Tim Redmond | Cash And Accrual Methods Of Accounting | Cash Flow Statements

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s C and Z up on your radio And now 3, 2, 1, here we go We started from the bottom, now we’re here We started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do Tim Redmond, how are you, sir? I’m doing great, how about you, Clay? Well, I’m gonna be sincere here, I’m excited to talk to you today about this subject. You’re excited. There’s no sarcasm. I mean it. There’s entrepreneurs all over the country who are meeting with bookkeepers, accountants, and they say, are you wanting to do cash or accrual-based accounting? And the entrepreneur says, well, what do you recommend? And then the accountant says, well, cash. And they’ll say, OK, that’s what I was going to recommend. And they don’t know what it is. We don’t know what it is. I remember the first time my accountant asked, just this week, I had a guy who asked me, what’s the difference? So you are a CPA by, you actually went to college, you became a CPA. You don’t practice as a CPA, but you did grow a company from two people to 450. You have kind of an accounting background. Right, yeah. So I’m going to ask you some of these and just kind of see if you can make it simple for us, I guess. Yeah, and let’s just have a… let’s make sure that if you’re watching here, we’re talking about accounting, cash or accrual, don’t clue out. We want you to be intelligent about little things like this. It doesn’t mean you have to master it, but just stay plugged in with us, because it’ll be worth your while, and you will appear to be much more intelligent than what you’re looking like right now. Now, I’m going to give you as many crazy analogies as possible so that it’s fun to listen to. So here we go. Bookkeeping, we’re getting into the bookkeeping. You don’t teach these at motivational seminars, but your accountant’s going to ask. There’s basically two types of accounting methods out there. So you have the accrual method of accounting, and then you have the cash method of accounting. So technically speaking, accrual-based accounting can be defined as the accrual method records income items when they are earned and records deductions when expenses are incurred. For a business invoicing for an item sold or work done, the corresponding amount will appear in the books even though no payment has yet been received and debts owed by the business show as they are incurred even though they may not be paid until much later. What are we talking about? Could you repeat that about 18 times because I even got bored with that. And it says, what does that mean for an entrepreneur? Okay, so we have two different ways of going here. We have cash basis and we have accrual. Cash basis is you’re going to record the sale, record the expense when the cash comes in or out of your business. As soon as I, in fact, physically the cash, the cash physically leaves or… Now some businesses, and we’ve even recommended, we co-coached a couple companies recently, and we actually recommend get rid of your receivables and just do things on cash because there’s a lot less to manage. But there’s a lot, a lot, a lot of companies will allow people to buy stuff on account. Okay, so let’s say that you’re going to buy, I sell red ties. And I know you love red ties, and I wanna sell you about 100 red ties here. You come in and buy 100 red ties for a dollar a piece. A hundred dollars. All right, now, you don’t wanna pay me cash right now, you wanna say, hey listen, let me pay you in a month, let me buy that on account. So I’m going to set up what we call an accrual account, which is called accounts receivable. Accounts receivable, accounts payable, those are accrual accounts that say, listen, I didn’t get the cash. I didn’t pay the $100 yet. Right. But I’m going to give you in good faith, I’m going to give you these 100 ties, you’re going to give me a promise to pay this hundred dollars sometime in the future. Okay? So cruel method says, listen, I am going to record the sale when I make the sale, not when I get the cash. Okay. So I’m going to record the sale, I’m going to say a hundred dollars in sales, a hundred dollars in accounts receivable. You owe me, I didn’t get cash from you yet, but I’m going to record it there. On a cash basis, it says, listen, okay, I’m going to record the sale when I finally get the money, when I finally get the cash. If I don’t see the money, show me the money. Jerry McGuire. Bam! I see a lot of business owners, this is what they’ll do, they’ll try to do accrual where they’ll say, hey, I’ll go ahead and sell you the ties and you don’t have to pay me now because I’ll collect later, but then they spend money as though they actually have been paid. And so my thought, and I’ve talked to bookkeepers and accountants, and they always say in a smaller business, it might make more sense if you don’t have the financial systems in place or the bandwidth to track it all, to probably go cash. I recommend when you’re first starting out or if it’s a relatively small business, you’ve got 10 employees or less, you’re less than a million dollars or even a couple million dollars. But you know, to do a cash basis. Now if you have the type of business where it’s customary for people to buy on account, then I would recommend at that point to do accrual. That means if I on a regular basis, people buy ties for me and I say listen you can pay me later, I’ll get the receivable. What you’re doing here is when you set up a receivable you set up a whole other stuff you have to keep track of. You have to spend money and labor to try to get the money out of them. So when you’re first starting having accounts receivable or accounts payable, takes a lot more time and puts you in a cash crunch position here. That’s why I don’t recommend doing that. I’ve met specifically two retailers, I’ve met builders where they went accrual and they basically sold a bunch of their products, they put them in retail stores and they didn’t get paid for 60 days and they thought they would get paid in 30. But they spent the money because they had to make payroll, and they just ran out of cash. And I think when you’re a small business and you have very limited cash and very limited time, going accrual is probably not the method for you, like you said. But as you grow and your business matures and you’re trying to do business with Walmart or you’re trying to do business with a big vendor that’s used to paying in 30 days, now you have to switch over there a little bit. This is so important, Clay, because I work with a lot of contractors. I work with all kinds of different industries. I work with construction contractors, all kinds of different contractors. And many times they’ll have a job at maybe $100,000, maybe $5 million, maybe $20,000. We’ll just say it’s $20,000. So a lot of them, the customer wants to try to hold on to the money as long as they can. And so they try to convince the person to say, listen, I’ll pay you a little bit right now, and I want you to be my construction guy, but I also want you to be my banker, too. Banker, meaning you’re giving me a loan? If I’m the contractor, I’m giving my customer almost a loan. It’s a loan. If you are a construction guy and you have to spend for this $20,000 job if you have to spend $8,000 on material and I only give you $2,000 down because I only want to pay 10% this $20,000 job, I only want to pay 10% down, it’s $2,000 but you’ve already paid $8,000 that means you’re loaning that customer $6,000 you had to come over $6,000 somewhere that means you’re the banker. And this is where a lot of thrivers, I’m telling you, get into trouble when your customers force you to be a banker. And I recommend to all my clients, you are a construction guy, you are a financial service guy, you are a gas station owner, whatever it is. You’re not going to allow your customer to force you to be a bank or two. For any entrepreneurs watching this, I know if you’re starting a business, I’m just going to give you an example. When I started my DJ business, I had maybe after buying my Yellow Page ad and the vehicle and all that, I probably had $2,000 of cash left. And when I got booked by Boeing to go entertain for them, for Boeing Airlines, they said, do you do, can you do it in a net 30? And I remember I didn’t know what that term meant. I didn’t know what net 30 meant. And so I had said, I need you guys to pay me when I get there and I’ll give you a receipt. And they were like, we don’t do that. You need to send us an invoice and we’ll pay you 30 days afterwards. That’s how it works. And I remember thinking, I don’t have the money needed to pay my staff to work this event and wait for 30 days to get reimbursed. They wanted you to be the banker for 30 days. Yeah, and so I just went in and I said, I really, I can save you guys 25% off if you’ll pay, you know, before the event, or I just can’t do the event. And I can say this, I was in business for almost 12 years as the owner of a DJ connection, the entertainment service. We did weddings and corporate events for Southwest Airlines, IBM, I mean, big companies. and I never ever ever took an invoice and waited for payment. I just would not do it. That was my terms and I work that way. So if you’re in small business and you don’t have the cash needed to to deal with this sort of thing, you can you can get by. You can do it. Can you kind of explain what the term net 30 means just so that people get this? Because I don’t think a lot of people even know, even still as I’m explaining what that means. Right, okay, so let’s say that you had $800 to do your DJ event. Yeah. And that’s the total amount here. So I’m going to pay that amount, net, just the net total of whatever that is here, I’m going to pay that $800 30 days after the event. That’s all it means. I’m just giving you a loan for 30 days. You can use my services in the afterglow. You can use the aftermath of a great party for 30 days. You can own that feeling without paying for 30 days. Now companies will want to try to force you into being a banker because they say, listen, we want to make sure we actually receive the goods or the services and we go through this approval process and we’re going to take 30 days to be able to do that. And we want to make sure that everybody signs off on it to make sure there’s not just frivolous things coming through. So I can’t blame it. You may be one of those companies that that says, listen, I’m not going to pay you up front. I’m going to pay you in 30 days. That’s the way I’m going to do it. I don’t have the money to pay you right now. I’m going to pay you in 30 days.” But that’s what they’re doing. They’re just making sure that they actually get it. Now, what I love about what your approach is, Clay, is you, by necessity, you could not be their banker, even if you wanted to be their banker. I couldn’t do it. And so it set in motion some phenomenal business habits here for you to say, listen, I’m going to make sure that I give you the best service, the best up front, everything going. You’re gonna pay me before I provide the service, and that way I’m not chasing you, I’m not spending any money trying to track down this thing, because I’ll lose money if I do that. You pay me up front, and then at the end of it, if you really don’t like what I have, I pay you that money back or part of it back. But right now, we’re gonna do it that way. That lowers so much angst. There’s so many companies that get into trouble because their accounts receivables are not maintained, they’re not being called on, it takes manpower, it takes cost and money and all that type of stuff. So you move into the accrual method and you allow people to force you into being a banker, you know, sometimes that’s appropriate because that helps you with it and you can get the float with it, but that’s usually not a good business practice when you first start a business. Well, in summary, if you’re watching this right now and you just feel overwhelmed by what to do with your accounting, I recommend you find a great local financial advisor or an accountant that can help you. We just want to familiarize you with the terminology so you don’t fly in there blind. But I’m telling you, if I can learn to do it, I promise you can too. And Tim, I appreciate you lending us your brain and teaching us about accrual versus cash-based accounting. I appreciate it. Good to be introduced to these. Thank you. Tim Redmond, how are you, sir? Doing great. You doing good? I’m doing well. I feel like that might have been the perfect handshake. And I feel like it’s off to a good start here. Now, we’re here to talk today about cash flow statements. A lot of entrepreneurs are watching this, a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs have no clue what this word means. entrepreneurs have no clue what this word means. So if someone says cash flow and his gang of dictionary writing buddies. They define cash flow as a measure of an organization’s liquidity that usually consists of net income after taxes, plus non-cash charges against income. What are we talking about, and what does the word liquidity mean? All right, liquidity is your capacity to use money. OK. Really. And so we believe, you and I believe, cash is king in a business. We want to manage with good systems, we want to manage with discipline and implementing good systems of sales and marketing and all that we do to help our clients, help our thrivers here. What we want to do, the cash flow statement is rarely referred to because a lot of people just don’t understand it. Even accountants don’t understand it. But all we’re doing in a cash flow statement is we’re saying, listen, here’s all the major activities of what happened with cash. Here’s where it went and here’s where it came from. And so it’s getting a really good idea of what all happened to cash during this certain period of time. And here’s the net cash activity. Let’s take your cash balance at the beginning of the period and that should equal your cash balance at the end of the period. Why do I have to do this? It is very important. In cash management, you know, most businesses have to shut down because they run out of cash. Now I don’t believe that most businesses have problems, you know, because it’s a cash flow management. It’s because it’s a lack of management or a lack of business know-how or lack of discipline or whatever, but it always shows up your bad decisions or sometimes there’s unpredictable things that happen in the economy that we don’t anticipate. Whatever it may be, the series of decisions in your business always shows up in the cash account. It always shows up in the cash account because really, eventually we’re going to sell our product, we’re going to collect our receivable, we’re going to pay our debt, and it’s all going to come in and out of that cash account. Makes sense. Now, Tim, let’s kind of dive into this cash flow statement here, and let’s just kind of work through it methodically, and kind of explain to me what all these things mean, and let’s just assume nothing. Let’s assume I don’t know what any of these terms are, and let’s go through it. So with a cash flow statement, really we’re wanting to know what happened to our cash during a certain period of time. Like an income statement, a cash flow is over a certain period of time. It’s not like a balance sheet to say, well here’s our net worth at this one point. This is over a period of time. What happened with our cash? And there’s three main divisions of a cash flow statement, or three main ways that cash is used in a business. The first one is from operations. Operations are like, what are you in business for? Well, I’m here to sell hot dogs. That’s what we’re talking about before. Based on the amount of hot dogs I sell, and based on the net income that I have, I’m gonna show let’s say I have a net income of two thousand dollars that I made over this one year period of time. We’re talking about $2,000 in net income. So I’m going to put that on there. Okay, now there’s some other elements of non-cash items in your income statement. I don’t want to go into those so much, but depreciation, amortization, things that really don’t cost you money in your expenses, but the IRS allows you to deduct them. They don’t really cost you cash. Like depreciation is just an amount, like let’s say if you have a car and you’re depreciating at $2,000, you didn’t lose $2,000, you didn’t have to pay out $2,000, it just reduced the amount of money that you spent on that depreciation. So those things are actually added back into the net income. I didn’t show those, but for real anal kind of people that really know all this stuff already, we’re keeping it relatively simple. So we have a net income, this is from our operations, and then we’re going to invest in our business and we’re going to get new loans and pay off those loans. Those are the three areas. It’s from selling stuff and our expenses having to do with that, and then investing, expanding our business, and then paying off our debt or getting new debt from it. That’s really the three areas. So let’s just say in this example, let’s say that we sold our old concession truck. Yeah. And that was an old beater. It was worth $5,000. We got some sucker to buy it for $5,000, and we’re happy, he’s happy, everybody’s happy. We have a sentimental attachment though to the food truck. You can’t really put a price on that. I think that’s going to be another Thrive item that I’m going to have you do. About the same level of value of… By yourself. By myself. And then let’s say, okay, well we sold our old truck, now we’re going to buy a new truck. Well, we had to pay $10,000 for that. Now we got $5,000 from the sale of it, that’s money coming in, we’re going to have a cash flow, the money the cash flow is flowing in and out, we’re gonna keep track of it so we bought that new truck for $10,000 okay, so that’s money going out so we’re gonna have that as a as a negative amount, we have a negative either by a minus sign in front of it or parentheses, it means the same thing, okay, so we have operations are selling stuff expanding stuff, investing in stuff, and then also paying stuff off. So cash flow from financing, let’s say we got a new loan, we had some money in the bank, and we had some ways of being able to get this purchase of the equipment, this new truck here, and we got a loan for $5,000 because the rest of it we could pay for. And then we still owed $7,000 on the old loan, we wanted to make sure we paid that off during this time I have to get that off the book so we paid $7,000 that’s money going out the door and so what we do is we add up all the all three major activities What’s happened with a cash plus or minus plus two thousand plus seven thousand minus ten thousand plus five thousand We’re getting a new loan you get new money coming into the business you paid off the old loan, money going out, $7,000. So we had a net decrease of our cash, our cash activities of $5,000. And just to make sure we’re clear, anything in parentheses, that also means minus. Minus, yeah. A minus or parentheses is a negative number. So that’s money going out of the business. The positive numbers are money coming into the business. Because cash is so important, we have a whole statement built around just the cash. How often should an entrepreneur be looking at their cash flow statement? Monthly, weekly, daily, what? I was just talking to a client yesterday, and we are requesting from the accountant a daily basis. Now I would recommend a daily or a weekly basis you’re keeping track of your cash balance. Daily or weekly? Jeremy and every entrepreneur should schedule a time in their schedule, put a time in their schedule to look at their cash flow statement daily. Most successful business owners, especially when their business is small, they have a way of looking at their cash balance. They look at their bank, they look at the transactions that may not have hit the bank, and they know exactly where they are on a daily basis how much cash they have. Boom! I just want to make sure we’re not missing this because this is something you just mentioned we have to do daily. Daily. And we’re talking about three minutes. Three minutes. Now we have another session on time management that I’d like to be able to bring through. You know, what do I do when I create a master to-do list and I create my weekly and daily schedule, you know, I actually have a set time, set pattern, set place to do that with. So I’m asked set questions that I ask myself. Every day, what is my cash balance? Where am I at with my cash? And Clyde, how many times have you had a client, they’re ready to make a decision but they don’t have a clue where they are with their cash? I’d say it’s about half. 50 percent? I’d say 50 percent of clients, they’ve been in business for five years or more, they know they have just enough money to pay off their credit card or to make a payment on the credit card or to buy groceries, whatever they’re doing, but they have no idea how much cash is in the business. They have no idea how much is owed to them, how much is coming, how much is… it’s like this big nebulous blob. Okay, but let me just say this. Okay, if I look at my cash every day, it’s depressing. I just want to go home and not work. What do you say to that? Well… It’s just emotional for me, Clay. This is hard. I mean, I want to have more money in there. If I look at it, I just get depressed. Specifically, I think about a restaurant that I worked with years ago. I ultimately didn’t work with them because their stuff was so crazy. But I sat down and showed the lady the math. I said, on every transaction that you do, just doing some rough math here, you’re losing money. Every time a customer comes in, based upon how your cash flow is working. I’m showing that you actually took a large amount of money that your husband left you when he passed away, and every transaction you lose about 10 or 20 cents. So the longer you’re in business, the more transactions you do, the more money you lose. She was clueless with that whole thought. I had no idea. And I wish that she was alone. I wish that she was the only person. But I would argue that this thing that should be happening daily in every business across America, I mean it should be a deal across the Thrive Nation, it’s like 5am, 7am across the nation, 9am, 10am, whatever time you’re at, every day. Where’s my cash balance? Every day. And then you want to know on a cash flow basis, and effective business owners, what they’ll do is they’ll know where their cash balance is, and then they’ll know what’s going out. They take a look at their accounts payable and they look at their accounts receivable and if they don’t have those things, which I applaud you if you don’t, but they know that we have certain bills. We have utility bills going out, we have the rent going out, we have the car payment, the truck payment going out and I know that we got this event going on and I anticipate we’re going to have this much money coming in, maybe wrong, but they’re constantly aware of cash, because cash is the commodity we use to grow our business, to invest our business, for people to believe in us. If we can manage our cash right, bankers trust us, investors trust us, people want to put money, more money into us if we can manage that cash. Cash is like water. I mean, for humans, water is what’s needed to sustain life, for animals, you need water, and cash is like the water for your company. It just kills everything. It really is. And so we want to come up with it. Don’t look at it as this big, ominous, big task to do. You set up a pattern at the beginning of your day. You look at your cash balance. You take a look at your bank accounts. And then you look at your books to see where we are with our cash, and we know that certain transactions are going out this week or next week. I know I have, for many clients, Clay, I’ve said, okay, let’s set up all of your monthly obligations and when they happen in the month just so you can see this on a sheet of paper. You’re looking at your cash balance over here. You’re looking at, oh, I know this and this and this is going out. It’s not a big surprise. And so they can begin to manage their cash in a much better way. I love it. Now, Tim, for anybody who’s watching this, they feel like, man, I need to get started. I need to get after this. Again, I think we go back to you. We really need to hire a bookkeeper to help you set this up. A bookkeeper can do it without the drama. They’re going to do a great job, whereas an entrepreneur, it might overwhelm you. I mean, don’t we need to hire a bookkeeper? Yeah, I would recommend getting somebody that’s already familiar with this and can explain to you, and I do this with all my clients, I explain them why is each one of these numbers important and what is that telling us and what can we do about these numbers. What do these numbers mean? Because again the numbers represent your decisions that you made, your disciplines you have or you don’t have, the actions you’ve taken, the procrastination you’ve been putting off things and so it’s a summation, these numbers reflect the behaviors and the actions and how you’re managing your business. And so if we want to improve the business, we take a look at the numbers, they make sense to us, and we make adjustments. And to be a successful business, you don’t just set up a business, you manage a business. A business has a thousand adjustments in a given week alone. It’s an ongoing management and adjusting to optimize the performance of it. Tim, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you making this simple and breaking it down in terms we can all understand. And again, I just want to, on behalf of all the Thrivers, I want to tell you thank you for coming in and investing your time and mentoring us and teaching us some of these things. And I want to encourage you, if you’re watching this and you feel overwhelmed, the great thing about Thrivers, you can watch as much as you want. So just keep watching and eventually it will sink in to your cerebellum and you will get it. So thank you so much. Very good, Clay. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Alright Thrive Nation, on today’s show we’re going to be breaking down what Robert Kiyosaki has recently been talking about. Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author, the New York Times best-selling author and real estate investment guru, has recently been talking more and more about octa non verba. You say, what’s octa non verba? Well, one, it’s Latin, so don’t get too concerned there, but it’s octa, again it’s octa, non-verbal. What it means is, what it means is action. You need to watch what people do and not what they say. My name is Robert Redman. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help, you know, direct my life to get some mentorship. But I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant. I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. The experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life-changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe, wherever I end up, will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn. I have learned a lot in those different categories. All right, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we’re talking about this idea, this concept of how do you make a million dollars a year? That’s the question. How do you make a million dollars a year? Let’s start with a better question, though. How do you make $100,000 a year? Now this is a true story, and on part two of today’s show, you’re going to hear about the subject of the story. So years ago, I ran into a man, and I believe the man was in his 50s when he found me. I don’t want to get the years wrong. I think he was 50 when I met him. And at the age of 50, a lot of people think, I can’t be successful because I’m 50. I’m too old to be successful. Now this client didn’t have that mindset, but a lot of people think, I can’t be successful because I’m too old. Other people think I can’t be successful because I’m too young. Other people think I can’t be successful because I don’t have enough money saved. Other people think I can’t be successful because the timing’s not right. Other people say I can’t be successful because I don’t have kids yet, I’m not married yet, maybe I can’t be successful because I am married. Maybe I can’t be successful because I have too many kids. I can’t be successful until after graduation, till before the graduation. I can’t be successful, the time’s just not right. But Napoleon Hill, the best-selling author, he wrote a book called Think and Grow Rich. And that book absolutely changed my life. The book is called Think and Grow Rich. And one of the lines in the book is he says, “‘The time will never be just right, you must act now.'” So, here’s the story I want to talk about today, and I want to get your thoughts on this. So, Devin, a guy shows up in my life, 50 years old, and he saw me at a speaking event. I was speaking at Victory Christian Center. I was a speaker there. And I was scheduled to speak before the man, and after I spoke before the man, he heard me speak, and then afterwards, he said, hello. He followed up with me. He followed up to reach out to me. He invited me out for pizza. Now at the time I was like, I want to say 32, because I’m 43, so it’s been 10 years ago, so I’ve been like 33, and he would have been 50. And he reaches out to me and he says, hey, I would love it if you could teach me how to grow my business, because I always have between 5 and 20 clients. I’m always somewhere between 5 and 20 clients and I want to grow a big business like you’ve built and I want to know if you can teach me. So I want to get your thoughts on that. Why don’t most people ask for help if their business is perpetually stuck? Probably just they’re just embarrassed. They’re embarrassed? Yeah. What do you think, Jordan? Why don’t most people ask? Because this guy is 50 years old. I just spoke at Victory Christian Center. It was a crowd of maybe 75 or 100 people, and I was speaking on how to grow a successful company. And this guy, who was the speaker who spoke after me, he had a book that he had written that wasn’t selling super well. He had a consulting business that had between 5 and 20 clients. It was always kind of stuck. He didn’t know how to acquire new clients. But why won’t most people reach out for help, Jordan? Probably because they either think, one, it’s like, oh, that’s great information. I don’t know how that applies to me. They don’t know how to implement it, like the systems that you teach, or they’re not actually interested in growing. So the idea of it. And again, without mentioning who this person is, well, on part two of today’s show, I’ll let everybody hear from this person. But without mentioning who this person is, I don’t want you guys to know that part of the story yet, but why do you think, Devin, that this person said, hey, I would like for you to help me, please help me? Why did this person call me and say, is there any way you could meet me for pizza? I wanna meet you. Is there any way you could help me? Why? Because you had a successful business and he knew you could help him. Okay, so I sit down with the person for pizza, sit down with him, this is a true story, sit down with him for pizza, they’re asking me questions, well how did you start your business, how did you grow your business, how did you get your first client, how did you get your next 10 clients, how did you get your next 20 clients, and I’m just laying it out. And then we go for the, he says, well I want to become a client, I said sure, he says, well what do you charge, I tell him the fee. It’s a little bit of a pushback there, a little bit of a, ooh. Now, why do I, Jordan, charge clients $1,700 a month? By the way, if you’re listening out there today, we do scholarships too, okay? So in this particular case, I ended up working with this guy at a discounted rate. And I said, hey, as long as you pay me $750 a month per consulting client that you add to your portfolio. So you pay me $750 a month per new client that you add. I’ll work with you at a little bit of a below market rate, but every time you add a client, you’ll just pay me $750 a month. So you add a new client for $2,000 a month, you pay me $750 a month. You add a client for $3,000 a month, you pay me $750 a month because my team, we can do photography, videography, web, search engine. We have the workflow. We have the website optimization. We know how to do online ads. We know how to build sales systems, sales scripts. We know how to lead meetings. We know how to lead staff meetings. We know how to do the group interview process. And this guy didn’t know the group interview. He didn’t have a group interview, didn’t understand the idea of the group interview, didn’t know how to optimize websites, didn’t know how to do online ads, didn’t know how to do videography, didn’t know how to do photography, didn’t know how to make landing pages that convert, didn’t know how to do retargeting ads, did not know these things. Why do you think, Jordan, that this guy said, well, that deal makes sense? Because that’s a lot of value. And it doesn’t matter. It’s what he needed. If it’s what he needs to do to grow his business, if that’s what it takes, then that’s a fair price. And why would I, Devin, be willing to work with this client and tell this client, hey, you know what? I’ll be willing to work a little bit below rate as long as we have a signed agreement that you’ll pay me $750 per new client that you add. Why would I say, yeah, I’ll teach you all my systems and you can use my staff if you pay me $750 per month? Because you believe that you can help him and it’ll make you money. It’s a win-win. Now, this is a true story. I want people to be very clear. With this client, when I met this person at Victory Christian Center, and you’re going to hear them say in this video testimony that they always had between 5 and 20 clients. Would it be shocking to you if we grew this person’s business to where they had 50 clients? 50 clients? We’re talking about 50,000. Again, they’re charging an average of $2,000 a client. Would it be shocking to you that this person’s business grew from 5 clients, 5 to 20 clients, to 50 clients? Would that be shocking to you, Devin? Knowing you, no, it’s not shocking. I believe it. And he talks about it. Okay, so this is a real story. So we’re growing the guy’s business, and I’ve helped him make all the scripts. I helped him learn the call recording process. I helped him learn how to train a team of sales professionals. And then he says to me, hey, I don’t have a team of callers. Could I use your callers? And Devin, why would I say, sure, you could use my callers, knowing that I have a $750 a month ongoing. Every time he gets a new client, I make $750. Why would I say, sure, use my callers? Because your callers will make the calls and get the clients and then that’s more money for you. Now this same client comes to me and says, hey, I don’t have an office to meet clients. And Jordan, why would I say, hey, you could office in my office for free, which by the way, I do that for Clay Stairs. For anybody out there that doesn’t know, Clay Stairs offices in my office. I charge them $0 a month to be in my office. Jordan, why would I say, sure, you could use my office, which by the way, at the time I was at the Riverwalk and my monthly rent or expense to be there because it was a lease and you have utilities. I’m paying $20,000 a month to be in there. Why would I say you could be in my office for free? Because it’s still a win-win. So if he grows, you grow. Yeah. So I said you could use my office for free. You could use my cold callers for free. You could use my physical office. And I said, and then the man says to me, hey, I don’t have it now. I’ve got so many consulting clients. I don’t have any other consultants that work for me. Could you train my consultants for me? So I’m giving the guy office space. I’m giving the guy my cold callers. I’m letting them, we’re doing all the backend support. Why did I say, sure, I’ll train your consultants myself. Why would I do that? Because the more consultants he gets, the more money you make. Well, I guess the more clients he gets, the more money you make. Right, right. And so this client, he says, could you train my son? I said, sure. I let his son shadow me, ride with me. He rode with me in my vehicle. We drove to a farmer’s insurance where the first meeting we got a chance to shadow me training the insurance agents. He followed me to my office meetings with face and body. He followed me to all my client meetings. Why would I, Jordan, mentor this man’s son knowing that I make $7.50 per month per client? Because that’s part of the deal. If you train him to do the same thing, you bring in more clients, you bring in more money. It’s the same thing. It’s a shalom relationship. They grow, you grow. The win-win. The shalom. Yeah, now if you’re out there listening today, and again, I’m telling you this story because there’s somebody out there that you’re like, I’m too old to be successful. I’m too young. I’m too whatever the situation is. What happens is, is you get this like mental block where you’re like, well, time’s not right. Well, anyway, long story short, with this particular client, I’ll let him share part two of the show, part two of the story. I helped this guy grow his business to where he has a hundred clients. A hundred clients, we’re talking about a net monthly profit, every month a profit of over $50,000 a month this guy’s making. Now if you’re making $50,000 a month, every two months you’re making $100,000. Every six months, folks, follow the math here, every two months you’re making $100,000. Every four months you’re making $200,000. Every six months you’re making $300,000. I mean, think about it. This is life-changing stuff here. We do that all day. So if you’re out there today and you feel like, man, I want to become successful, you either have to learn from guesswork or you have to follow what’s been proven to work. I would recommend that everybody out there, you don’t run through the landmine of life, you’re not streaking through the minefield of life looking for solutions. I mean, A, I think streaking is a general rule, it’s not the move, but streaking through the minefield of life hoping that you find the right solutions doesn’t make any sense. Why not just follow a proven path? And so that’s why I do scholarships. Let me explain how the scholarships work. I will work with a client. I’ll say, hey, you know what? $1,700 a month is what I charge, and we operate at a 20% margin, so it’s a $340 a month profit per client. However, I reserve the right, have the ability to, I will make the offer of, hey, I’ll work with you at a discounted rate, and I’ll even let people like ClayStairs.com, and I’ll even let people like TimRedmond.com, and I’ll even let clients like D2Branding.com, RedmondGrowth.com, all of these people office in my office for free. Because I’m, why would I do that, Deb? Why would I say, hey, if I’m making a percentage of the revenue that you’re making, why would I say, sure, be in my office for free. Sure, office in my office for free. Sure, I’ll staff your cold callers. Sure, I’ll do the group interview for you and find you employees for you. Sure, I’ll train your employees for you. Sure, you can shadow me and actually observe everything I do. In fact, in the case of Mr. Redmond, we’re going to talk about him on part two of today’s show, I said, you know what? Why don’t you just invite your new clients to my conference? That’s fine. Why would I do that without charging this person’s clients? Because doing that makes them grow, and then that just makes you more money. So it makes sense. And you hit on it, and I’m not trying to say that what you said isn’t accurate. I just want to hammer home what Jordan said. It’s a shalom. It’s a win-win. It’s the ultimate win-win, isn’t it? I mean, that’s the idea. The word shalom, look it up, folks. It’s a win-win. It’s a biblical idea. But the client wins, I win, and it’s the move. Now, Jordan, whenever we do an onboarding for a new client, and I’ll do probably two or three of these today, two or three tomorrow, but we have, you know, I’d say a dozen people a week that reach out for coaching. Yep. And there’s usually one or two a week. I offer a free 13 point assessment. Why would I do a free 13 point assessment with anybody who wants to work with us or who is thinking about working with us? Why would I do a free 13 point assessment? Well, one, it’s free so people will do it, you know, but you have to see, one, if they’re a good fit for the program and if they’ll do the work and two, if, you know… Okay, and why are the vast majority of people not a good fit? Now, I’m sure, I’m sure if you’re listening right now, I’m sure you’re a great fit. But why, why, Devin, are the vast majority of people not a good fit? So why would I do the group, why would I do the weekly, the weekly 13-point assessments with this large group of potential candidates? Why would I do these, these 13-point assessments for free, knowing that the vast majority of the people that fill out the form are not a good fit? Because before they become a client and pay the monthly fee, you have to know if they’re willing to do the work. Right, and if they are, then that’s a good fit. And as far as the fee, I’m not going to work with you for free, but I do scholarships for anybody who has the mental capacity and the tenacity needed to do the work. That’s why you see all the time we had a client here recently and I said, hey, why don’t you come shadow me? You can come to my office in Tulsa and see what I do because this client was passionate about paying me. I won’t mention their name or their industry, but this person recently shadowed me. They brought their team with them and they were passionate about hiring me. They’re like, we want to hire you. And why did I say, Devin, why don’t you just come to Tulsa and shadow me? Watch what I do. Watch how I work with our 160 clients. Watch how we help them grow. Look at these clients. Go to Thrive Time Show. Look at the testimonials. See the massive growth. Why would I do it? And again, it’s a month to month relationship to start. Why would I have someone shadow before I decide to take them on? Because they are able to see the environment here and the work and it helps them realize, okay, this is going to be me. Actually never mind, I don’t want to work with you. This is too much for me. You know, it doesn’t give them that chance. But it’s a proven path. Yep. So now we move on. So now, Jordan, you watch this. When I tell a client it’s time, okay, yeah, you are a good fit. If they are a good fit, if they go to thrivetimeshow.com, thrivetimeshow.com, they do a 13 point assessment, I think they’re a good fit. They think they’re a good fit. Why would I say, hey, you know, today’s the 18th. Let me charge you a dollar today to reserve your spot and then we’re not going to even charge you that monthly recurring fee of $1,700 a month or if it’s a scholarship that recurring fee of $750 a month. We won’t even charge you that until the first. Why would I give them that first couple weeks free? Because you want to make sure that they actually want to do it instead of just instead of in their excitement and being hyped up they’re like oh yeah yeah sign me up I want to do it and then you know a week later they’re like oh wait you know I I don’t you know I can’t do it. So on today’s show, it’s going to be like the ultimate testimonial. You’re going to have a client that’s going to explain to you. I worked with this client for eight years, nine years. And they’re going to explain how they doubled their business every single year. Then you’re going to have this client, Tim Redmond, you’re going to hear his son explain how I actually taught his son everything about business. His son will say this, and you’re going to go, so you gave this guy free office space, you taught his son, you let your cold callers make calls for the guy’s business, you helped the guy make the call scripts, his website, his print pieces, his marketing materials, you even taught him his core product and service, you let him office there for free, you let him attend your conferences for free, and you let his clients attend the conference for free. Why would you do that? Well, because it’s a win-win. You tell your client, you know, and why would I, before I have anybody sign a contract, Jordan, before I have someone sign a contract, why would I give it to them and say, please read this with the assistance of an attorney before you, because I don’t like to do a contractual agreement with most people, but if it’s somebody who’s on a scholarship or it’s somebody who we’re going to work with and really help them scale, I like to get a contract so that way it’s a contractually binding like, hey we’re gonna help you scale. That’s how I generate a lot of wealth is helping people scale their business. Why would I say please take the contract, do not sign it today, take it home, run it by your attorney, at least look at it for at least seven days before you sign it. Why would I do that? Because most people aren’t sure about what they want to do. So you give them a chance to look it over and make sure they want to do it because if they don’t want to do it, you don’t want to sign them up. Devin, why would I have somebody, why would I say, hey Devin, you want to become a long time partner client, that’s exciting, I’m going to charge you, in this case of Tim Redman, $750 per month per client, you know, for forever, every time you land a client, I’m going to charge you $750 per client to use my systems and processes. Why would I say, please read that agreement, eyes wide open, read it, run it by an attorney before you sign it. Why would I do that? Because when you first give them the contract, they’re pumped, they’re excited, and then you give them some time to think about it so they really understand, hey, this is forever. So no matter if you have 50 clients, it’s like a mortgage. Yeah, a mortgage. Yeah. And the word mortgage, by the way, means death grip. So I’m just saying, I’m not going to enter into an agreement with somebody unless I really want to be in a win-win, shalom relationship. So on part two of today’s show, you’re going to hear this incredible success story of how we helped to grow Redmond to Growth. I think it’s going to be a blasty blast, but I think it might be better if you hear it in their own words. This is Tim Redmond and Robert Redmond from redmondtogrowth.com. Again, that’s Tim Redmond and Robert Redmond from Redmond Growth. You can hear their own words. It’s an incredible success story. Hopefully it pumps you up, folks. And if you’re out there today and you feel like the time might not be right to grow your business, I would encourage you that the time is never right. You must act now. To quote Napoleon Hill, the time will never be just right. You must act now. And so I would encourage you. You’ve got one of three ways we could help you today. One, you can go to thrivetimeshow.com and book a ticket for our in-person workshop where we tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford to pay. What a good deal. Second option is you can schedule a 13-point assessment. Maybe you need to check up from the neck up to see if we can help you. That’s okay. That’s Thrivetimeshow.com and you get your free check up from the neck up, a 13-point assessment. Or option three is we offer the one-on-one business consulting, business coaching. It is going to be an exciting show. I’m so fired up for everybody to hear it. Devin, Jordan, I appreciate you guys. You’re here every day helping clients grow their business. And I just thought it would help for the folks out there to know these are real stories. These are not holograms. These are not get-rich-quick schemes. This is a client who we worked with over like an eight-year period of time. And you’re going to hear the progression over an eight-year relationship. And hopefully it does encourage everybody out there that this is your year. This is your time. The time will never be just right. You must act now. And without any further ado, we’re gonna end this part one with a boom because boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. Again, boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. Here we go. Three, two, one, boom! We go back eight years ago. Think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We gotta inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to our calls. Well, okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s an up and down roller coaster. And so now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t, without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100, as a percentage, what is that? I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. It’s a hundred percent growth every year I’ve worked. Now so I’m looking, we’ve been good friends seven, eight years and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean the first time you do it that’s one thing but when you do it repeatedly, I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, as I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take, no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. I’ll tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. The best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management, and he said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. That’s really what it’s all about. With a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script, and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every 100 calls. We make 200 to 300 calls a day per rep. Right. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there is having a hard time. On that script. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between two and three hundred calls a day. Whoa. And our relationship is weird in that we do, if someone were to buy an Apple computer today, and or let’s say about a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell, but then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems, and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe further down the road. Maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012. And at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met, how did we meet? What was the first interaction? There was some interaction where you and I first connected. I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But do you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well, we had that speaking thing that… Oh, there it was! So it was Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redman. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help direct my life, to get some mentorship. But I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here as a business coach, business consultant, I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. And the experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe wherever I end up will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn. I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. You know, working here you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence, and then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life. That standard of excellence that you want to implement, no matter what you’re involved in. That standard of excellence that you want to implement, no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay.