Entrepreneur | Daily Life Management + Creating an Asset Through Franchising

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to hear what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now three, two, one, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we’ve gotta do. Arthur, over the years, every article that I’ve read, and all research that I’ve done, and I’m sure you’ve done too, I found that every successful entrepreneur has this routine, and that has allowed them to become successful. And so it’s not so much it’s an event, but it’s a process to becoming successful. So I want to know for you, what time do you wake up every day? I generally wake up, the latest will be 6 o’clock. What time do you speculate most of your employees wake up, based upon how they look when they show up right at work. Or most, not your employees, but most employees, not your other people. I think most people probably wake up about 30 minutes before they get to work. There was an article I read in Forbes that talked about how the average millionaire, like 80% of these people, wake up three hours before they get to work, whereas the average employee, it’s usually 30 minutes. Yeah. It’s craziness. Like, how does somebody, anyway. Some of them don’t even bother to put their hair down from having bedhead. Dad, well that’s a hot look now. Apparently. Now, to stay organized, how do you manage your time on a daily basis? I mean, do you run around just kind of trying to remember what to do, or do you write things down? What’s your system? For me, I use a calendar. And my calendar is one that syncs with my phone, with my iPad, with my computer, so that all of them stay in sync. What program? I use Kalen Mob. Kalen Mob? Yep. How do you spell it? Is that real? Yep. C-A-L-E-N-M-O-B. I don’t know what that is, but can you maybe describe it more? One, so I know you’re not making that up. Look, it’s just an iTunes, a cheap iTunes app. Yeah, but you like it. But it works for me. But I’m also not a big techie guy, so I won’t spend a whole lot of time doing it. I’ll use that until somebody else comes to me and says, hey, you need to use this, and then I may switch. Now, you’re a big idea guy. You always have a lot of big ideas. You always have these creative solutions and things. Most big idea guys I know are crazy disorganized. Why is that not you? Why are you not the guy who’s always two hours late to a meeting? Why are you not the guy who’s perpetually forgetting to, you know, what, why is it that you’re able to get things done? If you’re going to be successful, you need to honor the other people that you’re spending time with. So to me, when I set up a meeting, I actually had a meeting set up one time, and the guy was two minutes late, and he wanted to sell me on something. And when he came, I said, you know what? We’re not going to do business together. And he said, well, I’m only two minutes late. I’m sorry, I had a phone call. I said, I understand that, but what happens when I need my product here, and it’s not there because you gotta take that phone call. And it’s tough, I think it’s tough because I think that all of us, you, myself, we start off as entrepreneurs, we mature, and every once in a while we find ourselves breaking our own rules, you know, for whatever reason that we believe to be justifiable. It’s a kid’s sick, it’s on the phone, or whatever those things are, and I think it’s important that we all have the same ideals, though. You know what I mean? It’s like when someone’s a hypocrite if they held everyone to a high standard. But you’re striving for that same ideal. I mean, you try to honor everyone’s time. Now, you have six kids, two restaurants, one wife, multiple businesses you’re involved with in some capacity. How do you balance the demands of faith, family, and finances? I mean, how do you do it? How do you balance all three? Well, one of the big things is if it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t get done. If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t get done. That’s the reality of it. Schedule it. What doesn’t get scheduled doesn’t get done? Absolutely right. My wife, her calendar syncs with mine. It takes like two minutes for my calendar to load because my wife has every kid’s schedule on the calendar. Boom. And so when I look at it, yeah, and so of course I have to focus on my color, which being as erratic as I am sometimes, I’m like, which color is mine? You and your wife share a color code of calendar? Yes, she creates it. I’m the spastic one, she’s kind of a little more organized, but when it comes to business, you don’t succeed if you’re not organized to some degree. I think that’s huge. So you are scheduling out your day. You’re not just running around? No. Okay. No. Do you have like a life mantra that you try to live by? I do. Well, my life mantra is really improvise, adapt, overcome. And I believe that came from the military. But that’s kind of how I live. If something’s not going to work, there’s always a way to improvise and adapt and overcome that situation. That’s amazing that you say that, because I think that there’s huge skills that every entrepreneur has to have. Did you learn those as a result of growing up poor? Did you learn those recently? Did you learn those? I think a lot of it I learned even when I was young, is that if I wanted something to happen, I had to figure out a way to make it happen, because it wasn’t there for me. We have got a guy who works here, and he’s working really hard. And I told him the other day, I was like, hey, you know, the only thing that’s easy, you know, in college and there’s like to get things done here, you’ve got to be resourceful. You just have to be. And he was having a hard time getting a few things done. I was like, hey, man, the only thing easy for you is college tests. College tests, I mean, you study for them, they’re pretty predictable questions. But in business, I mean, things don’t work. Suppliers don’t deliver, weather’s not always good, people get sick, people get tired, people show up late to work, customers quit coming, new customers start coming, and there’s so many variables. And I just, I really do think this whole, you said, is it to adapt? Improvise, adapt, overcome. Adapt, overcome, love it. Now, the late, great success author Napoleon Hill, he said success is a choice. Napoleon Hill said that success is a choice. We’re talking about the guy who studied the world’s wealthiest man, Andrew Carnegie, probably the top self-help author of all time. He says success is a choice. A lot of people I know say, no, it’s not. It’s not a choice. You can’t choose. Is it a choice? It is absolutely a choice. What do you mean? How has it been a choice for you? Everything about success is a choice. you get the choice on if you’re going to get up early to get the job done. You get the choice on if you’re going to stay up all night long to get it done. You have the choice on if things aren’t prepared for your meeting in the morning, are you going to go see that movie or are you going to sit down and watch that reality show? There’s a phrase out there that I love. It’s that the average millionaire does not know who got voted off the island. And I love that. But that’s the truth. Now, here’s one thing I think that’s tough. Because you say success is a choice. I have found that failure is a prerequisite to success. And I agree with that as well. Because even with Thrive here, we have a spreadsheet we made of all the different venture capitals. I think we’ve made over 400 attempts to talk to people and then my favorite guy, the guy that I’ve been like, dear Lord, I really have prayed this, please allow David Robinson to join our team because he’s so awesome, high integrity, great guy on and off the court and he’s the guy who joins our team. You know, I’ve been talking to different venture capital firms and the one guy I’d like to have on our team, Sean Copeland, is on our team. And to me it’s just been neat to see that, but hundreds of rejections. Absolutely. And I know when you were at Chick-fil-A, the scene was you’re at a mall, the mall’s called Eastland Mall. Yep. And to set the scene, it’s basically a name of a vacant mall. Pretty much. And you were in the food court of a vacant mall where they’re installing a library because the traffic is so slow. Yep. And you had to promote your food items. Yeah. How did you do it? How did you get the food out to the people? There were like seven people at the mall. Yeah. Well, so here’s what I did. In that particular food court situation, that food court was downstairs. It was what we called it the dungeon. It was really bad. The dungeon of death. Yeah. And so there was us and a movie theater and a lot of birds. The birds were flying them all, and they There was us in a movie theater and a lot of birds. The birds were flying in the mall and they’d steal the pizza from the pizza guy. It was awesome. But anyway, that’s a whole different story. Did that really happen? Yeah. I would look over at the pizza place and the crows would be grabbing an entire pizza and just trying to fly off of it. He’d come chasing it with a knife. It was a scene out of a movie, I tell you. It was awesome. But I remember looking up at the people going, I need them down here. The people up top at the mall, second level. Yeah, because they would be shopping upstairs, and they wouldn’t come down. So I said, well, if I can’t get them down here, I need to go up there to them. To them. And so what I started doing, well, then I had some other logistical issues, like the mall would not let us just go wander around and hand out food. So then I went to some of the stores there, and I got to be good friends with them. I said, hey, can I give out food on your lease line? And so I would take the food up there, and I would give away food on their lease line to those customers walking by. And they’d have a sample of Chick-fil-A, and they’d say, you know what, I want Chick-fil-A. Well, we’re downstairs. And so I was able to increase my traffic count from seven a day to ten a day. It wasn’t really that bad, but we were able to increase our traffic count. What was the traffic total before you started doing that? What did you really get to? Do you remember roughly? It was… there were days when we only had like 125 customers. Well… But by the time I left that store after a couple of years, I think on the lower end we were running 200, 250 customers. So you did some things. You chose to be successful. You just didn’t wait down there in the food court on the empty level with the bird they’re trying to steal a pizza. That’s right. That’s right. It just goes to show you can’t always watch a bird steal a pizza on the second level of a empty mall. You got to get out there and sell your products and give samples on the lease line of other people. You got to put that like on a coffee line. It’s so concise and clean. But no, success is a choice. Now in your mind, why aren’t most people successful? If success is a choice, are people choosing to not be successful? Go. If you’re going to choose success, you’re going to have to do the uncomfortable things. You’re going to have to get up early when it’s not easy. People choose not to succeed because they’re too comfortable in their lifestyle. So people are choosing to be unsuccessful. Absolutely. Well, OK. Thrive is for people who have decided to move beyond surviving. And I think they’re a little bit fiery. They’re honey badgers. They’re going, I’m just going to do whatever I have to do to become successful, so I’m not going to be irritated when I hear this sort of message. But we are saying that people choose to be successful, but also some people are choosing to not be successful through their actions. Correct. Maybe not their mind, what they’re thinking, but what they’re doing. Absolutely. In your own life, how have you chosen to become successful? Well, for me, it was really the mentality. I wanted to thrive, basically. As I wanted to be successful, I wanted to be able to provide for my family. And so I would, you know, the first thing is I started aligning myself with people who had that in their life. And then, of course, I would do the things that others would not do to get to that point, like getting up early, staying at work late, adding that extra second mile service, being that, you know, sometimes it’s about being that friend that other people may not be. I’ve noticed that you’re Chick-fil-A, you clean your bathrooms about every 15 minutes. That’s probably right during the busy times, yes. I know businesses, businesses, that have gone months. I’m at months, maybe weeks without cleaning the bathroom. Really, real talk. You go the extra mile all the time in those areas too. Why are you doing this? One of the reasons is the Chick-fil-A customers absolutely expect that. What we find is that if we’re not keeping a clean restroom, then first of all, they’ll go somewhere else. So on top of the fact that they expect that, it’s what we need to do to make sure that the customer is getting the best experience they can. Because there’s plenty other bathrooms for them to use, but we want them to be going, I’m going to Chick-fil-A bathroom, because when I go there, I know that it’s gonna be clean, it’s gonna smell great. The flow’s good every time. It’s amazing. Amazing flow. Flows. Funny story. One time, we were creating our system on how we’re going to clean the bathrooms. And we’re talking about, we actually went to some other stores, and we benchmarked on what they were doing. A friend of mine from Quick Trip showed me that terminology, which is funny, because we were benchmarking Quick Trip on how they clean their bathrooms. And they would go in there, spray all the walls down. And so we went out there, we sprayed all the walls down. And I did it myself. I went in there, I sprayed them all down. It smelled fantastic in there. So I left the bathroom, got my manager, went back and brought him back to the bathroom. It smells so good. And I said, you know, you’ve got to come in here. You’ve got to come in here and smell this. And we go in there, and I walked in, and I said, doesn’t it smell great in here? And I looked over, and there’s a guy sitting on the potty right there, using the restroom. He’s benchmarking. He was. And my manager looked at me and he didn’t know what to say. And then I realized that there was a guy sitting there. So we stepped outside and just started laughing about it. The guy felt pretty awkward, so we went and hid. So it just goes to show you, if your bathroom is starting to smell nice, bring a buddy in there. That’s right. Okay. For all the aspiring entrepreneurs and current entrepreneurs out there, what are three things in your mind that everyone needs to do if they want to become successful? Again, if I’m an entrepreneur watching this, what are three things that I can do to choose to become successful? Three of them. Three things. One, you need to get a mentor, someone that’s going to give you wisdom into your life. The other is be ready to do the things that others won’t do. I think the third thing is, be ready for everything to fall apart. Because as an entrepreneur, not everything works out perfectly. You just have to be ready for it. Gosh, you know, I was talking to my wife today, and I was trying to hit on her, you know, and she’s trying to ask a question, and I’m just trying to hit on her, and she’s asking, she’s like, well, how’s production going? I was explaining to her all the great things that are happening, but at the same time, like, I don’t understand why I can’t get the electricity to work here where we can’t turn on the whole mothership without something crashing, like, what is the deal? And it just seems like that’s the, you have to have that though, otherwise it would just be too, it’d be too awesome. And you almost have to have that adversity, I mean, it’s just, it’s funny. You know what I mean? So I guess my heaven is if we could recreate the Thrive set here, but the electricity would work consistently. That’s really what I’m looking for. But that’s the true entrepreneurial spirit because it’s probably not gonna happen. So you gotta work around it. And in recap, your mantra, I wanna repeat that one more time was? Improvise. Improvise, adapt. And overcome. Overcome. Awesome. Hey, thank you for your time. My pleasure. Terry Powell. Hey, Clay. I’m great. How you doing, buddy? I’m doing well. You know, I’ve had a, just, this North Carolina is beautiful. I’ve never been to Charlotte before and I’m just amazed by all the trees downtown here. It is gorgeous. It’s absolutely great. It is a nice area. The, well, today though, we are talking about creating an asset through franchising. And this idea is a little bit interesting, I think, for a lot of people. Because when you think about creating an asset, very few people stop and take a time out and think about their current job and whether they’re creating an asset at this current job, whether they’re creating something that has value later. But before we deep dive into that, I want to give people just a little bit of a context as to how many years you’ve spent in this industry and a little bit about what you do today. Can you tell us how many years you’ve been involved in franchising and what exactly you do today? Yeah, I’ve been in franchising for a little over 30 years and the primary concept that we worked in that 30 years is a company called the Entrepreneur Source, which is a network of franchise coaches that work with people seeking to discover whether franchise ownership might be a viable solution to building an asset base for themselves. Now, you’ve seen a lot of people go from rags to riches or somebody who started a very small you know with a very they put everything they had into starting a franchise or buying a franchise and you’ve seen a lot of these people become millionaires. I mean, you’ve seen it firsthand. As far as this concept, what kind of potential does somebody have to create a million dollar asset for themselves by buying a franchise? Oh, it’s very likely that you can create an asset that would be a million dollar asset. Considering that 52% of all franchise units are owned by multi-unit operators, the potential for going extremely beyond that million dollar asset is quite high. What kind of revenue does somebody have to do on an annual basis to generate a million dollar valued business? What do they have to do? Depends on the industry they’re in and how those industries are valued from a resale standpoint. Okay. But anytime you have a predictable, you know, volume that’s of history and you’ve got a business that’s got clientele that someone can come into and start at that point rather than starting at the beginning, it creates a very high asset value or what we call a resale value. And that’s not unusual in a franchise. Then you’re going to have other assets associated with that franchise such as the equipment and such as some of the fixtures and furnishings and the leases that will be transferred. All those things have an asset value. I’ll just give you an example for the thrivers watching this. There’s a gentleman that I’ve met kind of from a peripheral, is not a very, very close friend of mine, kind of an acquaintance, not a nice guy though. And what he’s done is he has this habit of buying franchises from a franchisee who’s maybe a little disgruntled, not following the system. He buys them and he fixes them up, implements the system and sells them for a million bucks. And he’s done this a couple times. And I thought, what an interesting business model this guy had. But he was able to do it because he says, hey, the brand has value as long as there’s customers and revenue. But if you’re working a typical corporate job, you can’t just work at your job for a few years and then say, I’m going to sell this job to Larry. That’s right. And then Larry can’t just buy that job from you. So I mean, it’s a big differentiator. It’s huge. Now, Terry, if I’m somebody who’s unaware of what the word asset means, I’m going to go ahead and kind of just, I guess I’m going to break it down for anybody watching this who doesn’t maybe know what this term means exactly. An asset is defined as a resource with economic value that an individual, corporation, or country owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide benefit. Terry, what are some of the things that you see franchise owners do that can absolutely kill, like destroy the value of their franchise? Say they bought a great franchise, it’s well known, it’s known for being successful, but they bought it. What are some things that we want to be careful and make sure we don’t do that can just kill the value of a franchise asset? That’s a great question. The key to developing a high-value asset is to maximize all the elements of the franchise model to be working for you. Because franchise models create lots of synergies and multipliers. And multipliers are like compound interests. The system does the heavy lifting for you, but it also works for your business to continue to drive multipliers. So the more you’re in sync with having the system work for you, the higher the asset value. Now we talk a lot about income, lifestyle, wealth, and equity. The equity that you develop in business ownership is that asset. That’s what you can either pass it on to your children as an inheritance, or it can be part of your estate, or you can sell that asset. Why is it so important, if I’m working in a job right now, that I take a time out for just a second to ask myself, am I building an asset? What happens if I don’t, and why is it so important for me to really think about that. Well, you know, I’m a firm believer that the reason 75% of the adult population has an ongoing, consistent, strong to very strong desire to be self-sufficient is because we were really never designed or wired to be working in the kind of environment we are for unemployment. At least 75% of us weren’t. So most of us are functioning in that role for the wrong reasons. And when you add to the factor that there’s no asset appreciation, it makes sense that you have to ask yourself, why am I doing this? So if you’re working at a job right now and you don’t own the job, or you’re not an investor in the job, or you have no upside if the job’s done well, we’re just asking you to take a moment to think about it and think about whether you’re truly on the path to creating an asset and something of wealth for yourself as opposed to just working at the job. Absolutely. If I’m somebody watching this and I don’t own a business, could you explain to me the difference of what it means to work for a check as opposed to work to create a business of value? Like what sort of differences you see in the lifestyles of people and just the energy level and what that really means? Yeah, I’ve been blessed to be part of that, you know, thousands and thousands of time and be on the receiving side of what the transformation is like. I actually did coaching myself for the first 14 years of the business before I franchised it. Today, I still get letters and cards and phone calls and Christmas cards from those individuals that I empowered to make that transition from employment to take control of their destiny and sharing with me some of the results of that. So the difference is huge. In today’s employment environment, it’s actually far greater than ever before. And people that are employed are asking that question more and more frequently because the battered career syndrome is really taking its toll on most people in that environment. I find that too, once there’s an entrepreneur who finds a business model that can help them get to their goals. These people have boundless energy regardless of their age. I’ve seen this a lot. I mean, it’s like these people that are tireless and they found a franchise or a business that just is helping them get to their goal and it doesn’t matter how old they get, they just seem to have that energy. Do you see this a lot? Absolutely. You know, you can have a job. Anybody can have a job. You can have a career, which is better than having a job. Or you can have a business, which is great, but if you have a calling around that business, that’s that passion you see, when they really have that energy and they’re really driving, which is what I’ve seen the transformation be in so many of our clients over the years who’ve taken that step. Have you seen examples in your first hand of people that started with very little money who’ve now become millionaires through franchising? Oh, absolutely. I mean, do you see this often? Yeah, actually, interestingly, 23% of all of our clients actually end up in a… I’m sorry, 23% of our clients end up purchasing multiple units right out of the gate instead of starting with one. Really? And the history of franchising, as far as millionaires and beyond, those who do multiple units or area development types of agreements are more likely to grow to that million and multi-million dollar asset value in a shorter period of time. The book, The Millionaire Next Door, which I reference often, but it’s so great because it’s a study on how people get wealthy. And what it shows in that book, and there’s a lot of statistics, but it’s well over half. It’s like, and in the book it’s got some very specific data, but just as a general concept, it doesn’t really matter what research you look at, about three quarters of the millionaires across our country are self-employed in some capacity. And I think it’s important that we know that, that you really give yourself a lot better chance to move up that ladder when you’re in control of your own destiny. So that’s absolutely huge. Terry, I have to ask this final question here for you. Why are you so passionate about helping people create an asset through the model of franchising? What is it? I mean, 30 years you’ve been helping people. Why are you so passionate about helping people create an asset? Well, there’s a number of reasons. First, lots of people go into business for the wrong reasons. And they shift from working for what they refer to as their idiot boss to working for themselves who becomes the idiot. And makes those kinds of mistakes and basically ends up buying themselves a job, becoming a technician. And I’ve had this passion for a long time to allow people to see that the business is really a vehicle to accomplish it. They talk about their dream. The dream isn’t the business model. Yeah. It’s not about finding the dream business. The dream is what you’re going to do as a byproduct of having that vehicle that accomplishes income, lifestyle, wealth, and equity. I know I was guilty of that at one point. I remember I was so excited to own a business. I was almost like that itself was the promised land. But then when you realize that that’s the promised land, you maybe didn’t have a big dream there. But the goal is to own a business that can help you get to your life goals, to help you achieve those goals. So you can have a dream lifestyle, income, wealth, and equity, and use that business the right way. And so many people make mistakes about choosing a business around their perception or around their background or experience and they hold themselves back. We’ve used the analogy before of doing the same thing over and over but expecting the results to be different. Why would you go into a business and invest and not change things that allows the results to be different? For somebody who’s been trapped in working for dollars, working, exchanging time for money rat race for years and years and years. This concept of even having a business asset that allows them to live an ideal lifestyle is probably foreign. Can you maybe just describe briefly what you mean by lifestyle? What does that mean to have a business that allows you to live that lifestyle? What are you even referencing? Well, in any business cycle, income is the first thing you’ll be able to achieve and that comes pretty quickly in a franchise. But now you’ll have enough income that you’ll have the opportunity to change your lifestyle for you and your family. Okay. So you’ll be able to aspire to have a lifestyle that will be at a different level than you’ve expected you could or that you’ve dreamed about having. So that you get to now reap some of the rewards and benefits of investing in yourself and investing into an asset that has a higher return. Makes sense. And then you go to wealth and equity as the business matures. You’ll make more money than your lifestyle and your income will be able to utilize. That excess money now gets to be put into wealth factors that you’ll do other investments and you’ll diversify even greater and then you’ll have equity that’s developed by all that wealth and that franchise business. It’s amazing. You make it sound so simple and I know you’ve helped people achieve big results and so I appreciate you taking the time to share with us how to do this. Terry, I appreciate you more than you know. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being here, Twain. Appreciate it. All right, JT, so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business? To get you to your goals, so it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination. And would you need profits to get there? I mean, when you have a business that’s successful and you’re in your mind your expert opinion would you need profits to get your to get you to your goals? Yeah because if you have a 15 million dollar business but you have 15 million dollars of expenses it’s kind of pointless. Holy crap! Alright so the question I would have here for you if you could take like 10 minutes or less and see if you could save 3,000 bucks a year by reducing your credit card fees would you do it yes absolutely all crap why would somebody out there who’s listening right now who has the same mind why would they not uh… go to thrive timeshare dot com forward slash credit dash card thrive timeshare dot com forward slash credit dash card to schedule a ten minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least three thousand bucks a year why would they not do it? yeah why would they not do it? Maybe because they don’t understand how you set the website. This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Griswold family Christmas. That’s clear. Okay, so that could be true. So I encourage everybody to check out Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card What would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they can save three thousand dollars or more on credit card fees. Maybe they think it is a waste of time and then it won’t. It’s not possible. There’s somebody out there that’s making more than three thousand dollars every ten minutes and they’re like nah that’s not worth my time. Hello! We getting there everybody! We getting there everybody! There’s probably some someone out there. Okay. They would think that. Well I’ll just tell you folks if you’re out there today and you’re making less than $3,000 per ten minutes, I would highly recommend that you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard because you can compare rates, you can save money, and the big goal in my opinion of building a business is to create time, freedom, and financial freedom, and in order to do that, you have to maximize your profits. Holy crap. Now, one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue another way to do it is to decrease your expenses profit deal takes the pressure off JT’s are any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take ten minutes to compare rates to see if they could save a total of three thousand dollars a year on average. I am at a loss, I cannot think of any other. Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair. Conditioner is better. I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool, really. Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. Stop looking at me swan. Well let me tell you a good story here real quick. I actually years ago compared rates with this company here called IPS. It’s Integrated Payment Services. And I scheduled a consultation. I don’t know if I was skeptical. I just thought, whatever, I’ll take ten minutes. I’ll compare rates. I can’t tell. You can tell me I’m a doctor. No, I mean I’m just not sure. Why can’t you take a guess? Well, not for another two hours. You can’t take a guess for another two hours? And in my case, in my case, my particular case, I save over $20,000 a year. Holy crap! Wow. Which is, you know, like groceries when my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great. Okay. Oh God. Everything okay ma’am? Oh it’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items and it’s already 60 bucks. I’m so scared. Okay I’m a trained professional ma’am. I’ve scanned a lot of groceries. I need you to stay with me. It’s just that my in-laws are in town and they want a charcuterie board. This isn’t gonna be easy so I need you to be brave all right. What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia all right. I need you to take a deep breath. We’re about to do the cheese You know that’s the difference between eating organic and not organic so because my wife eats organic I had to take the ten minutes needed to compare rates to save the $20,000 a year on credit card fees just for one of my companies one question What’s the brand name the clock the brand name of the clock Rod? Do we have a name of the clock? It’s an elegant from Ridgeway. It’s from Ridgeway Let Let’s buy the clock and sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. You schedule a free consultation, request information, a member of our team will call you, they’ll schedule a free consultation. It should take you ten minutes or less, and they’re going to compare rates and see if they can’t save you more than $3,000 a year off of your credit card processing. You were hoping what? I wouldn’t owe you money at the end of the day. No, you don’t owe us money. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the goal of the business is to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And in order to do that, you need to create additional profits. Let’s go, let’s go. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. We have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now, okay? I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also, we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews, and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest and Lawn company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. So 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85%, and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process, and that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really really contributed to our success. But that like is of the diligence and consistency and doing those and that system has really really been a big blessing in our lives and also, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut, and if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So, we just wanna give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore, I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense. Starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof and turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay’s done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the system, the checklist, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockrell, head of Disney, with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers and they run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks he’s doing reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. Amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. And that’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. And Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest His highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey, guys. I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to 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. Here you go. 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 4 to 14 and I took this beautiful photo We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and Just teaching sales, which is awesome. But Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website, we’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. 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’ll even give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. If we go back eight years ago, think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to their call. Okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it was up and down roller coaster. 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 five clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t, without the systems, you’re gonna be at the, you’re gonna 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 100% growth every year. We’ve been good friends seven, eight years, and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean, the first time you do it, that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean, that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’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, is I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. Well I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. Right. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management, he said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. And so that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every 100 calls. We make 200 to 300 calls a day per rep. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there is having a hard time. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between 200 and 300 calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do… If someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say you buy 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. Well, you and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe even further down the road, maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012, 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. 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 is a business coach, a 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 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 wanna implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall in the group interview talks about how the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal-oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory, and we’re on our own trajectory. And the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship, that as we pursue our goals and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I would say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that, I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know, he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business, whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. You know he’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that a motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s again unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that are satisfied with mediocrity, people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people. In short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time, the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks, he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay. I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day, actually. I carried a notebook with me all around and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say, come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.