get too excited. And just because we’re honored. We’re not, you know, again, we’re just honored. Now, do you want to do the four tickets? Yeah, absolutely. Now, the way it works is it’s going to be a four payments of 4000 for a total of 16000. And that’s serious. And now they’re in the trade shows. He’s going to the trade show and there ain’t nobody there. There is nobody there. To be technical, nobody was at this trade show. I mean, everybody was not at the trade show. He’s got photos of like him and his wife and his team in an empty booth and he’s got a magazine and no leads are coming and he was so excited to tell me. I’m sure you’ve never encountered this sort of thing. Virginia, have you, you know, have you ever seen a situation where that sort of shamockery advertising has been entered into your world in some capacity? I’ve been there. I’ve been exactly where, what you’re talking about. And I’ve set up everything and paid employees and I felt like I was nothing more than a free pin show. The only people that were there were people looking for free pins. Oh, I know. And it feels terrible. And then you kind of have to sell it to yourself all day. Guys, we’re getting our name out there. Sean, can you pass the megaphone back there? Yeah, because I tell people, when you get your name out there, what you do is you just run outside and say, right, come visit New Parnsup Health Care. People go, why are you yelling at me? I’m trying to shop for my groceries. New Parnsup Health Care, getting my name out there. Is this effective? It appears it’s effective. I’m getting my name out there. That leads to buying Frisbees, branded Frisbees, Goozies. You know what I’m saying? Branded pens. Yes. All of a sudden you buy these things. Sean, you know what I’m talking about. Oh yeah. Okay. So now we have to do, and I’m gonna show you, this is kind of the backend of one of my companies called Elephant in the Room. And you do a search for eitrlounge.com and then you go to forward slash staff. I’m not gonna give you the password folks, but you log in and these are all the systems needed to run the haircut chain. Now one thing I thought was very interesting is Truth Social, President Trump’s social media platform, the other day they were disclosing, Newsweek was disclosing the revenue of it. And I just want people to know this because I think, and just full disclosure, I’m a very conservative person, but I just want people to see this. This is just something to look at. Truth Social, they declared in their filing that they did $3.3 million of revenue and had $49 million of losses. Which, by the way, that’s very normal for a tech startup company. And their users are going up and they’re having an after… There’s like a reaction in the marketplace. People are actually putting more money in. They’re investing. The stock price is going up. But I don’t know anybody that I’ve met in my life, I’ve never met a client that can afford to bring in 3.3 million and lose 49 million, you know? So like for my haircut chain, we have five locations. We bring in more than 3.3 million and this just in, we don’t spend 49 million, you know? So we have to, we call it a lean startup. You got to keep that thing lean. And so when you go to eitrlounge.com forward slash staff, every document needed to manage the business is here. So the opening checklist for the manager, you click here. Boom. This is what the manager has to do to start the day. Everything is documented. And that’s kind of where we’re at right now with Jenny and Mike’s business. We’re in the process of building all those checklists. Yeah. Sean, what kind of checklists have you built so far? Oh, man. We have a whole page. Their staff page is pretty built out. We’re really getting there. I think more right now, it’s getting, correct me if I’m wrong, we need some managers in there so we can free you guys up from the business. And so we have a lot of the worker level systems, we’re just now working on more of how do we get those manager level systems and find those high quality managers. Now let me give Jenny a little mentor moment here, this will be helpful for you. I’m going to hop on a flight in about two and a half hours, three hours to go to Denver, right? And I got to go to Denver to meet with the founder of Oxifresh.com. This is a brand we’ve worked with and help them to grow to 550 locations now. Five hundred and fifty locations. OK, and if you type in carpet cleaning floats or the world’s highest rated and most reviewed company in the world in the world. OK, 274000 reviews. We’ve been holding this idea in our mind for 15 consecutive years. I’ve been working on this, Sajan, before I met you, we just were grinding, okay? Yeah. And the biggest challenge that the locations have is managers, finding a good manager. And I tell people this, and it never goes over well, but hopefully eventually it will. I’ll keep refining it, refining the idea. The kind of person that enjoys conflict but also likes people is a good manager. Let me try that again. The kind of person that enjoys conflict but also likes people is a good manager. And I have found it’s not so much trainable as it’s findable. So as an example, we’re getting ready to head out to Denver. Sean, you know my personality type. You know that I have to pack all this stuff to get ready to go. You saw my suitcase out there. Yep. How many times do you think I followed up with the people involved in the trip so far before leaving? Oh man, it’s probably on your to-do list and you’ve checked it off like at least five times today I would think. And what kind of things do you think I might have put on my checklist to travel to Denver? First off, just making sure that the timing is working, making sure that you have all the stuff that you need, making sure that you have double of the stuff that you need in case something gets broken, making sure that the people who are there know you’re coming and when you’re going to be there and what to expect from you. Do you think I’m checking a bag? Oh yeah, you’re probably not checking a bag. There it is! You’re going to get lost. Right! No. And am I, do you think I’m catching a flight a lot earlier than I need to be there? Way earlier. Yeah, if I’m having a meeting tomorrow, which I am, I’m leaving today at 1230. Yeah. So this is, that’s the sort of paranoia that makes management possible. So I have literally called, I said, alright, I’m getting on the 1230 flight, we’re meeting tomorrow, I should be in by like four o’clock Denver time. Our meeting’s tomorrow. If that flight gets delayed and the next one gets delayed and the next one I’ll still be there. I’ve got backup phone chargers. I have a rule, everybody going with me. You cannot check a bag. I want to check a bag. Can’t check a bag, why? Because it could get lost. This is real. I’m not, I am completely paranoid. And that is the paranoia is what makes the businesses run. Yeah. And I asked my staff every day, guys, elephant in the room, did you guys get a review? And they say, yeah, we got a review. You asked me 10 minutes ago. Okay, I’ll talk to you in four minutes. You hear me say that. I’ll say, I’ll talk to you in five minutes. And I’ll do it. And it’s a follow up of, because I have to make sure that the checklists are being followed. The reviews are being followed. We’re a licensed business. People don’t know that. Haircare, you’re licensed by the state. So we have certain cleanliness standards. We could have random people from the state show up. So we got checklists and I follow up and it doesn’t bother me to follow up with the same adult who’s in their 40s six times within a 50 minute span of time. It doesn’t bother me. But most people that bothers them. And so have you found that Jenny that a lot of people don’t like to follow up? Have you found that or is that just something unique to me? I found that they don’t like to follow up. No, people don’t like to follow up. It’s a almost like an awkward communication thing That people try to avoid. Yeah, and and it’s not necessarily that you’re being mean or any type of way but that’s I feel like that’s probably the way that we feel when we Continuously follow up like we’re having to step on people’s toes, but really we’re not we’re just getting my mentorship moment for you Is it’s probably the same feeling you have when you ask for reviews? Yeah, it’s probably the same. So, and I’m just saying, and then, and if you, Mike, do you ever play football or a sport of some kind? Yeah, I used to play soccer. Okay, soccer. So, like when you, what position did you play? Goalkeeper. Goalkeeper, okay. So, is a goal, this is a great example, I didn’t know you were a goalkeeper, but when you’re a goalkeeper and someone’s kicking that ball at you fast, I mean, just the ball’s coming in there, I mean, people can really kick a soccer ball fast. There are certain people that want to be a goalkeeper, but they kind of avoid the ball. They try to hide from it. They flinch. You know what I’m talking about? But you actually would lunge into it. Am I correct? Right. I mean, you’re aggressive, right? I mean, you’re like you and for some reason you enjoyed it. Yeah. Right. Getting 100 miles an hour fastball. Have you ever seen somebody who tried to be a goalie? I’m not looking for a name here, but somebody who would kind of hide from the ball. Yeah. This is the same thing for management. Like as a manager, you have to want like you have to sort of seek out conflict, but like people. So I’ll say things like, OK, it’s eight o’clock. I need to make sure you put up the flags and for the elephant in the room store today, Mr. Manager, put out the flags that draw the attention by the road, put up the flags and I’m going to call you in 10 minutes to follow up. Call me 10 minutes. Are the flags up? Can you send me a picture? They’re like, do you not trust me? Absolutely not. I trust nobody. Go ahead and send him. And then I’ll call him back 30 minutes later. Hey, did you get Google reviews? Yeah, we got one Google review. You know, the quote is 10. Yeah, I’ll call you back in two minutes. You know, call him back. Hey, did you get a review? It’s been two minutes. I know. I’ll tell you what, I’ll call you back in an hour. And my whole day is just following up. And then over time, the culture happens where people go, he’s going to follow up. And now the people that like the follow up, like to work there and it’s become a great thing. And that’s where we’re kind of at right now, I think, is we’re getting into the follow-up phase. Do you have call recording in place there, Mike? Do you have the call recording for quality assurance installed yet? Yes, we do. And are you learning some things? Yes, it is very hard to train people on recording. It’s serious. Yeah, that’s something we got to do. Now we’re just going through the workflow. And then the wowing the customers. What Sean is saying is that your patients are consistently wowed. Now, I don’t know if that’s because Sean is your hype man or if that’s a real thing, but it seems like people are actually wowing. They’re being wowed right now. People when they come in, if you look at the workflow, they buy something. Right here, we have to wow them. You’ve got to create that wow moment. And again, if you want to download this diagram, folks, just go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire. You can download it from my newest book called A Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You got to create that wow moment. I mean, amidst the checklists and the tracking, at some point here, you’ve got to create a moment that wows people where they go, wow. So I’m trying to get everybody’s creative juices flowing here. So if you have a restaurant, I work with a restaurant in Florida right now, a great restaurant. They say, welcome in. Is it your first time? They say, yeah, it’s my first time. Oh, well, hey, you get free appetizers on us today and one free adult beverage. Welcome in. And that every time it’s that, wow. And then when you come back later and ask for a review or, hey, what entree do you want? Guess what? People become generous with how they buy. Another example, I work with an auto auction. The auto auction says your first time that you buy from the auto auction, you only have to pay a dollar more than the actual cost of the vehicle, just to wow people, to get that going. I happen to work with a carpet cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, and what they do is they say, hey, the first time we clean your carpet will be any competitor’s price, and it will be at least half off of our normal price. And they go, okay, great. You gotta have that wow moment. What are you guys doing, Jenny, to wow your customers there? Well, there are things that we do. We will oftentimes give samples of certain things because we know they work. We have a lot of supplement sales that we do. Again, the dollar consult is a wow moment because we will spend 10 to 15 minutes explaining how we’re different. And I feel like they’re wowed because of that. Also, our services are so much different. We spend time in the room with our patients. We listen to them. They’re not just a number. And a lot of times people have never experienced that. So there’s a lot of wow moments, I think, for all of our patients. Now, I understand that 59% of your customers are now from word of mouth. Is that accurate? Yeah. That’s huge. Yeah. Well, and with the customer acquisitions cost, too, I’ve heard you say this before, Clay, that if you’re advertising and you’re doing a good job wowing at the same time, they compound each other and you’ll end up having two to three word of mouth referrals from those patients that are wowed for every one lead you have from advertising. We measured and tracked that they had this last year. For every dollar they spent on advertising, they were able to bring back in $4.61. So that’s a 461% return on their marketing investment. It’s incredible stuff. And the great news is as we build these systems, if you guys ever wanted to franchise or license or open up multiple locations, if done properly, you should be able to scale it. It should be very repeatable, very duplicatable. Other things you guys have done, you’ve implemented a database to keep track of your customers, you’re gathering objective video reviews. You guys are really checking all the boxes. I’d like for you, if you can, Jenny here, to give a word of encouragement for any of our listeners out there that are a little bit on the fence right now and they’re going, you know, I have thought about scheduling a free consultation, but I don’t know, I hear it’s $1,700 a month. Can you maybe explain your thoughts, what you’d say to anybody who’s a friend of yours or family that asks you about the value about the business consulting? Oh, well, I would say that the $1,700 a month is an excuse not to have someone to mentor you. It’s kind of like being in a gym when you need a trainer. We’re not always perfect and business owning is not easy and you need a mentor. I’ve never missed the $1,700 a month, even when I was only six months in when we started with you guys. I’ve never even considered it a loss. It was scary at first to make that, but that wasn’t an excuse. I knew I needed someone to guide me through this. And you guys have guided us through this through the entire thing, through employees, through income, through spending, through all of it. We come through so many problems. There are a lot of problems that are established when you have a business. You become very overwhelmed very fast, and you need somebody that you can call who’s successful, who’s been there, that says, you’re not crazy. This happens to all of us. Here’s what you do about it. It’s been the best decision that we’ve made. Final question I have here for you as far as having a turn, like a one-stop shop. Years ago, I hired a business consultant who was great. And he would say things like, and I’m not ripping him. I’m just telling you what would happen. He would say, Clay, you got to work on your business and not in it. I’m going, that’s true. He goes, you got to delegate to elevate. That’s true. Clay, your website is not optimized. And I’m going, this is great, fresh perspective. I go, Bruce, could you help me optimize? No, I don’t optimize. Could you help me work on it? No. Could you help me make a checklist? No. Do you help me with the print pieces that I need to make? No. Can you make a video? No. Do you help me with my online ads? No. Clay, and he used to, he was kind of an eastern, he’s a northeastern American guy, and he used to say, Clay, baby, let me tell you something. I don’t make print pieces. What am I, a print piece guy? I’m not a web guy. We know what I am. I’m a work on the business guy. You’ve got to find a good web guy. So every meeting we would have would result in me having to find another vendor to pay another $8,000 to build the website, $4,000 to make the video, $5,000 to do it. So every time you give a recommendation, it would lead to another cost. Can you maybe explain the value of having a flat monthly fee? Yeah, I don’t have to ever worry about it. I know if I need the website updated, it’s a text away. I know if I need financial advice, it’s a text away. And again, we meet every single week and all our questions are answered and we’re held accountable to what we need to be held accountable for. So it really works for us. Jenny and Mike, thank you guys for your time so much. I really do value your time. I appreciate you guys being here today. And on part two of today’s show, we’re going to tee up another success story because we want people to know it is possible, despite the financial jackassery plaguing our nation right now, it is possible to become successful and you guys are a living example of it. Thank you guys for bringing your baby on the show. We’ll talk to you soon. Alright, Sean, so we’ve got three people in a very small space here in the studio. Sean, introduce us to today’s guest there, sir. Okay, so this is Kandra Sipansky and it’s quite a last name folks. Yeah, and we’re hockey So we were going over some of the stats before and she owns an eyelash extension salon What’s the web address where I can go pull it up here phone is? There’s yeah, there’s two which one are we going to she has the extensionist which is th e. Yep, and then X Tensionist tensionist. Yep. Got it. Okay. That’s right. There we are. Okay. Okay. So what are the services can do that you all provide here? Mainly just eyelash extensions. Eyelash extensions. We do other stuff but that’s been the main thing for years. And then we started adding things like permanent makeup, brow stuff. And how long have we worked with you? How long have we had the opportunity to work with you? Since 2019. So tell us what kind of growth have you had from 2019 versus now we’re in 2022. So 2019 it was 880. Yeah, it was like 880,000 is what the tax returns. That’s great. Yeah. Okay. And then what’d you get to this year or 2021, I guess? 2021. It was like 900. 1.4. Oh, 1.4. Yeah. 1.4. 1.4. Okay. And when we work with a lot of clients, you know, a lot of clients, if you’re out there listening today, what we wanna do is we wanna help you grow your company. And so I wanna walk you through the process of how to grow a company, because a lot of people watching go, I wanna grow my company, it’s kind of a big, vague idea, but I wanna dial into the specifics of what we’ve had to do to grow the business and what we’re doing moving forward here. So first off, when we started working with you, you’ve always had a product that people love. I mean, is that an accurate statement? People love it, I think. So what we’ve had to do is build the online reputation so that people that don’t know about your business, who haven’t been in the business, they can hear about it before. They can go online and build an online opinion about your business before they come in. How have you been doing on gathering objective Google reviews? Has that been something you guys have been hammering on there, Kendra? How have you been doing on that? Every stinking week, she hits the key performance indicator at each one of her locations. We have nailed that. Like they just do it now. It’s awesome. Okay, so step one, we want to put the online reputation. There’s a lot of detail on that. Have you guys gotten into video reviews yet? Yeah. Oh, they have an ungodly amount of them. It’s ridiculous. They’re on the website. Yeah, if you go to the testimonials page on theextensionist918.com, you’ll find them. Now when people go to the website, then you want to create some sort of a no-brainer, some sort of a hot deal, so that way people that don’t know who you are don’t hesitate to do business with you. Now, again, you guys have, in my opinion, you’re branded as one of the top, aka premier brands in Oklahoma right now for what you do. What’s the no-brainer offer that you now offer first-time customers? So we’ve just been doing a discounted classic full set, but Sean and I were just talking about doing a $1 full set and trying that. So $1 for a full set maybe. Yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah, I’ve always been afraid to do that, but I think we’re going to. Well, and two, we’ve got the memberships going now, too. You didn’t have a membership model. Now we have membership packages we’ve developed that make it make a little more sense to get somebody in for a dollar, because just like with Elephant in the Room Clay, if you can convert the majority of them to a membership, it makes a lot of sense to give away 25 or 40 bucks on the first service. And for people that don’t know, Elephant in the Room is a haircut chain that I own and founded. But again, regardless of whether you have a business that’s a eyelash extension business or a haircut business or a dog training company or a home building company, the step one we gotta do is we gotta improve the online reputation. Now step two, we gotta get those video reviews. Step three, we gotta enhance the website. Step four, we gotta enhance a no-brainer. Come up with a no-brainer that gets people excited and off it’s so hot people will not reject you. And then step five, if we can make a membership model for certain services, you can do that. Has a membership model helped you with the sustainability of your finances? So far, no, just because I feel like we weren’t offering a good enough no-brainer. It’s only been a couple months. So it’s kind of a newer thing. Now the hiring process, next thing is you want to create a hiring process. Now one of the things that’s tough about your business or my business or any company out there, it’s finding good people. Now if you have a system in place to find good people, that’s not so challenging. Have you guys started the group interview process? Yes. How’s that going? It’s good. Has it helped you? It’s a lot of fun, actually. Has it? Yeah. Okay. We went from, in 2019, you had 14 employees, and now you have 40. Wow, okay, so you went from 40, from 14 employees, okay, from 14 employees to 40 employees. Now, people who work with me, it’s very interesting. I was just talking to a guy, literally, probably, 39 minutes ago, I mean, who I’ve worked with for years, and the one thing that he mentioned to me, it’s interesting, he goes, you know, Clay, I’ve worked with you now for almost a decade. And he’s like, my business is now 10 times what it was 10 years ago. And he’s like, it’s just a consistent application of effort. I just go down that boom book, I follow it. And every week we just get 2%. And he’s like, I’ve tried to explain that to people. And they don’t often get that it’s not like a one big idea. All these things are big ideas, but it’s the implementation. Can you talk about what it’s like working with our team and Sean on a weekly basis now since 2019? Well, I feel like talking to him every week, I have someone who can help me with ideas and stay on my ass about things. And like you said, the consistency. So that’s, I feel like the biggest thing that Sean helps me with. Just the consistency. Right. And the tracking. Because before, I didn’t do any kind of tracking at all. And that’s been probably the biggest thing for me. Now tracking, what it does is it takes the feelings out of things. Let me just give you an example. This is kind of a funny thing. One of these clients I’ve worked with for years, I was talking to him on Monday and it’s really funny because on the tracking sheet it shows how many outbound calls did you make? How many appointments did you set? So again, in his particular business, it’s a different industry, but it’s how many calls did you make? How many appointments did you set? How many leads did you get? We just try, how many Google reviews did you get? How many, how many dollars a week did you spend on your Facebook ads? And we just track every week and that tracking allows us to see obvious patterns. So we get to the part where the calls, it shows the number of calls being made. And I know his caller. Like I know the caller, cause I’ve been around the guy. And the owner brought the caller to the meeting. And so I’m going, so you made that many calls? Cause I don’t think he did. And he’s like, no, no, I didn’t do it. So sometimes people, even with a tracking sheet, they’ll put in information that’s kind of bogus. Has the tracking sheet, I’m not looking for specific names, but has it allowed you, Kendra, to expose bogusness in your business, like gaps? Yeah, for sure, yeah. Yeah, someone that was just copying and pasting. Really? She does the appointments booked weekly part. Yeah. She tracks a lot of the lead sources. She tracks, she’s also tracking whether or not the people are in fact getting the reviews to put onto the sheet, which we can go and verify ourselves. But still, this person is supposed to be supplying. We just got this in the last week or two. Because when you delegate a lot of stuff, you’ve got to follow up on it regularly. And this person went two weeks or so just copying and pasting the same amount of leads that we got. Wow. Now, installing a quality control loop, I’m not sure if we’re there yet in the system, but for the elephant in the room, as an example, it’s a haircut chain. And, you know, we have mystery shoppers that we pay to come in or they get a free haircut to come in and get a haircut. And then what we do is we try to get feedback from them and they have a checklist. It’s very simple. They go over, but it’s sights, sounds, smells, experiences, just so that we know. And then they text me how it’s going. Well, you know, it’s interesting because when you have mystery shoppers, you pick up on things you wouldn’t pick up on. So like recently, this past week, we found out that there were smudges on one of the windows that had been not addressed since the last mystery shopper. Or we’ll find out, we have five stores, so we found out that the bathrooms at one of the stores were dirty. Have you guys started putting in a mystery shopper yet? Has that started yet? No, OK, so we’re still kind of. Now, where do you, like right now, how many locations do you have open now? Five. Okay, so now as you’re scaling the systems, that’s kind of the next process, the systems and the checklists? Yeah. How are you doing on that process, Kendra? How are you on implementing, building scripts and checklists for everything? We’ve made a lot of scripts within the past couple of months. Just for every little thing, mainly on the phone. So where do you see the vision going now? Because again, how many locations, do you have five? Five. Where do you see the vision? What’s the plan? Are you looking to license now? Are you looking to franchise? What do you see as the future? I would like to license. License it, okay. So no more stores that I open. Yeah, there’s still room. We can fit about 14 more stylists in the space that we have, which will bring in a minimum of a half a million dollars more just with the space that we have. But it’s important to mention that we are maintaining a very healthy 20% profit margin in this business as well. Well, let’s talk about that for a second, because a lot of times people forget that part. You know, you gotta get the accounting done. And I kind of view this as part of the tracking process, but when you start tracking and you start to go, well, this is how much money came in, and this is how much money went out, and you go, wow, you know, you can discover real quick, wow, there’s maybe not enough there. Tracking, did you end up having to maybe raise prices or cut any expenses, or did that help you kind of seeing where the income in and the expenses were going? I think for me, it was a lot of the just not knowing, like being a business owner and waking up every day and not knowing if you’re gonna have enough money for payroll or if you’re gonna have enough money to pay the bills. And so doing that just gave me the mental picture, the physical manifestation of how we’re actually doing. And that was not as bad as I thought. Now, everybody’s got their own flow, you know? So what I do with my businesses is, I know how big I want to get. I’m very happy with where we’re at, so it’s good. And people all the time, they go to Thrive Time Show and they’ll schedule a consultation. I just talked to a guy today and he was like, I don’t understand why you have 160 clients. Why not take on 400? And I just know, because our business is very involved. Like every business owner we work with, it’s like, we have to really get to know you. Where the haircut business, I don’t have that. You know, it’s like, I don’t know most of the customers and we scale it out. But you ultimately, no matter what kind of business you’re in, if you’re in a high touch business, like a dentist or a cosmetic surgeon, I mean, Dr. Whitlock, one of my clients, it’s very high touch. We eventually have to get to a place and space where we figure out our ideal schedule. A schedule that works for our family and one that’s kind of, where do you, are you happy currently with your schedule? Have you optimized it? I’m not saying it has to be, check all the boxes that the world approves, but I mean, do you like your schedule now? That was also another thing that I started doing because of Sean was my calendar and I’ve sucked at it for a long time, but now I- She has every minute of her day blocked out every day. And so you feel good about where you’re headed now. Yeah, I do. I pretty much don’t have to do anything with this business anymore, so I just opened a Daylight Donuts. Really? I’ve been spending time doing that. Last Monday. Bam! Yeah. Awesome. Is it a little crazy? Yeah, just because the person that was supposed to work and open… Yeah, bailed. Bailed, so I’ve been having to do it. Yeah. Now, for entrepreneurs, if you’re out there today and you are… Let me just pull this up real quick here, if you’re out there today in the Northeast Oklahoma, Tulsa area, one, you can visit the business here, the extensionist918.com, you can check it out, you can learn more about it, I encourage you to do so. Also, you know, we have workshops that we do and the workshops, why I like the workshops is that we’re able to work in kind of a shop-like environment on somebody’s businesses, on their business for a window of time. So people will come to the workshop, we start at seven, we go till three and they’ll go, I learned more in a day than I’ve learned in years. And we hear that all the time. How would you describe the actual business workshop experience? It’s pretty much everything that’s in coaching, just like packed in two days. Got it. And so is that helpful for you? Is that kind of a reinforcement thing for you? Yeah. I sometimes when I’m getting up super early, I’m like, why am I going? I already got a coaching. But every time that I go, it like gets me going again. By the way, I have a question for you. This is not dogging any of our attendees, but we have one guy who attended the past workshop and he is brand new to business. And he asked a ton of questions that I would have asked when I was 20 years old. And to me, it was great to hear it because I’m like, ha ha, I remember when I had those questions. And it almost reaffirms what you’ve learned. Do you learn stuff from other people that have questions? Yeah. Do you kind of learn stuff from their questions? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so Sean, people like Kandra are not a dime a dozen. I really do believe, you know, we look for diligent doers to help people that show up, people that knock out the homework, people that are not super high emotional. It doesn’t mean you can’t have emotions, it doesn’t mean you can’t be excited, but you know, people that can just knock it out. What makes Kandra a great client to work with? Just for anybody out there that’s thinking about reaching out to us. She is just very stoic in that if something is going wrong or is just like, it doesn’t matter if it’s a small thing or a large thing, she comes in very even keel and goes, we gotta like fix this thing. And it’s just a very unemotional process. She’s also very realistic about timelines. She blocks her action items into her calendar, which is a big deal. She actually does that. Yeah, she gets stuff done. And she’s also a client that, you know, she can operate very consistently with this business and build another business and still not be emotional and freaked out. So it’s just, it’s very rare. And that’s what we would look for in a great client. Cause you never know in business, like what emotional turmoil is headed your way. It’s more about your mindset towards when things come up and she’s really mastered that. Now, now Kendra, you know, according to Inc magazine, I’m going to pull this up for a second. You know, Inc magazine reports that 96% of businesses fail. And it blows my mind, but I talked to a guy at the last conference and he was like, you know, I love the idea of coaching, but the thing is, and he said, Clay, I’ve tried other coaching programs in the past, and the issue is I’m not going to meet with somebody every week at the same time. That’s just not, I’m not, and I’m not a guy who uses a to-do list, okay, and I’m not a big calendar guy, and that’s the problem with other coaching programs, and I kind of like your program because I think I go, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not us. That would not be a good fit. So if you were out there telling people who would be a good fit to become a client, because we get our clients grow by default, 96% of businesses fail according to ink magazine. So by default, we know most businesses fail, but we don’t want to take on every single client who would be a good fit for us and who wouldn’t kind of from an outsider’s perspective, someone who knows that they have to put in the work to do it because that’s what it takes. I feel like a big reason that that 96% is 96% is because they don’t do anything to grow or take responsibility because it is your responsibility and no one else’s. I love it. And again, I’m not gonna get into your personal life but I do wanna point out something. Everybody likes to say that I can’t become successful because I have this going on in my life. And I see people that are newly married. They say, I want to grow my business, but I just got married, just had a kid. I see people that, one of our clients this year, her husband passed away and she had her best year of all time. And I asked her why. And she said, because we worked so hard as a couple to build the business. And when he passed, I recognized that, you know, it didn’t help to pout about it. I was just gonna focus on growing the business to kind of honor what we had built together. I think of another client that recently, they’re growing their business and a weather situation attacked their business in a way that, you know, if you live on the coasts, weather can hit you. And their business was ravaged years ago by disastrous hurricane weather. And they went on to have their best year of all time. And I’m talking to the owner and he’s going, man, now the challenge for him with his particular business is staffing because more and more people are harder to find to work in this particular industry. But again, we can all make excuses or we can all step up and make it happen. So I encourage everybody out there if you’re looking to grow their grow your company, you can go to thrive timeshow.com at thrive timeshow.com and you can click on the little consulting button here. Let me see here you can schedule a free 13 point assessment. Let me go there right now. Feeling the flow working it going to thrive timeshow if I spell it right, it helps. Go in here, awesome. And I click here, boom. And you can schedule a free 13 point consultation with myself and I’ll teach you all the systems that I have in place to help you grow your company. Or if you’re looking for eyelash extensions, and I know that I’m not, but if you are, you can go to theextensionist918.com. Kendra, thank you so much for joining us. I really do appreciate you. Thank you. Take care. Now, Sean, a lot of people reach out, they go to Thrivetimeshow.com and they always ask me, they say, Clay, what do you do? And so I’ve tried to explain it in as succinct a way as possible. But first thing we do, you know, Sean, a lot of people go to Thrivetimeshow.com or I’ll see people at a tour, I’ll see them at an event. People reach out to us and they’ll say, what exactly do you guys do? And if I had to explain it to you succinctly. We essentially grow businesses seven times faster than the average business that doesn’t fail. Although, Inc. Magazine does show that 96% of businesses fail by default. So if you go to Inc. Magazine, you see that 96% of businesses fail by default. So I guess one benefit is our clients don’t fail, but the next thing they do is they grow seven times faster. So what we do here is we help you reduce the working hours that you’re working and decrease your costs while increasing your sales and your profitability. And then since 2006, we’ve got a team now that does graphic design, photography, branding, print media, photography, videography, digital marketing, systems creation, public speaking, coaching, booking, workflow mapping, search engine enhancement, PR, marketing. We do a lot of PR, a lot of monetizing. We help people to grow their business, their podcast, their dentistry, their law firm. But what we do is we document those success stories over here at thrivetimeshow.com. If you click on the testimonials. And since 2006, I have over 2000 success stories. So if you’re out there today and you want to become the next success story, what you have to do is you go to thrivetimeshow.com and you click right here on growth consulting and you schedule a free 13 point assessment. And that free 13 point assessment, what that does is that schedules you a time to meet with me so that you and I can go over where you’re at versus where you want to be. And then if you want to work with us, I charge $1,700 a month. It’s a flat rate of 1,700 per month to help you grow your company. And again, folks, if you want to learn more about that, we’ve got the in-person workshops, we’ve got the one-on-one coaching. Sean, how long have you worked here as a consultant? How long have you worked here? Doing consulting, it was about 18 months after I came on board. So it’s coming up on five years. Five years. And just think of a few clients off the top of your head that have had massive growth. I mean, I think about what, Levi Gables? Oh, yeah. He’s working on company number three and four right now. What’s his company called? His original company came to us called GEI-USA.com. That’s a client you’ve worked with. He’s had tremendous growth. We just did an interview with Kandra, the attorney James. We worked with him. Who else can you think of? Nick Holman. We grew his business by five-fold and we decreased his workload. That’s a cabinet company. Yeah, the cabinet guy. Yeah, so again, if you’re out there and you’re saying, I need to see the success, I need to see the documentation, I need to see the proven plan. All you gotta do right now is go to thrivetimeshow.com, thrivetimeshow.com, and you click on testimonials, and bam, you can see what we do. My name’s Clay Clark. I’m a former USSBA Entrepreneur of the Year. I built all the systems, built all the processes, and I’ve been, since 2006, coaching clients. And along the way, I’ve started to discover great people like Clay Stairs or Sean Lohman or Andrew or different members of our team. And we teach them the processes so that they can help you grow your business for less money than it would cost you to hire one minimum wage employee. If you hired one minimum wage employee out there full-time, it’s gonna cost you about two grand a month after taxes, insurance, etc. It turns out we’re less. Turns out, this just in. So schedule that consultation today by going to thrivetimeshow.com, click on the business consulting button right there, click on the red button that says schedule your free 13-point assessment with me and you can schedule that today. Sean, I appreciate you and I want to remind everybody out there, Sean, you smell terrific. Hi, I’m Ryan Wimpey. And I’m Rachel Wimpey and the name of our business is Tip Top Training. Our business is a dog training business. We help people with behavioral issues and teach their dog how to listen. When I was learning to become a dog trainer, we didn’t learn anything about internet marketing or advertising or anything at all. Just dog training. And that’s what’s so great about working with Clay and his team because they do it all for us. So that we can focus on our passion and that’s training dogs. Clay and his team here, they’re so enthusiastic. Their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment. They’re at grind. We’ve been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35%. Clay’s helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, scripts for emails, scripts for text messages, scripting for everything. How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are awesome. They’re so effective. It’s worth every minute. Things get done, we’ll ask for things like different flyers and they’re done before our hour is up. So it’s just awesome, extremely effective. If you don’t use Clay and his team, you’re probably going to be pulling your hair out, or you’re going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game and produce your own flyers and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You’re really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it has a real sense of urgency and actually knows what they’re doing when you already have something that’s your core focus that you already know how to do. You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team. We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business, not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily. So no one has a marketing team, too. Most people don’t. They can’t afford one. And their local web guy or local person that they know probably can’t do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months. There’s a definite sense of urgency with Clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people, really, I mean, really ride them to get stuff done. And stuff is done so fast here. And people, there’s a real sense of urgency to get it done. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super. It’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which, you know, we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, and so the humor definitely helps. It breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts, and it’s very interactive. You can raise your hand. It’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. You’re definitely, it’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars. So you’re missing the thought process of someone that’s already started like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information but just getting in the thought process of Clay Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches, getting in that thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses, to me just that is priceless. That’s money. Well we’re definitely not getting upsold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where they upsold, where it was great information and then they upsold us like half the conference and I don’t want to like bang my head into a wall, and she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like, it’s good information, but we’re like, oh my gosh, I want to strangle you, shut up, and go with the presentation that we paid for, and that’s not here. There’s no upsells or anything, so that’s awesome. I hate that. Oh, it makes me angry, so glad that’s not happening. So the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business, and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using, and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school, and I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. The information that you’re going to get is just very, very beneficial and the mindset that you’re going to get…