Clay Clark | The 18 Accounting Terms Every Entrepreneur Must Learn With Marvin Morse

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s what I’m a dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and that’s what you gotta do. Marvin, thank you for being on the show, my friend. Thank you, Clem. Pleasure to be here. Well, before we get into the 18 accounting terms that every entrepreneur must learn. I really want to ask you here, how long have you been an accountant, my friend? Well, let’s just say it’s been over 40 years. Really? Okay, so you’ve probably seen in your career some extreme examples of what to do and what not to do? I’ve seen a lot, yes. Okay, okay. And before we kind of delve into the magical world of accounting, I really want to get to, I want to ask you this here. Do you believe that most entrepreneurs who are operating without a bookkeeper are doing things the wrong way? I mean, do you believe that most entrepreneurs who do not have a professional bookkeeper are probably doing things the wrong way? More than likely, yes. Okay, well, I’m going to get into these terms and when I, I’m going to kind of read the definition and I’d like for you to kind of add a little bit of a texture and explain to us what you think they, what it means from your perspective and then give us some examples of really what some of the things we shouldn’t be doing or some of the common mistakes entrepreneurs make. So I’ll kind of lead you through it. So here we go. Term number one is the balance sheet. The financial statement that gives business owners a quick look of the company’s financial situation at a particular date and time. This statement features the assets, liabilities, and equity. Marvin, from your perspective, what is a balance sheet really? Well, a balance sheet is, like you had mentioned, it’s a snapshot look of the assets and liabilities of an organization at a specific point in time, list the assets and liabilities. But if you delve a little deeper than that, it reveals things about the liquidity of the organization, their ability to pay their bills when they come due, the debt to equity ratios that are so important in maintaining your solvency, and that type of thing. What are some of the most common mistakes that business owners make when it comes to their balance sheet? I mean, you see it all the time, I’m sure, but what are some of the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make? We see a lot of them not recording liabilities that exist. Really? So their balance sheet may look better than the facts would really indicate. So they maybe owe a bunch of money to other people and maybe don’t put that on there? Correct. Or what what ways do they have kind of a blue-sky perspective to their liabilities? Like what kind of things do they not put on there conveniently? Trade accounts payable. Okay. All right. Notes payable. Okay. And as a business owner, you just have to have an accurate balance sheet to know where you’re headed, right? Correct. Absolutely. Now, the second term I want to get into is assets. I think a lot of people get this confused, but assets is all the stuff that a company owns to run its business. This includes the buildings, the land, the vehicles, the furniture, the intellectual property, the cash. But Marvin, in your mind, what is an asset? That is any item that has future value to the organization. So as far as the assets and keeping track of the value of the assets, what are some common mistakes that entrepreneurs make when dealing with the value of their business assets? Well, many owners attribute more value to some of their assets than is really realistic, such as used furniture, used data processing equipment, and that sort of thing. I think I put an artificially high value on my former porcelain penguin I used to have as a doorstop in my old home office there, so I don’t know if that had the value that I- That would be a great example. Okay, now term number three, liabilities. Now this includes all of the debt that a company owes, such as unpaid bills, loans, bonds, etc. Marvin, in your mind, what is a liability? Well, a liability is any obligation, of course, for which the organization is responsible. Whether or not that liability would be recorded on the balance sheet or not. One of my first businesses I started was called DJ Connection. What we would do is we would do entertainment for weddings and corporate events. We would charge the customer a deposit to reserve our services. Then we would go out and do the event six to ten months later, typically. So a bride would get engaged, she’d book the DJ. We don’t have the DJ for her until the summer. So we’d have her deposit. And so when I met with an accountant, he pointed out that I had all these liabilities because in theory, I still owe these people service that I hadn’t rendered yet. It’s a very good example. And I had that all messed up. So talk to me about liabilities and maybe some of the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs you see make a lot of times as it relates to their liabilities. Well, I think, again, the failure to record them. Or in your example, you just mentioned you might perhaps receive that money recorded as income when in fact it really isn’t income now, it’s a liability until you provide that service. And so in that case, you would be overstating your income and understating your liabilities. Leases are very real liabilities, but don’t typically get recorded on the balance sheet. Oh, a lease. So you owe money on the rest of your lease, your monthly payment. Correct. So let’s just say my lease was 2,000 a month and it was for five years. I might have a $120,000 liability there. That’s correct. Okay. So do you feel like that, and I just wanna make sure if you’re watching this and you’re thinking, why do I need to know this stuff? Well, if you go and try to get a bank loan or you try to expand your business to get the capital you need, banks want to know this stuff. That’s right, Clay. And if they don’t feel comfortable that your financials accurately reflect all your liabilities, they’ll likely just take the easy way out and decline your loan. And this is, if you’re watching this and you feel like, oh man, I’ve been in business for five years and I’ve never done this stuff, I don’t think you should beat yourself up, but you really do need a bookkeeper, right? Someone to help you with this? That’s correct. Someone that understands basic bookkeeping and accounting, that can at least get the essentials recorded properly in your financial statements. And our goal here today is so that as you’re watching this, maybe you can get familiar with these terms to the point that you can have a coherent conversation with your actual bookkeeper or your tax service provider or your accountant there. Let’s talk about now term number four, equity. This is the total amount of money that has been invested in the company by its owners. If a small business is owned by one person or the group of humans, then this total should be shown in a capital account. Talk to me about why it’s important to keep track of the equity of a business. Well, the equity is a reflection of the, essentially, the accumulated funds that have been put into business by the owner, and the earnings of the entity since its inception. It’s important, it’s used a lot by, again, the banking and the bonding industries to gauge a company’s ability to take on debt. Maybe you’ve heard the term debt to work ratio. Yeah. So, so that it is, it’s used quite a bit, but yet it’s never given much attention to by anyone. But it is, is an important number that appears in your balance sheet. And if you have aspirations to grow a business from small to big, you really need to know this. You need to, you need to understand your liabilities, your equity, your assets, because again, if not, you can’t get bank loans, you can’t grow your business. It’s really important for you to understand this. Do you find that almost every business owner, when you first sit down and look at their numbers, that their equity is wrong, and their liabilities are wrong, and their assets are wrong? I mean, is it usually just… Typically, if they’ve had no assistance. Okay. Okay. To that point, right. So don’t beat yourself up if that’s you. It’s OK. Now we’re moving on to the income statement. Turn number five. Turn number five. This is the financial statement that provides an overall summary of a company’s activity, financially speaking, over a given period of time. In your mind, what’s an income statement? Well, an income statement is a reflection of a given time period of the funds that were earned by a company, not necessarily collected. Because if you’re using accrual basis accounting, which is the preferred method for management purposes, you’re oftentimes allowed to use cash for tax purposes. However, accrual basis is the amount you’ve earned during the period, not what you’ve collected, and your expenses are those that have been likewise incurred during the period. If I’m watching this and I have no idea what the word accrual means, can you walk me through what that word means? Accrual means you recognize events at the time the event occurs. For example, you do a job and you send an invoice to your customer. At that point in time under accrual method you recognize an account receivable and revenue. Whereas if you are using the cash method you would do nothing at that point in time. When you collect your money you would show cash and revenue. So if you had like a balance sheet you would record the income the moment that you sent somebody an invoice whether you actually had the money or not? Correct. If it was accrual. Okay. Right. Now we’re moving on to term number six, revenue. This refers to all the money that has been brought in through the process of selling goods and services. In layman’s terms, what is revenue? Well, revenue are the, essentially, the sources of, ultimately, catch that a business realizes from providing the goods and or services that it operates within. So when most when you look at most business owners and you look at their you know you look at their accounting situation where are some of the most common mistakes that business owners make as it relates to calculating their revenues? Well again probably the maybe the failure to record it at the time they earn it, or also to reduce it at the time maybe they realize it’s not going to be collectible if someone doesn’t pay you. I think one common pitfall I see is too much of an emphasis on revenue. Entrepreneurs tend to be very intense on revenue and if revenue is well or is increasing, they think everything is fine. The problem is if you are not making a profit on that revenue, that can be very deceiving. So entrepreneurs tend to naturally focus more on the top line, the total revenue, and not necessarily the bottom line they have left? That seems to be the case. What causes the psychosis that we all do? Why do entrepreneurs, why do we do this? What makes us do this in your mind? I believe it’s a combination of just intensity of the business and the enjoyment of doing more business Yeah It’s much more fun to make a sale than it is to decline a sale because you couldn’t make a profit on the sale Oh, and so entrepreneurs tend to have an inclination to do the sale close the deal Do whatever it takes to get the job. Kind of interesting because you’re self-employed, right? That’s correct. And you’ve been self-employed for a long time. So you’re an entrepreneur, but you have kind of an analytical view of things. I think it’s important that every entrepreneur who’s watching this, you understand how important it is to have a guy like Marvin, a CPA, a certified, you know, basically somebody who understands taxes and really get… Are you a CPA? I am a CPA, Certified Public Accountant. When you’re a CPA, not always, but as a general rule, the CPAs I’ve worked with are a little more analytical than the entrepreneur who’s kind of hell-bent on growth and driving and revenue. I think it’s so important to have a mentor in your corner that can help kind of bring that analytical perspective. Do you find a lot of times with entrepreneurs that you’re the only person in the room in some of these businesses that has that analytical bent? That is right. Okay, and that’s kind of your job. That’s why they pay me the big bucks. All right. To help them figure that out. Well, I’m just mentioning this because if you hire an accountant, I remember when I hired my first accountant, a guy by the name of Frank Biskup, a great guy in Tulsa here. He was a great accountant for me. And when I hired Frank, I was so frustrated that he kept bringing up these details. And he kept thinking so analytically. And he was so focused on the numbers. And why can’t he just let me run my business? And- Make the sale. Yeah, and Frank had said, you know, hey, it’s not so much how much money you make, it’s how much you keep. And I’ll never forget him mentioning that over and over and over. So I just, if you’re watching this and you say, well, I would hire an accountant, but they’re so analytical, I’m just telling you, you need that balance. You really do. It’s important. Very important. Now, we’re talking now about point number seven here, costs of goods sold. So all the money that goes into purchasing or producing the services and products that a company plans to sell to buyers. Can you maybe add some clarity about what that means, the cost of goods sold? Cost of goods sold are the direct cost of selling the product, making and or selling the product or the service. And I see lots of businesses fail because of their inability to properly identify their true cost of goods sold. They tend to leave out things. For example, they leave out workers’ comp insurance, or they leave out liability insurance, or they leave out the light bill on the shop. All those things are really an integral part of producing the good or service. And so they not only don’t call it cost of goods sold in their books, they don’t use it when they go to bid their work. And so for the thrivers watching this, we’ll put a little graphic on the screen so they can get it, but what you’re saying is, let’s just say that I’m a plumber, and I might say, well, my costs of goods sold are just paying my guys. My guys go out, my guys go in, and I pay for their gas. But you’re saying, no, no, no, you’re paying your guys to come in, to come out, and you’re paying their gas, but now you’re also paying for the vehicles, you’re paying for the workers’ comp, you’re paying for the light bill, you’re paying for the office space, all of that factors in. That’s correct. Okay. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t seem to realize that immediately. And again, if you’re somebody who’s crazy enough to go out there and start a business, and to believe- Well, you have to be crazy to start your own business. There you go. I’ve been in business for 40 years. So you’ve had your crazy, you’re done being crazy now. You were crazy back then now, and now you’ve kind of, now it’s an established business, now you’re not as crazy. Not quite as crazy. Okay. Well, if you’re crazy enough to go out there and start your own business, I’m just telling you honestly, you have to be a little bit optimistic. You have to be a little bit passionate. You have to be, and so that passion and optimism sometimes can glaze over some of these details, and that’s what creates a problem, and that’s why we need accountants. That’s right. Now, let me get into expenses. Number eight, expenses. This refers to all the money that has been spent to operate a company that is not directly related to the sale of the individual goods or services. So walk me through what the word expenses means in your mind. As distinguished from cost of goods, which are really expenses, but they’re expenses that are directly attributable to providing the service. General selling, general and administrative expenses are more along the lines of expenses that are going to occur whether you make this particular sale or not. The phone bill in the office, the office personnel. Could you just because there’s a lot of terminology that I want to make sure Thrivers get very familiar with. Could you say that the cost of goods sold is kind of like your variable costs and your expense is your expenses could be considered like your fixed costs like you might have to pay more for lease this month because you sold more or less units. That’s correct. OK. Very, very good. OK. Very good analysis. So what is the most common mistake that business owners make when they’re looking at their expenses? Do they just miss big expenses, or what happens? I think the biggest mistake that I see is they fail to anticipate all these expenses. And when they do their business plan, they determine their startup capital or their budget for the year, that type of thing. They simply don’t figure that they’ve got the phone bill and the cell phone bill and the office insurance and the property tax bill and things of that nature that they don’t think of. And then when those items come along and have to be paid, then that disrupts their budget and disrupts their profitability. So you continue as the accountant to have to be the non-fun guy. You have to bring up all the detailed expenses that entrepreneurs can think about. No fun at all. Now, term number nine here, we’re talking about the accounting period. This refers to the amount of time for which financial information is being tracked. Walk me through what that means in layman’s terms? Well, the accounting period is the period that’s covered by the income statement, typically. Preferably, you’re looking at your monthly accounting period seeing your results of operations for the month. You probably should be comparing that to the month from the year before. You probably also want to be looking at the year-to-date accounting period, say the first six months, you know, through June 30, and again comparing that to the prior six month period. So if you’re talking to your accountant and he says, he mentions the word accounting period, hopefully you’re not going to be able to do that anymore. What are some common mistakes people make when they get into their accounting period? Do they kind of every month make it a little different or do they change things around to make the numbers look better sometimes or do they get… I suppose that’s possible although I don’t see that a lot. Okay. The advent of the counting software kind of locks you in to your reporting periods. Okay. Some businesses might make a mistake on choosing their tax year end, that type of thing. Although most businesses anymore are dictated under internal revenue code regulations to use a December year end. But I really don’t think it’s so important what your year end is as long as you’re tracking and when you’re comparing this month and this period to the previous period. I see that as being a big mistake or a big tool that entrepreneurs don’t take advantage of. They tend to just look at, here’s my profit and loss for the last six months. It looks good. There’s money on the bottom line. They don’t compare it to the six months a year ago and see that sales are actually trending down. Cost of goods sold are actually trending up. up, selling general administrative is up 10%, and over time, that can create problems, of course. Now, how often do you recommend someone meets with their accountant so that they can detect these trends? Is monthly a good idea? Would you advise? Probably quarterly. Quarterly? I think there should be some initial counseling and training. Ideally, the entrepreneur would learn to do this on their own. Therefore, they wouldn’t have to go to their accountant unless there was something they didn’t understand about their analysis, but I would think a good accountant would attempt to train their client to do some of this analysis themselves and then maybe meet periodically with their accountant to just make sure they’re interpreting it correctly and that type of thing. How much time should an entrepreneur be devoting to looking at their numbers each month? Well, I would vary a tremendous amount by the size and type of the business. But they should at a minimum be studying those financials even for the simplest of businesses. One thing is they should do it every month. Okay, every month. Not once a year or when they get something back from their CPA. Maybe that’s too late, of course. So in order to spot trends and identify problems before they get to be a larger problem, you need to be looking at it monthly. Maybe you could look at your financials and it might take you four hours to analyze it. I might, mine may be very simple and I can look at it in 30 minutes. Okay. So I don’t think you can say, I think it’s just whatever time is required to get a thorough understanding. And if you can’t do it on your own, then seek help from your accountant. But at least every month? A minimum every month. Okay, okay. Just want to make sure you’re hearing that. If you’re watching this and you’re going, I haven’t looked at my numbers in a while, that’s a bad deal. We want to just look at each month at least, get in there, do a deep dive, know what’s going on, so that way you don’t get behind the eight ball and find yourself in a bad situation there. Correct. And a lot of entrepreneurs say, well I don’t need, I’ve got money in the bank, I don’t need to worry about my numbers. But that of course obviously isn’t true because even though there’s money in the bank, there could be liabilities piling up somewhere else that are more than the money in the bank. Good example, your deposit for future services. Even though you’ve got money in the bank, if you collected that $4,000 deposit for future services and immediately spend it on a new car, then you’ve got to do an event in the future for which you won’t have any more revenue or less revenue coming in. So that’s a good example of how just looking at the money in the bank can be very deceiving. Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re watching this and you’re saying to yourself, man, I have no idea how important this is. Don’t feel like you’re lost. Don’t feel like there’s no hope. We just need to find a good bookkeeper, a good accountant, and have the diligence to monthly look at these numbers. Now we’re getting here into the term number 10, accounts receivable. This is an account used to track all the customer to have credit so that the customer can provide payment at a later date. What does that mean? Well, it just means you’re providing a good or service and you’re not getting paid for it. You are extending credit to your customer expecting to be paid for it within a reasonable period of time. It’s very common in certain types of business. Of course, the rule of thumb is if you can get your money, get it now. Yeah. Rather than carry accounts receivable because the pitfall of carrying accounts receivable is even though it’s a valid asset, it requires capital. Yeah. So the bigger your accounts receivable, the more capital you’ve got to have in your business to continue paying your bills when they come due. This almost wiped me out when I first started in business because I was doing a lot of business for school proms I was providing entertainment services for schools and those guys like to pay like net 30 Net 60 I guess when I say net that means that they’re not going to pay me what they owe me for 60 days or 30 days and I had to pay my staff and pay for my team and pay my lease and pay my ads and I thought well As soon as I DJ for that prom or provide entertainment service, they’ll pay me. And that was not the case. And so this was a very big thing. It can be very deceiving. It was bad. It was bad. So please learn from my errors there. Just make sure you’re budgeting out and not – don’t count your accounts receivable as cash in hand until you actually have it. That’s good, yes. Now term number 11, accounts payable. This is the account that is used to track all the unpaid bills from vendors, consultants, companies, and individuals from whom the company buys goods or services. Talk to me about accounts payable. What does that mean? Why do I need to care about it? It’s a legal liability. Accounts payable are a legal liability, so you must plan on paying it or having someone probably take you to court to collect it. So it’s a legally enforceable obligation. And so therefore, it should be important to you. You’ve incurred a legal liability to pay someone, generally within a stated time. And so you should have the ability to fulfill that obligation. And the typical mistake that most entrepreneurs make is not keeping track of the total liabilities they’re incurring. They’re maybe piling up unopened on the desk rather than being open processed through the accounting system and appearing on that monthly balance sheet so that you know what kind of liability you’re building. That may change your thought process on whether you can buy the new piece of equipment or that type of thing with the utilization of your cash. So if you’re an entrepreneur watching this and you’re kind of the I don’t like to open mail guy where you typically don’t look at the mail, you typically don’t deal with bills promptly, this is for you. Open those bills, process those, run them through the system and that will affect your spending habits moving forward. Absolutely. Now, we’re moving on to depreciation. This was a term that I never understood at all until about four years into business. And it says it’s in reference to the accounting method that is used to track the use of assets and their aging. Every asset a business has ages and will eventually need to be replaced, including equipment, electronics, buildings, et cetera. Talk to me about depreciation and why we need to chart this stuff. Well, you sure opened up a topic of conversation on that one, Clay. There’s a lot of confusion about depreciation that’s allowable for income tax purposes versus realistic depreciation that truly reflects the economic life of any given asset. The Internal Revenue Code has been very liberal in recent years, allowing entrepreneurs to write off assets the very first year that they purchase them, which may be good. We recommend that in a lot of cases simply to lower the tax liability. Yeah. But the pitfall that most entrepreneurs make in this area is they record that same aggressive, very rapid write off depreciation used for income tax purposes. They use that for their financial statements. And so that becomes an expense, it lowers equity, and when you go in to your banker to make a loan to buy that new piece of equipment, he looks at it and says, well you have no equity. Let’s assume that I’m a third grader and I’m from a different planet, or at least maybe a different country, and I kind of sort of understand English. So walk me through this, because you threw out a lot of terminology there that I think maybe some of the thrivers might not get there. So you’re saying that the depreciation, the government allows me to be liberal with it. If I say I bought a printer for $1,000, the government lets me write all of that off my taxes up front sometimes? That’s correct. Okay, so I write the whole thing off and so I said I bought it for $1,000. When it comes time to pay taxes, let’s say I owe $10,000 in taxes, I can say, well, I spent $1,000 on my printer and reduce my taxes a little bit. That’s correct. Now, where do we make the wrong turn now? The wrong turn is on the balance sheet and profit and loss that’s maintained and provided to bankers, bonding companies, whatever the case might be, is you would want to assign the true economic life to that printer. Let’s say that printer will last 10 years. Then your depreciation each year would be $100. So that in your financial statement, you’re showing depreciation expense this year of $100, which therefore you show a greater profit than you’re showing on your tax return where you’re showing depreciation for $1,000, the entire cost of the printer. Okay, so what would be if you are an entrepreneur, do you recommend that an entrepreneur tries to do their own depreciation schedules? Or do you recommend they have an accountant to help them with this? I would categorically say they should let an accountant handle that. If you’re watching this and you’re going, no, no, no, I want to do. We strongly recommend that you do not do this. Now we’re moving on to term number 13, the general ledger. This is the place where the company’s accounts are summarized. This ledger is kind of like the big kahuna. I mean, this is the big deal when it comes to your overall bookkeeping system. Why is the general ledger so important? a summary place for all the transactions that are encountered and entered into by the organization. And so you have to have a general ledger just to have a place in your accounting records to summarize all your activities by category, such as direct labor, insurance expense, both assets, liabilities, income, and expense. And the general ledger, the pitfall I see there with entrepreneurs is they don’t design their general ledger correctly to begin with. Initially, you should develop a coding scenario. It’s referred to as a chart of accounts, you then have a general ledger account. And so with the software that’s available to do bookkeeping accounting with currently, once you design the proper chart of accounts, that pretty much assures you have the correct general ledger. So the problem I typically see is that we don’t design the chart of accounts properly. We don’t put in certain expenses. Or we put them in a broad sense like, what is a good example, insurance expense. We have one category called insurance expense and we’re charging medical, liability, workers comp, disability, fire and casualty, all of this going into one category and you might say well it is all insurance and I agree and IRS will accept that. They don’t care that you put all your insurance in one category. My recommendation is that you would split those out into the types so that when you engage in this comparing of expenses for this six month this year to the six months last year you can see that this expense is way up. This one’s down. In other words, it gives you better ability to manage expenses. And kind of adding a little entrepreneurial spin to this for a second, if you’re watching this, and let’s say that you spend $1,000 a month on advertising as a big broad brush, advertising. That might not be helpful for you to know that. That might not be helpful at all for you to know that. But if you know that you spend $900 on your internet advertising, and you spend $100 on your mailers, and your internet advertising produces you zero business, and you get all your business off of your mailers, then you can know, hey, next year, I need to reallocate, I need to move money from here and focus it here. Same thing with accounting. I mean, in accounting, the more specific it is, the more it gives you mastery over, wow, I’m spending a lot more money than I thought I should in this specific area. But when you group things into big, broad blocks, it becomes impossible to sort them out, right? That’s correct. And that’s another area where a good advisor or a good accountant can help the entrepreneur when they’re starting out or even after they’re already in business. Maybe they need to expand and improve upon their chart of account. Their accountant should be able to help them along those lines. Now we’re getting to term 14. Here we go. Talking about interest. Interest. This is defined as the money that a company needs to pay for the use of money it borrows from a bank or other company. Where do companies usually get it wrong as it relates to interest? And what does interest mean? Well, interest, of course, is the cost of using somebody else’s money. Some people have referred to it as renting money. Renting money, OK. And so interest is not a bad thing if it’s used correctly. Some of the mistakes I see regarding interest is that entrepreneurs don’t split out their principal and interest. So they make a payment to the bank and they charge the entire payment against the note payable on the balance sheet and they don’t show any interest expense in their profit and loss. I see that quite often. Okay. The other risk of interest is that you have to look at interest from the standpoint of what does that do to your profitability? Can you, you know, with the incurring of this interest, does it still allow you to make profits on your job? Or is it going to render you to where even though you can do more work, maybe the cost of the interest is so great? I see this as a small business more than anything. When someone’s starting up a business, and let’s say they need to borrow $50,000. So they’ll put it on an American Express card and they’ll charge it up there. Well, now they’re paying 15% interest every month just to use the money. They’re not even paying the principal down at all. And so they just spent $50,000 on the card, but their interest payments are substantial. They might be $6,000 or $7,000 a month in just interest. And so it becomes very hard to make a profit there. So you just got to be mindful of that, right? Very careful. And a good accountant can help you find out if you’re wasting money on interest, maybe consolidate a few loans into one place. There’s a lot of things you can do there. We’re moving here now on to inventory. Term number 15, inventory. This is the account that tracks all the products that are sold to buyers. Why do we need to keep track of inventory and what is inventory? Inventory is any product, good, tangible item that is held for sale to others. It does not include the tables, chairs, IT equipment that is not held for sale to others. Those are called fixed assets. So inventory is items held for sale, and they are an asset because it’s something you’ve either paid or owed for that you’re offering to sell. And then so you carry it as an asset on your balance sheet. And then when you sell the item, you remove it from inventory as an asset on the balance sheet and show it as a cost of goods sold. Okay. Some typical mistakes I see, difficulties is keeping up with inventory. I see entrepreneurs that make a sale with something of inventory, but they leave it in inventory. So it makes their profit and loss look really nice because there’s no, they sold the widget for $1,000, but they didn’t take out of inventory the $800 cost and show it as a cost. This can be very dangerous to not keep track of inventory. That’s correct. So if you have like a retail shop or a business that sells a lot of products, you keep an inventory. Again, is it in this case, would you have a bookkeeper coming almost once a week? No, I think I would probably recommend that depending on the type of business, either a perpetual inventory that the entrepreneur or someone in their office would keep track of, or if not, a physical inventory count at the end of the month so that if inventory in your books is not correct, it can be adjusted to whatever the result of your physical account is. And I don’t necessarily think you’d need to have the accountant do that. Someone in the organization could count it and put the cost on it. You might get the accountant’s help as far as how it’s recorded, that type of thing. So a lot of entrepreneurs never take a physical inventory. How often should we be taking a physical inventory Marvin? My argument is every month because it to me it’s important to have accurate monthly financials. Okay. If you if you feel confident that your inventory is correct without the physical inventory and maybe not once a month but even if not once a month at least quarterly so that you at least you know if you’re not getting it exactly right on a monthly basis, you catch it up at the end of the quarter. But if you’ve got large inventory, a lot of small items, probably that physical is going to be the only surefire way of making sure your inventory is accurate. And Clay, also a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs don’t realize that they have to pay property tax on their inventory. That’s another sneaky expense that slips up on a lot of entrepreneurs. That is, you’re like a demotivational speaker when you start talking about paying taxes on that inventory stuff. So that’s something no one wants to talk about, but something that’s true. Need to be aware of it. It’s a real liability. And if you don’t file your property tax report, the county assessor will give you an ugly call or ugly letter or assess you, a tax on it, using outrageously high figures. Let me ask you this then. Let’s say that I own a retail shop and I have $1,000 of products. What kind of tax do I pay on a monthly basis on that? What kind of property tax do I pay on that? Okay, well it isn’t monthly, it’s once a year. Once a year. In Tulsa County and most counties throughout the country, they have an annual property tax report where you declare your taxable assets and send it down to the county assessor and then later on in the year, usually October or November, they send you back a bill. And the bill is usually, it varies by school district as to how much the bill will be. It’s usually assessed at maybe 10 or 11 percent of what of the original cost. Really? Then multiplied by the rate in effect for your school district. It’s not very fun. It’s not any fun at all. Okay, all right. You know, you are a fun guy, despite the fact that you’re giving us all this unfun information. This is just real talk with an accountant with 40 years of experience, right? Yes, sir. Did you invent the word accounting, or are you one of the founders of that word? It was not nearly as well known when I first got into business. It’s unbelievable, and you’re like the corrective business coach for all these businesses. All these entrepreneurs come in with their wild ideas and you have to sit down and reel us all in, don’t you? I’ve done quite a bit of that. Okay. They’re a bear of bad news, I guess. Yeah. Okay, now we’re moving into journals. Term number 16. This one number is named after Joe Montana. Term number 16, Joe Montana, Super Bowl champion quarterback. Here we go. This is the place where bookkeepers keep the records of the day, records of the daily transactions of a business. They then save this information in chronological order. Each active account has its own journal. Talk to me about journals. Why do we have to keep journals? What’s a big mistake entrepreneurs are making? Well, journals anymore with the software that’s available are functions of the software package. Okay. So your typical journal you would think of would be your sales journal where you record your sales and your accounts receivable is generated out of that. Okay. Your purchases or accounts payable journal where you record all your expenses and generate, you know, generate the accounts payable, and then you have cash receipts and disbursements where you enter all checks, all checks in the cash disbursements journal, all deposits in the cash receipts journal. And at that time, they’re coded based on this chart of accounts that we spoke of earlier. And then the software automatically puts that into the general ledger where we mentioned earlier that there’s an account for each item. Where are most entrepreneurs making common mistakes here as relates to their journals? Are they just not doing them? Are they trying to do them by hand? What kind of mistakes are we seeing big problems with here? Either they’re not doing them, they’re just keeping a checkbook with no real accounting system. I see that occasionally. We immediately insist that they get an accounting package and either engage our, you know, the firm or somebody, anybody to start entering these transactions and processing them through these journals. Is there a software package that you recommend? It’s the one that seems to be the most popular and the most user-friendly where non-accountants can muddle their way through it. Yeah. It’s a software developed and provided by a company called Intuit. Okay. And it’s referred to as QuickBooks. So QuickBooks is the Marvin Morris is a sensational, wonderful world of accounting recommended software. Yes, and mainly because it’s easy to train our accountants, our clients how to use it. Okay, you don’t have to be an accountant to figure it out. You can, if you’ve never done accounting with a little bit of training and explanation, you can learn to get your items in QuickBooks. Now, you may have questions from time to time that something comes up you don’t know how to handle. You don’t know what journal to put it in or what chart of account code to charge it to, or you’ve taken out a note and you don’t know how to get that on your books. That’s where the good relationship with the accountant’s office would pay off, because you could simply call up or email and find out how to do that. You just have to have an accounting service help you do that. It’s the safety. Okay. Now, moving on to turn number 17. Here we go. Turn number 17. Here we go, the folks at home are excited. Here we go. Payroll. This refers to how a company pays its employees. Managing the payroll is typically a core function of the bookkeeper. It involves reporting much information to the government. Payroll, first off, what does payroll mean? What are we talking about here? Well, payroll, of course, is the process of not only paying your employees when payday rolls around, but also withholding taxes, depositing those taxes with the state and federal authorities on a timely basis so you don’t incur major penalties, recording them into your books in a proper place such as payroll tax expense and direct labor and general administrative salaries. That’s the process of payroll. What kind of mistakes do entrepreneurs make on payroll? Is it just filing everything wrong and not withholding taxes? Is it just… What’s the most common errors you see? There’s so many errors. Okay. First, one big error is entrepreneurs treat employees as independent contractors when they’re really not. They don’t even, they don’t withhold taxes. They just write them a check. And that can lead to some very unpleasant situations if the employee becomes unemployed and goes down for unemployment or that type of thing and you’ve not treated them as an employee, it could get kind of ugly. That’s the first mistake. The second mistake is they try to do it themselves. I don’t recommend that most entrepreneurs do their own payroll, that they would engage a payroll company to do that. What does that cost? I mean, if I’m watching this and I’m doing, let’s say I do $50,000 a week of business, or $50,000 a year of business, so just like myself and one employee, is a bookkeeper a hundred bucks a week or is it thousands of dollars a week? I mean, what’s a bookkeeper cost to do these kinds of payroll services? There are companies that specialize just in payroll. Okay. They don’t do your bookkeeping, but they will process your payroll. They’ll either send you checks to sign to give to your employees and or they’ll direct deposit the employees money in their account. They will either pay your federal and state withholding and Social Security and Medicare for you or send you checks so you can take them down to your bank and do it. They’ll send you a summary showing how to record your payroll in your books so that you’re showing all your different payroll and payroll tax expenses. There’s national organizations. There’s local payroll services in each locale. They typically run what, in your example, I would imagine that process would cost you maybe $50 a month, $600 a year. Really? And what do you get for that? You get the ability not to spend time on payroll. You don’t have to worry about payroll tax deposits being made late. The penalties on that alone can be 20 percent. So it would not take many missed deposit deadlines to more than equal the $600 cost of the payroll service. Yeah. That’s why I categorically recommend that service through startup onto manures. Now, after a bookkeeper is on board, if that person has the time and the inclination, then they perhaps could do the payroll internally. Now, what about the trial balance? This is the final term, number 18, numbered here after Peyton Manning. This is in honor of Peyton Manning, number 18. Here we go. The trial balance. This is the process that you use to make sure that the books are in balance before pulling together the information for the financial reports, ultimately closing the books for the specific accounting period. Marvin, trial balance, why do we need to know about this and where do entrepreneurs typically go wrong? Well, a trial balance is simply a listing by account number of every category in the general ledger. So rather than produce the general ledger that shows every transaction that the business has incurred that month or that year to date or whatever time period you’re looking, whatever accounting period you’re studying, could be numerous pages. The trial balance simply takes the ending balance each of those categories and just produces a two or three page printout of that. So overall, when it comes to being familiar with these terms, in your mind, does it make sense for every entrepreneur to at least know what these terms are and then go out and immediately find an accountant or bookkeeper if they don’t have one? Well, I certainly think they need an accountant or bookkeeper because there’s not – there’s only very few entrepreneurs, unless they’re an accountant, starting their own firm, but not too many entrepreneurs doing that. So they just don’t have the necessary background and training. They need advice. It’s good that they have a general sense of these items. I wouldn’t say they have to have a deep understanding of how, if they have a good relationship with their accountant, the accountant should be able to cut right to the chase and help them identify the things they really need to know to run their business. Because, you know, we can’t forget that the entrepreneur doesn’t make any money studying accounting. He makes, he produces revenue by going out and selling or performing the work. So while this is all very important, it needs to be done in a very expedient, efficient manner so that the entrepreneur can be back on the job producing revenue or there won’t be any need to study these numbers because he won’t make profit and he won’t be in business. I love how you see the balance there. You see the entrepreneur should do what he does well, the accountant should be doing what they do well, and you work together as a team there. Yes. And I just want to belabor this because I know I meet probably three out of four entrepreneurs that reach out to me for help as a consultant who do not have an account, who do not have a bookkeeper. And I’m always like, please go find one. You know, I try to stress as much as I can, go find a bookkeeper. Can you just, the final thing I wanted to clarify is, can you clarify what the difference between an accountant and a bookkeeper is? Are they one and the same? Are they different? What are the roles of the accountant and the bookkeeper? Well, typically, you know, the bookkeeper is maybe someone that doesn’t have a degree in accounting, that has studied, maybe has been out in business and learned it just by doing it. Maybe they worked under someone for a period of time. They’ve been doing bookkeeping for a number of years, and they’ve just pretty well learned how to be a fairly good bookkeeper just by the process of being exposed to it. Whereas an accountant, you think more of a maybe a degreed person or at least some amount of education to go with it and maybe having the ability to do maybe a little more than just the bookkeeper, you know, because the bookkeeper doesn’t have any training other than just what they’ve learned, you know, doing it down through the years. But there are many good bookkeepers that can keep very accurate balance sheets and profit and losses that are not, you know, accountants or CPAs. Well, Marvin, I appreciate you coming in here and introducing us to the Marvin Morse wonderful world of accounting. It has certainly lived up to the hype, and I appreciate you because these are things that entrepreneurs need to know that we just don’t know, and I think it’s important that we learn these terms and at least educate ourselves so we can have coherent conversations with these tax planning professionals. So thank you so much. Sure, my pleasure, Clay. Appreciate it. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Oklahoma, baby. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, but I’ve never had the two-time Heisman Award-winning Tim Tebow come present. And a lot of people, you know, if I followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field, and off the field the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tip Teebo is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Also, this is the first Thrive Time Show event that we’ve had where we’re going to have a man who has built a $100 million net worth. Wow. Who’ll be presenting. Now, we’ve had a couple of presenters that have had a billion dollar net worth in some real estate sort of things. But this is the first time we’ve had a guy who’s built a service business, and he’s built over $100 million net worth in the service business. It’s the yacht driving, multi-state living guru of franchising. Peter Taunton will be in the house. This is the founder of Snap Fitness, the guy behind Nine Round Boxing. He’s going to be here in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. JT, why should everybody want to hear what Peter Taunton has to say? Oh, because he’s incredible. He’s just a fountain of knowledge. He is awesome. He’s inspired me listening to him talk. And not only that, he also has, he practices what he teaches. So he’s a real teacher. He’s not a fake teacher like business school teachers. So you got to come learn from him. Also, let me tell you this, folks. I don’t get this wrong because I get it wrong. Someone’s going to say, you screwed that up, buddy. So Michael Levine, this is Michael Levine. He’s going to be coming. He said, who’s Michael Levine? I don’t get this wrong. This is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestselling authors he’s represented, including pretty much everybody you know who’s been a super celebrity. This is Michael Levine, a good friend of mine. He’s going to come and talk to you about personal branding and the mindset needed to be super successful. The lineup will continue to grow. We have hit Christian reporting artist Colton Dixon in the house. Now people say Colton Dixon’s in the house? Yes! Colton Dixon’s in the house. So if you like top 40 Christian music, Colton Dixon’s going to be in the house performing. The lineup will continue to grow each and every day. We’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup. But I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today go to thrive timeshow.com again that’s thrive timeshow.com and some people might be saying well how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to thrive timeshow.com let’s go there now we’re feeling the flow we’re going to thrive timeshow.com you just go to thrive timeshow.com you click on the business conferences button and you click on the request tickets button right there the way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket yep or whatever price that you could afford and the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Yep. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, when’s it going to be? June 27 and 28. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Jerusalem, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russia. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russia, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show in Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. So when? June 27th to 28th. Who? You! You’re gonna come! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com and again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets which give you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re gonna give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s Tebow time right here in Tulsa, Russelam. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years, 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars, and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies. And I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California, in the beautiful sunny weather of LA, come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing, and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine, I’ll see you in Tulsa. James, did I tell you my good friend John Lee Dumas is also joining us at the in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. That Tim Tebow and that Michael Levine will be at… have I told you this? You have not told me that. He’s coming all the way from Puerto Rico. This is John Lee Dumas, the host of the chart-topping EOFire.com podcast. He’s absolutely a living legend. This guy started a podcast after He’s absolutely a living legend. This guy started a podcast after wrapping up his service in the United States military and he started recording this podcast daily in his home to the point where he started interviewing big time folks like Gary Vaynerchuk, like Tony Robbins, and he just kept interviewing bigger and bigger names, putting out shows day after day. And now he is the legendary host of the EO Fire podcast and he’s traveled all the way from Puerto Rico to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop. If you’re out there today, folks, you’ve ever wanted to grow a podcast, a broadcast, you want to improve your marketing, if you’ve ever wanted to improve your marketing, your branding, if you’ve ever wanted to increase your sales, you want to come to the two-day interactive June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop featuring Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, John Lee Dumas and countless big-time, super successful entrepreneurs. It’s going to be life-changing. Get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com. James, what website is that? ThriveTimeshow.com. James, one more time for the four enthusiasts. ThriveTimeshow.com. Everything rides on tonight. Even if I got three strikes, I’ma go for it. This moment, we own it. I’m not to be played with because it could get dangerous. See, these people I ride with. This moment, we own it. Thrivetime Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and you’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same system that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever. We’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you got to do is go to thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York, octa non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Harvard Keosok University Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric, Eric Trump, but we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t – what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say. Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. And he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor and I owe a lot of that to you and I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success and I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you thank you sir for changing my life. Well not only that Clay, you know thank you but you’ve become an influencer. You know more than anything else you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changing my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa! Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school and I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us and getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool, the people are nice, it’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored. You’re awake, alive the whole time. It’s not pushy. They don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively, they’re pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. Biggest takeaways are, you know, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use, to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence. That businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort and you got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the road map out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do and he gave me the road map out step by step. He set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allowing me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want, they guarantee it will be answered. This conference like motivates me and also give me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things. There’s stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for you. I can see the marketing world taking it. It’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. It’s been super fun, super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivates me. Your competition is going to come eventually or try to pick up these tactics. So you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. This is where we used to live two years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing, and this is our new team. We went from four to 14, and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd. We’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. So we really just wanna thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. If you decide to not attend the Thrive Time workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The Atmosphere plays office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door. And it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business, bottom line. Love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing, I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned, marketing is key, marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me, as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group interviews has completely eliminated that because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands on how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing, and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me, and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business. It’s real critical if I’m gonna grow and change. Play really teaches you how to navigate through those things, and not only find freedom, but find your purpose in your business, and find the purposes for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real.