Entrepreneur | Part 1 – Determining And Managing Different Personal Velocities

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 3, 2, 1, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do. Jim, I appreciate you letting me come to your kitchen area here and just harass you, my friend. I have at it. Thank you. Welcome. Well, I want to say this because I am overwhelmed by just your career. But I wanted to give a little bit of richness and clarity for people who maybe don’t earn as familiar with you as I am. You actually received the Golden Gavel Award. Can you explain to the Thrivers what the Golden Gavel Award is? There’s an organization called Toastmasters International that has like a quarter million members around the world. And it’s an organization formed through local clubs that are very low cost. You can join for just a few dollars and participate in the weekly or monthly meetings. And you learn communication skills. So you learn to speak in public. You learn to introduce other people at a meeting. You learn to do parliamentary procedure and things like that. Well, they every year give have a big contest and they give an award to the international winner who has gone through local, regional, district, national competition, and they get on stage at their big international convention in front of thousands of people and give their final speech and they’re judged and they either win that award or something. You know, they’re in that competition. Then there’s a separate award that Toastmasters gives to non Toastmasters. And this is called the Golden Gavel Award. And it’s given to someone that they consider to be sort of symbolic of what they’re all trying to be. And so they’ve given it to Zig Ziglar and Earl Nightingale and Norman Vincent Peale. And, you know, it’s kind of a big deal. I was looking at the list of winners and you look at your name on there and you go, okay, and you work your way down and you see Tony Robbins, then you see Les Brown, you see Tom Peters, you see, I mean, it’s unbelievable. Those are all people I know. It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It is amazing. We are here with a living legend. I’m excited. The legend’s escort. I hung out with the legends and carried some of their notes as they walked to the platform. No, but I’ve known so many of them and I’ve had the privilege of working with them. I remember Les Brown on his way to his first speech. Really? Paid speech. We were at the National Speakers Convention. I was on the National Board of Directors and we were in Orlando, I think, or Tampa. And we’d gotten on the bus to go from the convention back to the airport. And he said, you’re Jim Cathcart. And I said, well, I try to be. He said, well, I’m Les Brown. And I said, well, tell me about you, Les. And he said, I’m on my way to give my first paid speech. Really? And I’m going to be a famous motivational speaker. And I said, well, great. Good for you. What are you doing? And he told me a little bit about his story. Well, I’ve gotten to know him and we’ve been friends for a long, long time, and he did, in fact, become a famous professional speaker. Well, I tell you what, if things get rough today, you can hit me with your golden gavel, okay? There you go. Well, we’re going to talk today about personal velocity. Before we get into that, I want to ask, if you can just kind of explain to the Thrivers as a big concept. When you say personal velocity, what is that in reference? Well, if you think of velocity, the actual definition of velocity, it’s the rate of advancement toward a goal or toward a destination target A lot of people say well the same as speed no Speed is rapidity of movement, but it has nothing to do with whether you’re getting where you want to go So speed you could go in a circle at 200 miles an hour velocity would be zero speed would be 200 miles an hour You could go toward your goal at 20 miles an hour and your velocity would also be 20. So it’s the rate of advancement toward what it is you want. So if you don’t want anything, your velocity is going to be zip. OK, that makes sense. So you need a goal. You need a dream, an aspiration. You need a targeted destination. In your book, The Acorn Principle, which, by the way, is endorsed by Jack Canfield, Brian Tracy, Les Brown. I mean, it’s just, again, it’s a who’s who of endorsements. So the book, I mean, right away you know that it’s written with some credibility and you’re saying things that really do matter. But in there, when you talk about the personal velocity, one of the quotes that came to mind for me was Albert Einstein. He has this quote where he says, everybody’s a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. And I was thinking about personal velocity and how that works, because you have different velocities. Everybody has their own velocity. Yeah. And some people in the way that a fish can’t climb a tree, everyone has their own velocity. And I thought we’d just dive in first to this area of high velocity. Can you kind of articulate what high velocity means? Let me back up a step and define personal velocity a bit more. Let’s do it. And that is it’s the energy and drive patterns that are natural to you. Okay. So everybody has energy and it rises and falls depending on a lot of things, but there’s a level of energy, kind of like your vibration frequency that is set throughout most of your life. Once you’re an adult, I can be around you now and 20 years from now and your velocity, at least from an energy point of view, is going to be approximately the same. There will be moments where it’s enormously greater and then significantly lower but for the most part I will know you by the energy patterns or kind of I keep coming back to vibrations in my mind You know thinking of the frequency at which you operate naturally Yeah, and the second factor in that and these are mixed together to make make a blend is drive. So it’s like you’ve got a natural setting inside and if your setting is understood, you can orchestrate your life to complement that. Okay. If it’s not, then you keep expecting yourself to be like somebody else who might have a different velocity than you. to achieve, your willingness to face resistance and persist in order to achieve. So energy and drive combined, that’s your personal velocity. Now when you talk about, let’s say high velocity is an example, because in your book you say your drive is to be self-motivated, to work toward goals, particularly challenging goals. You have high aspirations and hold yourself and others accountable to high standards. Competition excites you when you have expectations of yourself. Your energy is allocated by always thinking about tasks, goals, and work interests. You even use leisure time to advance towards goals, whether they’re personal or professional. You find inactivity to be frustrating. You prefer long hours filled with varied activity. So how do you manage? Let’s say I’m a manager, OK? And so I own a business, and I have maybe 10 employees. How do you go out there and manage somebody who’s high velocity different from somebody who’s, let’s say, low velocity? Well, a high velocity person is like having a racehorse. And if you’ve got a racehorse, you don’t want that one pulling the milk wagon. You want to find a way to use that racehorse’s ability and its eagerness to do what it’s capable of doing and if you put it into a position that’s Like as a pack mule you will not only underutilize its potential you’ll destroy it same thing for a person a high-velocity person is going to end up being an entrepreneur or Somehow being an initiator at an achiever a competitor and they seek that and they thrive on it You said well, you know just calm down clay. You know, you don’t you don’t have to go that hard. Clay enjoys going that hard if he’s a high velocity guy. Right. So it’s it’s not that, you know, they talk about type A and type B personalities. Well, a type A personality is supposed to be this hyper, always on overbearing person. And type B is a more mellow person. And you should be more type B with occasional bursts of type A. Well, the fact is we are either a high velocity, moderate, or lower velocity person naturally. So how does a high velocity person find an environment for them? Find one with the maximum freedom and feedback. So like if I’m a high velocity athlete, I not only want an athletic endeavor or sport that allows me to do what I’m capable of doing, but I also want a coach who will say, hey, hey, hey, slow it down. You’re pushing too far on this. If you pull back just a couple of beats, your speed overall will increase and your endurance will expand. So, you know, we need the feedback as well. That’s for a high-velocity person. Well, you know, I want to ask is because I want to, again, if I’m a manager and I have a company with 10 employees or some of the organizations we work with at Thrive have thousands of employees. Sure. Or hundreds. If you were to go in and look at the- Hundreds of thousands. If you would look at the number of employees, let’s just say you go into a typical office, there’s 100 employees there. What percentage have you found of these people to be high velocity? You know, out of 100 people. Typically out of 100 people or out of any large sampling of people, you’re going to find that there’s less than 20%, closer to 10, will be the higher velocity people. But then there are degrees of that. You’ve got the super high velocity, the types that are like a metronome that you could use as a ceiling fan to keep yourself and friends cool at night, those kind of people, and the hummingbirds. And then you’ve got high velocity that more like it as I was saying a racehorse, you know that not nearly as intense as the other one, but if you look at like 40 to 50 percent in the middle Yeah and then take the Percentages top and bottom that remains split them equally you’ll find the way the population tends to be distributed. That’s not scientific, although I have people that have done the research and have the science to back it up. But off the top of my head, that’s generally it. Well, being that you’ve spoken with and you continue to speak with some of the biggest companies in the world, how often do you see where the manager or the leader of the company has maybe put high velocity people in low velocity jobs? How often do you see people mismatched? Or maybe a high velocity person shows the wrong job. But how often do you see the right people on the right team but in the wrong position? Frequently. Frequently. Because most people don’t know. That’s why I’m writing the book, Success Velocity, how to increase your success velocity. You don’t increase your personal velocity, but you can increase your success velocity by making the right choices for what you do with your talents and with your people. And it’s amazing how few people know how to think about this. Yeah. You know, they think, well, you know, Jim’s not particularly high velocity guy. As a matter of fact, he’s low velocity guy. But I think with the right motivation, you know, and if we gave him enough fiber and whatever, you know, they come up with their solutions, then we could get him to be high velocity. No, you won’t. You might get him to give you a little burst of high energy and drive, but they’re not going to be sustained because they’re not coming from what’s natural for him. So we need to think in terms of alignment as a primary factor in how we assign people to roles and responsibilities. Okay. So you, you know, I think this is really important for managers and people who are watching this who manage large groups of people. This is important that we know where the… Is it important to look at each person on your team and figure out what kind of velocity they naturally bring? Is it important to do that? Yeah, and you do that over time. You don’t do that by watching them on Tuesday. Okay. You watch a person over an extended period of time, maybe weeks or months, and notice their natural patterns. Notice when they’re at their best, when they tend to smile without provocation, you know, when they when they seem to start really getting in the zone, so to speak, and then just keep notes. And over time, you’ll find it was like my wife and I, I’m clearly a high velocity guy. I love a challenge. If I don’t have a challenge, I’ll go create one. Yeah, right. So it’s kind of like, if I didn’t have a competition for physical competition, I would go work out, thereby creating an artificial competition, me against the weight. I need the challenge in order to feel fully alive. I can relax. People say, oh, you can’t chill. Yeah, I can, but when I relax, I’m doing it intentionally. I didn’t just disconnect and float, I disconnected intentionally for a reasonable amount of time that is not going to get me in trouble. And I make sure I’m doing whatever I need to do to not use up my reserves of energy and drive. That 20% that’s the high velocity, they’re the big drivers, the go-getters. Yeah, even less than 20 when you get into people like that. That’s the top 10 or top 5. And now you’re getting into more of this next group where these people, you define them as moderate velocity. And that’s most people. Most people. This is kind of in the middle 70% here? 50% probably. Maybe middle 50% okay. Yeah. If you think about it, as you go about day to day dealings with people, most people are not intense. Most people are not lethargic. They’re somewhere in between those extremes. So for moderate velocity people, which is most people, you do what you’d usually do in managing most people. The common conventional wisdom applies. I love your descriptions because I’m reading these and I think of certain people, or I’m sure people listening to this will think of certain people, but you describe moderate velocity as being your drive is to be somewhat self-motivated. You set reachable goals, have moderate aspirations, don’t demand perfection, and accept competition, although you do not require it. You allocate your energy and balance of work and leisure. You prefer standard work days and do not require constant overtime. With a moderate mix of activities, you use leisure time to complete chores and to socialize. You find inactivity relaxing, meaning you can just lie on the beach and feel good about time spent. Let’s dive into these folks here. How do you manage… Does John or Jane Q average? How do you manage moderate versus high-velocity people? How do you manage them differently? Well, that’s what all of the management books going back through time have been written for. Not all, but the vast majority of them are written for the norm, written for most people. And so it’s just help the people find meaning in their work, you know, remind them of why what you’re doing matters. When you think about this series, this educational series, you know, the reason it matters is because it empowers people to make their own choices, to advance themselves during times when they wouldn’t normally be studying or learning or reflecting on some of the bigger ideas or digging deeper into what makes them who they are and finding ways to be better. So you’re making a convenient mobile tool available to people to make their world a better place without them having to crank up the velocity and work their buns off and commute across town to attend. I have done consulting with clients for years. A lot of them, for some reason, I’m really in the medical field. I do a lot of consulting with basic cosmetic surgeons and neurologists and that kind of thing. And one of the guys, he said it best. He goes, I pay you to read all those case studies and all those books so that I don’t have to. So just tell me what I need to do. And I think you said it beautifully there, because I enjoy reading case studies. And so if I have downtime, I’m plowing through a hard-to-read book because it’s a challenge. And my wife’s like, what are you doing? I’m just like one page at a time trying to understand each page. But it’s something I enjoy. Now, I want to ask you, let’s just say, though, that let’s kind of make up a scenario here. OK. Call this a scenario. Let’s say that I’m a cosmetic surgeon. All right. And I run the business, and I am. You’ve got a little, I’m joking. Go ahead. Well, yeah, we might have some trade out there. But he’s a high velocity guy. So he’s high velocity. And then he has a staff of nine other people. And he’s got one person on the team who’s high velocity. And he’s got eight other people that are somewhere in the other ranges. If the high velocity person makes a mistake, intentionally makes a mistake, you know, or forgets to do a checklist or something. And a moderate person forgets to do a checklist. How do you manage the two differently? How would you manage a moderate velocity versus a high velocity? What kind of things should we do different with those kind of people? With the high velocity person, the main thing you want to do is get them aimed right. You know, it’s like having a high velocity weapon. You want to point that thing where you want it to go because you’re going to blow away whatever’s out there. So point it wrong, big destruction in the wrong place. So that person, you want to make sure that, first off, they get it, why what they’re doing matters and why they have to do it right. And you’ve got to really spend some time letting them know deeply why it’s vitally important for them to do things right, especially in the medical world, because you’ve got compliance issues and health issues and sometimes life or death issues. So with that person, first thing is jump on it, address it spot on. I mean, do not imply. Don’t say, hey, you might want to rethink that. Say, Clay, let’s talk about that. That doesn’t work. Now, what were you thinking? You know, and then you draw them out and you get into this thing and you solve the problem. A moderate velocity person, you take a much less intense approach. Because going that directly with a moderate velocity person is going to be kind of daunting, you know, a little overwhelming. They might go, oh, gee, man, you know, I made a little mistake and he rained all over me like a rainstorm, you know. But just sit down and say, we need to talk about this. I think it’s funny, but I’ve partnered with a lot of different people over the years. A lot of the guys I partner with are high velocity, business owners. Well, the like attracts like. If you’re an achiever, you’re attracted to other achievers and vice versa. It’s just funny because my wife sometimes will be hanging out with their wives, you know, or their wife, and they’ll be hanging out. And my wife will go, I can’t believe he said that to you. Or dude, he’s so intense. Or my daughter, she’s 10, and she was at one of the meetings, and she was in the living room while we were talking. And we get in the car, and she says, Dad, he yelled the entire time. You know, he wasn’t yelling. I said, that’s the way he talks, you know. But it’s just interesting. So now with the moderate velocity, OK, so this person, you said with the high velocity, you basically want to be direct with them, you want to tell them why it matters, they have to deeply understand it. And address it now. Now. Yeah, don’t let it wait. Don’t ever gunny sack or accumulate things with a high velocity person. Just problem, solution, problem, solution. He just walks out and he just has unloaded, had an intense conversation with the high velocity person. The high velocity person now says, thank you, I appreciate the clarification, boom, I’m back to work. Yeah. So now he’s all hyped up, he’s got that energy going, and then he walks around the corner and he needs to talk to the moderate velocity. If he brings that same energy, that same intensity to that moderate, what would happen? Tidal wave. Tidal wave. It, you know, blow them away. And they say, man, I don’t know what I did today, but jeepers, I’m not going to do that again. Well, how do you know you’re not going to do that again when you don’t even know what it was? I think as a high velocity person, it’s important that an individual learn to self moderate, which starts with self-awareness. You’ve got to realize whether you’re higher, moderate, or lower velocity. Now there’s a lot of judgment thrown on this by most people. Our society tends to say, high velocity, oh good, you’re a winner. Moderate velocity, too bad. Low velocity, oh, dude. Sorry. No. If you look at the world, most of the work is low velocity work. Yeah. And who’s going to work on an assembly line if all you’ve got is high velocity people? I do high velocity typing. You should see me type. It’s just the loudest thing in the world. It’s just aggressive. It’s a good thing it’s digital. Because if it were still mechanical, you’d have keys sticking on the typewriter. My wife jokes with me all the time. She’s like, you’re the most intense typer ever. It’s like, you know, just jamming. Lee Iacocca, who’s obviously a legendary CEO of Chrysler back in the day that who by the way has the most coincidental name in the world. Iacocca, right? It’s an Italian name. Okay. All right. I am chairman of Chrysler Corporation of America. What? That’s incredible. Yeah. Somebody noticed that and told him about it and he too was shocked. But what a perfect name for a guy like him. And he was clearly high velocity all the time. Well, we have a lot of other Thrivers around the world are folks who are in their, you know, they’re business owners or they’re managers. We’ve got a lot of Thrivers who are in that, you know, 30s to 60s range there. And if you’re watching this and you own a minivan, you have to thank him or you have to send your complaint letters to Lee Iacocca. That’s the guy who kind of saved Chrysler with the invention of the minivans. If you like it or hate it, that’s Lee’s deal there. Yeah, but with Ford, he was the one who came up with Mustang. Yeah, he did the Mustang and he kind of made the sexy car that people want, kind of midlife crisis car. And he also made the minivan which lets you know you’re headed into the midlife crisis. By the way, you know what I drive? No. I drive a 2003 Thunderbird two-seater with 114,000 miles on it. And someone asked me the other day, if I win the mega lottery, I’ll buy you a car, what do you want? I said, just give me a stash that I can spend on upgrading and restoring mine. Really? Yeah. The, now, Lee Iacocca says this about management. He says, management is nothing more than motivating other people. So give me some tips on how to, and I’m not saying you agree with it, but I want to ask you, what would be some tips to manage moderate velocity people? What are some tips to kind of get them to perform? Number one thing, they’ve got to know why what they’re doing matters. When I do a planning retreat with an executive team, I always start with the same question. Why should we go back to work tomorrow? Aside from a need for revenue, why should we bother opening our doors again tomorrow? And they look at me like, this is what we do. So we do. Yeah, but why does it matter? Who cares? Besides us, who cares? And what’s our place in the world? Because if we don’t remember why what we’re doing matters, then it just becomes a mechanical and we lose the, pause for effect, motive to do it. The motivation’s rooted in the motive, not in the action. So motive and action, that’s motivation. If you focus only on the action, you’re treating people like machines, and they’ll behave like machines, and they’ll care about as much as machines do, right? But if you address the motives, and you stimulate the motives, then everything changes. For example, the cosmetic surgeon Yeah, cosmetic surgeon if I were that person and I was talking to my staff. I would say Folks every week. I want us telling stories about Patients who have had a life-changing experience because of the surgery we were able to do for them And then every week I would have people telling I just heard from so and so the other day and they were so much more confident and so much more full of life because they had had that scarring and we were able to remove that and now they’re not self-conscious and you know the life is so much better or another person you know you tell whatever it happens to be those are the things that put meaning into what we do so you need meaning and then you need to know somebody cares about you. Yeah. So I’ve got to show you, my fellow worker, that I care enough about you to respect and listen to you and take care of you. And I want to unpack that, because as you were saying that, kind of two big questions I think a lot of thrivers would want to ask you here is, if somebody is watching this is a high velocity person, their motive. And the likelihood is strong that that’s the case. Yes. And their motive, though, I’ll give you an example. So let’s go back to that cosmetic surgeon example. So let’s say the motive of the cosmetic surgeon at first was to help people. And now as he’s advanced in his career and he’s kind of in the twilight of his career, the peak of his career, his motive is to now pay off that building, buy that lake house, go on that trip, pay for his kid’s college. All of that stuff takes money. So he’s thinking about, let’s improve the profit margin, let’s increase the number of patients we can see, let’s increase the efficiency. My motive is to make more money. Now typical business scenario with the entrepreneurs and the startups, it’s all about meaning. It’s about a mission, a cause, a campaign to change the world. And once it’s established and becomes an enterprise, then it’s all about margins and systems and processes and things like that. And that’s why they say the person who starts it is typically not the best person to continue to run it. So here we go. So if you’re the person who’s motivated, you’re this high velocity person, you are motivated to make all that money, right? Yeah. Your staff though, let’s say the majority of your staff, moderate velocity people, that’s not their motive. So how do you bridge the gap of being a high velocity person as a different motive entirely for the business and making, so how do you make the work meaningful if that’s not your motive? How do you do that? How do you begin to bridge that gap between this is my motive, this is your motive? How do we do that? That’s where the DNA of the organization comes in. An organization has a genetic code that is a combination of its mission, vision, values, and beliefs, and from those grow the standards and systems by which it operates. So for example, Walt Disney is the visionary that started that. He created it so that he could build the happiest place on earth and then multiply it after that. But his goal was to create the happiest place on earth. Well, you can’t do that without happy people running it. So he had to constantly sell his dream, his vision. And as he did, other people wanted in on it, so Disneyland grew. It became a humongous enterprise, a worldwide enterprise. It’s touched virtually everybody now. And he found that what had happened was, once he started getting things in place, he needed to get other people with talent for keeping things in place, to help him develop the systems, but everything he does is done, you know, he’s passed away now, but everything he was doing was done to reinforce the understanding that this is not just a car that fits in a ride that goes around this circuit. This is an experience that causes little kids to tell their own kids later when they’re grown-ups about how much fun it was to be at Disneyland the year it opened. So we’re creating experiences and this must be the happiest place on earth. Therefore, your attitude is part of your job. There we go. And that’s the point. Isidore Sharpe is the founder of Four Seasons Hotels, finest hotel company worldwide. Isidore Sharpe started it by putting in place the standards that would make these the finest hotels. And then he put in place the systems that would keep them the finest hotels. And then he recently wrote a book called Four Seasons. And my son works as a director of human resources at a Four Seasons. And so I know the company quite well. As a matter of fact, my granddaughter, Amber, has her photograph in Isidore Sharpe’s book. Kind of cool. But Isidore Sharpe said that he found that after he built his company to a very high, highly functional level, his job had changed. And he was no longer the guy who was in charge of, or should be the guy who was in charge of, seeing to it that these systems were doing this and that. Instead, he needed to take on the role of being the guy who keeps the flame alive, who keeps the glow in the hearts of every person, that keeps them aware that the Four Seasons matters and it’s setting a standard for the rest of the world to follow. 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 business, but you have $15 million of expenses, it’s kind of pointless. Holy crap. All right. So the question I would have here for you, if you could take like 10 minutes or less and see if you could save 3000 bucks 3,000 bucks a year by reducing your credit card fees. Would you do it? Yes, absolutely. Oh Why would somebody out there who’s listening right now who has a sane mind why would they not Go to thrive time should I come forward slash credit dash card thrive time should I come forward slash credit dash card to schedule a 10-minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least 3,000 bucks a year Why would they not do it? Yeah, why would they not do it? Maybe because they 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 can be true. So I would encourage everybody to check out Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. What would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they can save $3,000 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 $3,000 every 10 minutes and they’re like nah that’s not worth my time. There’s probably some someone out there. Okay. They would think that. Well I’ll just tell you folks, if you’re out there today and you’re making less than $3,000 per 10 minutes, I would highly recommend that you go to thronetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard. Because you can compare rates, you can save money. And you know, the big goal, in my opinion, of building a business is to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And in order to do that, you have to maximize your profits. Holy crap. Now, one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue. Another way to do it is to decrease your expenses. It’s a profit deal. Takes the pressure off. JT, is there any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save a total of three thousand dollars a year on average I am at a loss and I cannot think of any other Shampoo is better I go on first and clean the hair Conditioner is better I leave the hair silky and smooth Oh really fool, really Stop looking at me, swan! Let me tell you a good story here real quick. I actually years ago compared rates with this company here called IPS. It’s Integrated Payment Services. And I scheduled a consultation. I don’t know if I was skeptical. I just thought, whatever, I’ll take 10 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? 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 alright? What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia alright. 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 twenty thousand dollars 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 and sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to thrive time show dot 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 three thousand dollars a year off of your credit card processing. You were hoping what? I wouldn’t owe you money at the end of the day. No, you don’t owe us money. Because at the end of the day, the goal of the business is to create time freedom and financial freedom, and in order to do that, you need to create additional profits. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now, okay. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminix, 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 that’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%. Okay, 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 that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah. So here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals and more new customers last year than we did the first five months. Or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year, from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. I mean, 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 I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the 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. And we didn’t know… The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, and they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action, and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s going to take in order to really succeed. So we just want to give a big shout-out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a 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 percent increase, month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you are 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 systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with like Lee Crockerill, head of Disney, with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day. He does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. Think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. In the weekly, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from start ups go from start ups to being multi millionaires teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical 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. So, amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is, 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. 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. 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 desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey, guys. I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to 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’s the house. This is our old neighborhood. See, it’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to 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 ten locations in only a year. In October 2016 we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses? Or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve 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. I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, up and down roller coaster. So now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. So I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t, without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100, as a percentage, what is that? I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. That’s 100% growth every year I’ve worked now so I’m looking we’ve been good friends seven, eight years and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean the first time you do it that’s one thing but when you do it repeatedly yeah I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating new some some some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, as I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. Well, I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. Right. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management. 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. She’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day on that script. Somebody out there is having a hard time. Call them script. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between two and three hundred calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do, if someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say you bought a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe 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 that oh there was so it’s victory Christian Center. I was speaking there My name is Robert Redmond. 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. And then, again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. Working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence, and then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life. That standard of excellence that you want to implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall 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 say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that, I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know, he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. He’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s again unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses the kind of people that wouldn’t like working with clay are people that are satisfied with with mediocrity People that Want to get through life by just doing enough by just getting by People who are not looking to develop themselves people who are not Coachable people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people and in short anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t wanna miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay. I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day, actually. I carried a notebook with me all around, and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about three or four months, just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.