Clay Clark | The Four Steps To Getting Things Done – Ep. 186

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 where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now 3, 2, 1, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we’re about to do. Boom, boom, boom. Guess who’s back in your room? It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. And join with me today, inside the box that rocks. We have two incredible Americans, one who I’m happy to be married to. Almost 16 years. We near closer to 16 years with each passing day. But first off, batting lead off here, we have a man who has gone from NSU, Northeastern State, Oklahoma, to becoming the tycoon of Tulsa. He is the entrepreneur of entrepreneurs. He’s the man who’s put the Z all over Tulsa, like his name was Zorro. It is Dr. Robert Zellner. Sir, how are you? I am fantastic, and I’m so excited that your wife’s joining us today. She always adds a little bit of, you know, estrogen to the box at Rox, and sometimes we need a little bit of that. But it’s actually Northeastern State University. Oh! Oh! You can get confused with NEO, which is a junior college a little bit farther north in the state. And now we’re the proud River Hawks. The River Hawks! We were the Redmen, and now we’re the River Hawks. How does it feel? How has the transition been for you emotionally as you’ve transitioned? I’m still trying to get down my River Hawk call. I don’t have it down completely. Is the River Hawk a thing? Is the River Hawk a real thing? Oh, oh yes, yes. It’s a very rare species of hawk, and they live by rivers. We have a lot of hawks by us. I’m kind of wondering, do I know if it’s a river hawk or not? I mean, we don’t have a river, we’ve got a creek. It could be a creek hawk. You could have a creek hawk, or you could have a forest hawk. I mean, you’ve got like the woods, and now you’ve got all those pine trees you planted. It could be like a pine hawk. We have a couple of thrivers who have begun to tell me that they are now cheering for us. We had one thriver who gave us a tree. If you’re listening right now and you feel the need to go to Atwoods or Lowe’s and to buy trees, you’ve got to be careful if you’re going to come by and drop off a tree. This is a thing where you can beautify Tulsa and help restore the oxygen levels to where they need to be. People are tearing down trees in the Amazon every day. The only thing you can do, the best way for you to make an impact in Tulsa is to come to the Riverwalk, to the Thrive15.com World Headquarters, and to give me a tree. Well, he’s reforesting our forest. And he’s stuck on these pine trees, which is great. I’m really excited he wants the evergreens. I’m into the fruit trees. I want them to give me stuff. You know, I want cherries, I want apples, I want stuff from the trees. I want them to make something for me. Clay just wants protection from the outside world. I mean, he just wants solitude and peace and no prying eyes. I tried to get that drone through all those pine trees the other day, and that’s going to take… I’m going to have to up my drone flying skills. I’m just telling you right now. It’s going to be tough. Yeah, I will tell you this. Some of the pine trees we’re planting can grow up to be 60 feet, 80 feet. So I will tell you what, I am excited about the reforestation that’s going on. I’m also excited about today’s show. Today’s show is going to be kind of an unusual style. It’s not unusual to have a show today. It’s not unusual to be in a… So we’re going to do a two-parter today. So part number one, okay, is we’re going to be talking about how to get stuff done. The high art of getting stuff done. Like a ninja? Yes, like a ninja. Now, part two, hour number two, we’re going to be getting into basically planning out your financial future for your business. So it’s kind of a part one, part two, let’s get into part one, Z. Here we go. This is the art of getting stuff done. Because in a perfect world, we would have no distractions. Wait, time out, time out. It’s been a while since you have made the bake bean challenge. And I know you’ve given out several books because of this. I have given out up to date four books to the Thrive Nation. That should be a lot higher. It should be a lot higher. I think people are afraid. They’re intimidated. They’re intimidated to take the baked bean challenge. So now it’s lunchtime. I’m in my car. I’m getting ready to drive to lunch. I kicked on the show. Throw that back out there once again because I don’t think people understand the benefit, one, of your book, which is awesome, and then two, the challenge that is inherent in the baked bean challenge. Well, what happens is, is that you have to decide right now. Do you want to have a great lunch? I mean, it’s around the noon time. Do you have a great lunch or do you want to have an okay lunch? Now, we, full transparency, we’re very transparent on the show here. I love Oklahoma Joe’s baked beans. They happen to be a sponsor, but I am obsessed with them. And they’ve won these records for the world’s best baked beans. And my wife over here, she won’t touch the beans. Right? Is this right? I feel bad saying that. I’m not trying to be difficult. I just… She’s trying to be difficult. So if you’re somebody who doesn’t like meat… I’m not against their baked beans. I’m against all baked beans, unless they’re a vegetarian. So this is not a shameless plug where it’s a deal where I’m just saying things. I mean, she won’t eat the baked beans. And if you’re listening right now and you’re somebody who doesn’t appreciate the baked beans at all or any type of meat product, then you need to just go and eat some grass. Go get some grass. Go get some kale. Do that whole thing. Meet my wife at Whole Foods. Get the kale. But for those of you who love food, you’re carnivores, and you love meat, and you love baked beans, you love barbecue. If you love baked beans, you love barbecue, and you love meat, then you’ve got to accept the challenge. You’ve got to get on over to Oklahoma Joe’s and buy yourself those baked beans. And you will try those baked beans and you will discover that they are, in fact, the world’s best baked beans. But if for some reason you believe they are not the world’s best baked beans. Oh, here we go, here we go. I like the way you’re saying the world’s best baked beans. There’s a sort of punch to it. There is a kind of a punch to it, kind of a nutty bite. You can head on over here to the Riverwalk and you can tell me and I will first off I’ll call you a liar and then I will give you a copy of my book Thrive. Now if they are the world’s best baked beans you can also drive over here to the Riverwalk and I will also give you a high five now. I will not question your honesty and your integrity but I will give you a high five and I will give you a copy of my book. It sounds like a win-win challenge. I mean I don’t know for sure but it sure sounds like a winner. You get great baked beans. Oh, and while you’re there, get the burnt ends, by the way. It’s like meat candy. And you don’t have to be just a carnivore. You can be an omnivore. You can like vegetables and meat. So just throwing that out there. Didn’t want to get all scientific on you. Not to one-up you, but you could also be a herbivore, right? Which means you wouldn’t want meat at all, right? I mean, just like we’re naming all the different kind of ores. Well, then you wouldn’t want to get all the ores. I’m just trying to name off all the ores to show that I do know all the vores. All right, now here’s the deal. Thrivers College was not wasted on me, okay? I’ve learned about papyrus, I know about carnivores and omnivores and herbivores and… What are they called? The tigers and Euphrates. Yeah, the tigers and Euphrates. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. Stratus clowns and cumulus clouds and anyway, so we’re talking today about stuff that does matter the practical education we’re talking about the high art of getting things done so in a perfect world Z if you’ll go there with me to a perfect world okay I’m there you would have no clay try you would have everyone could see his face he’s kind of in a really Zen place I mean mmm pine trees everywhere walls to keep people out of distractions no distractions interrupting us when we’re trying to get things done. However, we are now in a world filled with text messages, emails, voicemails, mail. Mr. Mailman, get that mail out of here, males and females. Mr. Mailman, get that mail. Social media updates, people’s emotions, distractions, and so how in the world do the most productive people get so much done when everybody else just seems to be treading water? How is this possible, Z? How is it possible? It’s not. It’s not. It’s just luck. Some days you just get lucky and you get something done and some days you just go, oh well, hmm, darn it, didn’t get anything done today. I’m gonna read a highbrow article from Psychology Today. I’m gonna read it in kind of an epic, kind of a professorial voice. So here we go. Well, okay, now we’re going to get all high-brow. High-brow, okay. Here it is. Get those brows high. Magazine. All right, here we go. So here we go. Imagine that after a routine medical exam, your doctor delivers some devastating news. I’ve got some devastating news to deliver. Since your last checkup, your cognitive performance has plummeted. You’re not thinking very clearly or something like that plummeted went lower Okay, common man your ability to connect with others has eroded You can no longer connect and your memory for everyday events is no longer operating as it once did I cannot remember What I’m supposed to tell you right now as it turns out there is a cure and it cost you a penny Nah, the treatment is simple. Yes. All that’s required is that you put away your smartphone. What? What? So psychology today, they do these studies. And what they’re finding is the average person is getting over 70 data points a day that come to you that you did not ask for. So as an example, a text message. How many of you are listening right now? How many of you received at least 10 text messages today? How many of you received at least 10 missed calls today? What about 10 Facebook updates? What about 10 emails? All of a sudden you’re getting into 70, man. You know what happened to me? I was just getting out of my car and walking into the studio and my phone started making this obnoxious noise. It was an Amber Alert. Oh wow. I guess I’ve got that, I don’t know, I may need to turn that off or something. It was kind of like, oh man, that was annoying. Got my attention and I guess a couple of kids got… I think that’s the point of it. It’s trying to annoy you enough to get your attention to find those tips. It worked. To be aware. For those of you who are offended by that example, I’m going to break this down here for you. An Amber Alert is, like I say, it’s a serious thing. Let’s say that a Facebook update someone’s trying to get you is a serious thing. An email that they need is a serious thing. What happens is, the most successful people are purposeful about designing the life they want. And so I’m going to challenge you today, more than you’ve probably ever been challenged on this show, to design the life you want. So step number one is you want to understand that your brain is a great problem-solving tool, but a very bad storage device. It’s a great problem-solving tool, but a very bad storage device, unless you’re talking about my wife’s brain, because she can remember anything ever. My memory is awesome, Clay. There’s only one problem with it. What’s that? It just doesn’t last very long. But it’s really really good. It’s really good in the moment. When you’re in the moment, you can remember it. You know where you are. Now here’s the deal, okay. Napoleon Hill, the best-selling author of Think and Grow Rich, he wrote this. He said, An educated man is not necessarily one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. An educated man is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants or its equivalent without violating the rights of others. So Vanessa, I want to ask you this. When we went to college at Oral Roberts University, they would assign something like, Hey, read chapter 1 through 2 and we’re going to have a test tomorrow and you need to memorize ABC. Why is that easy for you? I think when I’m reading something, first I would do the reading, okay? And I guess I’m digesting, I’m understanding what I’m reading. I guess it makes it so then later it just, I don’t know, I just remember it. Why is it impossibly hard for me? I don’t know. I know your brain, so I know you read to understand, so you’re understanding what you’re reading, but the part I can’t get is why you can’t recall it. Sam the man? Sam the producer? I know why. I know why. I know why. Why is that? Because you have to be able to apply something and if you can’t apply it in that moment, it doesn’t make sense to you and so you dismiss it. Even though you understand it, you dismiss it if you can’t apply it. So here’s the deal, Albert Einstein, they thought he was retarded. They thought, the school system thought Thomas Edison was a moron. I mean, I’m not kidding, these people were accused of being dumb. Henry Ford, people thought he was dumb. So how is it possible that every time you run into somebody who’s at the top of industry or the top of success, these people, if you said, I need you to list off the addresses of all the rental properties you own. I need you to list off the employee identification number of your businesses. I need you to list off the phone numbers of your employees. Almost universally, they all go, I have no idea. But what they do know is how to make copious amounts of money. But it seems like the ability to memorize things that is so prized in formal education, Z, doesn’t at all translate over into the world of business where memorization really doesn’t matter. I think I know why. I think there’s something wrong with your synapses. You probably have some tar or maybe some gummy kind of object that’s blocking your synapses. And this is just, you know, I’m not like a brain doctor, but I’m just thinking, I’m just pit-balling. I probably picked a bad week to quit smoking copious amounts of marijuana. I love the airplane, I love your airplane analogies. But that’s not scientific, I haven’t opened up your head and looked in at your synapses. It’s hollow in here. I’d be willing to get in there. Sam, you got a saw? We come back, we’re going to get more into the art of getting things done. Stay tuned with RavtimeShow.com. Aw yeah, aw yeah, aw yeah, yeah, aw yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m just reading the lyrics here to Bruno Mars’ songs, trying to make sense of it. And I’m telling you what, to me, Z, you know what? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah means. Oh, yeah means. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, yeah That is that is that is what my mind thinks of when I see you walk in to the dojo of mojo preparing for every radio show when you when you get out of that Porsche of awesomeness and the and when the and when the prince of Just microphone magic gets out of that Porsche of glory and he walks in there, I just hear, oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then all of a sudden, it’s unbelievable. I mean, it just fills your cranium. It does, it fills my cranium. And today what we’re talking about is a subject that so many people have emailed us and text us about. It’s how do you get so much stuff done? Because in a perfect world, you know, we would have no distractions, we’d have no interruptions, we would have no social media updates, no people’s emotions, no endless distractions, people constantly pushing away. You went to the conference, you’ve gone to a big event, you’ve read the big book, you’ve watched the movie, you’re now inspired, you have these big goals, but you’re not getting anything done. And so we’re talking today about the high art, the art of getting things done. Now step number one is you have to understand that your brain is a great problem-solving tool, but a bad storage device. So write things down, save things, quit trying to memorize everything. Now step two is in order to think clearly and to get stuff done, you must have a trusted collection bucket or a system to keep your ideas that is outside of your brain. So Z, I’m going to ask you how you do it. So you have an idea, let’s say, to your newest expansion, your optometry clinic there off of Harvard. Yes, yes. Can you describe how it looks to the Thrive Nation? How does it look? Well, what happened was… Excuse me, I’ve got this little cough I can’t shake. Hang in there, Tiger. I am, I’m hanging in there. Sorry, folks, if I cough in your ear. I was offended. I apologize up front, because every time I do it, Sam or there, it gives me skunk eyes, like my art producer. This show’s ridiculous. Every time he’s on, he coughs. Quit coughing, you idiot. Stop it. Well, what happened was is that when you get busy in life, when you get busy in your job and when your business is growing, you can say one of two things. I can kind of, okay, that’s big enough, I’m going to limit it. Or you can say to yourself, wait a second, how can I see more patients? How can I do more? How can I grow it? And so one of the projects I started a couple, three years ago, I was going to tear down a building and rebuild a new building. And that’s, you know, there’s a lot of steps in that. One, you got to tear it down and two, you got to build it back. Those are two steps right there. Yeah, exactly. You got to tear it down and build up. But then I was going to build a bigger building and move a few of my other businesses in it. So I got architectural plans. I was getting permits. I had bought a business next to me so I could have the space to do it. And then lo and behold, the business or the building next to me came for sale. Lo and behold. It was a four-story red brick building, and I thought, hmm, I could maybe just put all my businesses in there. Let me check this out. So we went over there and sure enough, won’t bore you with all the details, bought it, cleared out a floor and built what I thought was a super swanky, it kind of is a super swanky office. I could double the size of it basically. We can offer more frames. We can have more examiners. What does it look like in there? It looks like, kind of like, you know if you were to walk into like a… I imagine it is like industrial but I don’t know. Is that an angel? Is this heaven? Is it minimalist? Is it rustic? I just love how he describes it as heaven. That’s how every business owner, you know when they get their first building and it’s heaven. It’s your business heaven. It really is. It’s really cool. It’s kind of industrial chic. It’s got some really cool colors. I went with kind of the, the, the pictures are espresso. So all of you out there, espresso is the new in color I found out. And and then I did an accent color of this kind of a aqua, kind of like an aqua man, like if you were like a Miami dolphin, aqua. So you have this vision in your mind of what it’s going to look like. And then Vanessa over here had a vision for what she wanted her kitchen to look like, right? Yes, yes. So Vanessa, I want to ask you, what is the way, I mean, how do you, because you have a lot going on, you’re obviously a mom of five, or of five kids, you obviously help with a lot of the accounting, there’s so many different hats you wear, we’ve got video shoots we schedule for the Thrivers, and photography shoots, and commercial shoots, and radio shoots, and podcast shoots, you schedule all that stuff, how do you remember it all? Where do you keep your big to-do list? So, you know, you put items on my to-do list. I add items to my own to-do list. People who are constantly adding to my list, I check it every day and kind of see what’s new, what needs to be done, and then I look at what is top priority, must be done like this minute, and then the rest that can be done later on that day. So I just check it every day, and I mean what we actually use is an Excel sheet, and so it’s constantly changing and just being added to I also put if there’s some family things that are out of the ordinary I’ll put it on there. Otherwise if they’re weakly occurring in my schedule like taking the kids to lessons. I have that like Memorized I guess you that’s my mom my mom hat you just kind of know and take them Well planning our son’s big birthday party. I get the water slide. You got to get the homies over there Got to get the cake all these things we have to do and I’m just telling you I don’t want to be a bad dad but I would forget major things if I don’t put it on the to-do list and Z, I will tell you, do you know why? Because I’ve coached with hundreds of clients. Do you know why it is why most people don’t try to use a to-do list or some kind of bucket to dump their ideas in and why they’re trying to memorize things? Do you know why that is? Because they don’t know any better? Because that’s what they’ve been taught? Because that’s what really smart people do, they think? Yes, that’s the idea. They think that smart people have it all memorized. I’ll give you an example. There was one Thriver, and you probably remember this situation. There was a Thriver who had asked you what kind of insurances do you take, or how do you… There’s something about what insurances do you take over there at the Robert Zellner and Associates. Your response to that was what? I don’t know. They’re going- I know somebody who does know, called this person, asked for this person, and the day I have to know all that, I’m going to fire somebody. And I will tell you what, the one thing that frustrated… That sounds mean. No, no, this is true. Back in the day when Rockefeller had to go to court for the monopolies that he was creating, he frustrated attorneys endlessly because they said, Mr. Rockefeller, do you own such and such LLC? And he says, I don’t know. And they’re like, did you order yada yada? And he says, I don’t recall. And they’re going, okay, do you own this subsidy of that company? I’m not sure. And he honestly did not know. And the issue was, is that when he grew the company, he was, if you took Bill Gates’ net worth and you multiply that times 20, that’s what his net worth would be. He’d be the wealthiest man in the world times a factor of 20, and you just can’t build something that big and be focused on the myopic details of trying to memorize everything. So what advice, what encouragement, Z, would you give to the thriver out there who’s prided themselves on memorizing everything forever? What advice would you give to him? Well, you know, congratulations. And the problem is you probably don’t even remember what you don’t remember that you’re supposed to remember. I would challenge you that if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to start and grow your business, and we know a lot of you listening to the show want to, if you don’t have a to-do list, make one today. That’s the challenge I’m going to give you. Get out a piece of paper. What? A piece of paper? Do people still use paper? Do you use paper? And you can use… I’m like Clay. Clay likes to write in a little small font that nobody else can read, and he’s got to have these decoder glasses to even see what he wrote. That I buy from Dr. Robert Zellner and Associates? Yeah, exactly. You know, but I used to have it in my little to-do list and it was a thing and what was fun was checking stuff off of it. That was really cool. Yeah, it’s almost an inappropriate endorphin rush that I feel that I can’t, this is a family show, I can’t relate to the experience of crossing stuff off. I can’t say what it really relates to. It’s non-relatable, really. Yeah, it’s an endorphin rush. It’s a climactic experience. Now, when we come back, we’re going to be teaching you more about how to get stuff done. But during the break, go to Thrivetimeshow.com and check it out. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com, click on the conferences button, and reserve your seats for our next in-person workshop. It’s a game changer. Check it out. Thrivetimeshow.com. Live time show on your radio, one, two, three, here we go. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. And to my left, to your right there, if you’re listening at home but facing us, which would be a weird thing, but you could do it. We have DJ Jazzy Z. Woo! DJ Jazzy Z. It’s Dr. DJ Zellner. I like their music back in the day. I’m telling you what, he missed his calling. You might say, wow, that guy’s been a successful optometrist. And I would say, loser. Because he secretly wanted to be a disc jockey. And whenever I would go creep into his business, my wife worked there as the front desk person, then as one of the test prepper people. When I would go in there, he wouldn’t make eye contact with me. He kind of wouldn’t acknowledge me. He always seemed kind of very busy. And I realized what it is now that I have studied the human mind so much. I realized he had a yearning and a burning desire to become a disc jockey, and he was experiencing what we would call dissonance, because here he wanted to throw his financial success away and to become a DJ and to have an oath of poverty and to become almost like a monk of disc jockey-ness. Time out, pump the brakes. You were a DJ and I think you had what you’re doing, over 4,000 events a year. And I think you sold that business for seven figures. I don’t really hear poverty in the DJ mindset. Yeah, I will tell you is that what I did is I made a commitment, an oath of poverty when I decided to become a disc jockey and then I just lied to myself and broke that oath. That’s what I did. Apparently you did because you were very successful and you know there’s one, there’s only one little bitterness I have in my heart. What is that bitterness? Because you’re turning into bitterness. When you had that come, you never let me DJ an event. And I was so wanting to do that. I didn’t tell you, but I figured you’d just see it on me, that you would just see the talent that was within me, that you would just sense it being a professional DJ like you were. And the fact you never asked me really kind of, you know, probably put our friendship back a little bit. It did. It did. We’re just now working through that. We’re just now learning to kind of get things done and to push through the emotional distractions. And today we’re talking about the art of getting things done, how to get things done. Because in a perfect world, you know, everyone would get stuff done. But this is my morning. So you tell me if you can relate to my morning. Okay, so I get up, I plan out my day, I don’t have any emotions and that thing. I get up, I went to work out at 4 a.m., feeling good, fist bump the trainer. Things are going good, right? Things are going good. I get in there, take a shower, have my protein shakes. Things are going great. I get to the office now, where it’s about 5.30 a.m., things are still good. Then someone says, at 5.30 a.m., no kidding, no kidding, can I grab you just for a second? And here it comes. Oh no, oh no. And it’s this emotional blockage where somebody doesn’t want to get something done because of an emotional reason. It’s just a logical thing. You need to, you know, and what we were dealing with was specifically relocating someone’s desk from point A to point B because of the logistics as we’re growing, it makes more sense to do that. And it’s like, yeah, but I kind of like it over here. I just don’t want to be over there, you know, because I just, I just, I’m so used to that area. And I’m like, come on, you got to move. And so what happens is these distractions are keeping many thrivers from getting their actions done. And so we’re walking you through the six different steps during our one of the show today. So step number three. I got to hold on a second. Hold on. Can I have a minute? The other day, one of my employees, I was walking in the hall and they did the old, can I have a minute? And they were a person of note, they were a supervisor, and they were someone that I should give a minute to. But everything about my body said, I don’t want to do this. Oh, it was just all I could do. And I looked at them, and I had to be somewhere, and I had my bag, and I was getting ready to walk out the door, and they did the, hey, can I have it? And I was like, yes. And I did it, but it was challenging You know I want to dedicate this song to you and that person who can we talk by Kevin Campbell This is a great song Just walk right by me Here we go I looked over to Zee and I said, Zee, can we talk? Can we talk? Can we talk? Let’s talk it out. Hold on a minute, Zee. Let’s just talk it out. I’ve got hours to talk. I know you’re the boss, but I’ve got a lot of things I want to talk about. You’d be on the couch right now. Just a quick minute. It’s not about communication, Ben. I mean, it won’t take more than an hour. No, no, never does. Can we talk? I’m just telling you, Thrivers, people are trying to distract you. And so we’re talking about the high art of getting things done. Step three, you’ve got to use a to-do list, one to-do list for your one life where you write down your F6 goals. Now Sharita has now joined us inside the Box of Rocks. Sharita Bent, business coach, singing phenomenon. So Sharita, we look into the goals here, the faith, the family, the fitness, the finances, the friendships, the fun. You’re kind of looking through that list here, and you’ve been around myself. You’ve witnessed the Zolhan, Dr. Z here in action. Could you maybe describe from your perspective maybe what he does differently than the average person or what you’ve seen as far as blocking out time to get done what he needs to get done? Because you see it from a fresh perspective, in my opinion. Yeah, definitely. First of all, I’m glad to be here with you guys. I love your reconciliation, your song dedication. It’s so heartwarming. I’m glad to be here with you guys. We really have a bromance going on. You can’t really tell, but he’s a tough man to love. He’s a tough man to love. But you do it. You do it well. Well, the thing that I noticed about both of you all is just you both are so myopically focused, just like Just like Z was saying, you know, he has his bag. He’s ready to go. He’s going to the next thing I feel like he knows what he is doing. He does not want to be distracted from that You have your your goals your agenda and really just the word myopically focus no distractions Like that’s what I noticed when Z walks in the building. You can see on his face. You can see in his eyes He has purpose. He knows what he’s here to do. He’s gonna get it done He’s gonna bring his best and then he’s off to the races for the next thing, you know? You’re like a prize stallion, Z. Wow! Why the long face? Because I’m a horse. He’s a good one. He’s a good one. Now, here’s a notable quotable for all the Thrivers. I want you to marinate on this. This comes at you via Napoleon Hill. Also, Jack Welch has said the same statement, so you can either attribute it to Jack Welch or Napoleon Hill, but the point is, control your own destiny or someone else will. So, I’m going to give you a little bit of a break. I’m going to give you a little bit of a break. I’m going to give you a little bit of a break. I’m going to give you a little bit of a break. or Jack Welch or Napoleon Hill, but the point is, control your own destiny or someone else will. That’s huge, that’s so huge because there’s so many times, I’m just thinking of examples today, I mean just today, somebody sent me a text and said, can I come over tonight and talk? Well, let me just walk you through the scenario. This particular situation, I know this conversation’s not gonna go well, it’s about nothing that I can control, And do I want to give up my night? Because I’ve worked really hard for time freedom. You know, do I want to? And I have to decide that. But if you just say yes by default, see, you’re going to drift and drift and you’re never going to get ahead. And it’s so hard because as an entrepreneur to build a business, you have to kind of say yes a lot when you get started, don’t you? Absolutely. But that’s one of the, one of the skillsets that when you go to the next level, is learning how to say no, because no sometimes gets a lot more done than yes. One of the things that’s the concept that we’re talking about today, we go over in our in-person workshop, which the next one is April 21st and 22nd. People can understand when we talk about the finances in the workshop, they understand a budget. They understand, okay, if I don’t tell my money where to go, it’s going to just go where it wants to go. So you make a budget. People understand that. They’ve got that concept. You know, we have money, we have money coming in, money coming out, we have bills. But the concept we’re trying to do is budgeting your time, budgeting your day, and planning it with purpose so that it doesn’t just happen to you. If you want to build a million-dollar business, you know, Jim Stovall, one of our listeners and a great Tulsan entrepreneur, he wrote a book called The Millionaire Map, where he teaches you how to basically set up certain guardrails to get where you want to go. I would argue that our workshops are kind of like the million dollar business map. If you want to build a multi-million dollar business, you want to build a business that’s going to provide your financial freedom for both you and your spouse, your family, your kids, that time freedom, that financial freedom, you really owe it to yourself. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com during the break. Check it out. Read the reviews. Thrivetimeshow.com. Oh, Z, it’s heating up here as we’re heading into summertime. You crank that up, my friend. Oh, wow. This is DJ Jazzy Jeff. Oh, you call me the DJ Jazzy Z. I just had to dig this one out of the archive. Here it is. And I just came up with it on the spot, and that’s the problem. I don’t do enough pre-planning, and I do a lot of show prep, but I’ve got to work on those nicknames. But I think it should be DJ Jazzy. That’s it. DJ Jazzy. I like that. That is your DJ name. Capital Z. Capital Z. Yeah. That could have been your DJ name. DJ Jazzy. Is it too late to have a DJ name? No, no. That is your new honor. Henceforth, you will be known as DJ Jazzy. Let’s do this. Let’s have a Thriver out there email us, and I’m going to do this. Let’s have a contest. Okay. Someone out there is going to want you… Now, listen. I was fortunate enough that when my children got married, well, my daughter actually, when my daughter got married, I insisted upon Clay personally doing the wedding, and he was gracious enough. He had like six billion DJs working for him. He’d grown the company so big, but he was like, okay, I’ll do it for you, Z. So he was there and personally did it. How fun would that be? You and I, like, DJ an event. A wedding? That would be fun. A wedding? A wedding or a bar mitzvah or a something. I want to be there. I want to be there whenever you do it. I mean, would that be fun for someone to, like, email in and say, listen, I want you two to DJ my wedding? Now logistically, as long as the thrivers understand that this right here, you would take your wedding, it’s kind of like you go to one level and then above that level there’s another level, and then when you go to that next level, it’s like nirvana. Like third heaven. It’s like heaven, yeah. I don’t want to be sacrilegious, it’s like purgatory, where you’re almost in heaven, you’re kind of in that decision area. That’s what your wedding would do. I don’t know if you would be, because you would be physically located, spiritually located above your own wedding, looking down at it going, it is so awesome down there. If you’re okay to have a meta wedding. It would be fun to DJ a wedding with you, the two of us. Could you imagine? So here’s the deal, Thrivers. We will do a meta wedding for you. But here, I say meta. We’ll take you to the next level. We go above the normal wedding. But you have to email us in a compelling reason why and we’re going to keep talking about it week after week until we find the perfect… until we get the one that’s fine then we’ll film it and we’ll put it on the website and then you guys can enjoy all the trick all the trick-o-try that we do. Oh boy we’re gonna have to because the technology’s changed as I’ve like kind of retired since I dropped the mic I’m probably gonna have to get DJ Eric Herman with DJ Connection to be sort of like our button pusher kind of a Paul Schaefer oh yeah Paul basically is paid to laugh at David Letterman. That was his job, is to go, ha, that’s great, David. Okay, that’s awesome. So when we have some swing and a miss jokes, as we approach the meta level, this person will just kind of go, that’s great, Z, wow, wow, wow, huge. But how fun would that be? That’d be fun. I’m excited. And then my life would be complete. That’s one thing on my bucket list I haven’t done, is DJ a wedding. And like I said before, you’d never asked me. Can I tell you about the last show I did? This is a true story. If you’re listening right now and you know Dr. Joe Lye, I want you to send him a text right now and say they’re talking about you. Dr. Joe Lye. He’s a great guy. It’s one of the largest orthodontist clinics in Tulsa. If you know Kirkpatrick and Lye, if you know them at all, send him a text because he has to know this story. But basically, he was turning 40, you know? And so his wife says, you know, could you DJ? And I’m like, I’m done. I’m done. I’m done. I love him. I love you. I love him. I love you. Can you do it? So anyway, they keep kind of raising the ante and the pressure, and I love them. They’re good people. Some of my original clients from, you know, a decade or more ago. So I find myself at the Mayo Hotel, and I decide if I’m going to be at the Mayo Hotel, I might as well take the party to the next level. Absolutely. So what I started doing is I encouraged the people who were at the party. I said, listen, if you know somebody who’s not here, shoot them a text. You know, shoot them a text, shoot them a Facebook message, whatever. And that Mayo Hotel, the rooftop, can comfortably have about 150 people up there. I’d say so. I’d say so. And so, well, these weddings start ending early because their DJs downstairs were lame. And so a bride comes up, kind of looking for something to do with the groom, they’re just hanging out. So I said, get all your people up here, bring them up here. And then another wedding was wrapping up and they brought their people and I’m, no exaggeration, we ended up having hundreds upon hundreds of people. Joe is crowd surfing on the rooftop of the Mayo Hotel and it just goes to the next level and it was so huge. And finally the bartender’s like, we got to shut this down. And I’m going on the mic, everybody, the bartender thinks we need to shut this down. Do you want to shut this down? No! And so there’s like 400 people saying we should not shut this down. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t get a drink if you wanted to. And then when it got to that just insane level where it was time to be done, we just kept pushing. And I don’t even remember how it ended. I think we just ended up like going… Who’s the guy in the Bible who went to heaven in a pillar of fire? He just went to heaven. Was it Elijah or like Elisha, one of them? Basically it was like an Elijah, Elisha, whatever moment. We just went… And then I woke up in my bed. You woke up in your bed with a fireman over you, doing the dead man carry you into the house. And I wasn’t soliciting tips, but people kept coming up and giving me hundreds, going, this is awesome! Because we were just crowd surfing. And so I ended up making thousands and thousands of dollars that night. Just it was a fun deal. So anyway, we’ve got to focus on getting stuff done. Today we’re talking about how to avoid distractions. Like I just did. Yeah, there you go. To get things done. Well, and what the email is, info at thrive15.com. Nominate yourself. And I’m serious, if you give us a compelling enough reason, we’re going to do that. That would be fun. That would be a fun- A meta wedding. A fun, yes, a fun. You know, it sounds good now. Of course, when that day approaches, we’ll be like, why didn’t we just say yes to that? By the way, I’ve done some crazy ones. Sherita, I don’t know if you know people who do this, but I’ve done a wedding on a pontoon boat. Love it. Grand Lake. Love it. Nice. Keystone. Love. Nice. Done an outdoor deal where it was in Sepulpa, and they had just recently buried a body right near the site where the bride and groom got married. Okay, now we’re getting a little weird. I’m not kidding. Now we’re getting a little weird. I’ve done a wedding where the bride came in on a horse, and let’s just say the bride weighed almost as much as the horse. No, no, no. And I’m just telling you, and she kind of started to fall off the horse. No, no. I have done these things. So when you talk about weddings, there’s so many crazy scenarios. I don’t think you understand what you’re setting yourself up for. You’re talking about going to Israel and going, hey, let’s go wave the Israeli flag around the Gaza Strip and see what happens. That’s the kind of craziness. You’re just provoking that sort of activity. Well, and provoking I am. So there it is. The gauntlet’s been laid out there. Met a wedding. Nominate yourself. Hustle up, buttercup. There you go. Info at thrive15.com. Now the next move, we’re talking about getting things done. Step number four is you’ve got to use one day timer. Now Lee Cockrell, he’s the former executive vice president of Walt Disney World Resorts. He once had 40,000 employees that he managed. He says you either pay now or pay later with just about every decision you make about where and how you spend your time. Shredda, you’re a mom. Yes. You have demands as a mom. Yes, definitely. You have demands in business. You’re a wife. You’ve got demands. So there’s all these different hats you’re wearing. Why is it so important to use one day timer for you and not seven or three? Sure. Well, this is great. Clay and I actually were talking about this and you kind of helped me work through that some time ago, but I was a multi-notebook person. I had my to-do list for home, I had my to-do list for work, I had just here’s my to-do list for my goals or my trips or things like that. And so it sounded like a great idea, but just over the years I’ve learned from you, like you wanna pull everything into one place because you’re trying to find the notebook that has this in it and you may not be able to put your hand on it. I’m gonna tell you a confessional here. I remember before I had the one day timer. Yeah. I was supposed to be somewhere and I’m going, gosh I got a lot of time on a Saturday. That’s awesome. Nothing’s going on. I’m playing a tree. This is great. I mean this is, I’m serious, this is back in the day before I had one day timer. Yeah. And I’m a wedding DJ. There’s probably a wedding I’m supposed to be leaving for right now. And I find the super day timer, I get to the wedding, I set up on time, the customer has no idea how stressful it was for me. But I’m like, that is it. I’ve read the books about having one day timer, but I almost missed somebody’s wedding. I’m switching to one day timer. That’s what I did. Well, you have to. And we all have stories out there. Until you switch to one. I mean, I got really smart a few years ago, and I thought, you know, I’m gonna, these personal assistants, that seems like a good idea. I’ve never had one, I think I’m gonna get one. So I got a personal assistant, you know, and then I try to funnel everything through them. You know, and so my personal assistant had my schedule. Of course, I had my schedule because I had people that still had direct access to me, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and then I had another manager that had kind of been my pseudo You know personal assistant up to that point had another schedule I remember what day I just happen to be more than once I’d have like three lunches plan on the same day I’d be like hmm Which one should I go to and what I do is I just have them all come to I just said pick a restaurant I have a mall show up, and it’s just kind of awkward, but I’m just like hey. I’m multitasking You guys could here’s what we’re good at the game We’re gonna play each one of you take out a credit card and then let that will mix them up And the your waitress could pull one that she’s paying for dinner today You’re meeting with like a financial planner and then like a florist for your kids wedding at the same time going Oh, yeah, just so he’s all cut around. Well, no what what’s really weird is that they’re competing in the same industry You know, like I have two contact lens reps from two companies They’re giving each other skunk eye the entire lunch and they can’t talk about their products because they think it’s some kind of big secret in front of the other one. Why don’t you two work together and come up with a package in the middle and sell those lenses to me and sell those frames. Why don’t you two work together? Why order some guacamole? Yeah, exactly. Well, let’s see. I’ll tell you what, you put your bid down on this piece of paper and slide it to me on the table. You put yours down over here and we’ll just see which piece of paper wins. Now, Thrivers, when we get back, we are going to be wrapping up this topic of how to get stuff done. Then we’re going to get into the deep weeds, the details of how to plan your business’s financial future. It’s so much to pack into one show. How can we do it? I don’t know, but we’re going to do it today. And I’m going to tell you what, during this break, you got two assignments. One, go to Okoma Joe’s, get some baked beans. Two, go to thrivetimeshow.com and book those tickets. Baby, baby. Play us. Put your pinky, raise up. Oh, wow. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Z, can you crank it up, crank it up, crank it up right there. Wow. DJ Jazzy. That’s Dr. Robert Zellner over there. I’m excited for that wedding we’re going to do. Oh, man, I’m excited. Dr. Z is throwing down the gauntlet. He’s made a challenge to Tulsa. He said, if you will nominate yourself or somebody else, he said you can get the two-for-one package You get dr. Zellner and you get clay Clark to DJ your wedding That’s that that’s your that’s your commitment to the city of Tulsa that that is I threw it out there and you got an email It info at thrive 15 calm and with the compelling story and we’re gonna pick one compelling story and then we’ll We’ll film it. We’ll have some fun with it We’ll videotape it and put it on now joining us in the box that rocks is a non-DJ, but a man who could be taught. He’s a very teachable, very coachable guy. He went into the U.S. Navy, and then after getting out of the Navy, after serving our country, he learned everything there is to know about financially planning your business’s future. He is the guru, the guy in charge of anchor financial. Chris, how are you doing there, sir? I’m doing well. How are you guys? Well, I’m just… This whole thing about this meta wedding that Z is really pushing, this whole thing about just coming out of retirement for one show. I mean, it’s getting me kind of excited. I can tell. I mean, I’m kind of excited too because like I said, when you’re in the DJ company and you grew up to this monstrous thing, you’d think you could have thrown me one little, little, little event. I mean, one little, you know, like, well, they’re having the bridge club meeting from 12 to 1 and they need a DJ, you know, for their… I mean, you could throw me a little just something, you know, but you didn’t let me DJ one event. I was trying to keep your DJ career from taking off because I know you quickly scale every business you’re involved in and I didn’t want to create a competitor. Oh, that’s probably the real reason behind it. Now, thank you for your honesty, by the way. Drivers, we’re talking about how to get stuff done today, the art of getting stuff done. And step number four, obviously, is you want to use, we mentioned it before, but you want to use a little pop quiz. One day timer. And why is that something obvious to you now, but wasn’t obvious before? Because a lot of us have one day timer for family, one for work, one for church, and then when you miss something, you realize, I need to have one day timer for my one life, then it becomes obvious. But before it’s obvious, it becomes something we’re oblivious to. So that’s an action item. Everyone needs to have one day timer. Step number five, is you got to schedule meta-time. Meta-time meaning to think above the daily grind, above all the reactions, above the things you have to do. You want to proactively plan out your future. What do you do during meta-time again? You want to plan out your financial future. Future, future, future. You want to plan out your physical fitness. Fitness, fitness, fitness, fitness. You want to plan out where to mount your large, Patriots-themed flat screen. No way! No! No! Oh, you just, you had to, no. Tom Brady is committed to playing six more years. And Romo is committed to playing no more years. Romo’s not going to play anymore? No, he’s going to be done. He’s wrapping it up. No way. He’s retired. Broadcaster. Yep. True story. Seriously, really? This just in from the home office. Wow, I’ve been that unplugged from the Matrix. Wow. I need to get back in the Matrix. Well, the thing is, the market for porcelain quarterbacks has gone down. Oh. I see. Oh. All right. Now, so scheduling time. Now, I want to ask you this, Chris. You obviously are a guy who helps businesses plan their financial future, business people to plan their future. Why is it so important that people take a time out from the busyness of business to proactively plan out their financial future? Well, business owners are usually spending all their time and resources and money and everything they’ve got in putting their business. They rarely set aside time for themselves to think about, okay, what am I going to do later? Here you’re in this busy schedule, but eventually things are going to slow down, you’re going to wind down, and want to wind down. And I’ll just give an example, Z, for my son’s birthday. Yes. You know how by default when other people invite your kid to a party, you feel the need to reciprocate. You know, law of reciprocity, you want to invite the other kid who invited your kid. Yes. Someone invites your kid, then you invite their kid, and it just happens. It happens. Well, a few years back, we had a guy who invited our kid, so then I invited his kid, and the kid was crazy. It was crazy. It was like a deal breaker. Crazy kid. The kid is like, you know the kid who has had no discipline in his life up to that point in the time of the party? Oh, yeah. Been around him. He’s around there shoving the other kids making fun of the other kids He’s injuring kids breaking things eating the cake before we’re having the birthday cake. He’s that guy Yeah, so I and during my meta time. I’m not kidding. We’ve just planned out my son’s birthday I made sure that this particular child a good kid who I’m sure Matriculate into a fine fine adult as a result of listening to the show. Yes, I made sure that I Proactively decided to have a great party and to not invite said human. Interesting. Speaking of your son, by the way, Aubrey, how’s his landscaping business, lawn care business coming along? Well, first off, he launched his website, which is MotownTulsa.com. I love that. MotownTulsa.com. I love that. And he’s nine. So the slogan that we developed, which is, it’s, let me pull this up. We’re not breaking child labor laws yet. Is that the slogan? I’m going to, I tell you what, I’m going to pull up his website, and I’m a bad father because we just launched his new domain, and I don’t want to get it wrong. I said Motown Tulsa, but it is something else, and I’ll come back to that in a moment. But I will give you the new domain because it just launched, the new domain, and I’ll tell the Thrivers they can check it out. It’s going well. He has three lawns. Nice. He brings in about $9 a week, and it takes me about four hours of my weekend to get to those locations, but he now can attach the trailer and detach the trailer without his mother doing the work or without me doing the work. So progress is occurring. Progress is occurring. I love it. I love the fact that he loves to mow. That’s just awesome. Hey, now, Vanessa out there, I don’t know if Vanessa can hear me. Okay, we’ll kind of wave at her there. So we’ll see. Let’s see. I’m knocking on the window inside the box that rocks to see if I can get the attention of the bird here. Let’s see if I can get her attention. Is it possible? Is it through sites and stuff? Quick question here, Vanessa. Quick question. What is Aubrey’s domain for his website? What’s his domain? I’m not going to bother him because we get it. MotownTulsa.com. I don’t think it is Motown Tulsa. Can you find what that is real quick here? Okay, so inside the box that rocks, we will find out my son’s domain for his website very, very soon. But again, you want to schedule time to proactively design the life you want for faith, family, fitness, finances, friendship, and fun. Those F6 goals. Faith, family, fitness, finances, friendship, and fun. And I want to ask you this, Chris. When you decided to join the US Navy, did you do it because you woke up drunk in a bush one day and you realized, oh my gosh, I’m in the military? Or did you plan it out? Or what was the process like of deciding to join the US Navy? Well I tell you it took about 11 months before I actually shipped out, what they call shipping out to boot camp, but I joined the Navy for the Seal program. And when did you, how long did it take you to decide that’s what you wanted to do? I mean was it like an overnight thing or did you kind of plan that out or how did that decision occur? It took some planning. I think I, basically I ran out of college money. That was my big thing. So I decided okay well I’m going to take advantage of some of the things they have to offer in that area. So now that you’ve built a business, Anchor Financial, obviously that has taken time to build. When did you decide you wanted to get into the financial planning game, and then how long did it take you from the time you had that decision until you actually became a financial consultant for businesses and business people? Well two things. Number one, I had a father-in-law that was in the business at the time, and he helped mentor me in. And the second thing was the fact that my grandfather had gone his entire life, didn’t believe in life insurance, made, worked probably two jobs his entire life and died broke. And you know, you see that firsthand and it’s exhausting to go through the process of passing away and seeing someone pass away and then having to take care of the remainder behind. So yeah, it was definitely a two-fold thing for me. So it was good timing and it was right where God wanted me at the time, I believe. Now Z, this just in, we have my son’s domain. It’s Mowtown, but M-O-W, so not like the record company, but Mowtown. Like I want to mow, yeah. MowtownTulsa.com, and the slogan is, if you want the nine-year-old to mow your lawn, call his mom. That’s nice. That’s nice. It feels good every year. You know, I mean, it’s like, you know, unless you’re just always hiring nine year olds. Yeah, we haven’t thought through. Now, I want to ask you from the time that you had the idea to become an optometrist. Okay, so you had the idea. How long did it take you before you graduated with a degree that would allow you to practice optometry? Well, I did four years of undergraduate and then four years of optometry school. So that was eight. And I really locked it down probably my second year of undergraduate. You know, I knew I wanted to go into the medical field. And so I did a little research and I thought, well, you know, optometry is the perfect blend of, you know, people are happy when they come in and like some doctors where you’re sick or you’re hurting. So people are on the most part happy when you help people see better. You know, vision is so important to people in their life. And then also you have that business side of it too, you know, where you sell glasses and contact lenses. And so I thought, that’s a nice mixture of the two. And when did you decide to open up your own practice? When did that happen? Well, I, when I got out of school, I was going to buy a practice, um, and then, you know, put my print on it, so to speak. And then I couldn’t find the money from the bank. And that’s a whole nother story. And so I had to go work for other folks for about a year, year and a half. And then I finally saved up some money, just scraped it up. And if we’re just flying through all the things you had to do, you had to design a sign, you had to choose a building, make a logo, business card, graphic design, checklists, workflows, you had to set up all those things. Hire people. And so you had to wake up every morning or stay up late to make a to-do list for the items you wanted to proactively get done. Because when you get to work, there’s all this reactionary work. So when did you find the time, Z, proactively to get all these things done. What was your schedule? What was your flow? Mine was at night, you know, in the evenings. I’m more of a night owl. I know you’re a morning lark. I am a morning lark. I’m more of a, you know, I’m going to bed when you’re getting up kind of thing. If we just text each other at 3 a.m. we’ve covered the entire… We know it’s so funny, you know, whenever we would be filming here for our website thrive15.com and sometimes you have to film, you know, in the evenings and so… Like 8 p.m. Crazy Well, it’s about that 830 to 9 o’clock Could you be over there making funny eyes and you’d be like? Nodding and you’d be like, you know looking for a blankie and a corner to get into and suck your thumb in the fetal position I’m just like I was just waking up and it was just so fun to look at you and go I’m awake and you’re not so you did it at night though. Yeah, I did mine at night So I was I would stay up and then I that was kind of my move It was easy for me to stay up and get up at it like you do. But you’ve got to block out time. Yes, you have to do it because nobody’s going to do it for you. You’ve got to block out time. And so Thrives, I’m just telling you, the lie that you’re making to yourself is I’m going to get all this done, but you’re not committing to a specific time to get it done and that’s where it breaks down. Now this final tip for getting stuff done is you have to have a specific place where you’re going to get the stuff done. So Z, where were you building your workflows and your systems when you’re working at night? Were you doing it in the garage, in your car? My little office area that I had a little desk, you know, my little office area, my little pad and my stuff, you know, back then, it’s going to sound weird, but you didn’t have a lot of computers and smartphones. And I mean, we didn’t have all that kind of stuff. We actually had, I had a big, big chief notepad, big, number two pencil. Was that code for a chisel and a rock? Did you chisel it into the rock with your original workflow? I’m not that old. Okay, so here’s the deal, Brother Abraham. Zig Ziglar says this, lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have 24 hours in a day. And that’s once you come to grips that, hey, I’ve got the same amount of time that Oprah has. I’ve got the same amount of time that President Obama has. I’ve got the same amount of time as anybody who’s successful has. I just have to become better at using that time. Once that idea, that responsibility, and the profundity of that idea sinks into your core, you’re able to get more stuff done, too. Don’t feel bad about it. Listen, I tell you what, so many people out there beat themselves up. They’re like, I’m not getting stuff done. The thing is, you don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s why our in-person workshops are so awesome. That’s why we spend a whole segment of it on time management, because I hear it over and over and over from young entrepreneurs. I would do that, but I just don’t have the time. And you know what you do have the time for? You do have the time to plan a proactive financial future. And we come back, Chris, with Anchor Financial. He’s going to be walking us through some practical steps, five practical steps that every thriver out there can take this week to secure your financial future? I mean, are you at all, would you all be excited if you knew that if you did what he’s going to teach you to do, that you would guarantee your retirement? That you wouldn’t just one day wake up and saying, what happened to my money? Would you be excited to know that he knows the super moves? He does know the super moves, and that’s why he’s on the show. He did a great job last time, and I’m excited to come back from the break and hear what he has to say. Now Thrivers, during the break I encourage you to go over there to Thrivetimeshow.com. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com and click there on the conferences button because when you click on the conferences you will discover that the world’s best business workshop, one that people from all over the world are flying here to attend, is right in your backyard at the 20,000 square foot Thrive15.com world headquarters. Check it out. Thrive15.com. Thrivetimeshow.com. Alright Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. It’s the Thrivetimeshow on your radio. The show that you go to to learn the practical skills you need to move beyond paying the bills. If you want to learn skills that will help you move beyond just paying the bills to, I don’t know, make a couple mils. You know, a lot of times people say, man, I want to make a million dollar business. I want to retire successfully. I want to, but then there’s not a lot of training on how to specifically do that. And so we’re honored today to have a guy inside the box that rocks, that helps people just like you plan out their financial futures every day. This is Chris with Anchor Financial. Chris, first off, what’s the website where people can learn more about Anchor Financial and what it is that you do? Myanchorgroup.com. You can call us on the phone, too, at 918-591-2880. And as we’re talking about planning out your financial future, you have five questions. You’ve got to have some questions that you want all the thrivers to ask themselves. So I’m going to turn it over to you, my friend. This is kind of a leading question. I mean, what kind of time of year are we in right now, guys? I mean, for entrepreneurs, a lot of us out there fear April, March, April, for one reason, and that’s because of taxes. Taxes. Taxes. I love paying taxes. Oh, I hate tax. It’s like having your gum scraped. Nobody likes it. Nobody looks forward to it, and you get to the end of the year and you think, oh my God, I hope my CPA is brilliant this year or whatever he’s going to come up with. Do I have enough write-offs? Do I have enough this, that? I have a couple of questions for you. As we go through and we build businesses, we’ve got to think about taxes in ways of how it applies to our business. Let’s talk about how it applies to our retirement. Now, first of all, I’ve got a question for you real quick guys Will taxes go up or down in the future you feel well Z I was gonna go I was going on a website where you can watch in slow motion Mean kids pulling the wings off of butterflies. Yeah, that’s a way to uplift myself Yeah, but I couldn’t get the website to load so instead I went to us debt clock Dot org I went to US… because it was more uplifting. And I discovered that the average… the national debt, I mean if you just go there to usdebtclock.org and just watch it while we’re listening to the show here, you’re going to discover that the national debt is approaching $20 trillion. When you think about how big the national debt was when President Obama took over, and what it is now, it is staggering the rate at which that’s growing. And so how does that impact you? Well, the average U.S. citizen, the average taxpayer right now, if you took the national debt and you said, stop, we broke even, which by the way, to balance the budget, we have to basically get rid of schools or health care or something, because it wouldn’t be possible to balance the budget because entitlements are so big now. People are so used to these things. Is this a political show? It is not. I feel like we’re going political. No, no, no, but this is a, this is just a math show. Oh, my, well, I like math. So we were going to balance the budget. We said we’re done right now. Every one of us, every listener right now, you would have to pay, check it out, $61,146 to pay off the debt if we quit incurring debt. Now if we don’t stop incurring debt, this is where it gets even crazier. Right now, there’s $165,000 per taxpayer, okay? Because there’s only $61,000 per citizen, but a lot of people don’t pay taxes at all. So if you do pay taxes, you owe $165,000. And so I would have to say, Z, my guess is that taxes would probably be going up. Am I wrong here? Am I missing something? Well, I mean, yes, you have to go down to stimulate businesses to open up. I mean, you know, 65 to 70% of all new jobs are stimulated by small businesses. And there’s more money generated by some of the fees than actual income tax. And so it’s all very complicated. But the other thing is that if you’re spending something, you’ve got to, at some point, you’ve got to pay the piper. At some point, you’ve got to cover the check. At some point, you’ve got to come to grips with what you’re spending. Wasn’t that a bagpipe reference? I’m sorry. You’ve got to pay the piper. The piper. Piper down. I’ll only pay for so long without payment. All right. All right. Now, Chris, so what’s the next question we need to be asking ourselves? One big thing here. You know, two things that are certain in life. Two things. Absolutely certain in life are what? Death. And for 400 points. And Z for 500 mega points, you’ve got death. We’re certain of death. Z for 500 mega points. What’s death? Taxes, taxes and death. Taxes and death, absolutely. So really, if there were a moral, legal and ethical way to disinherit the IRS from your retirement plan, would you do it? Is he endorsing Congress? And let’s all take our shirt off and take a selfie. You’re saying that if we all team up together and we split our income equally, and we all form a kind of a socialistic, almost nationalistic… Share the chickens equally. If we all team up together, we could form such great countries as North Korea, which is doing not very well financially right now or a you this former USSR Which did really? Dad, let’s throw that out. So you’re saying without if communism isn’t an isn’t an option. That’s off the table. I Guess I would do it Yeah If communism wasn’t the option if you weren’t pushing communism the biggest thing that people don’t understand is there are ways to do this There’s ways to be taxed on the seed and not the harvest. Talk to me. Whoa! Back pump the brakes. What are you talking about? Is this an agriculture show? Are we going down to the farm again? Well, let’s pretend you’re a farmer, Dr. Z. So if you’re going to plant a bunch of seed, would you rather be taxed on that seed or taxed on what that seed’s going to produce? Woo! I love going down to the farm. Because I’m not intellectually qualified to answer that question. Could you kind of educate the Thrive Nation here? What do you advise? No, no, no. Let me tell you. Oh, okay. I’m a farmer. I’m a rancher. You see here, Clay, you start off with the seed. Let’s use for an example corn. You start off with one little kernel of corn. You put it in the ground. You kind of make a little plow mark. You put it in there and then you water it and fertilize it and weed it. And guess what? Corn stalk grows up, and guess what? You get more than one kernel of corn out from that one corn. You can go into the barber shop, but you can’t get two perms, I would say. Kid, it’s hard on the hair, Clay. It’s hard on the hair, you know? Chris, what advice would you have here? What advice would you have for the thrivers out there? Well, there’s three things. There’s three vehicles that you can get that you can be taxed on the seed and not the harvest. Most people know about that’s a Roth IRA. But if you make over a certain amount of money, you cannot qualify to put money in a Roth IRA. So a lot of people can’t qualify to do that, and there’s a better way. Another way is a municipal bond, which if anybody’s ever looked into a municipal bond, the interest rate return on municipal bonds right now are horrible. You might as well just go get a CD and let it sit in there. So those kinds of things are available. The third thing that nobody ever thinks about is life insurance as a vehicle. And life insurance can build a lot of cash value inside it. Okay, now Thrivers, for those of you who are me and you operate like me and you operate on the shallow end of the pool, I’ve got a fun factoid for you about the Roth IRA. One, this thing was developed by Senator William Roth in 1989. And Z, do you know what happened in 1989? Do you know what happened in 1989? baseball history, Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire doing broids at the same time on the same team. The acne had to be just through the roof. If you want to grow your financial nest egg the way that Mark McGuire and Jose Canseco grew their biceps, almost using steroids, you want to stay tuned because this is an acne-free edition of Financial Steroids. Stay tuned, drivetimeshow.com. Oh, well, back in the USSR. I appreciate the communism references there. That was impressive. Well, I mean, I just felt like you were going there, so I just needed to button it up with a little bit of, you know, Paul McCartney and the Beatles singing back in the USSR. You threw them out, you like North Korea, the former USSR. I said to myself, you know, one of the best things about the USSR was the song the Beatles wrote about it. You know, Z, communism is all about everyone having an equal share of the pie. And it’s chosen, you know, your share, your profession, your career, your financial future is determined by the benevolent dictator. And it’s a great idea, right? Especially if you’re the benevolent dictator. Right. It gets really good there. Right. It never works. And the whole thing is people that are unable to provide for themselves eventually say either, A, I’m going to do something about it, which is what this show is all about, is saying I’m struggling or maybe I’m not growing at the rate I want to. Maybe I’m growing great, but I just want to take it to the next level. It’s all about the pursuit of excellence. Or you say, forget it. I’m just going to, I wanted the government to do it for me. And that’s sort of the communism game. But I’m telling you what, because we are in a capitalistic society, and we are in America right now, I encourage you to listen and to take notes, because we have a gift for you today. Today we have a financial planner that can help you retire in a way that will make the people, the majority of people envious of you, because you’ll be in a financially great place and the average person won’t by default. You know, according to Time Magazine, I want to encourage you Thrivers to look this up, also the Atlantic, the Atlantic did a study on this. It’s posted in the Atlantic. It’s in Time Magazine. There’s also a USA Today study. The average American has less than $400 saved right now. That’s a statistic that you can Google search. You can find the average American has less than $400 saved. That’s cited in USA Today. You can find it in Time Magazine. You can find it in The Atlantic. That study, Forbes Magazine did a study on this. Eight out of ten businesses will fail by default. And so right now we’re honing in like a laser beam on your financial future. And so Chris, the guy who’s the guru behind Anchor Financial, is here to educate us and to help us in a very specific way. So Chris, what do you have for us? Well, I guess you guys mentioned it, you know, when you’re talking about a communist society, you are paying into a big, huge conglomerate and everybody, you know, excels equally here in the U.S., in the good old U.S. of A. We’ve fought for a whole nother reason. So the whole idea is to get that partnership in your retirement plan, because really it is a partner now. I mean, would you have a partner now that’s going to take 40% of your income and not actually do anything for your business. They’re not going to actually be a part of it, help you grow or anything, but they’re just going to take 40% of your business or 30% of your business. And people don’t want that. People see that in the retirement plan. They’re like, they’re more and more today. They’re just, I don’t want that much. I don’t want that much taken out of my retirement. So you’re saying if people are counting on the government to take care of the retirement, that’s not really the move. No, not at all. But let’s just say you have a traditional IRA or you have traditional, what we call in the industry, qualified funds where you’re diverting those taxes until a later date. Oh, yes, tax diversion. So you’re advising to pay the taxes ahead of time. Correct. So anyone listening right now, you’re saying, okay, if you’re going to, let’s say that someone made $100,000 this year, just to keep the math straight here. And let’s say they owe $40,000 of taxes between state and federal. Just throwing out some broad numbers here, okay? You’re saying that you could invest the money into what kind of vehicles? What kind of vehicles could we invest in? What kind of vehicles should the average self-employed person listening maybe consider investing in? Well, there’s always the markets. I mean, I’m a big believer in the markets, but there is a broad portfolio you need. You don’t just need to put it all in the markets. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket. So taking it and diversifying it into different things, that’s what makes these insurance contracts so much easier, so much less of a hassle. They’re on autopilot, like a lot of what you talk about here is autopiloting your financial future and setting aside a certain amount of money. Those kinds of things are so important to the business owner because if he doesn’t set it aside, it’s going to be put back into the business and spent on something. So he’s got to set it aside and pay himself for the future. And how do you recommend, I mean, Zee, I want to ask you this because you’ve done this with your advertising, as an example. You’ve set up some sort of guardrail, it appears, where you’ve been able to say, hey, I’m going to set aside a set percentage of money for advertising so you don’t have to think about it and yet I see a lot of entrepreneurs who start advertising They stop they start they stop. I’m sure Chris you see people financially do this. They start investing they stop So I’m gonna start with you Z if you want to automate let’s say your marketing or automate your advertising How have you been able to kind of set it and forget it with your with your advertising dollars? Well, what I’ve done is I make a budget for the year and then I take a percentage It was much the percentage was much higher when I started off. It was as high as 10% day one, okay? So I make a budget, I put that in, and then I do a yearly contract. If you go in and you negotiate things in bigger chunks of time, you can get a better deal on it. And I would always go and negotiate in January because that’s when they sold the least and they were the most desperate. So I would go in, lock in that good low rate for the year, and I would negotiate for the year, and then it would just happen. I would belly up, sign up. Are you saying that we have to look forward to a year? We can look forward to a year of those wonderful commercials airing right now on 106.9. Can we look forward to that for a year? Absolutely. I go in every month and make a fresh one, a new one. I do it typically the last Tuesday of the month. It’s kind of my set schedule on that. I have to reschedule that. But yeah, you’re just going in and you make a commitment and that’s for the year. And you know, there’s some things that I have in there, some caveats that if something goes wrong, I can bail out of it. But by doing that, giving them a longer commitment, I get freer, I get more stuff, I get more add ons. In other words, I’ll say, okay, for that year’s contract, we’ll give you some remotes for that year contract. We’ll give you every 10th, you know, um, ad not sold for that contract. We’ll give you, you know, some digital on our website for that, you know, and so what it gives you much bigger bargaining than going in and saying, yeah, I’d like to buy one TV ad and see if this thing works. You know, you, you, you tried to, I remember you were, you’re negotiating with the station and you said, Hey, if I do five years, can I get my Z tattooed on Pat Campbell’s head? You know, the, the host of the morning show. And they were like, no, we can’t do that Z. And you said, no, they did. It was just flesh tone. It’s flesh tone. Okay. Okay. Now, Chris, I want to ask you this. Um, if I’m listening and I want to automate my financial future, I’m going, okay, I know, I got to do it. I know I’ll make bad decisions. If I have to make decisions, I’ll make bad decisions. What’s step one? How can they get their financial situation turned around? Number one, they need to call me. What’s your phone number? 918-591-2880, or they can go to the website, myanchorgroup.com. You’ll see my business partner, Phil Pickles’ face, my face. I’m the pretty one. Oh, yeah. Look at that. The beauty up there. I know. You went so fast on that, and I wasn’t really paying attention. Would you give me those numbers and things again, and that like www something thing, something? www.myanchorgroup.com, 918-591-2880. Right here in Tulsa, we handle actually a four state area, so we’re on the go a lot. If you guys are around, any in the listening area whatsoever, you guys are worldwide, so you know, we’ll do whatever we need to do. Now, Thrivers, if you Google search right now, you type in myanchorgroup.com, you find the website. The phone number they have is posted right up in the top right. It says 918-591-2880. And see, you know what happens if you add up those numbers? Do you know what you get? A bigger number? I have no clue. It is a bigger number. I have no clue. But I’m kind of joking, but I’m being serious. If you don’t know what you’re doing financially, do you know what that spells? Disaster. I mean, if you don’t have an intentional plan, if you don’t have a specific, by default, you will lose. By default, you’ll lose. When you fail to plan, you plan for failure. Oh, wow. That feels so good. Is that mean? Sometimes I sound mean. I don’t want to sound mean. When we come back, Thrive Nation, we will answer any of the questions that you have. You can always text us your questions to 918-851-6920. 918-851-6920. And over the break, check out thrivetimeshow.com and get your two-day workshop tickets today. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. It’s Business School Without the BS and ES. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, sent here on a mission to help your wallet, to help your wallet grow. You know, so many of you are in a place right now that’s not where you wanna be. I mean, see, just as an example, I want you to think about this example. You tell me, you tell me, because this is the research. It’s according to USA Today, the average American has less than $400 saved. Ouch. But yet, I don’t recall, maybe it was different, maybe your high school was different, but did you have a guidance counselor, Z? Did you have one in high school? Of course, yeah. Chris, did you have one? Do you have a guidance counselor? Absolutely, sure did. So you’re talking to the guidance counselor, he pulls you aside, you take some kind of standardized test, and he goes, well Z, based upon your scoring here, you know, you would do well maybe doing this career or that career. Yeah, they told me I’d be, based on my scoring and all the data and everything, they said I’d make a really good fire watcher. Fire watcher? That’s some caddy shack. What you be? So what happens is, so what happens is they then say things to you like, okay, well, what do you want to do with your life? They ask that question. And I can’t remember anybody saying, you know what, what I want to do is I want to work about, you know, five days a week on average, you know, 40 hours a week spending five sevenths of my, you know, time on the earth. I’m going to spend the majority of my waking hours at a job. And then what I want to do is I want to get to about age 45, 50 probably, probably 50, and I want to have a total of about $400 saved. Because I’ve been working at that point, I’ve been spending it along the way. I want to save like $12 a year. And if I do that, I’ll have to be worth about $400 when I’m 40, 45. And a dollar a month, actually. And then what I want to do is when I get into retirement age, I want to kind of play the game of let’s see how cheap of nursing… At the time of my life, I’m the most physically feeble, and I need the most care. I want to find the cheapest place to stay. I want the nursing home where they treat you the worst. Because I want my life to be a living sacrifice, and I want to have horrible care so people can look at me and go, despite your horrible care he has and receives and no savings, what a great man. I want to die broke, and I want to feel broke. That’s what I want to do, Mr. Guidance Counselor. There were a lot of people at your school that were saying that, because that seems… that’s weird. You know, I attended a high school, primarily in what is now called the former USSR. That’s where I went there. And President Putin, our principal at the time, I was afraid of him, so I made these claims so they wouldn’t take a larger portion of my pie. You know what I’m saying? Well, yes, of course. I mean, that all makes sense now. Did you take selfies with him? Thrivers, if you’re following the timeline of my life, I realize that wasn’t possible, but I’m just giving you some hyperbole because I’m telling you the insanity of not planning your financial future, it’s beyond my grasp. I do not get it. Now, again, I’m an entrepreneur, so I’m the kind of guy who said, you know what, I don’t like the way that I’m living, so I’m going to do something about it, right? Because Henry Ford said, what? He says, it’s hard to build a reputation based on what you’re going to do. Thomas Edison said that a vision without execution is hallucination. I’m not hallucinating, and I’m not an idiot. I’m gonna change my life and so I did something about it. But for many people out there listening, I believe that you want to make a change but you don’t even know what changes you need to make. So I’m gonna start with you Zee and I want to ask Chris the same question. If I’m stuck in a rut Zee and I am not getting ahead either with my business or say I’m an employee and I’m not getting ahead, what advice would you have for me? What can I do today? Well you can do several things. One of them you can reach into your pocket and you can pull out one dollar. If you don’t have a dollar, you can ask to borrow a dollar. Just stand by the Coke machine at your business and say, hey, you got an extra dollar on you? Shake the sofas, shake those out. You probably can find a dollar’s worth of change in a sofa somewhere, maybe not yours but your friend’s place. Do not attempt to break into a home in Broken Arrow. We are not endorsing burglary on this show. I repeat, we are not endorsing burglary. But just get a dollar and then you need to type in this. Find a computer that’s working, that’s connected to the internet, and then type in thrive15.com. That’s thrive15.com. And for one dollar, you can have a monthly membership and you can watch all kinds of great things. From smarter, more clever guys in Clay and I, as a matter of fact, we’ve got great mentors, men and women, very successful people that tell their life story, tell all the little secrets of life. The first thing is you’ve got to want it, and you’ve got to get a dollar. That’s one step you can do. What’s another I could do? Another move you could do is you could obviously go to the podcast and you could subscribe to the podcast because when you subscribe to the podcast, you’re never going to miss a show like this. Oh, wait, that didn’t even cost a dollar. Yeah, that doesn’t cost a dollar. Move number three, you know, move number three is you could get out to our in-person workshop, which is an absolute game changer for many of you. But I’m trying to sell you something, so don’t trust me. Go read the reviews. Just type in Thrive 15 Conference Reviews. Let other people from around the world, people from New York, people from California, people from Texas, people from Toronto, people from England. Let them tell you about their experiences, or you can hire a one-on-one coach to show you the way. And I would also give you just a little bonus move, but we cannot do that, Z. You don’t do it, I don’t do it. We might advise you to find a financial advisor that could help you map out your financial future. That’s why we have Chris, the head honcho over there at Anchor Financial, inside the box that rocks. Chris, what advice would you have for the thriver out there that maybe knows they need some financial help and is on the verge of maybe picking up the phone and calling you? What advice, what would you do if they did call you? What does that look like? Well, basically, I’m going to set up an appointment. We’re going to sit down for 20 minutes. That’s all it takes. I could go through a fact finder. We could find out where your money is sitting now, how you’re treating your business a little bit. We wouldn’t go too far into that because that is your business after all. You know it better than anyone else or you wouldn’t be in it. But we’re going to make sure that we start allocating some funds that isn’t going to hurt at first. You start where it doesn’t hurt and then you add to it as you go. That’s the easiest part to do is just to start with a number that’s not going to hurt. If it’s $50 a month or it’s $100 a month, but you want to ramp that up as quickly and as furiously as you can. And if I’m busy, I just want to kind of set it and forget it. I mean, do you guys help me do that? Or do I have to meet with you like once a week or once a year or once a month? Sure. What is that? How does that work? No, you don’t have to meet with me. It really passed the first couple of times. After that, it’s on autopilot. And we just take care from there. You know, for a late, Z is kind of a late night guy. He’s the kind of guy… A lot of times you say, who goes to Waffle House at 3am? Well, you and I are past each other at Waffle House. I’m actually leaving it to go home and go to sleep, and you’re just awoken. That’s why sometimes I leave a little waffle behind for you. I know Clay’s favorite booth, and so I just leave. I don’t eat all my waffle, and I just put a little note there. You’re welcome, Clay. Do you like Waffle House? I’ve been to it. I mean, I’m a low carb thinger. I’m doing kind of a low carb thing. So it’s hard to do a low carb diet and go to like the Waffle House or IHOP. What are you eating right now? What are you eating? Fish and vegetables a lot. Where are you getting all that fish? You going out to eat a lot? Are you making the fish? What’s your move? Oh, no. I’m not a cook. Are you kidding? Are you buying fish and whole foods? Well, normally we get it from restaurants. There are places where they actually cook it for you. So you’re eating at a lot of restaurants eating fish right now? Well, that or take out or sometimes I’ll go buy Whole Foods or I’ll go and have it pre-cooked and just buy it and take it home and heat it up. You know what I mean. When did you decide to go low carb? Oh, I don’t know, a few months ago. It’s just kind of a healthy. I’ve done kind of seasons of it and it’s just once you kind of get going down that and been kind of working out and kind of, you know, I’ve been doing it for a while. I’ve been doing it for a while. I’ve been doing it for a while. I’ve been doing it for a while. that and been kind of working out and kind of, you know, making the best version of me. Are you working out? Yeah, a little bit. Are you working out? Are you doing a lot of indoor soccer? What are you doing? This is what Courtney Quest is, this is my life. Well, I’m actually doing stuff around the house you can do, a lot of sit-ups and push-ups and you know, and then doing a little aerobic stuff, you know, and the little thing, you know, what they call them. Because I’ve got chin splints, I don’t run as much, so we’re going through the whole thing. I know you’ve got a new trainer, and you’re like, I do. What’s happening is I’m going in the mornings, you know, at 4 a.m. It’s a good time. I haven’t done any excuses. I’m showing up. The problem is there’s this lady today who is freaking jacked, and she’s already… I want to get there at 4, but part of me wants to be there because I want to be the first one in. Oh, yeah. I want to be sweaty before the people show up. This lady’s already jacked. She’s already sweating. She’s already, and I’m going, no. What time did you, I’m thinking, what time did you get her? She has headphones on. So, gym etiquette, you don’t ask. You don’t ask. But the trainer guy, he’s like, oh man, she’s been here for like an hour. I’m like, what does she do for a living? How is she here? How could she do that? So, Thrivers, here’s the deal. This show is dedicated to helping you become the best you that you can be. And if you want to get your financial future in order. Again, Chris, what’s that website? www.myanchorgroup.com. And Thrive Nation, I’m going to challenge you right now to do one thing, one action item. Go to thrivetimeshow.com and read the reviews. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Just read the reviews. And the great thing about our in-person workshop, Clay, there’s two things that are great about it. One, we have scholarships. It’s $500 and you can bring three employees with you, but we have scholarships. So if you say, listen, I can’t afford that, just let us know. We’ll help you out. There’s no reason for you not to be here. And the second one, when you come, we’re not going to upsell you. We’re not here just to do a bunch of trickery on you to say, you know, hey, we’re really here to sell you the $10,000 secret to success. That ain’t going to happen. You know, I’ve noticed that a lot of people are reluctant to attend seminars because when you read the ripoff report, there’s all this high pressure back of the room. That’s the normal. That’s the default in the speaking seminar realm is high pressure back of the room up sales. But Z, that’s not our heart. That’s not what we’re about. And we encourage you to go to thrivetimeshow.com and read those reviews. And I encourage you to go check out myanchorgroup.com, a great website by some great guys. And get your financial future in line, Z. You’ve got to get it in line. You’ve got to plan for it. It’s not going to happen magically. As always, 3, 2, 1, Boom! Alright JT, so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business? Um, to get you to your goals, so it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination. And would, uh, you need profits to get you to your goals? Yeah, because if you have a $15 million business, but you have $15 million of expenses, it’s kind of pointless. Holy crap! All right, so the question I would have here for you, if you could take like, I don’t know, 10 minutes or less and see if you could save $3,000 a year by reducing your credit card fees, would you do it? Yes, absolutely. Holy crap! Why would somebody out there who’s listening right now, who has a sane mind, why would they not go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card to schedule a 10-minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least 3,000 bucks a year? Why would they not do it? Yeah, why would they not do it? Maybe because they understand how you said the website This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Griswold family Christmas No, that’s that’s clear. Okay, so that that could be a deck of each room So I would encourage everybody check out thrive time show dot-com board slash credit dash cards right time show dot-com board slash credit dash card What would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they can save? $3,000 or more on credit card fees. Maybe they think it is a waste of time and that it won’t. It’s not possible. If there’s somebody out there that’s making more than $3,000 every 10 minutes and they’re like nah, that’s not worth my time. Hello, we getting there everybody, we getting there everybody. There’s probably some, someone out there. Okay. They would think that. Well I’ll just tell you folks, if you’re out there today and you’re making less than $3,000 per 10 minutes, I would highly recommend that you go to thronetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard because you can compare rates, you can save money and you know the big goal in my opinion of building a business is to create time, freedom and financial freedom and in order to do that you have to maximize your profits. Holy crap. Now one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue. Another way to do it is to decrease your expenses. It’s a profit deal. Takes the pressure off. JT, is there any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save a total of three thousand dollars a year on average. I am at a loss and I cannot think of any other. Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair. Conditioner is better. I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool, really. Stop looking at me swan. Let me tell you a good story here real quick. I actually years ago compared rates with this company here called IPS. It’s Integrated Payment Services. And I scheduled a consultation. I don’t know if I was skeptical. I just thought whatever. I’ll take 10 minutes. I’ll compare rates. I can’t tell. You can tell me I’m a doctor. No, I mean I’m just not sure. Why can’t you take a guess? Well, not for another two hours. You can’t take a guess for another two hours. And in my case, in my case, in my particular case, I save over $20,000 a year. Holy crap! Wow. Which is, you know, like groceries when my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great. Okay. Oh, God. Everything okay, ma’am? Oh, it’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items and it’s already 60 bucks. I’m so scared. Okay, I’m a trained professional, ma’am. I’ve scanned a lot of groceries. I need you to stay with me. It’s just that my in-laws are in town and they want a charcuterie board. This isn’t going to be easy, so I need you to be brave, all right? What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia, all right. I need you to take a deep breath. We’re about to do the cheese. You know, that’s the difference between eating organic and not organic. So because my wife eats organic, I had to take the 10 minutes needed to compare rates to save the $20,000 a year on credit card fees just for one of my companies. One question, what’s the brand name of the clock? The brand name of the clock, Rod, do we have it? The brand name of the clock, it’s an elegant, from Ridgway. It’s from Ridgway. Let’s buy the clock and sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. You schedule a free consultation, request information, a member of our team will call you, they’ll schedule a free consultation. It should take you 10 minutes or less. And they’re going to compare rates and see if they can’t save you more than $3,000 a year off of your credit card processing. You were hoping what? I wouldn’t owe you money at the end of the day. No, you don’t owe us money. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the goal of the business is to create time freedom and financial freedom. And in order to do that, you need to create additional profits. Let’s go. Let’s go. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So, what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now. Okay. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has. By being consistent and diligent on doing a podcast, and staying on top of those podcasts, to really help with getting up on, with our listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, you know, asking our customers for reviews, and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest and Lawn Company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay, so 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. is about 85%. And that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten people really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals and more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible. But the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned, that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut and we didn’t know… The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year. But we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So we just wanna give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore, I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42 percent increase, month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof and turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy’s just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockrell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. Think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. In the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from start-ups go from start-up to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. And that’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. And Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve got nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey, guys. I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right. This is where we used to live years ago. This is our old team and by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to 14, and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s 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 it. If we go back eight years ago, think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to their call. Okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s an up and down roller coaster. So now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. So I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business For the somebody out there who struggles with math if you would say that your average Number of clients was 30 and you go to 100 is a percentage. What is that? I I have grown I have doubled every year Since working with you, so I’ve doubled and clients have doubled in revenue Every year it’s a hundred percent growth growth every year I’ve worked with. So I’m looking, we’ve been good friends seven, eight years and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean the first time you do it, that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, as I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take, no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. Well, I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management, he said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. And so that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every 100 calls. We make 200 to 300 calls a day per rep. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day on that script. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between 200 and 300 calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do… If someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe further down the road, maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012 and at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met, how did we meet? What was the first interaction? There was some interaction where you and I first connected. I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But do you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well we had that speaking thing. Oh, there it was! So it’s Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redman. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help direct my life, to get some mentorship. But I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant. I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. And the experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life-changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe, wherever I end up, will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say almost everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn. I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then, again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. Working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence. And then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life, that standard of excellence that you want to implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall, in the group interview, talks about how the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal-oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory, and we’re on our own trajectory, and the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship, that as we pursue our goals, and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I’d say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that, I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know, he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. He’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s, again, unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that are satisfied with mediocrity, people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people, in short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time, the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks, he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay. I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day actually. I carried a notebook with me all around and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.