Clay Clark | Start Here | Building the A Team + Installing Guardrails For Your Business

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 get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five. That’s what I’m about. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them. I see and see up on your radio. Now, three, two, one. Here we go. Our nation, Josh here with the world’s best business coach, Clay Clark, so good to see you. Hola, hola. Does this also broadcast in Espanol? Si, senor. Me amo el clay. Awesome. Awesome. For all our Spanish-speaking thrivers. Buma. Buma. We’re on… What’s Buma? Oh, yeah. It’s a Spanish version of Buma. I just added an ah to it, thinking that maybe that would work. Perfect. 5.4, building the A-team. This sounds like a very important part of the process here. Yeah. Well, here’s the deal. You can have all these great systems. Yeah. And if you have people that don’t want it or can’t learn it, it’s just not gonna happen. Right. And I hate to say that, but I mean, I could think in our businesses, we had a girl that I hired, I don’t know, about five years ago. I felt bad, but man, that girl like just didn’t want it, didn’t want success. She had all the talent. Great, we’d role play on the sales training, we would practice, photography training, just nail it in training. But when it came time for a wedding, or it came time for an event, or it came time for a sales presentation, she just was awful. So we’d train her some more. Then I moved her to a different position, moved her to a different company, moved her, pretty soon I started realizing she just doesn’t want it. Then, I can think of a guy that I brought on our team and I really felt bad about this one because he was a neat, neat guy, but he just couldn’t get it. Like he just doesn’t have the mental capacity needed for that job. Right. And I am that guy in the world of construction. Like I worked in the construction crew. I remember my boss one time pulled me aside and he goes, hey Clay, I said, what’s that Peter? He goes, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I like you a lot, and it’s not because of your construction skills. And we’re on a construction crew. And so I remember going, what are you saying? He goes, no, I mean, your work ethic’s awesome, but I’m gonna have you start drilling all day. Yeah. drilling All day. Yeah drilling my job was to take a jackhammer and just basically drill a hole straight down into the footing so we could put in some rebar and everybody else had multiple tasks like everybody else was like cutting steel or cutting things and hammering things and building things and Working as a team and getting to use the crane and it was kind of all these different things and he was like I Want you to do that? Yeah, it’s like a week into the job and I’m going, boo, boo, and I’m just, just jackhammer. That’s all I’m doing all day, just jackhammering. And eventually you start to get like, the vibrations are in your bones. You’re, boo, boo, boo, and my shoulders are hurting. My whole body’s like, I’m just, that’s all I’m doing. Everyone else, I look around and everyone else is doing different things. So I’m like, hey, Peter, can I do something else? And he goes, I don’t want to bust your, the word he used was colorful. But from a skill level, probably not. So I just want you to do that until the end of the summer. And I remember going, I suck at this job. And I really did, though. I was terrible. But he understood that even though I wanted it, I couldn’t do anything beyond that. And for my benefit, and for the benefit of the team, and the benefit of the customer, he just was like, if you want to be here, that’s all you can really do. And because it was a summer job, I did it. And I did it well, because that’s all that I could do. And so all I’m saying is right now, you’ve got to think about your team. Do they want it? And can they get it? Because if they want it, and they can’t get it, then you’ve got to move on. Or if they can get it, or if they really can get it, but they just don’t want it you got to move on. So you got to find that teammates, you got to find the A players. Well you’re not doing anybody any favors, you’re not doing yourself any favors by hiring or keeping someone on the staff that can’t do it and you’re not doing them a favor if they’re not succeeding in what they’re doing. And the thing is if you keep somebody in a job where like to your point that they’re not being successful, what happens is they’re going to quit or they’re going to keep showing up But they’re gonna know that, you know, they’re gonna know that, you know We all know that they have no upward mobility in your company, right? And they’re kind of dead to you. So you start to treat them differently and they know it but they’ll keep showing up Right, and that’s that. Yeah, I actually think it’s not right because people only live a finite amount of time I don’t think it’s healthy to keep someone in a job where they’re not having any success long term, right? I got a notable quotable here I’d like to read to you. Herb. Herb Keller. This is the founder of Southwest. And I think the name Herb, it’s almost a deal where you go Herb, you go Herb, you know, just Herb. It was the last name. It was the spelling of the last name. It’s almost of a German, it looks German to me. You read it how you want to read it hub Tell him how much okay? Okay co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines He says we will hire someone with less experience less education and less Expertise than someone who has more of those things and has a rotten attitude because we can train people We can teach people how to lead we can teach people how to provide customer service, but we can’t change their DNA. So what Herb Keller is referring to, and he talks about a lot in the book, Nuts, it’s a case study of Southwest Airlines, is that you want to hire for character and train skill. Hire attitude, train skill. You know, don’t hire skill and then try to train attitude. You’ve got to hire the attitude first and then train the skill. Yeah. And that’s what we really try to do with all the companies I work with. We really, really put a bias on good people. And then you try to find good people who are also trainable. There’s no exact science, but all I would say is when you’re recruiting, look for the attitude, train the skill. That’s awesome, that’s great. Your process, you talk about how your process are constantly being refined. Yes, sir. And this is the same way with people. Like you might start out with a great attitude, you might start out with they’re doing really good, but then over a period of time, it’s either time for them to move on, or you just don’t, you maybe not need that anymore. Well, you’ve worked in an organization or organizations for a long period of time. Yeah. I know you’ve done that in your career, I have as well. And you get to a certain point where you go, I think where the company’s going and where I’m going are no longer the same place. Yeah. And the healthiest thing to do is remove your situation, remove yourself from the situation as an employee and say, I think it’s time for me to put in my three month notice, my two week notice, my whatever that looks like for you. But as a business owner, you have to also do the same thing. That’s good, yeah. And I’m just telling you, we had a few weeks ago in the office here, we had a guy that I just knew wasn’t happy, and just little subtle things. It’s showing up 15 minutes late, it’s not taking notes anymore, it’s kind of being a little bit short to want to get out of here, it’s kind of not contributing with a new idea, and pretty soon you don’t get the whole person. Yeah. Because an engaged person will really, really add value to your company. We’ll put the stats on the screen. I want to make sure we put the stats on the screen from Gallup. But Gallup shows, Gallup is a national research organization, and they have found that very few people are engaged at work. We’ll put the actual stats up on the screen so you can just see it and marinate on it, but it’s very, very, very few people are engaged in work. I would say less than three out of 10 people really like what they’re doing. And so you’ve gotta find people who all love what they’re doing. And when you do that, you win. Boom, you have the A team. A team. The A squad. It’s like Mr. T on steroids, Mr. T probably was on steroids, but it’s like Mr. T on a ludicrous amount of steroids that aren’t harmful for his body. That’s what the A-Team is like. Can you remember any of the other A-Team members’ names? What’s the guy named, Mick? Mick sounds about right. Mick? Mr. T’s the only one that I can remember. There’s a guy who smoked a lot. I remember he always had a cigar. The captain or something. Captain or something like that, yeah. We’ll put a picture of him up on the screen for nostalgic purposes. And for you Thrivers out there, all of you that are watching our thrivers but there’s an Easter egg on the site oh if you find it it’s called the B team and I might be in it and another guy named Chris Munch might be in it and it might be an exact duplicate of the A team opener but with the B team in there let me do this so I guarantee it so I make it more obvious because I know the thrivers there’s people out there who have said I’ve heard these Easter eggs exist, but it’s buried deep within the code. Is it okay if I give one away? Yes. Thrivers, we’re going to put a link right here on this video right now, so you can just click it and watch it and have your life changed. The B team, these are the guys you don’t want to hire right here. Well, the A team, it’s an essential part of your company. You got to find those people. You got to find the right attitudes, and you’ll have great success. Absolutely. Boom. Thriving on with the A-team. Bam! This one gets me going. Thrivers, what’s up? I’m here with the world’s best business coach. World’s best business coach, Clay Clark. How you doing? I’m doing great. I’ll tell you what, tonight I’ve been talking to my wife about a little bit, kind of, you know, getting in the mood here, and what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna go home and I’m gonna have some asparagus after. I see this guy, he’s always thinking, I’m talking to my wife, we’re getting in the mood a little bit. Sure. He’s like, he’s taking it to a place that’s really not appropriate. Drivers want more, they expect more out of you. We talked about asparagus, and I’m excited to have some asparagus. It’s organic, so I don’t know what you’re thinking. I think what we’re about to talk about is great, though. Installing the guardrails. We could have used guardrails right there, because we went off. We went off the road. Sometimes mentally, I try to project positivity and ethics. Yeah. And you just, you do what you do. I take it away. 5.5, installing the guardrails. What are you talking about here? OK, what we’re talking about is when you build a business, over time, the members of your team are going to each have their own morality they bring to the table. So here’s an example of morality that I have that other people do not. You tell me if you disagree on this, okay? I believe if you work in an office and you call a woman a derogatory name, the name for the female dog, you’re fired. Do you agree or disagree with this rule? Wholeheartedly. Wholeheartedly agree. Agree, okay. So we have a guy in our office who I didn’t, you know, it’s been a while now. Yeah, but he literally told one of the people ladies in her office he goes hey, you don’t have to be such a So I pulled the guy’s side I said hey I Understood these what you said she came to me crying said you said this and he’s like no I said you don’t have to be such I didn’t say you were I go, okay You’re fired. And so that was kind of like, you know, the the fit the thing Well, had I not had a guardrail in place and clearly identified this, going into it with this gentleman who came from a background where you refer to women that way. His background is such, I’m not kidding, his background is he just refers to women that way all the time, casually. I told him, if you do it, you’re gone. And so that was a guardrail. Other examples of guardrails is that guardrails are anything that you have to put in place to keep a member of your team from making a very costly mistake. Yeah. One that could really ruin the company. You want to set up some preventative measures, almost like in housing projects when you’re building big houses and they’ll put, in cities where houses are really close together, they’ll put a firewall in between them or in like a cruise ship, they’ll put those water, they’ll break the ship into different sections so the water can’t flood all of the cabins. They can shut off certain areas of the cruise boat to keep the whole thing from being filled up with water. That’s the idea. Yeah. These guardrails, I mean, they’re protection, not just for your employees, but for you, the employer. Yeah. Yeah. It’s keeping you protected from the jackassery, if you will. I’m going to give you some guardrails right now. They’re very practical. Just give you two. Yeah. One is the person who sells something should not be accountable for determining their own commissions. Oh, that’s good. So if I work in the sales department and I say that my check, let’s say I have to, if I sell $10,000 of something, I shouldn’t be the one who has to calculate my own paycheck and then sign my own check. Because you’re just asking for the temptation to be there for someone to mislead the employer. What you should do is the number should be determined and that number should be submitted and an independent third party, someone who’s objective, someone whose actual job is to make sure the company makes a profit should determine and analyze how much commission you should make based upon the numbers, the actual facts. Back in the day with my DJ company, I did not do this. So I allowed the guy who sold something to report how much money he should be paid and to actually pre-write his own checks. Literally. I literally did this because I only had like three people. And so one of the guys who did sales also did accounting. And so he would just fudge the numbers every week by a thousand, which would create about $150 a week of extra income for himself. And he did that for a long time until eventually we had to put an end to that. And I would say that he had low character, which is why we had to let him go, but it was dumb for me to set up a system where those kind of guardrails were not in place. Another example is the person who deposits money into your bank should not be the person who’s going through the actual process of reconciling your accounts. So recently, about three years ago, I was working with a doctor, and there’s a guy who works for him. Check this out. His job was to deposit the money at the bank. But whose job was it to also reconcile the bank statements to make sure the money was there? That guy. Yes. And this man systemically stole about 5%. I hit the Gallagher, but I’m excited. It’s like a higher power knows that I should hit that right then. There it is. So what happens is, this guy was finding a way to, it’s like a casino almost. He was like, so what happened is every time that the company would deposit money, he was like, well, and he would just 5%, you know, and then 5%, and then pretty soon he’s going, 5%, I’m not kidding. At the end of like eight months, I think the guy had amassed like 30 grand. Wow. But he had just taken a little at a time. And there was no guardrails in place. I go to the boss that is a doctor. I said, doctor, hey, I feel like you’re maybe having money stolen from you. And he goes, why? And I go, because the guy who you pay, I don’t know if you pay the guy, but he’s literally driving the nicest car here. I don’t know if he’s smart enough to know if you’re stealing money from your boss, thou shalt not, thou shalt not drive nice car after stealing money from thou boss. You know, you just, and so, but he was flaunting it a little bit. He was dressed in really nice, always had new clothes on, brand new, everything. And I’m thinking, unless he has like a second job that pays him a ton and he only works at night doing it, there’s gotta be, I mean, it was obvious. You would have seen it too. You’d be like, what in the world? So, the boss’s wife and I, we confronted the boss one more time. We said, boss, listen, I was a consultant. I said, listen, look at your bank statements. He goes, no, he handles it all. And guess what we found? The guy had been siphoning money off a little bit every month, and he was terminated. It was sad, but it happens all the time. So you want to set up guardrails that are going to prevent your company from really getting in a bad situation as a result of not having guardrails. So is there a way to do it? I mean, it almost sounds like you have to be there like 24-7, keeping your eyes on everything in order to make sure your company, I mean, are there these guardrails or the systems that make sure that you don’t have to be there 24 seven. Have you ever watched me walk around the building? You’re seeing what I do. Yeah. I always will stay away from people and I will see. Just sitting back and looking into a room, you can see who’s working, who’s not, who’s pretending to work. It’s hilarious. You’ll get a guy who’s from me to, let’s say, you. I’m standing behind him, and he’s on his cell phone. Yeah. But they’re like, hey, hey, how’s it going? Hi. And I’ll say, hey, you know, you’re working on there. They’ll go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why? Why? And it’s like I just see it. So I have actually paid people in our office, there’s two people right now who work in the office, don’t get scared, two people, who I pay specifically a bonus to report to me the things they see. And I get probably three text messages a day and they usually look like this. They’ll be like, mm-mm, drama on aisle two. And so I’ll send in the manager or I’ll go in myself and I’ll say, guys, what’s going on? And they’ll, nothing, nothing’s going on. And that’s how I know. So I’m constantly, I’m not kidding, probably once a day, some member of my team is breaking up that kind of stuff. And when you have so many teammates, there’s always something. So you have to have controls in place, guardrails for email communications, guardrails for money depositing, guardrails for theft, guardrail for camera systems, guardrails for hours, guardrails for not allowing people of the opposite sex to work alone in a one-on-one office environment, guardrails for guardrails for guardrails. You got to have the guardrails because the thing that you don’t think about is the thing that they’re going to get you with. So you want to build and install self-regulating systems into your business that allow ethical and diligent people to get their job done right without everything having to go through you first. That’s the goal and so you want to have a system where they’re kind of the guy in accounting should have an incentive to catch fraud and waste. Yeah. And the guy in sales should have an incentive to try to sell as much as possible. And when the two numbers don’t equal each other, there should be a natural confrontation that you’ve created as a result of having one guy try to seek out waste and fraud, and the other guy is trying to seek out sales. And potential for false sales could be there for the guy who you pay based on his sales. So you want to set up a system where they’re kind of self-reinforcing, forcing. There’s kind of an ongoing clash, if you will. If you build the systems right, there’s a constant clash of the systems, and you begin to have accountability. And it’s something you do in all your business. Elephant in the Room. You have to do it. So Elephant in the Room, as an example, we pay customers to be mystery shoppers, meaning you get free haircuts. And any time you catch one of our teammates not following a system, if you send me a text, you get $25. Ooh. So funny story recently. Yeah. I was at, I know you don’t know the area, but I’m trying to kind of mentally, hopefully you can go there with me. I’m on the 169 driving home and I get a text message. I shouldn’t text while driving. So we’ll just say that I knew through osmosis the text was coming in. Sure, and I’m texting drive. Yeah, sure. So anyway, so I get on the phone and I said, hey what’s going on? He goes, one of your employees, the elephant in the room is going to close down tonight at nine and I just left and it’s like 7 45 and it’s closed. So I go, really? Thank you. So I call Jose, what’s going on buddy? I can say it because he no longer works here and I’m not telling you his last name. I said, Jose, what’s going on? He goes, hey, nothing much, man. Things are rocking up here. And the elephant in the room, we have the music playing in the background. It’s like, but I go, is it busy tonight? He says, oh yeah, it’s busy. I said, so super busy. It’s probably huge. Friday night’s huge. So you make sure you close up, you know, before you leave. I want to make sure you cash out the till. Oh yeah, absolutely. Okay, I want to make sure now. I just want you to know, since we’ve got, I talked to the guy from 169 to the Broken Arrow, to Elm, yeah. From Elm and 169, I was driving the whole time talking to him, keeping him on the phone the entire time. So let me ask you, what’s been the highlight of the day? Oh man, we’ve been swamped. Huge, huge sales. So tomorrow morning, you ready to go? Oh yeah. Getting close to 91st and Yale, turning in, pulling the driveway, and I go, so how come you’re not at the building right now? And he says, what do you mean? And I said, because I’m at the building, and I’m in the building that you are in, and you are not here. Are you invisible? here are you in visible and as a result of that I was able to fire the guy and catch huge amounts of theft and that guy literally Josh had downloaded all of the customers information for that shift and was calling them from his house and was starting his own business Wow taking customers but if I didn’t pay a mystery shopper yeah to constantly so I’m just telling you, paying mystery shoppers to go in your business, will save you money. I’ll give you the big three here, okay? Pay mystery shoppers. Put everything on camera, audio and video, if you can, security systems are so inexpensive now. Put up a camera system, one. Mystery shoppers, okay, two, cameras, and three, do merit-based pay, where you pay people based upon what they do, and not what they say, and you can root out almost all waste and fraud very quickly Notable quotable time. Oh, come on from Steve Jobs like great Steve Jobs co-founder of Apple CEO former CEO of Pixar He says my number one job here at Apple is to make sure That the top 100 people are a plus players and everything else will take care of itself. That’s great I mean, that’s huge and I will say this, you, I didn’t know you at all before you started working with us three, four years ago. I had no idea who you were other than I just thought you were funny, I saw you at church. And consistently funny, and I know humor enough to know that it requires work. And I thought, man, let’s bring this guy in. And I can say, the production level that you bring to the table for everything you do is consistently high, and I don’t think it has anything to do with me. It has to do with the fact that that’s your own personal ethic, your own value for your own brand. You want to bring it or not do it. Right. I mean, and so as an A player, that makes my job much easier. Now Marshall, you met Marshall. That dude is like all about systems. I don’t have to sit there. I do, you know, mentor and try to coach Marshall. He’s in the office. I try to help him. But he’s a guy who you don’t need to sit there and talk about dressing sharp or being committed for success or being on time. That guy just wants success. So all I’m getting at is when you hire A players, that whole conversation layer, you can imagine as layers, you can now focus on the highest and best use. You don’t have to spend all your time talking about those layers in between about, why do I need to do it again? And I don’t know, and is that fair? And how come they get it and I don’t, and how come you’re favoring them, and I just don’t feel appreciated, and the whole thing is gone when you have A players. So I would highly recommend that you do exactly what our main man Steve Jobs said, and I’m going to read it one more time because I just think it’s phenomenal. It says, my number one job here at Apple is to make sure that the top 100 people are A plus players, and everything else will take care of itself. The top 100, that’s huge. Steve Jobs, people said, man, if you read up about Steve Jobs, people said that guy was brutal. If you didn’t deliver, he’d fire you. But you know who loved working there? A players. A players love working with other players because they’ve never been around them before. They’ve never been around a bunch of A players. If you have an office where you have the majority of people are A players, let me tell you what, they’re going to be excited because they’ve never worked in an environment where excellence is expected. So it’s going to be a game changer. It’s going to attract the right kind of people. Be intense. The final little caveat to that is if you’re not an A player and you recognize it right now, you say, I’m the leader of this company. I started it, but I’m not an A player. I’m a B. You really need to delegate and begin to find a leader that you can develop. You see it all the time for big companies where the founder, and this just happened recently with Nike. The founder of Nike, Phil Knight, is and was an A player. But he realized the energy needed to take the company to Nike 2.0, to go to the next level because of his age and because of just where he’s at in life. He’s going, I now need to find someone to succeed me who can now take Nike over and take it to the next level. And so he, before he had to, he decided, I’m going to groom somebody. He mentored them. And Steve Jobs, many people right now are kind of debating, you know, did Apple sidestep? Are they growing? I know you said kind of a lateral. I think a lot of Apple fanatics have said Apple’s not the same since Steve Jobs left. But Steve Jobs had the foresight to put the next CEO in place that he believed could do it. Yeah. And groomed him for a long time. And when he started getting physically ill, he was able to delegate to somebody else. It wasn’t a panic thing. It was like, this is the guy I’ve chosen. And you very rarely see it in sports. You saw it with the Spurs, how David Robinson mentored Tim Duncan and that continuation of success happened. You see it very rarely. You see Joe Montana mentored Steve Young and Steve Young with the 49ers was able to take over. Very rarely, but you really, and when you do that, let me tell you what, Joe Montana could still play a little bit when they brought in Steve Young. And David Robinson could still play when they brought in Tim Duncan. So sometimes it’s not a comfortable transition to recognize that your time has passed, and it’s time to bring in the next generation. But if you really are, if you’re committed to success and succession, you sometimes have to make that change before you’re ready. Thrivers, hello here with America’s best business coach, Clay Clark. So good to see you. Hey, good to see you, my friend. Clay, we’re on 5.6. We’re talking about eight examples of effective guardrail business systems. Boom. Boom. Nailed it. Yeah. Well, this is the stuff. A lot of times people, we get big vision, a big vision, a big idea, a big passion for our business, and we don’t set up these guardrails. So what happens is that things are going along, we’re doing well, and then we just implode, we get robbed. Thrivers, welcome to session two of 5.6, eight examples of effective guardrail business systems. Clay Clark, America’s top business coach. How you doing? Man, I’d say I appreciate the hyperbole in the intro there. I can’t say we’ve coached with thousands of people all over the world, and I definitely can tell the Thrivers we will help them grow their business. Maybe if we just start referring to me as the author of the best business book, that would be more of a humble way to reference, you know, because I was there a business book is the best in the world. Right. As far as business coach, I’m in the top two. Top two. Okay. Yeah. So I want to keep it humble. The number two best business coach right over there, guys. People will be like, okay, who’s the number one? That’s what I’m going to go listen to. Right. Exactly. That’s right. So we’re on number five, scorecards and scoreboards. This sounds like fun. Creating visual charts that show everyone within the department or work group the performance, statistics, conversion rates, and quality control scores of everyone involved. So let’s just give an example. In a sales room, a scoreboard or a scorecard could look at, like let’s say you and I are doing sales. Yes. And there’s five of us in a room. And you are doing $10,000 a week of sales. I’m doing seven. John’s doing three. Sherita’s doing 14. Sherita. And Jose’s doing 16. Cool. It’s very transparent who’s doing the most sales. Yeah. So then all this discussion about how come they get all the leads? How come they get all the favoritism? How come they got promoted? How come? It’s a quantifiable, it’s a done thing. Yeah. These organizations that are kind of socialist or kind of communist in their overall approach This is what they this is what they do. They go they go we get They say Everyone we’re gonna do is we’re not gonna focus on commissions. No, no. No, we’re above commissions We’re gonna do is we’re gonna focus on working as a team and we’re not going to say who sold the most this month No, no, we’re not gonna talk about who sold the most we’re gonna talk about who’s the best. We’re going to be working as a team because communist sports are so fun to watch. When you go to a kids hockey game and no one has any idea what the score is, that’s the best game. And in countries where they don’t keep score and we just divide income equally, those are the countries that are really, really getting it done. In fact, such communist countries as… They’re all the innovators in the world. I mean, think about all the great products that North Korea’s created those guys have created them and then if you think about the former Soviet Union they were famous for inventing Nuclear warheads, okay, maybe but anyway the thing is You want to keep score? It’s just depressing to work in an organization. So you go. How do you do that in customer service? Well? It’s Josh Got this many. Thank you letters this month. He got this many favorable surveys this month He was able to get this many favorable reviews He was able to get you have to quantify the success that you want to achieve. Otherwise, it’s just absolutely just Frustrating and just it’s demoralizing. You don’t like a lot of things behind closed curtains. Oh, it’s ridiculous cuz you’re in a meeting And you’re in the meeting and you did they talk about well, how come this person’s getting promoted? Well, if you said, say you’re in a video editing department, at Thrive it’s kind of different, because we don’t have like 18 producers or something. But if we did, what you would do is you’d go, Nathan has this many airs per 100, and Clay has this many airs per 100, and Josh has this many airs per 100, because this person has the fewest number of airs with the highest speed and air to air ratio, or the best. Therefore, they’re getting promoted. Does it also create kind of a culture of competition where everyone wants to get better? Yeah, you know what you do is a lot of times is you, it’s very hard to want to get better if you don’t know where you’re at. So that’s why people who get in great shape, you know, we have a lot of Thrivers, we have a lot of fitness people on Thrive. A lot of people who are like fitness trainers for some reason. Yeah. So a lot. It’s weird. A lot of fitness trainers. And one lady I can think of in particular I spoke with and she’s a personal trainer. She goes, you know what I do, Clay? I every week I have my clients weigh in. And then I also keep track of their calories they eat and I’m able to help them see incremental improvement that keeps them encouraged. I said, what do you know? Kind of playing dumb. I just wanted to ask him, so how does that connect with your client? She goes, well, just when they look at the board, and we put every one of our customers on this board, and it shows their weight they’ve lost, doesn’t that embarrass someone who’s not gaining? And she goes, yeah. I mean, a guy who’s working out, they’re not gaining, or they call it making the gains. Not gaining weight, but they’re not making the gains they want to see, they’re not having the weight loss they want to see. It makes them want to do better. And those competitive environments, that’s the best thing for weight loss or getting in shape is that spirit of competition. And you’ll see that in fitness, you’ll see that in sports, you’ll see that. You just don’t see any level of success in the areas where there’s not some level of competition. Right. It’s transparent. I like it. Even in like when you measure who has the most Pez dispensers on their desk, for instance. Like I have zero and you have two. So the score is two. It’s really two to zero is the score right now. I have one. Darth Vader is just a canister that opens. Well I’m really sorry about that. But the score is 1-0 on the pet dispensers. Now on the taxidermied squirrels, we were doing a game earlier, like hey Josh we’re all going to have desks, we’re all going to start off at the same time, we’re going to put 15 minutes on the clock and we’ll see at the end of it who has the most taxidermied squirrels and guess who won? Places. That’s right. Boom. You can download a scorecard and scoreboard template at thrive15.com slash scorecard and scoreboard. Boom. Number six, standardized and compliant contracts. That’s standardized and compliant contracts. If you’re going to be engaging in any type of transaction over and over again. It doesn’t make sense to be operating without a standardized contract. Yeah, now some people say, Clay, I thought you said in one of our trainings we shouldn’t have a contract. Work with me. If you’re a video guy like you, you produce videos for people? I do. I would highly recommend for a guy like you, you say, hey, your video, to produce it, it’s going to be $2,000 and I want $500 up front to start and $1,500 when it’s done or something. That sounds good. But someone says, I mean something like that or whatever. And then you go, do you have a contract? I’d go absolutely not. Just 500 down. It’s enough to sign on your serious. And then I get the rest when you approve it. It’s done. Boom. So as a consultant, I have never and will never sign contracts. Never? Nope. Don’t do it. Why? Because I don’t want you coming back and saying that I didn’t deliver. I don’t want to talk to my attorney because it costs money. I don’t want to sit there and put in paper 800 and things I agree on. I say, listen, our contract is a verbal handshake and it is a week to week, month to month, day to day thing. And if you don’t feel like I’m performing, then just quit paying me. Yeah. So it’s a month to month. They build a really. Yes, that’s what I do. And so for elephant in the room, we have an agreement for our memberships for men’s haircuts, but I’m not going to take you to court if you don’t want to pay me this month. And so don’t get all litigious, but if you’re going to have a contract where you really do have to negotiate the sale of 70,000 parts or this number of hours of calls, just make a standardized contract one time and get it done instead of always reinventing the wheel every time. Right. Right. That’s what we’re saying. OK. And there are a lot of different contracts that we have, a lot of good samples on thrive15.com. For instance, we’ve got a photography contract. Thrive15.com slash photography sample contract. And real quick, because I have a photography company, I wanted to make that available for people that can see the kind of contracts we have our customers sign. So they understand if we screw up your wedding, we owe you only the cost of the wedding. We don’t owe you damages and undue stress because, I mean, honestly, I have been a part of, as a DJ, I have screwed up a wedding. I’ve done that. I’ve talked about that earlier. And when you do that, you feel bad. But I had a customer early on in my career that sued me because of the damages, the mental stress. And they were like, you know, it’s 20,000 hours of mental stress. I mean, it’s hard to put a number on it, but it’s priceless. So now it’s just like, hey, you want to pay us? You want to book a DJ? Great. It’s 150 down to book it. At the end of the wedding, if you’re not happy, then we don’t owe you more than 600, but the total is 600 or whatever the total is. But we’re not liable for more than the total. That’s awesome. So again, that’s thrive15.com slash photography sample contract. We’ve got another sample for commercial real estate, commercial real estate contract, thrive15.com slash commercial real estate sample contract. Shout out for anybody who likes Sky Vodka. True story for you. I actually, my team, we used to represent the man who invented Sky Vodka, Maurice Kanbar. If you Google my name, we’ll actually put a link to the article, but if you Google K-A-N-B-A-R, Kanbar, and then my name, Clay Clark, or just A-K-A the jerk, you’ll find me. But we actually represent his real estate, and he owned one-third of downtown Tulsa, and this is a standardized contract that we use to sign mega leases. This is a real deal. Wow. Yeah, that sounds awesome. Boom. I’d like to hear more about all that story, maybe some other time. Yeah, absolutely. We’ve also got an entertainment contract. Now what is this entertainment contract? That would be like, you know, you’re an entertainer. I used to do, I know it’s hard to believe, but I used to do entertainment, that kind of thing. And so if I’m going to go DJ on your cruise ship, or used to DJ a lot of clubs and, you know, venues, and it just says, you know, I’ll be here at this time, I’ll deliver this kind of service for this price, and this much serves as a deposit, and the remaining balance is not due until this date. And even if the foregoing limitation or foreseeable limitation of liability is exceeded, I am not liable for this amount or more. That’s the deal. And all of these samples here are something that have been written by attorneys? I’ve paid attorneys to review these things. And these are things I actually use. I’m just giving you a few. That way you’re not going, what’s an example? I want to give you some real examples. That’s awesome. It took me a while to say that, but I got it out. Hey, don’t worry about it. I struggle with the English language. So the entertainment contract is thrive15.com slash entertainment sample contract. We’ve also got another consulting contract. And do you do this currently? I do not sign the contract. I refuse to sign contracts, but I’ve helped other people write them. I just will not write a consulting contract. I’ve never done it. Not going to do it. Not going to do it. So you won’t do it? No, because it’s just stupid. Here’s the deal. I am very, very, very good at consulting. I know how to do it. So good, in fact, that I do it for myself. So I’m not perfect as a human, but I will grow a company. I know how to do it. So if somebody hires me and says, I want you to teach me how to grow it, what time did I wake up this morning? Just a question. Three. Yeah. Today. Why? Because we’re recording tonight at six, and I have things I need to get done. And so a lot of clients will go, I know what to do, but I’m just not a morning person or a night person. And I just don’t, I don’t, I don’t like to work. I’m more of a people person. I don’t like the people in my office. And I want, I like to work from home, but I just can’t figure out how to organize my files and I can’t get an internet connection. And my dog is, you know, and you just, how’s your dog relate to that? And so I can’t guarantee your success if you’re not gonna do the work. To quote Maya Angelou, nothing works if you don’t. Boom. Bang. The consulting contract sample is thrive15.com slash consulting sample contract. And the last one we have for you is a membership-based medical care contract. Dang. Yeah, so if you’re a doctor and you’re going, I’m done with insurance. I’m tired of it. We have a lot of people all over the country whose insurance rates are doubling, who are going up 20%, 30%. Perhaps you were on the planet Earth last year and you noticed your insurance went up. Then a lot of people say, what am I going to do? I still need health care. So I’ve worked with doctors who’ve decided to say, Josh, guess what? For $150 a month, you can come and see us whenever you want, all you want, unlimited health care, and it’s $150. Oh, I like that. And so that’s a thing that thousands and thousands of people are turning to. And we have written up sample contracts for this kind of service. It’s like Netflix, but for, you know, my health. Yeah, I mean, I mean, if it gets bad enough and we can’t do that anymore, if the health care costs rise high enough and then we can’t afford to move in, we can’t we aren’t allowed to do the medical based medical, you know, medical based memberships. I think ultimately people are just going to turn to Netflix to heal themselves. Yeah, I love it. Pretty sure this is how we do the knee surgery. Right here, this is how you do it. And that’s thrive15.com slash membership based medical sample contract. Yeah. Okay, we’re gonna move on from number six to number seven, official policies and procedures. Basically, we’re trying to clearly communicate in advance what your company’s process is for handling complaints, refunds, mistakes, and customer service issues. Okay, for my consulting company, if you’re not happy with the print piece, we just keep remaking it until you’re happy. I mean, that’s our policy. Yeah. So, you’re like, I thought you were talking about refunds. Well, yeah, for us, I mean, it’s kind of like a refund. If you don’t like the print piece, we just keep doing it until you like it. Right. You know, but I used to get questions, the graphic designer would come back to me and go, they’re not happy. What do you want me to do? What do I do? And I’m going, hey, it’s common sense. Just redo it until they’re happy. Well, that’s not common sense, because a lot of companies will charge you per hour every time that someone revises it again. You’ve seen that before. Yeah. You just keep charging the company, the customer, per revision. But at the same time, you’re a guy who edits videos. You might have to edit something 1,000 times if you don’t put a limit on it. Yeah. So what you do is you agree in advance. You say to your team, guys, if we have a refund, this is how we handle it. Or if they’re not happy, this is how many revisions we’re going to do it We’re going to allow Southwest Airlines people are always late for their flights always late for their flights people are always What is the deal people are always late for their flights the front desk person like is there any way I can get on the plane? Is there any way I can get on the plane? It’s my daughter’s birthday Is there any way and the front desk person has to say no, but what we could do is And Southwest has to give them the latitude to make those decisions, and that’s what we’re talking about here. In your business coaching, you worked with a man who was dealing with basically just 2% of his customers that were upset but this ended up taking his whole work week. This ended up being the thing that he was focused on the most and you had to help him implement a system. Yeah, and I’ll just give you a very specific example in this case. You have a guy who has a very great business and he just didn’t set up these guardrails, these boundaries. So what happened is a customer would be upset and he would spend all of his time talking, coaching, counseling, mentoring, guiding, praying, loving, being with, fellowshipping with an upset customer. And so by helping him agree what to do in the case of an upset customer, it was the front desk person was now empowered to handle it as opposed to calling the boss. Because previously the front desk person had no, you know, every time there was a complaint the rule was just call the boss. And it’s the system that you’ve installed called the LAST system. Yeah, it’s LAST and I have, there’s a book called The Accidental CEO. It’s written by David Novak, the CEO of Yum! Brands, that’s like KFC, Taco Bell, that kind of thing. And they call it BLAST, which stands for Believe, Listen, Answer, Satisfy, Trust. And at Chick-fil-A, they have one called the LAST system, Listen, Answer, Satisfy, Trust. So if the customer’s upset, you train your staff to listen. And there’s a script, but you say, okay, well, tell me what the problem is. And then they answer, they respond, okay, well, this is what I think I can do here. And then they satisfy, does that, if I do this, does that seem like it will help resolve the issue? And then trust is, we won’t actually do it. So hey, I’m not happy with my milkshake. Listen, okay, so you’re not happy with your milkshake? Yeah, I’m not happy with my milkshake. Answer, okay, so it sounds like you just want another milkshake or what’s up? No, I just feel sick in my stomach. I feel so bad. So if I gave you another milkshake, you still wouldn’t be happy. Exactly, it’s ruined my day. Okay, well, if I gave you a milkshake hall pass where you can come in for as many as you want this week, is that okay? I suppose I probably would need two of those. Okay. So I give you two hall passes for as many milkshakes as you want. Are you okay? Yeah. Okay, great. So here you go. Yeah. I do it. Now we have trust. Last. Listen, answer, satisfy, trust. Boom. It empowers your employee. I love it. You can download the last customer complaint template at thrive15.com slash last. You can also download an example of the policy for handling customer complaints at thrive15.com slash policy for handling customer complaints. When do we get to talk about my vasectomy? Is that in the next segment? That’s going to be the next segment. I’m so excited talking about that in the next segment. That’s a good tease for the next segment. But we’re going to finish up the eight examples of effective guardrail business systems with number eight, automated backups. A lot of people lose their stuff because their backups aren’t automated. How many people in the world, look this up, we’re going to put up a little link on the screen to an article about this I read, it was fascinating. But how many people, 35 and under, have lost entire years of photos because they lost their phone? A lot. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk to you about some specific systems and tools that will allow you to never let that happen again. Coming up next. Boom. Thrivers, session three of 5.6, eight examples of effective guardrail business systems here with the number two best business coach. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There’s tons of people searching for that. Here’s the theory. There’s a lot of people who are saying, well, listen here. I want somebody who’s humble to be my coach. I’m looking for the number two. And there’s about two people looking for that. And when those two people are looking on the internet, because of our transcription and our beautiful optimization strategies, they will find us. And when they do, they will discover, I was tricked. They’re not humble at all. There’s nothing wrong with the silver medal nothing wrong with it. I would say it thrivers, okay before you get this automated backup Yes, doc. Let’s do it. We’re talking about guardrails. Yeah, there’s a guardrail that you’ve established early on you said listen I will do these programs. I will be a part of this team. I will go Through this process yes, but I am not going to talk about your vasectomy And I said that’s true, but you forgot to put it into a system. That’s true. It wasn’t documented. There’s no checklist. No contract. There’s no thank the heavens. There is absolutely zero. I mean, I’ve looked around for it. I was trying to talk to Nathan, our producer, and I said, I don’t see a scorecard that says I can’t talk about my vasectomy. I don’t see any compliant contracts. I don’t see any checklists. There’s no fixed, even though fixed is kind of really good. But there’s no fixed expenses. There’s no variable budgets. I don’t see any system of dashboards I don’t see any downloadables. I don’t see any of those things so we’re talking about it So let’s go ahead and get into it. Now. Let’s get into what I want to get into awesome We will finish up with clay’s vasectomy can’t wait for it We are finishing up the effective guardrail business systems with number eight automated backups Man, how many times have have we lost everything because we didn’t have things backed up? I don’t have a recent story of a thriver who I’ve talked to about this, but I can tell you an embarrassing story. I was working with a client, and it felt awful for him. This was about four or five years ago. He’s a doctor. Yeah. He’s going in to get a bank loan. And the bank’s won a profit and loss. There’s basically five things banks want. We have training specifically on this, okay? But banks want to see a profit and loss statement. They want to see a balance sheet, like how much money is coming in, coming out. They want to see your tax returns from the last three years, usually. They want to see your credit score. And they want to know if you can pay them back, like your collateral, that kind of thing. That’s fair. Comey lost everything on his laptop, like everything. So we have a huge meeting. I teed it up, man. I had made the connections. The banker was excited. He had sent over some initial just documents to kind of show some things. And this guy, I was like, hey, you got everything? He goes, dude, I lost my laptop. I’m like, you lost it? He’s like, I don’t know where I lost it. I don’t know if I left it at Starbucks or whatever. I can’t find it. I don’t know if I left it at McDonald’s, Starbucks. Where did you go? He’s like, well, dude, I’ve been working since I’m a doctor. I’m trying to open my practice. I’ve been working remotely like everywhere. I mean, Barnes and Noble. And sometime over the weekend, I didn’t look at my bag since Friday. And the meeting’s on a Monday. And I’m going, do you have it backed up? No. Do you have it on USB? No, I didn’t want. And like literally we sat there and I go, okay, well we’re going to have to go meet with this banker and you have to start off the meeting by saying, it’s like my dog ate it, you know, but we had to sit down. So we went there to the bank and the banker’s like, okay, well guys, I’m excited about the plan and Clay told me about you and it’s super embarrassing. He goes, do you, do you want to go ahead and walk us through your P&L? And he’s like, I don’t have that. And the guy goes, we’ve had this meeting on the books for like a month. I mean, do you not have your P&L? No. Do you not have your, what happened? He’s like, I totally lost it all. And he’s like, so you didn’t have it backed up? And he’s like, no. And he’s like, well, without saying it, the dialogue I heard was, because you didn’t even have the mindset needed to save or back up your stuff. I’m not even gonna reschedule I mean you can just see Mount Judgment like and So he didn’t get the deal. There’s no positive story He didn’t get the deal and literally it spent like probably a half a year making those documents man And he went back to go work at a local hospital, and I don’t know if he ever did open it But it was a deal where I can’t spend all this time doing it. He’d worked on it, and he just lost everything. Wow. And I hate that, but that’s true. And so we recommend, there’s a couple services we recommend. One is carbonite.com. You know Han Solo? Love him. What do they store Han Solo in, bro? Carbonite. That’s right, carbonite. So what happened is, you know, Darth Vader, he’s like, you know, I could probably kill you right now, but I’m not going to. He says, hey, tell me all your secrets. And he’s like, no, I don’t want to tell you my secrets. I’ll tell you. Tell me the secrets. No, I don’t want to tell you my secrets. So he says, fine. So he kind of messes with him. He tasers him, whatever he does. Next thing you know, what is it? Han Solo there? He’s got his handcuffs behind him. And he lets him, Darth Vader shows him compassion, really. And he lets Han Solo talk to Leia. They have a parting word there. And then he pushes them into the carbonite and he freezes them. Well, it’s a test to make sure it works for Luke Skywalker. But to show compassion, while testing Luke, he was able to freeze him and he didn’t die. He did not. And so what happened is later on, Princess Leia breaks into the palace of Jabba the Hutt or something. Jabba the Hutt. And breaks in. I’ve only seen the movie like 80 times. But she breaks in there and she thaws him out He’s okay if he had the handcuffs on how did he get his hands to this position right here? Well one of the things that that do what people don’t know is that Han Solo was able to wiggle free Okay, he’s like a Houdini sure and he was able to get free, but he was not that good. Yeah, so he was the number two Best escape artists in the world Houdini is number one. He’s number two so this is what carbonite.com does for you Yeah, it’s a cloud-based file data backup system. It allows you to freeze your friends forever. They froze Han Solo in Cloud City. Yeah. Isn’t that crazy? Amazing. It blows my mind. They saved it in the cloud. This right here, this is memorable stuff. But anyway, and then they also dropbox. I love dropbox. Now dropbox is great because this is a cloud-based company. Again, it allows people to access a file from anywhere on any device. Yeah. So you can like right now on my smartphone, I could pull up a file and send it to you. I could pull it up on my computer. And we have a nomenclature system where we will teach you how to save things and organize them. And Dropbox is who we recommend. There’s other great services, but we think it is the best for what our Thrive community needs. Love. We use it ourselves. We We make no commission. Now, even though a lot of people they always say Is he getting a kickback on that? Is that a Part of the Illuminati are they getting money by recommending? Let me tell you what We are not getting a kickback from Dropbox Although if Dropbox is listening and you would like to become an affiliate of thrive15.com We’ll talk about what you guys need a commercial. Give us a call. But you can watch a training on how we’ve created correct file naming systems and you can go to thrive15.com correct filenaming for small business. It’s a great, great teaching right there. Big segue here, I want to kind of get into the vasectomy here if I can. Sure. Is that okay? Is it now a good time? I would love to hear about your vasectomy. So here’s the deal. How long ago was this? I don’t want to talk about it. Here’s the deal. We have five kids, and my wife says, you have to have a vasectomy. And I say, no. I literally remember saying, I’m not taking the boys in. The boys and I, we’re not going in. My wife says, you have to go in. I said, I’m not going in. She says, well, then fine. You will be Sullivan. And I’m not kidding, Josh. I was like, fine. Wow. So I went into this whole monk-ish… And I was probably… it lasted for like three weeks. I’m just like, I used to value intimacy, but now I don’t. And so I’m taking cold showers and just trying to avoid contact with my wife. And she’s like, you are going to actually do this, aren’t you? And I’m like, I am now a monk. I will not. So she says, listen, I’m not kidding. We’re going to have some major issues. So this went on for probably two months. So finally I said, fine, I’ll do it. She says, you’ll do it? Fine. So you go in, the doctor, what happens is they don’t knock you out, which is stupid. And the guy gives me a Valium. He says, take this Valium, come back at this date, you’ll take the Valium, you’ll be kind of a lucid, you won’t really know what’s going on. And so I walk in, the doc says, you need to drop your pants and we’ll get going. And I’m going, I know what you’re saying right now. Like, I can process the words. And for me to be able to have this, I have to be knocked out. He said, we can’t knock you out. It’s not something we do. And I said, well, I’m not going to get it done. So I walked out. My wife was furious. So I scheduled a second time. Same deal. Same ordeal. I get there, value him, I walk out my wife goes We’re paying every time for these things. Sure. It’s my wife’s just my wife is so mad you you met my wife But she’s sweet, but she is just firecracker mad. Yes, so I decided the next time here’s what I do I’m not gonna sleep for 30 hours at all What I’m gonna do is the time that I would be sleeping. I’m gonna drink a vodka and work on paperwork. So I was hammered at like 9 a.m. and my wife, you’re not supposed to take any alcohol. You’re not. And I show up and my doctor, he’s like, well, you ready for your procedure? And I’m like, absolutely. Hey, you know, I kind of, I was just, I mean, seriously, I’ve never been more intoxicated. I couldn’t even like feel my face. It was like I can’t feel my face without what I’m with you That’s what I was gonna sing to the guy weekend. Yeah, so I’m just totally just intoxicated and I Passed out woke up in some severe pain, and that is the story That’s awesome, and I’m totally still to this day regret having done it. We have five kids I’d rather have 15 kids and to live through the horror of that moment. Yeah. Yeah. That was the story. Yeah. Demonstrating the lack of guardrails. That’s what happens when you don’t have it in writing. If you have it in writing, I wouldn’t have done that to you. I feel like you have a guardrail now, though. That’s not in writing. The Thrivers, I mean, it’s kind of a contract we have with the Thrivers. I’m saying now you have a guardrail. Your wife made you get a guardrail. My guardrails were attacked. Not sure if this is going to make the edit, but we’re going to continue our talk on guardrails in our next session. Join us and thrive on. Boom. Thrivers, welcome back. We are still in our conversation on 5.6 about the eight examples of effective guardrail business systems. We’ve gone through the eight examples. Yeah. Now we’re talking just about guardrails and and how they can actually help with your mental state. I have a notable quotable I’d like to start out with here. Now real quick, I have a sound effect that I have queued up, and we’re going to start using this more and more because we just have such unbelievable feedback from me every time I hit it. So I’ll tell you when you can start reading, okay? Okay. I am the number one most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh. Walt Disney, Nike, Google. But they are who we thought they were and we let them off the hook. There’s product here and this is where you end up, right here. If you can communicate this product, you can make money off the product. I can’t believe we drove around all day and there’s not a single job in this town. There’s nothing, nada, zip. Yeah, unless you want to work 40 hours a week. Those are all notable quotables brought to you by people who don’t know what they’re talking about, including Kanye West. Back to you. Dumb and dumber. OK, I’ve got a notable quotable here from Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple. And he’s talking about Steve Jobs here. And he says, Steve Jobs didn’t want to make a decision about what to wear, so he wore the same thing. That’s about focus. It’s about deciding what things you are going to focus on. And he knew that was one item that he could peel away from himself to take away the clutter. Well, that same thing I saw him do all day, every day, taking away the clutter. Yeah, so here’s the deal. When I get home, my wife sometimes will say, Hey, where do you want to eat? Ooh, I hate that question. And I’m like, because what happened is that my day is, I make so many decisions. So, and I do this so that I psychologically can be healthy. I mean this, I’ve never gone to see a psychiatrist, I’ve never taken medication or anything, but I’m just telling you, this is what happens. I make all my decisions usually between 3 a.m. and like 9 a.m., and then during the day, I just execute them. I’ve already thought through them all. But I used to try to make decisions during the day. And I can’t think of all the variables now everything affects everything. So as an example, we had a young lady who said this week that she wants to now be a contractor and wanted to turn in a 1099. Sure. So I always tell my wife, just email it to me. My wife works in the office with me and stuff, and I said, just email it to me and I’ll deal with it tomorrow. So then in the morning I look it up, I research, I take my career expertise and I look at it and go, this is the wise way to approach this. And I’ve decided, free of the clutter of all of the emotions of the situation or the people’s opinions or you know my my sometimes I’m usually I’m the we you if you’re busy you make bad decisions just cuz you’re busy right like the the urgency creates a bad decision so that’s why you never wanna invest until you’ve thought about the investment for at least 48 hours you never wanna buy something big unless you thought about for 48 hours is kinda that delay effect so what happens is I take the emotion of time the urgency the pressure out of my decision making altogether. And I make methodical and wise decisions before I see people. And then during the day I just execute them. I just follow up on them. But I always make my decisions in the morning. I never make decisions, I mean literally I don’t make decisions during the day. So what happens is then most people though literally wake up 10 minutes before work, 15 minutes, I mean they literally are just coming awake 10 minutes before they get to the workplace. They look like they just woke up when they’re walking in. Yeah. There and then they’re going, hey, real quick, can I get a pay raise? Hey, real quick, you saw one of the emails I showed you this morning, but you have people like, hey, is there any way real quick, I just need this urgency, I need to go to this place, or I need this money, or I need a pay raise, or I need a cash advance, or real quick, can I be promoted? Hey, just real quick, can I use? So what Steve Jobs did, and I see a lot of very, very successful people do. President Obama, whether you like him or not, he started doing this. Yeah. You see Jeff Bezos doing this. They limit their apparel options because they don’t want to be asked, do I wear this? Do I wear that? Should I wear this? Should I wear that? They’ve already thought about it one time if I wear this this is what I’m communicating you are one of those people I am one of those people I have a uniform What’s hilarious is that I am one of those people and you’re one of those people I don’t know other people who do this yeah, and here we are together. Yeah, but you always wear a Yankee hat Yes, why because I have thinning hair, and I don’t want you to see it But you’ve already decided that one time that that’s the look you want to go for well Probably ten years ago. I knew that that was probably coming down the road and I thought I’m gonna I wanna wear this hat I really like this Yankees hat and um… The bill’s always turned up. So I started out 10 years ago it was folded down and then I saw Jay-Z and I said that’s a good look. Flat bill, I wanna look like that. And I think it just opens my face up a bit more but it actually, I’m gonna show the Thrivers this. Yeah, sure, let’s see it. Oh wow, that’s hot. That doesn’t look right. I look like a completely different person. You do look different. So yeah, so you wear the bill up though. Do you buy hats like that? Do you buy hats that are bill up? Yeah, always fitted, 7 3 4’s. Any Thrivers want to buy me a hat, let me know. Where do you get a bill like that? This bill? That’s how they come. They don’t come bent. So you just get it, you don’t do… Okay, so I do a little bit of that action. Over time, yeah. It just kind of does that. Yeah. I like that look. Yeah, and always the top button. You know, no tie, but the top button’s always buttoned. Very formal. Yeah, dark colors, you know. Yeah, the whole thing is beautiful. Khaki pants, love khaki pants. I love the whole, are you like the Dickies guy, or do you have like a certain brand you’re loyal to that can be? I know people out there want to dress like you, so I’m just asking. I don’t do Dickies. Right now, I’m actually rocking some Levi’s. They’re kind of like a jean khaki thing going on. Oh, beautiful. Well, the point is, though, here, Thrivers, is that setting up the guardrail, though, in what you wear frees you up to think about other things. That’s what I do. That’s why I do what I do. And there’s just a lot of… You want to limit the amount of decisions. That’s why automated savings. Oh, knowledge bomb. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go, folks. I mean, that’s just a boom. Now check it out. Everyone watching this, if you don’t watch any other Thrive episode, if you do this action step right here, I guarantee that you will be worth a million dollars at age 60. Now if your watch says you’re 59, stop it. He said he was at, I don’t know. I’m saying if you’re 27 or under, check it out. Oh, man. Just take 5% of what you make out of your check and deposit it Don’t even think about it have it automatically withdrawn meet with the financial advisor and just put it into a conservative mutual fund The economy is gonna do like this every 10 years up and down And just just stay the course Yeah, and when you’re like, you know 50 or 60 if the economy’s not in the toilet, just know that you’re in the peak. Sure. Pull it out, you’re good. Boom. There’s a book called The Automatic Millionaire that explains this process. That’s how I am with saving. I just take money every week, I set it aside, there’s no emotion to it. And then at the end of the year, you’re like, wow, I’ve saved a lot. You go, I don’t believe in that, it’s not true. What if I have an emergency? Okay, think about your taxes. Your taxes are taken out of your check without you thinking about it. At the end of the year, guess what you did? You contributed a lot so that the government can spend four times more than we bring in. Right? National deficit. Just a little plug for Congress. Quit doing that. Boom. How is it possible, by the way, that we can, as a business owner, if I bounce a check, totally cool. Totally cool. No, it’s not. In fact, I go to jail if I write enough of them, right? Yeah. They’ve never not bounced a check. Just a deep thought. Back to you. Yeah, deep thought. I’ve got another notable quotable here. Talking about politics. Yes, speaking of politics. This one is about President Obama. It’s from an article in the Vanity Fair October 2012 issue. It’s from an article called Obama’s Way. Obama’s Way. By Michael Lewis. And he says… Can I get you music for that real quick? I feel like there’s an appropriate kind of music I’d like to play. This music in no way is meant to disrespect President Obama. It’s more of… I just think he’s one of the coolest guys ever. I think he’s the kind of guy who just brings a certain swag. So I’m going to just give you the music. I feel like that he should, you know, have here. All right, please feel free to read that. In this article, President Obama says, You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits, Obama said. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing because I have too many other decisions to make. He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. Decision fatigue. Boom. See, I was a careless whisper. No, no, President Obama is not going to make a careless whisper. No, he’s on 24-7. Yeah. Seriously, think about that. Mics everywhere. One miss. I mean, whether we like the guy or not, think about this. If you’re the president of the world, president of the United States, you’re kind of like the leader of the free world. If you say an offhanded comment, which he’s done a couple times, where the mic picks it up, or you look upset, people think the economy’s like in economic peril. If they’re like, sir, the economy this quarter is down a little bit, and you’re like, frick! This friggin’ economy, it’s just never gonna happen. I mean, they can’t, he can’t say that. I mean, think about it. If you’re, if you own a business, you, your staff says, how you doing? Our business is in a toilet. We’re effed. Now, you can’t, no employees will sit there and talk around the water cooler and say, our business sucks. Yeah. I see, I hear people say all the time, but you know what? Like the president of the company can’t do it. The president of the world can’t do it. And he’s, he has to hold himself to a high standard all the time. And one of the things he says here, which is just beautiful, he says he’s trying to pare down the amount of decisions he needs to make. He’s trying to limit the number of decisions he has to make because it degrades his ability to make other bigger, further decisions if he’s just always making these micro decisions. Where do I want to eat? What are you going to wear? What am I going to do? He can’t do it. He’s got to focus on the economy. He’s got to focus on creating jobs. He’s got to focus on making sure that America is shaping up to be the way he wanted it to become. We’ve got a few articles that you can read about decision fatigue. They’re from Business Insider, CNN, New York Times.com. We’re going to put those links on the screen. Absolutely. Yeah, we’re going to put those links on the screen. Check those out. Learn more about it. Now, we are going to make your life 2% easier. 2%? We’re not going to go 3%? No 3%, but 2%. We’re going to provide you with a massive list and accompanying templates for many of the best practice business guardrails. So we’ll keep you from your business from getting way over here, way over there, keep you going down the middle the road. Are you ready to hit this fire hose of knowledge? I am ready to hit this fire hose of knowledge. Let me tell you this real quick. When I say this will keep your business going on the middle of the road, I don’t mean the middle of the road like you’re going to hit incoming traffic. I’m talking about the middle being you’re not going to hit either. You’re not going to fall off the cliff or go into the ocean. And a weird thing, I guess you’d be in California if you were going to go off the cliff or into the ocean. But the point is, you’re going to stay right there on the road. You’re going to get to where your destination is safely. You don’t want to get stuck in the ditch. You don’t want to get stuck in a ditch. Inbound call scripts, these things are great you can find these things at thrive 15.com slash inbound call scripts outbound call scripts thrive 15.com slash outbound sales scripts pre-written post sales call email so we just got the phone with somebody what email do you send them they skip they get a certain receipt boom and we’ve got that you can download that thrive 15.com through that slash pre-written post sales call email. Okay. Pre-written directions to your office. Yeah. I mean, the thing is I used to tell people we’re over here at 91st and Lynn Lane. Yeah. And then they would go and then we’d drive and they would go, they’d call. I’m like, thank you for calling DJ connection. This is Clay. Yeah. I’m trying to find your office. I’m here in Broken Arrow at 177th. And I’m like, where are you coming from? Well, I just really, it says 9th now. Well the idiots who named the streets in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma literally have named Lynn Lane three different names. It’s Lynn Lane and 9th Street and 177th. That is one of the dumbest… Have you seen this? Yeah, it’s frustrating. People can’t communicate. So I had to really start to say, here’s what you do. You need to get to 91st and Elm, and I’ll tell people where that is, and then you just go one mile east to 91st and Linn Lane, you hang a left, boom, right there, five acre property, you’ll see it’s gorgeous, I would attach a picture to it. Well, over time I started noticing people go, hey, that picture was very helpful, thank you. So then we made pre-written directions that always had it, and then we just had the guys read the same description every time, send the same email, boom, no one gets lost, crazy. You don’t want to be like, hey, once you pass the mini golf course, you’re only five blocks away. Dude, I literally was losing, I’m not kidding, I was losing probably a deal every month from people who would just be frustrated, you know, pre-GPS. Just driving around, they said they couldn’t reach us. So we pre-written, these things can save you time, aka limiting the amount of decisions you have to make, thus giving you time freedom, financial freedom, and maybe more time to pursue your hobbies. Download it at thrive15.com slash pre-written directions to your office. We’ve also got pre-written online review request emails. We have an email, right now we’re in a world where the trolls are in control. What happens is that seriously, we’re in a world right now where the trolls are in control. Hey, I’m being serious. People who are upset or mildly upset about the service, they can go on Google or Yelp and just write, that company hates their people, man, they don’t even like customers. Or you could have a disgruntled employee who could go on there and go, I hate the company because their products aren’t any good. Well, they got fired for being late 400 times in a row. And now they’re able to be empowered to write a review. So if you’re not taking a proactive approach towards getting reviews, you’re going to be in the bottom of the Google review game. Not where you want to be. Not where you want to be. Download those at thrive15.com slash pre-written online review request email. We’re going to hit the rest of this fire hose list in the next session. Can’t wait for it. Can’t wait for it at all. It’s going to be a completely vasectomy free session. We’re not going to talk about that. We’re not going to mention the word vasectomy. We will be totally done bringing it up because the guardrails that we’ve established. We will never talk about vasectomies or just any type of, you know, what I would consider to be ethical birth control. We would not be talking about that at all. We just, we’re just, we move on. Thrive on. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s T-Bo time in Tulsa, East Lom, baby. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma June 27th and 28th. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, but I’ve never had the two-time Heisman Award winning Tim Tebow come present. And a lot of people have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Also, this is the first Thrive Time Show event that we’ve had where we’re going to have a man who has built a $100 million net worth. Wow. Who’ll be presenting. Now, we’ve had a couple of presenters that have had a billion dollar net worth in some real estate sort of things. Yeah. But this is the first time we’ve had a guy who’s built a service business, and he’s built over $100 million net worth in the service business. It’s the yacht driving, multi-state living guru of franchising. Peter Taunton will be in the house. This is the founder of Snap Fitness, the guy behind Nine Round Boxing. He’s going to be here in Tulsa, Russel, Tulsa, Russel, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. JT, why should everybody want to hear what Peter Taunton has to say? Oh, because he’s incredible. He’s just a fountain of knowledge. He is awesome. He has inspired me listening to him talk. And not only that, he also has, he practices what he teaches. So he’s a real teacher. He’s not a fake teacher like business school teachers. So you got to come learn from him. Also, let me tell you this, folks. I don’t get this wrong, because if I get it wrong, someone’s going to say, you screwed that up, buddy. So Michael Levine, this is Michael Levine. He’s going to be coming. You say, who’s Michael Levine? I don’t want to get this wrong. This is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan. 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestselling authors he’s represented, including pretty much everybody you know who’s been a super celebrity. This is Michael Levine, a good friend of mine. He’s going to come and talk to you about personal branding and the mindset needed to be super successful. The lineup will continue to grow. We have hit Christian reporting artist Colton Dixon in the house. Now people say, Colton Dixon’s in the house? Yes! Colton Dixon’s in the house. So if you like top 40 Christian music, Colton Dixon’s going to be in the house performing. The lineup will continue to grow each and every day. We’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today go to thrive timeshow.com again that’s thrive timeshow.com and some people might be saying well how do I do it I don’t know what I do it how does it work you just go to thrive timeshow.com let’s go there now we’re feeling the flow we’re going to thrive timeshow.com you just go to thrive timeshow.com you click on the business conferences button and you click on the request tickets button right there the way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket yep or whatever price that you could afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it. And I am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton. I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, when’s it going to be? June 27 and 28. So you might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell Oklahoma. It’s Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show in Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside see the facility We’re gonna have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed now for this particular event folks The seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless Convention center you’re coming to my actual home office And so it’s going to be packed so when June 27th and 28th. Who? You! You’re gonna come! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com and again you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford and we do have some select VIP tickets which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things and those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop over 20 hours a business training. We’re gonna give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years, 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars, and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies. I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California in the beautiful sunny weather of LA come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing, and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine. I’ll see you in Tulsa. James, did I tell you my good friend John Lee Dumas is also joining us at the in-person, two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. That Tim Tebow and that Michael Levine will be at the… Have I told you this? You have not told me that. He’s coming all the way from Puerto Rico. This is John Lee Dumas, the host of the chart-topping EOFire.com podcast. He’s absolutely a living legend. This guy started a podcast after wrapping up his service in the United States military and he started recording this podcast daily in his home to the point where he started interviewing big time folks like Gary Vaynerchuk, like Tony Robbins, and he just kept interviewing bigger and bigger names, putting out shows day after day. And now he is the legendary host of the EOFire podcast and he’s traveled all the way from St. Louis, RICO to Tulsa, OK to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show 2-Day Interactive Business Workshop. If you’re out there today, folks, you’ve ever wanted to grow a podcast, a broadcast, you want to improve your marketing, if you’ve ever wanted to improve your marketing, your branding, if you’ve ever wanted to increase your sales, you want to come to the 2-Day Interactive June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop featuring Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, John Lee Dumas and countless big-time, super successful entrepreneurs. It’s going to be life-changing. Get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com. James, what website is that? ThriveTimeshow.com James, one more time with more enthusiasm. ThriveTimeshow.com Everything rides on tonight, even if I got three strikes, I’ma go for it, this moment, we own it, ayy, I’m not to be played with, because it could get dangerous, see, these people I ride with, this moment, we own it. Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. 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 you’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 gonna be the best business workshop ever, and we’re gonna give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see you. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you got to do is go to thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy, Kings Point in New York, octa non verba, watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Harvard Keosakathe Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought, since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who’s my age, and I can say or cannot say. What’s the- Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I wanna show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorne, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. And he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor and I owe a lot of that to you and I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success and I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you thank you sir for changing my life. Well not only that Clay, you know thank you but you’ve become an influencer. You know more than anything else you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why Congratulate you on becoming because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there to our bad influencers Yeah, anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much and thanks for reading my books. Yeah, that’s that’s the greatest thrill for me today not thrill but Recognition is when people young men, especially come up and say I read your book change my life. I’m doing this I’m doing this I’m doing this I Learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York Octa nonverba Watch what a person does Not what they say Hey, I’m Ryan limpy. I’m originally from Tulsa born and raised here. I Went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business. And I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool, the people are nice, it’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally wanna model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility, and basically create it just on our business side. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored. You’re awake and alive the whole time. It’s not pushy. They don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively, he’s pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. Biggest takeaways are, you know, you want to take a step-by-step approach to your business. Whether it’s marketing, you know, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence. That businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort and you got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the roadmap out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do and he gave me the roadmap out step by step. We’ve set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allow me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want, they guarantee it’ll be answered. This conference like motivates me and also give me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things. There’s stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for you. I can see the marketing working, and it’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. Everyone’s super fun and super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivated me. Your competition is going to come eventually or try to pick up these tactics. So you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. 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. This is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team and by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing. And this is our new team. We went from 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. So we really just wanna thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. If you decide to not attend the Thrive Time Workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The Atmosphere plays office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door. And it really got me and my team very excited. I love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing, I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned, marketing is key, marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me, as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business, as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group interviews has completely eliminated that, because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands-on, how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business is real critical if I’m going to grow and change. Play really teaches you how to navigate through those things, and not only find freedom, but find your purpose in your business, and find the purposes for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone. Everyone needs to attend the conference Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real.