Clay Clark | Dr. Steve Greene | Celebrating the Life of the Late Great Entrepreneur, former Dean of Oral Roberts University, & the Consultant of Choice for McDonald’s, Stanley Steamer, etc. + Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

Audio Transcription

Oh, Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use. Because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body. Dr. Robert Zilner. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and I’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top Teaching you the systems to get what we got Colton Dixon’s on the hooks, I break down the books She’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the C and T up on your radio and podcast download. I think a lot of our listeners out there, according to the research that we’ve done and just interacting with you, the average listener, you are entrepreneurial minded. You have a, you kind of see problems and you want to solve them. You’re a goal-orientated person. You’re somebody who wants to achieve big things in your life. You want to create time freedom and financial freedom. And you’re somebody who, by and large, did not go to business school. And I think there’s a lot of anecdotal research out there that would indicate it’s probably a wise idea for many people to not go to college. I think there’s a lot of reasons out there that many entrepreneurs really, really should not go to college because going to college for a lot of people is a complete waste of time. And the reason why is because a lot of people are going to go to college and they’re going to spend a massive amount of time getting in debt and they’re not going to learn any practical skills. A lot of people are going to go to college and not gain any practical skills. However, there is a time that people might want to consider going to college. And that would be if you have a specific goal in mind and a specific skill you’re looking to obtain and if you know that the professors who are teaching you actually know what they’re talking about. Now that’s a big if, because there are a lot of professors that I have met over the years who have no idea what they’re talking about, and they have never run a successful company, and they basically hide on the campus. However, today’s guest, Dr. Steve Green, he previously worked as a consultant for McDonald’s, Stanley’s Femur, and Jiffy Lube, and other companies before becoming the dean of the business school for Oral Roberts University. Now for those of you who aren’t familiar with Oral Roberts University, we’ll put a link to Oral Roberts University. And you might be saying to yourself, well, if they kicked you out, then why are you having the former dean of the school on the show? I feel like the school, by and large, was a great school. Many great things about it. I just feel like, for me, I didn’t learn anything at Oral Roberts University that I could directly apply in my own life and business at all. Now, Chuck, that might be different for you. I mean, when you went to college, did you find there were things that you learned while attending Oklahoma State University that you actually used while either running your own business and or today coaching businesses? To be completely honest, the only thing college did for me was give me a little bit of a chance to grow up and be an idiot and not make too much of a mistake in my life because I was on a path. But literally for four years of college, I went to five different schools, two business degrees, one marketing, one management, and there is not a single thing that I use from that that I remember or use today. Surely you can’t be serious. I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley. I agree. I agree. I mean, there’s just… but I have friends who have attended Oral Roberts University and they swear that Dr. Steve Green really pushed them. In fact, one of our current clients, Steve Currington, and his company Total Lending Concepts, one of our clients that we coached today. Steve says, and I trust Steve because I’ve known Steve for almost three years now. Steve says that Dr. Green really changed the trajectory of his life and really helped him get on the straight and narrow path, really helped him to discover what it means to be responsible, taught him how to build systems, taught him about marketing, and was really the coach that he needed in his life. And so I thought, I’m going to do some research into this Steve Green, this PhD. Is this guy the real deal or not? And so, ladies and gentlemen, upon further review, this guy has actually worked directly with McDonald’s, Stanley Steamer, Jiffy Lube, and other top companies as a strategic advisor. Turns out he’s not so green. He’s legit. He’s not green. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for the Ph.D. and the former dean for Oral Roberts University. Let’s welcome him on to the show. I realize I can’t hear you clapping, but I’m going to do it. Ladies and gentlemen, here we go. Dr. Steve Green, everybody. Dr. Green, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show, my friend. How are you? I am great. I’m so excited to be here. Wait a minute. I’ve got to ask you about this 834, 5 star rating. That’s just amazing. I mean, I’m not kidding. I mean, I’m not kidding. I mean, I’m not kidding. Yeah. That’s just amazing. Way to go. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. It’s interesting because we’ve had about 500 people that have left us reviews on Google, and I think we had 600 people send in video reviews on YouTube. Yeah, if not more than that now. So it’s kind of everyone has their own path. Some people can’t figure out how to do the iTunes reviews, some people do Google, but as you know, it’s a marketing… It’s not average. This is beyond excellent. It’s almost unheard of in our industry. So great job. Well, I appreciate you so much. I want to clarify for the listeners out there, what was your role at Oral Roberts University? Because you were teaching there when I was a student there. What was your role at Oral Roberts University? I was both. I was the Dean of the College of Business and the Dean of Business Learning. And of course, I took a very active teaching role in marketing. So I believe I taught every student during my tenure there, four or five years. You know, Steve Currington, his company Total Ending Concepts is a client of ours at the Thrive Time Show. And we work with 160 brands at any given time. That’s the max we take on. And it’s kind of a waiting list in different categories. And so I’ve worked with Steve now for years, and Steve is always bragging on you. So before I let you brag on you, I want Steve… Steve, what kind of impact did Dr. Steve Green make in your life? I mean, why are you such a big fan of our legendary podcast guest? Oh, geez. I wish I could write a letter of recommendation like he did for me, and I probably can, but I can just tell you that at a time in my life when I was building my business, he stepped into that coaching role for me. This was end of 2008, 2009, both as a coach, as the pastor of my church. I went to his church, Bixby Community Church, that he was pastoring while running several businesses and doing his own coaching thing, and the school of business being the dean at ORU. I just got to know him through, I mean, Dr. Green knows I was his armor bearer at church. I would actually bring him out on the stage and bring his Bible out and get it out there every single Sunday for years. And so we just built a really, really strong bond. And he became somebody in my life, much like you have now, Clay, since we’ve been hanging out, that I just listened to. And so I take my book recommendations from Dr. Green. I take my marketing cues from Dr. Green. I took every single step of me building my mortgage business, which was mediocre at best until I met him. He was really that implementation artist that helped me decide what the right thing to do was and then to get it implemented in my business so that I could execute it. Dr. Green, I want to get your take on this because a lot of our listeners aren’t as familiar you obviously as Steve Currington is or as I was as a student of Oral Roberts University. Could you share with our listeners a little bit of a look into your background and how you where you started and how you got to where you are today? Sure Clay, first let me just say what I feel about Steve Currington that you know we all have our you know some people like to collect trophies and medals and awards and you know I like to collect success stories. I think you’re like that too, Clay. What I’ve seen in Steve in these growth years and even since I’ve left, you have certainly taken him to heights that I didn’t get him to, but he’s such a learner and you know that, that he absorbs anything that you throw at him. I think the biggest thing to say about his business is that he just gets it done. He takes care of people. If he tells somebody he’s going to get it done, it gets done. That’s why he’s different. That’s why he’s leading the pack in the mortgage industry. He’s just been a dear friend and somebody that I feel like understands the principles of getting it done, execution, go to work. Where did I come from? Basically, I was an egghead. I probably still am. I’m an academic. I came out, had my marketing degree, a PhD in marketing in 1983. So I was a college professor for a lot of years. And like most people, I got kind of tired of answering that question, if you’re so good, what are you doing in the classroom? And we all know if you can’t do it, you teach. So I had to get rid of some of those shackles that people were trying to put on me. And I just ended up stop teaching, consulted. I did a couple of gigs. You’ve listed some of those folks I worked with and worked I’ve worked amazingly with just so many good stories to tell over 83 television markets and spent a lot of time with NBC and their products and their clients and really learned the industry on the street, much like you have, in hand-to-hand combat, working at the retail level, making it happen with the cash register. Results speak loudly. When you can deliver results at the small level, you get to play in AA, AAA, and I finally made it to the majors. I went to San Francisco and had that opportunity to work in a major market with a major television station and felt like I’d done that. And it comes at a great big price. And I got to an age where I wasn’t willing to pay that time price any longer and came back and went back into academics, ended up at ORU, and there was another revisit to why I was born and I have to teach in a college classroom and to teach young people now that are not in the classroom. I still work with people every day as you do. I want to begin my apologetics tour for all the academics out there because this is something I want to shed light into. I remember when I grew my company, and Paul you probably experienced this, but as you’ve grown hood CPAs, I was growing DJConnection.com. And I remember I was at a breakfast event, and I was speaking there, Dr. Green, I was speaking to the Tulsa Bridal Association. And one young lady, she says to me, she says, I have a question. How do you get your website to the top of Google? And I tried to explain it to her, and at the rate of which that I act and at the speed that I act. And I found that I was really good at doing it, but really bad at teaching it. Really bad at it. So it’s like, you know, people say, well, if you’re not good at doing it, then you probably should go teach it, right? So all the teachers aren’t good at doing it. That’s why they teach it, right? If you’re not good, then you should probably just teach. But then I would also say, as an entrepreneur, I remember this lady, poor lady Jennifer puts her hands up. She says, how do I get to the top of Google? And I said, well, you need to make sure that your permalinks are correct, your title tag, your description, your keywords, you have a thousand words of content per page, you need to have the most reviews, you need to… She’s like, what? And I realized that the curse of knowledge was occurring. I knew so much about what I had… I just did it every day. It was intuitive to me that I struggled to teach it. And so only through the process of writing books was I able to clarify my ideas and make them succinct enough for other people to follow them. And I’d like to ask you this because you’ve worked… Let’s do an example. You’re working with Stanley Steemer or McDonald’s. You had to know your subject well enough to teach it to them. What kind of things would you teach to McDonald’s or Stanley Steamer or Jiffy Lube? What was your question? What kind of what did I teach to them? What kind of things would you teach to them? I mean, when you’re working with McDonald’s or- I was marketing. Marketing. What kind of marketing? What kind of things would you do with McDonald’s, big McDonald’s. The franchisor versus the franchisee. Learning to help franchisees take what comes from McDonald’s and make it work and get profitable to execute better. So many store managers and owners still have trouble executing. Believe it or not, even in McDonald’s, they can’t do what they’re led to do. And there’s a room for someone in the middle of those two organizations to help build them up. So really, Clay, it’s what you teach every day. It’s execution. Get it done. Here’s how. Until you do things their way, it’s going to be tough on them. You know, you have a lot of people out there that listen to our podcast who think right away when they hear somebody is a doctor, immediately they say, Hey, Gary. Oh, this is going to be terrible. This guy, he probably, right away, Paul, when someone hears the word accountant, they hear, right away, a lot of people, as soon as they hear the word accountant, this is what they say internally. Oh, Billy. A lot of people just don’t want to talk to academics or accountants. And then it’s hilarious now that, Dr. Green, you’re a marketer and we have you on the same podcast as we have a CPA, one of our show sponsors. So I want to ask you this question, Paul, and then I’m going to go to Steve with the same question here. How are you different than the typical accountant? Because the perception of most accountants is that you have no emotional intelligence, that you have no practical knowledge, and that you basically talk in circles and encourage everybody to file extensions because you’re not on top of your crap. That’s the average person’s perception of an accountant. Talk to me about how you’re different than the average accountant. Well, unfortunately, that perception is probably true for the average accountant. Why I’m different is most accountants are accountants because of their technicians. That’s what they chose to do because they were good at math. They really didn’t like people. They wanted to put on the green visor and pile their desk high with files. I’m a people person. I like to be around people. I enjoy life. I enjoy success just like you, Dr. Green. I enjoy success stories and I discovered that through being a CPA and a registered investment advisor that I can play a role in helping people become successful in their business and personally versus the average CPA or accountant just takes historical data and puts it on a tax return or historical data and puts it on a financial statement. So I like playing that role of helping people be successful, Clay. You know, Dr. Green, I’ve heard a lot of people outside of Steve brag on how practical your classes were at Oral Roberts University. A lot of people bragged on it. I’ve heard that from other people, but for the folks out there who don’t know how you are different than the typical academic or professor of marketing from an esteemed university, can you explain to us what makes your approach to marketing different from the typical, or I guess what people believe to be the typical academic in the field of marketing? Well, first of all, many academics don’t have street experience. They just stayed in the university level, came out, went to teach. I’ve been on the street for so many years, literally working in hand-to-hand combat with retailers. I’ve also owned businesses. I’ve owned restaurants. And you learn the pain of writing that check to a marketing that doesn’t work. What makes me different is I want to hold every single dollar. I’m very much an accountant in this way. I understand cost accounting. I know how to keep score. If we don’t know how to keep score, we don’t know how to win. We’ve got to understand what those numbers mean. The very first thing I want to do is be held accountable for the result of advertising dollars spent. So many years, since the 50s, 60s, we’ve gotten away with these kinds of marketers have gotten away with this. Trust me, it’s going to work. Give it time. Give it six more months. It’s going to work. Oh, we do it. We’ve got to build brand. Those days are over, Clay. We’ve got to get it done now. We’ve got to get results for investment now. That’s how I’m different. So you’re a results-focused marketer, and you happen to have spent time in academia. So don’t hold it against you, is what I’m hearing. Yes, sir. Frankly, I think I know enough theory, of course, as an academic, I’ve written a lot of scholarly papers, but so what? Until I can translate it to a store owner, to a business owner, to an entrepreneur, translate it into profitability, to spend the least money you can, and that’s the, our CPA’s friend, his job is to spend the least money you can, and yet still be legal, and do everything right. So I’ve got to get results. It doesn’t do me good to save you money if we don’t get results. We’ve got to spend what we need to spend to get the word out and to get people inside the store and coming back. It’s that repeat purchase that makes most marketers stop at getting them in the front door. We’ve got to have the back door handled. And if I can speak, Clay, I’ll just tell you, I think there was a period of about two years when I was working with Dr. Green that he did training in my office every, I think it was every Tuesday and Thursday, we’d do training at 7 o’clock and we just started inviting anyone that wanted to come and it got to the point where we like ran out of room. And what was a funny joke between me and Dr. Green is I think for about two years he would ask the question and the answer would always be systems. And so, you remember this Dr. G? I would say systems because everything was built around and that’s where he really helped my company launch, is just getting, you know, that first book he assigned, which was his Get Rid of Me book. If I read it, he would meet with me, but if I didn’t, then he would never talk to me again because I didn’t read the book. And it was called The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, which I know you’ve read, and it’s a systems book. And so I think that’s where the practical application of what Dr. Green knows is just getting those systems into place. And I remember him telling us stories about him sitting in the parking lot of McDonald’s and counting how many people went through the drive-thru and then parked their car in the parking lot and ate. How many people came back and you had a term for them, they called them shoes, they’re super heavy users. People that ate at McDonald’s seven to ten times a week. They were keeping that metrics and putting those systems in place so your franchise owners had that data. The two check system where people would get the wrong order that you put into place is a system that was set up in order to keep the errors out. I think that’s where Dr. Green’s application really comes full circle when you take a book like E-Myth, which is a great book and it talks about systems and then people actually implementing it into their businesses where it was helpful for me. And by the way, Dr. Green, Elle Strube. I think her last name now is like Ackerman. Is it Struve? Is that her name? Yes, she got married and she just had a baby. She bragged on you all the time. She worked with me like eight times. She was Elle, she was Elizabeth, she was Beth. You knew of Elle. Oh yeah, definitely. She bragged on Dr. Green all the time. So again, Steve Currington, Elle’s an example. So I want to get your take on this. You wrote a book called Love Leads. Thanks for reading that. Your book is, I’m going to say controversial, is my take on it. Because you’re advocating that love leads, like love is the best way to lead. In a world where the statistics would show, and I’ll put them on the show notes, so Eric will put them on the show notes. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports, they did a report with CBS News. They showed that 75% of employees steal from the workplace. Inc. Magazine showed that over 80% of people lie on their resumes. Gallup shows that 70% of people hate their jobs. So there’s a lot of negativity out there and yet you’re writing a book called Love Leads which is about um… Can you explain what Love Leads is about for all our listeners out there? Yes, and your statistics prove my point. You know, these things happen because they’re mistreated at work. And they have been. This is not a new problem that I’ve discovered. I’m just writing into a single factor. If you look at the cover of my book, you see that I’ve got the word strength knocked out because the average leader thinks that being strong and tough is the answer to everything. Bang the desk, yell, scream, holler, throw out some choice words and people will get better. Threaten their job. That’s Frederick Taylor back in scientific management days. Scare them into oblivion. And this pervaded our work system, our factories, everything that was started was started out of a position of you must keep fear in the workplace. If you do that long enough, Clay, we don’t have enough time to deal with it, but if you do that long enough, you create a culture of fear, and that culture of fear says that I might as well steal, cheat, lie, do whatever I can do to try to survive. They’ve got me in a survival of the fittest mode instead of coaching people up like you do, treating people with excellence, believing that these people that we’re working with could be something bigger than they can even imagine in their lives, to build them as you’ve built your business. I am a people builder, and I believe that that concept, if we can get that concept in the depths of every organization, we can change things. And I’m not, I don’t have rose-colored glasses on. I’m a realist. I’m 65, so I’ve seen it. You know, I’ve been at the victim’s end of work troubles, you know, being yelled at and treated badly. But when you start to treat people with the belief that you’re dealing with a human asset, we talk a lot about we’ve got a CPA friend sitting in the studio with you that knows what it is to have a ledger with assets on it, and yet our human assets are mistreated and undervalued. You know, you have a lot of concepts in the book that I think are controversial, concepts that are counterintuitive, that fly in the face of conventional wisdom, which is why I think it warranted writing a book. So what I want to do is I wanted to ask you directly to distill or to break down three concepts in the book that you wrote about. I thought, gosh, I’d love to hear it direct from the source for the listeners out there who say, I purchased the book and I had a question about this. Concept number one is relationships precede influence. Relationships precede influence. Okay. Listen. Break that down for us. I’m sorry. I interrupted you. Say it again, sir. I’d like to have you break it down. Relationships precede influence. I know we’re on the Skype, so there’s a little bit of a delay. I apologize for the overlap there. That’s okay. Relationships preceding influence. What do you mean by that? So let’s flip it and see how bad this is. An influence precedes relationship. You just know instinctively that’s not right. That everything starts with a relationship. I can’t influence you because I tell you to do something. It’s not influence, that’s just an order. And I choose to do it or not do it, but influence comes, yeah, if you put a piece of string, Steve knows this analogy, I’ve used it so many times, put it down on your table where you’re sitting and push that string, push it, and it’ll just wrinkle up. But get ahold of one end of it and pull it, and it’ll come and follow you on a straight line pretty much. And so what I teach is that I have to first grow relationship, first show you care. Before I start telling anyone, when they join a company that I’m working with, I want them, I want to know them, I want to care about them, I want to have dinner with their family, I want to know their kids, I want pictures, I want to get to know them in such a way that I understand who they are. Because I don’t hire people quickly. I’m really slow to hire because I want to know that they’re a cultural fit, that we can influence them to be excellent. So I really believe that if we go first, I want to go first as a leader. Their jobs have to build a relationship with me. That’s wrong. That’s old school. That’s Theory X. I want to build a relationship with them based on trust, build high trust, and then lead them by influencing. And influence comes because I care. First care, then give orders. Dr. Green, I am struggling to remember the name of the book. It was early on in my career. I think it was maybe a Maxwell book, but he talks about permission leadership versus position leadership. A lot of people don’t understand that principle that just because you’re a boss, just because you’re over somebody, doesn’t mean they’re voluntarily following you. You just happen to be in position leadership and you have to earn permission leadership. Is that kind of what you’re talking about? Yes, sir. I use Barney Fife and Andy Griffiths. Barney had a position, but he had no influence. Andy didn’t care about his position. He just influenced. Barney had a badge and a bullet. Andy just kind of walked around and built relationships with people and judge pickle contest that’s a leader that’s a model leader who when it came time to do what had to be done he got listened to and people fell in line not out of some form of rule but because they wanted to they trusted Andy there’s no trust they mocked Bonnie fight the positional leader Eric Chubb we had a caller calling from South North Chicago yeah an elderly man and this is what he had to say about Dr. Green’s most recent take. Holy cow! Wow, okay. That was Harry Carey! That sounded like him! Oh my gosh! Wow, okay. He’s one of my childhood heroes, how did you know? All he had to say right there, that’s all he had to say. Go Cows! Now, this is, I want to make sure the listeners get this idea. I don’t disagree with anything Dr. Green just said, but I will say this, that if you don’t heed the advice of the founder of Southwest Airlines, and Shep, I want you to pull that from the Tate Boys interview as well because it’s such a powerful quote, you want to hire character and train skill. You know, the founder of Southwest Airlines, Herb Keller, co-founder, talks about this. The founder of Quick Trip Convenience Stores talks about this. Any Jack Welch talks about this. So again, I 100% agree. Relationships precede influence. But shame on you if you hire a low character, two-time convicted felon to work in your call center and you’re shocked that they don’t do well with this kind of leadership. I’m just telling you. Again, you want to hire character and train skill. So if you’re finding somebody and you sense they somebody, and since they have some character, I do encourage you to build relationships with them. But at the same time, Ampa and Steve, you’ve seen this in your call center, I’ve seen it in my call center, and you have a great team right now, but you’ve seen people where it’s like this person is trying to steal from you day one because they have multiple arrests for stealing, violent crime, theft, whatever. Paul, you’ve seen that before. Someone applies for a job, they say, I graduated from Oklahoma University, and yet they didn’t actually graduate. I mean, you’ve seen that. So again, this system works. What he said works, but please don’t be an idiot. I mean, don’t just sit there and hire a two-time convicted rapist and a guy who says, I enjoy plundering on the weekends when I’m not watching the show Vikings. And then- Name’s Captain Jack Sparrow. Captain Jack Sparrow, argh! Okay, so concept number two that I wanted to have you break down is the importance of managing entropy. Now entropy, the definition means the lack of order or predictability. Gradual decline into disorder. That is the definition from Webster. So can you talk to me about the importance of managing entropy and what you’re talking about? Yes, but I want to shout back at you on relationships. Remember I said slow to hire. You know I’m not going to hire someone low in skill. We’re going to hire slow. I think a lot of people hear what you’re saying in Polarity and they go, oh, so I just built a relationship with anybody. This will work. But you said, I think we’re going to skip over that. You said slow to hire. He said slow to hire and quick to fire. That was always the way. Recruit, select, and train. That comes a long time before a relationship. And I’m going to act like I’m a choir who’s on fire. You are a choir who’s on fire. Okay, so Dr. Green, the importance of managing entropy. What do you mean by that? First of all, entropy is when… Here’s the example, Clay, and it’s really a good visual. That you have a good spring cleaning project, you get your closet perfect. Everything’s in its place. Oh, it’s so good. And then by, oh, two weeks, three weeks, maybe a little longer, you’re, you get chaos in your closet. Oh, that’s too close to home there. Oh, man. Too close. Why are you talking about Eric directly? He’s not in here. He hasn’t looked at your closet. I don’t know where he’s going. My wife listens to this show. Come on. I can tell you that you’ve been around restaurants, you’ve coached restaurants, you know people. Just walk away from your restaurant for two, three days. You won’t come back to the same place. It won’t look the same. CEOs, leaders, business owners have got to put a lot of attention on whatever it is they own. That’s one of the things that he meant. The myth is that entrepreneurship gives you freedom. That doesn’t. Owning something gives you nothing but the opportunity to work a really hard life and to do everything you can to create a franchise system, to create multiple units, and to create systems that help the operation work better. But it’s not going to happen on its own. If you leave it alone, it’ll move toward entropy. Our job is to create negative entropy. When we get a hold of that growth curve, throw it on our back and yank it up because it won’t do it by itself. Nothing like that. Not organisms in business are going to grow without attention from a leader. You know, I agree with what you just said, and I want to make sure the listeners are grasping what I’m saying to you, because it might seem, again, counterintuitive to what you perceive. But I’ll give you an example. Elephant in the Room, our men’s grooming lounge chain. I’ve been there. Chuck, you’ve seen this. You’ve been there. Oh, yeah. He was a client when I was in Tulsa. I was a client, yeah. Okay, and I want the listeners to know this. We have a staff or a team of about a hundred employees. About a hundred people work there between the three stores-ish. There is never a week where I don’t fire somebody, and I wish there was. So as an example, this week we had a lady. She said this is what she said. I would like to get your take on this because you are into management and marketing, and you tell me what you think about this. Now remember, most guys want to get their haircuts after 5, they want to get their haircuts after 5 or on the weekends. And she says, I’m a 100% committed team member, I just can never work after 5 or on the weekends. But I’m 100% committed to working here. I’m 100% committed. Now people don’t realize that this young lady recently got married and so she no longer needs to work. But for the last two years, she did. And almost immediately upon getting married, she says, I’m 100% committed. You know me. I’ve been here for two years. Which is true. Ride or die, homie. But I am definitely not going to be able to work after five or on the weekends. Which by the way, we’re closed on Sundays, but she said today, this is true story, she said today to one of our schedulers, she said, and I can only work two hours a week right now for the next four weeks. Two hours. So what she’s saying with her actions is, hey I’m kind of wanting to quit, but I don’t want to it. Right. And because I know this person, I know what’s going on and I know the entropy, by default, we would have a person that we’re counting on that’s going to be on their way out. So I know that we’re going to drift towards disorder. I said, let’s set up a one on one meeting with her on Friday and let’s find out her long term goal and see whether it’s time for her to move on and to leave with a great letter of recommendation or whether she… let’s find out what’s going on. But I don’t abdicate, I delegate. I’d like to get your take on abdication versus delegation. Abdication being just let it run on its own, let entropy happen. Delegation meaning you follow up, you have to follow, you know what’s going on. Talk to me about this idea of, hey, I’m going to buy an elephant in the room franchise and then not know what’s going on. Talk to me about that. Well, first of all, leadership, if there is a leader who advocates, is irresponsible. He’s not leading anything. So you have to be involved. You have to delegate. You have to trust but verify. You know, handle this. This is the way I’d like you to handle it. Then verify that it’s been done. I trust you. But I want to verify that it all happened the way that I’ve asked it to. This is a classic case in service businesses of saying one thing with your mouth, the person that you need to deal with, and then not being able to deliver it with their actions. You have a responsibility to all the people that work there and all of your clients. By the way, as a former client, I want you to know I still get phone calls. They still are trying to get me to come back. Well, yeah, we believe you’re going to move from Florida. I know you have a great home now. You’re enjoying the Florida life. I mean, you’ve got a beautiful house. But we feel like you should. I’m commuting for a haircut. Yeah, you definitely need to fly in once a month for a haircut. It’s not that expensive of a flight, Dr. G. I love it there. Allegiant. You can be here. I love the MRI. I love the therapy and that. I loved it. I absolutely love the place. Well, it sounds like a franchise in Florida. You’ve got a very real problem, Clay. Every one of your clients deals with this, and the answer, in my opinion, is lovingly let them go. Lead them on to a greener pasture because it isn’t here. Here’s how we work here. This is our system. Here’s how we do things here. We wish you well. I appreciate you saying that because I think for a lot of our listeners who think with a book called Love Leads, they’re thinking, this guy is a pacifist. He actually is from Switzerland. On today’s show, he’s gonna talk about never ever holding people accountable. Only holding their hands. Right, now concept number three in your book that I find to be controversial, and maybe you don’t, is the golden rule of leadership. I think we’re in a culture now without values. Or at least we have situational values. Let me give an example. Chup, you’ve seen this. I’m sure you’ve never… I will say I’ve seen this. Yeah. You’ve never seen this as a business coach. I’ve seen this because I’m not a good coach. This is why I’ve seen this. I had a client of mine, true story, a client of mine who’s talking to me about, hey, I’m thinking about leaving my wife and I wanted to know the strategy to minimize my tax implications. True story. This person also, though, wanted to know, it was kind of like, oh, and by the way, I want to fix my website. And I’m going, ah, I’m a business coach, not a life coach. It’s a big matzah ball hanging out there. True story. And, Chuck, I think you were in the meeting where we had a person who claimed to be a doctor. Yeah. True story, Dr. Green. True story. This person claimed to be a doctor. She claimed to be a doctor. And she wanted us to get her to the top of internet searches for testosterone and estrogen But she was not in fact a doctor. It’s a problem So I said we need to put your you know resume on the website. It helps instill trust We’ll get more conversions and she says well I actually am not a doctor So I wanted to see what’s the best way to kind of hype up my resume hard to instill trust though So I mean, I mean seriously, this is the thing I said, hey, you can’t be a client. That’s why we only take on 160 clients. For us, it’s about sorting, and if you don’t have consistent values, I can’t help you. No one can help you. So the golden rule, even that phrase, just seems so old school. It seems like, oh my gosh, rules. And yet you live it. Clay, I know enough about you through talking with Steve and knowing your reputation as a great business leader, very successful, great with clients. And you expect people to perform, to do their thing. Your basic core value is that you treat people the way you want to be treated. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s so offensive! Yes, but I’m not finished yet. I’m not finished. What I’ve taught Steve and what I believe is my way of living is to treat people better than I expect to be treated. That’s more offensive. I know, it’s offensive, but it’s how you roll. If I give more than I expect to get, I’m going to win. I just believe that. And I may not win with this client or the next client or the next client, but overall, I’m going to over deliver. I’m going to over deliver every day to every person I’ve been screwed, because we over-deliver and someone says, oh, because they’re over-delivering. You’ve been working with a client, you’ve emotionally invested in that client, you’ve helped them grow dramatically, and then they cancel because, oh, by the way, paying you $3,000 a month or whatever you’re charging is actually a little bit less than the $15 an hour employee who sucks, but because they’re in the process of buying a boat, they’re going to cancel you. You’ve had it happen. So I’m going to cue up my gospel music here. I would like for you to preach the importance of always over-delivering regardless of what other people do to you. With any further ado, Chuck, here comes the gospel music. Steve Green, bring it. Take us to church! Let me tell you something. That’s just how it’s going to be. I never expect anyone’s going to do what I think they’re going to do. But I’ve always got to do what I say I’m going to do. It’s just got to be that way. You know, over the long haul, when I’m at the finish line, I’m going to be fine. You’ve got a great life. You have a successful life. People want to be you, Clay. They want to have the kind of numbers you deliver. They want to live the life you live. They just don’t understand where they are yet, and they think that cutting out an expense, cutting out paying someone after you’ve already made them successful, is the right way to treat people. They’re on their way down. Okay, now speaking of incredible gospel dissertations, you recently interviewed the man that I feel like I know better than anybody else in the world who I’ve never met. It’s so weird. I don’t spend an hour a day with even my best friends, and I spend an hour and a half every single day with TD Jakes. Oh yeah. Literally. Well, that tells me a lot about you. Every single day, I listen to TD Jakes. Now through a unicorn event, Winters and King, one of our clients that we work with, we’ve worked with Winters and King now for four years, helping them with their marketing, and they represent Brother T.D. Jakes and Brother Craig Rochelle and Joyce Myers from a legal perspective. So I’m trying to get him on our podcast, but because I think the man has class, he has priorities, he’s yet to commit to be on our podcast, and yet he has been on your podcast, and so you obviously are kind of a big deal, and you have a great reputation that precedes you. So I want to ask you about how you got T.D. Jakes on your podcast, and what you learned most from him being on your podcast. Because I listened to your podcast twice. It blew my mind. My gray matter exploded out of my head in a figurative sense. I had to put it back in, listen to it again. I’m just telling you, I absolutely love Brother TD Jakes, and the fact that you had him on your podcast was unbelievably exciting for me, knowing that Steve speaks so highly of you. I thought to myself, this has to be a highlight for Steve. Talk to me about interviewing TD Jakes, what it was like. Talk to me about having him on your podcast. So first, let me ask you, how many times have I not asked the question that you were going to ask? Because if you’re sitting in that seat listening, you’re going to say, ask him this, push here, go there. How many times has that happened in the show? The entire time I’m taking notes and I just kept saying, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready. I was like excited, I kept going. He was eating a peanut butter and jealous sandwich. Peanut butter and jealous. This is the right sandwich. Oh, wow. I was so excited about having him on your podcast. It blew my… I love T.D. Jakes, and he, every day about 4, 15 p.m., I think this thought… Dr. Steve, you can tell me. I think to myself, is it ethical or illegal to kill a man? Just one, right now. I just… I don’t know, and I’m so mad! And then, every morning, I go to bed at night, and every morning I reset. And T.D. Jakes does such a good job about sharing the context of the scripture, and the story around it, what it meant, what it means to you, the context of that time. And he made the Bible relevant to me in a way that only Carleton Pearson had ever previously done. And when Carleton Pearson switched teams, Carleton’s still a friend of mine, but when he decided to no longer be a Christian and to switch to becoming a Universalist or whatever that is, I kind of felt violated and I felt like I knew God was real, but I felt like I’d lost a brother or a close friend. The only person that ever made the Bible real or relevant to me was Carlton Pearson, ever. And when I heard Carlton switched, I thought, gosh, I don’t know what I’m going to do to make the scripture illuminate to me like it did before. And I remember meeting with Carlton Pearson for lunch, because I hired Carlton to help me become a better speaker. And Carlton had told me, Brother T.D. Jakes is one of the most talented people that he’d ever worked with. And he had said that he’d heard, he’d spoken so highly of Brother Jakes that I actually started listening to him. And this was before YouTube and different things were available. So I had to buy VHS tapes and get my hands on whatever I could. And I honestly believe T.D. Jakes is a guy right at my breaking point. Not that I was going to lose my faith, but it was a guy that I was going to lose my motivation, I think. T.D. Jakes, interviewing him, your relationship with him? I just want to hear you talk about your relationship with T.D. Jakes. We have a lot in common. T.D. Jakes, and I’m not even a speck on his back. I’m a long way from being the kind of man that he is. But what I know about him is he’s a business pastor. He’s got a marketplace ministry. In other words, he spends as much time with business owners as he does with parishioners in his church. He gets entrepreneurs. He’s got an entrepreneur spirit that’s as strong as yours, Clay. And what he does with that is he finds out how God’s in the marketplace. We’re not living in an agronomy economy like Jesus walked. You know, he could just talk about wheat and seeds and fig trees, the sea and fish. He talked about what that life was. Now we got a guy like TD Jakes who can speak very clearly to men like you and I and other business owners and speaks to them about their dreams and what they want and he’s very much a dream caster with a very strong sense of reality. He will call you out if you’re just a dreamer without being a doer. He’s got a lot of one-liners that are just so powerful, but they’ll cut you to your heart until you understand what it means to execute. TD Jakes is an executor. He’s working in the entertainment industry. He’s big and he helps people. When he sits across the desk from someone, like you’re speaking of now, what he does is he makes it come alive, he makes it real, and he doesn’t milk toast the gospel one bit, but he talks not down to them, but with them. He’s just got a way of waking up the dreams that are already planted inside of us. God’s got dreams in us. He’s planted them there, and we’re just too lazy to execute, unless you, and people that are in that studio with you right now, they’re all doers. I would believe that everyone who circles in your gravity sphere, everyone that’s around you, gets things done or they go away. They are executors. That’s what T.D. Jakes… that’s why he resonates with you. Sorry. There was a time that Oprah attended T.D. Jakes’ church in Dallas. And Oprah has a different faith than the Judeo-Christian faith. And she sat down in the service. They were doing a behind-the-scenes, kind of like, what is T.D. Jakes? What is his ministry all about? And I only watched this because I watched the movie The Butler. Have you seen The Butler, Dr. Green? Have you seen The Butler? I don’t think so, bud. I respect your time so much, I will only give you one recommendation, and that is to watch The Butler. I’m writing it down now. The Butler was the- I had a pen in my hand so we started talking, because I knew you had much to say. That’s the only recommendation I have for you and all the listeners is that The Butler was the story about the first African-American ever working in the White House. He was working as an assistant, the butler, to the president. So he heard the president saying things that were crazy, confidential, like on the verge of war, on the verge of epic racist confrontations. He’s the fly on the wall that hears everything. If the walls could hear, it would be the butler and when Oprah decided to produce that movie which by the way if you watch that movie I’ve never seen an actress perform with more sincerity and purpose than Oprah in that movie I’m telling I’ve watched that movie a half dozen times and I want to watch it a half dozen more but Oprah man produced the movie and she watched the credits and I noticed at the end of it, T.D. Jakes. And I’m going, what in the world does T.D. Jakes do for Oprah? So I started searching and I started… and long story short, Oprah’s a huge fan of T.D. Jakes. So she travels to his church in Dallas and he’s talking about the loaves and how the fish and the loaves. Now Christ was able to multiply those things. And she explained to T.D. Jakes, you see her on camera, if you watch this on YouTube, it’s Oprah Visits T.D. Jakes. Find it on YouTube and she’ll put it on the show notes so listeners can find it. And Oprah begins to cry and she explains to T.D. Jakes that she had never got the message of that part of the Bible ever and it was only through what he taught that it illuminated, it made it real for her. It became alive. And I feel like that’s what TD Jakes does, and I feel like that’s really what you did as the Dean of College of Business at ORU. Business could be boring. The SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, you might say, gosh, that’s so boring. Talk to me about your passion for making business relevant and illuminating it and making it interesting for your students. Where does that passion come from? I think it comes from how average I was as a student until I met a faculty member who took an interest in me. I love to teach these students. Now Steve is a little bit of a C-minor student, you know, until he engages, until he engages. And then he becomes an A student. He almost was an A student. It’s just no teacher ever saw it in him. You know, so many of us get labeled real quick in education. We don’t color inside the lines real good. And if we don’t color right, what happens? You get branded, you get labeled, you get back of a class, you get put into a special room. The idea is to speak into the potential. I love to see a C student become excellent and to fight for it and to work hard and to have someone stand in front of that room that believes in them as people. I think that’s T.D. Jakes as well, brother, and I think that’s what Oprah saw in him. He just makes people see things in themselves and begin to dream. Steve Kerrington is a dreamer, but he’s a doer to go with it. How did you arrange to get brother T.D. Jakes on your podcast? Have you guys met him? Have you guys been friends over the years? What was your relationship with T.D. Jakes? Not a lot of years. We’re not best buddies. I could talk to you offline about maybe some things to try and I could put a letter in for you. He’s a good man and you’re speaking to the kind of people he’d want to speak to. So I don’t think it’s a real hard thing to do. He’s a good man and he cares about people so I think he’ll do your show. And I want to give the listeners a notable quotable that would let the listeners know that you are, in fact, not crazy. Because you said you want to teach C students, and someone might be saying to themselves, well, that’s a little crazy right there, C students. Albert Einstein once said, education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. Yes. Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. Not Dr. Green’s class. He’s so prepared for this interview. You knocked me out. It’s so good, brother. Well, this is my passion. And anytime we get a unicorn like you on the show, we want to make sure we deliver. Now, one of the things you talk about a lot, I’ve heard you talk about, I’ve heard people talk to me about you talking about it, is unit economics. And right away when somebody hears the phrase unit economics, this is what most people think in their minds mentally. La la la, Luke. Luke, I am your father. I think a lot of people, though, again, when someone starts to talk about unit economics, I have an audio clip, Paul Hood, you would appreciate this. This is an audio clip of a CPA, a colleague in your industry, explaining to a group of college students what unit economics is all about. And luckily, I was able to mic his classroom without his knowledge there. I’ll play, I’ll get Professor Paul, one of your competitors, one of your peers, and I’m gonna play this for you, and you can tell me whether this seems accurate. This is what he had to say to his classroom of 300 people, 100 of which were asleep. A lot of pressure, you gotta rise above it. You gotta harness in the good energy, block out the bad. Harness, energy, block, band. Feel the flow, Happy. Feel it. It’s circular. It’s like a carousel. You pay the quarter, you get on the horse. It goes up and down and around. Circular, circle. No one has any idea what’s being discussed. I mean, it’s just crazy. Paul, have you ever felt like that you’re in a class at OSU or any other college where you’re thinking to yourself, what is this guy talking about? I’m pretty sure I had a class with that guy, taught me at Oklahoma State. Absolutely. Okay, so Dr. Green, I’m giving you an opportunity to teach and to preach and to share because you care. My friend, break down unit economics for all the listeners out there. Why does it matter? I’m going to simplify it because I don’t want to be a cut for you later in another show. No, I will not. I’ve never done that to a guest. I’m scared to death, pal. Okay. Here it is. First of all, you’ve got to know your customer count. How many customers do you need? It’s your average ticket. What is your average ticket? How much you make on the average visitor. Eric Chup is putting these on the notes. He’s putting them on his show notes. So let’s repeat that real quick because Eric Chup is putting these on the show notes for the listeners. All right. We’ve got to know what our average ticket price is. Got it. Ten bucks. All right. We’ll make $10 if somebody walks in the door. That’s our average. Some will be lower, some will be higher. Now how many people are going to come in the door? How many people do I need to come in the door to cover my fixed costs? Just on a break-even basis. You can do this on a napkin. I taught it in my grad high level, senior level class. This is how we dumbed it down. Do it on a napkin or it’s not good enough. If you need a spreadsheet, it doesn’t help me. Thrive Nation, if you’re out there listening and you say to yourself, I don’t need to know the number of customers I need to break even, you might be in the same camp or company as one of our listeners called in, Chup, and he said, you know, I read a little bit of what Dr. Green talked about. I attended a class or two just kind of observing, and he told me what to do, and I decided not to do it, and this is what happened to me and Jeff he wanted to share a testimonial of what would happen to him as a result of deciding to hear what to do and then not do it so I’m very excited that the listener was able to be on the show and this is good it’s good that you have all this audio equipment this is awesome he left the voicemail I am 35 years old, I am divorced, and I live in a van down by the river. Okay, all right, so that’s what happens if you don’t know your break-even point. Back to you, Dr. Green. There are so many vans down by the river, because people don’t care about unit economics. They don’t care about the business side of it. How about this? In a restaurant, I just always wanted to cook food forever. I just wanted to be a chef and cook food and have real high food costs and over deliver, have six customers per table, I’m sorry, have six servers per table, and just do everything and over deliver and run out of business as fast as I can. There’s a listener out there. That’s what happened. There’s a listener out there who decided, they said, you know what, I’m not going to listen to Dr. Green and Unit Economics and another voicemail. And they left us a voicemail and they said he talked a lot about Unit Economics but I was too busy because I’m so passionate about the food that I really couldn’t implement what he said and so we were able to record the voicemail he left us. It was a call screener who won’t let everybody through and they said, sir, you don’t qualify to probably be on the show but if you’re going to leave a voicemail we’d be happy to play it. So without any further ado, Chuck, this is what a listener out there had to say, who was passionate about their restaurant and their recipes, but not so passionate about knowing their numbers. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking. It’s like I picked the wrong week to put amphetamines. Alright, so, I mean, it’s not going to go well for you if you don’t know your numbers. Have you ever seen an example where somebody did have success, but did not know their numbers? I don’t know of one. Surely you can’t be serious. I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley. Okay, so, it’s very rare. I mean to Steve Carrington you want to chime in there a funny joke between dr. Green and I is every once in a while I’d go dr. Green I Think I want to open a restaurant Why don’t you just give me a million bucks now save the time I’ll give you 500,000 back in three years and then it will not have been Nice, that’s what the funny is. Okay, everybody. What’s over dr. Green? We have to know those numbers. And again, just kind of repeat, what are the things everyone has to know? It’s the average ticket price. What else? Let me talk about the elephant in the room. If you don’t know how many customers are walking in that door and what your average ticket is, you have a real difficult time projecting revenue. We’ve got to be able to project revenue so we can do something about it and make sure we cover our costs. So we start right back at square one, make sure we have a real good, clear understanding of, first of all, like you do, you drive up that average ticket. You’ve got an assumed average ticket, but the job for everybody inside the store is to sell add-ons. And you commission those and you encourage those. As an example, Paul Hood with Hood CPAs, they don’t want to just do your taxes, because if you just do your taxes, it’s a reactive thing. It’s like, hey, this is how much you owe, boom, here’s your taxes. This is how much you owe, boom. But if they can help you strategize, and they can help you even save three percent of your income. If they can even help you save three percent of your income proactively, they know that it’s mathematically impossible for you to retire broke if you start early enough. I mean, Paul, why are you passionate about not just being a transactor? Why do you want to be, hey, we want to be your proactive accountant? Well, you know, I just, I’m not that guy. I’m not that guy that wants to sit in the back of a room and not talk to people And I want to bring value to the people that I’m meeting with and you know anybody I can hire the people that’ll do Those tax returns and I review my share, but the the exciting part of life is like dr Green saying taking it and I don’t know if they would be a C student But a person that’s willing to work extra hard, they just don’t know what to do. I love getting in front of them and helping guide them through the principles I’ve learned from you, Clay, and the principles I’ve learned from experience and acquisitions. I owned a restaurant and got out of it. To be able to take somebody that is just an overcomer, that just doesn’t know what to do, and help guide them, and that’s what we do at Hood CPAs. Chuck, I think for all the listeners out there who disagree with what’s being taught, there is an alternative out there. Chuck, there’s a parallel universe, there’s a parallel country out there for all the listeners out there who say, I don’t want to know my unit in economics, I just want to focus on my passion for haircuts or bakery goods or fitness or whatever the crap your industry is, Chuck. And I want to share, I want to make sure it’s equal and balanced. I want to make sure it’s always, I always want this show to be fair and balanced. And so I’m going to read a notable quotable from really a man who has a lot of respect from the people who are required to respect him. Kim Jong Un. And so in a rare show of benevolence, I will read a notable quotable from Mr. Kim Jong Un. on realizing the demand desires of the masses of people for independence is a revolutionary cause that advances a minute against imperialism and all other council counter revolutionary and oh by the way revolutionary forces. And oh, by the way, I do systemically rape people and pillage my people. Signed Kim Jong-un. Signed. So, I mean, seriously, I mean, if you don’t embrace capitalistic principles, I mean, I guess you could go to North Korea, and as long as you’re Dennis Rodman, you get right in, you fit right in, next thing you know, you’re playing on the basketball team, you’re I mean, Dr. Green, what do you think Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong-un have in common? Have you ever thought about that? Like, seriously, what has made them like best buddies? You know, they’re both so different. Neither of them do things like anyone else does them. That’s it, that’s all I can tell you. I’ve done any research on this matter, but they’re just, they don’t dance to anybody else’s drum. That’s probably what they’re into. They’re like, hey, are you a sick freak? Yeah, I’m a sick freak. Are you sick? I’m a sick freak too. Cool. Go to the sick freak party. I know you feed me up there, Clay. No, I’m serious. I just wanted to ask you because, Paul, I mean, you can obviously be the Monday morning quarterback here. You can one-up Steve. But have you ever thought about, what? I mean, America, we’ve had a country that for 50 plus years, we haven’t been able to find a single diplomat that can get into North Korea, can penetrate the society of secrecy and communism, and come out with some answers, and yet we sent in a basketball player with green hair and as many piercings as possible, and he’s the best we’ve got. What is Kim Jong-un and Dennis Rodman having in common? I think it’s really simple, and I think you mentioned it, and Dr. Green mentioned it in a different way. I think people that are successful, and success is defined by different things, are freaks, are different than the average person. You’re a freak, Clay. I mean, you grind, you work, you spend time. I’m a freak as far as CPAs are concerned. And fitness. Yeah, whatever. You know, we’re all freaks. And Kim Jong-un, he’s a freak, and Dennis Rodman’s a freak. Their freak just happened to match up. What kind of freak am I? Let me say this, guys. To sum that up, I want to give the listeners a notable quote that they can hang their hat on. I want to sum up that whole dialogue right there, then we’ll get back into some hard hitting questions with Dr. Green. I want to sum that up. This is what I have to say about that. You know what they say, see a broad to get that booty ackle? Leg her down and smack em, yack em. I have no idea what that means. That’s so audio. Yack em, yack em. From the airplane. So, what an incredible movie airplane was. Okay so Dr. Green where do most companies get it wrong when it comes to marketing? I think it just begins right there felt need. We think we’ve got a good product. We’ve built a better mousetrap. We’ve built a better piece of technology and people are going to want it. Not everybody can get away with what Steve Jobs did. He created something and nobody had a need for, taught them a need, and taught them to want it. That’s a rarity. That’s a one in a good million. He’s a guru. He’s the next level. I mean, that’s like trying to… If I’m a basketball player and I’m trying to… He didn’t do research. He just knew it. I would say this, though. This is Steve Jobs, Elon Musk. Those are disruptors, and my name is Michael Jordan, then you go ahead and do that. I mean, if you can jump… But I mean, step one, if I was teaching the listeners out there, step one, I want to be like Michael Jordan. Okay, step one, be 6’6″, or 6’7″, and have a natural shot, by the way. Step one. Step two, jump 45 to 50 inches off the ground. I got those covered. And then we’ll continue with the program. I mean, that’s like, I mean, so again, I mean, Steve Jobs had an intuitive knowledge of what people wanted, but you’re saying for everybody else, myself included, where do we get along in the market? You’ve got to know what people need. You have to feel needs. Wealth comes from feeling needs. It’s satisfying a customer that’s got an itch that he’s not been able to scratch. And you come up with an itch scratcher. That’s it. And suddenly, overnight success, right? In the next 20 years. Chuck, I feel like that Steve just said something that’s very, very practical, but I feel like a lot of people are thinking to themselves, you know, gosh, it just, it seems like it’s so me that he’s saying that I can’t be like Steve Jobs. I just have to solve a problem that people have. Chuck, as a business coach, where do you see people getting that wrong? Yeah, they come in, like Dr. Green was saying, and this idea of this business is their baby. And so they think everybody’s going to love their baby as much as they do. And it turns out, before you had kids, and you get guys in the studio, and Dr. Green, did you guys ever ride a plane before you had kids and there was a kid on that plane. That’s a great baby. I hated children until I had kids. I hated other people’s kids. I love the crying. Can you say that louder? It’s my favorite. That’s what I see is that they think that I don’t even need to market, I don’t even need to advertise, I don’t need to be different because everybody’s going to love my face. My baby is so beautiful that other people love it. I mean, think about it, it looks just like your father and it’s just awesome. Just think about the baby. Look at the size of her head. And then all their friends tell them their baby’s so beautiful, but it’s really ugly. Here, hold my baby. No, seriously, that’s what it is. That’s what I say. You’re blinded by the beauty of your baby. I hate to slap the baby. Paul will slap your mama. I will. I hate it. Pour a bowl of that soup. Ah, that’s a different show. I hate to slap your baby out there, but I’m going to tell you hard facts there, Thrivers. Nobody cares about your baby, except for you. You can forget about it. In fact, if you bring a baby on the plane, a lot of people are thinking, can we open up the emergency exit? Why won’t you 10,000 feet in the air and throw that baby out? Because that baby, if it doesn’t stop crying, I wanted you to get a lead pipe. Why won’t that baby stop crying? What are we doing with this lead pipe? So again, I mean, it seems harsh, but I mean, a lot of people don’t care about your business at all. At all. At all. So, Dr. Green, we live in a culture and a time in which approximately 50% of marriages end in divorce. And yet, you and your wife, Annette, have been married for 45 years. Is that accurate or have you been married longer than 45 years at this point. 45 years. Congratulations! Now, I had Dr. Zellner, who’s an optometrist, do some research. And one of the things he’s done for me to help me out, and this is a tip that I would give to you if you want this tip. I actually, my wife, I met Dr. Zellner as a result of my wife being his front desk lady 19 years ago. And so, there’s no proof I had this conversation, and Dr. Z doesn’t remember the conversation, but the point is, this is how I felt it went. I said figuratively or mentally through telepathy to Dr. Z, I said, Dr. Z, through telepathy, Dr. Z, is it possible? Is it possible? Dr. Z, could you decrease my wife’s vision to 2100? Could you prescribe her the wrong contacts, the wrong glasses, make sure she never sees my body or me? Because that’s the tip to my success that’s how we’re going to keep it together and Dr. Z who’s above he’s above that kind of thing he says to me I swear if you will just pay me a hundred dollars a week I will make sure that I manipulate her charts to make sure that she never sees you again, so I will meet you by the bar With your car ask for a guy named sneaks He will he will hand me can do a brown bag in that brown bag There will be various things in the brown bag a lot of things written about Tom Brady The top the Patriots and there’ll be a false prescription I want you to take the prescription, and I want you to don’t not make eye contact. That’s where it gets weird And he said also for next to $17 I could get you an indulgence which allows you to get a family member to heaven If they have screwed up You can also for 99 you could also get a free exam and a pair of glasses. And I said back, I said, that sounds like a no-brainer. I said, that seems like a no-brainer. He said, my child, blessed are you, your wife will never see again, and if you ever meet Dr. Green, make sure I can screw up his vision, her vision as well, because I want to make sure that she can’t see him, because if they do, it could end in a divorce. So outside of obviously paying Dr. Zellner to mis-prescribe your wife for 45 consecutive years, what is your tip for staying married for 45 years? We just have a pretty good secret, and that’s just service. Just try to serve each other more than you get served. Give more than you get. I know it sounds so simplistic and so rose-colored glasses, but we teach die to self. I don’t want as much as I want to serve you. I just want to think about something going home tonight that I can do for her. And I know it sounds manby-pamby, and I get that, but that’s how we’ve done it. We just serve each other. I think Annette’s better at it. You know, Chup, speaking of manby-pamby. You know what that means at some point. That’s for the movie Airplane, a great movie. So, Dr. Green, you’re a well-read man. What are two or three books that you would recommend for all of our listeners to read at least once? Okay, Deep Work. Gotta read Deep Work. It’s the first one I’m going to put on the list in case I don’t get to number three because there’s going to be a sound effect come at me. But I absolutely believe that Cal Newport, he’s a PhD in algorithms, so this is not an interesting guy. I’m going to hang out with him. He’s going to talk geek stuff about algorithms. But he wrote a book on how to work, and how to work in a completely different level. It’s a superb book. I love it. I read it six times, probably in eight weeks. I just love the book. Deep work. I would also say this for anybody out there who says, listen buddy, listen buddy, I don’t have time to read a lot of books. Why should I read deep work? I’ve listened to the audio book of that multiple times. It’s because most people just get into the epidermis of their service or product. Most people never get into the marrow. Getting into the marrow requires a narrow focus. A lot of people aren’t willing to get into the narrow focus required to get into the deep marrow. They’d rather just focus on the epidermis of their business, the skin level, the surface level. They never really quite understand the customer. They never quite understand what they do for the customer. They never really obsess. And you must have a magnificent obsession for what you do to ever become a truly rich and wealthy deep work great book book number two my friend book number two different by young mean moon Harvard professor of marketing she’s outstanding in the way she sees things and the book it won’t interest a lot of people but if you’re a marketer and you love to understand how marketing works and what we have to be doing today different is a great book for you this book my managers a lot of people out there but if you are of an Irish Asian descent or an African-American Russian you would love this book Just kidding with you There’s very very few people that can relate to that I I’ve had a few of my friends that are I have a lot of good friends were Asian But not a lot of Asian Irish hybrids air chop But there’s not a whole lot of Americans up there in the Soviet Union for me Soviet Union Russia So again a book three book number three. What is book number three that you’d recommend? How Will You Measure Your Life by Clay Christensen, another Harvard guy. Hey, I’m very close to getting him on the show, by the way. I’m very close to getting him. Yes, Innovator’s Dilemma, great book. Try to get him on the show before I specialize in rejection with maniacal follow up. And it looks like we’re very close to getting him on the show. He’s tough, but he’s so well, you get him on, that’s going to be a show. He is really good, really, really good. I don’t think people realize. His books are so good. They teach entrepreneurs that, listen buddy, you might have a big idea, but you’ve got to build the processes and systems. How will you measure your life? Can you kind of explain what that book is about overall? Yes, sir. He had a death sentence on him, he had a bad disease. And began to really think about what he’s done and how he measured it and how things weren’t going the way he wanted them to go, and he wished he could do some things differently. It’s about that, it’s about setting out to know what matters most in measuring your life by how you measure it, not by how I measure it. That book is incredible. And I assign it to almost every one of my students. Clayton Christensen, a great professor, Harvard Business Professor, read his book, How Will You Measure Your Life. Dr. Green, I have final two questions. I want to respect your time. Final two questions here. You obviously have a top podcast. You’ve done well with the podcast. You’ve had years of experience as a consultant, working directly with businesses. You’ve taught business as the dean of business at Oral Roberts University. From your perspective, both anecdotal and statistical, what is the number one reason businesses fail? How can our listeners prevent it? What’s the number one reason businesses fail? What can our listeners do about it? Clay, I think I’m going to be a friend of your CPAs next to you. You sound like an excellent accountant. Here it is. You just run out of cash. You run out of cash because you’re making bad decisions, you’re not keeping a good, let me just use the language, cost accounting, you don’t know where money is coming or going, and when that’s the problem, you’ll run out of cash. And so what do you do? What the average business that goes out of business does wrong, they go borrow because they’re out of cash. Cash is coming in. Probably not. If you’re out of cash, something’s wrong. At least look at it with a good accountant, have a really good understanding. Businesses go out of business because of lack of cash or perhaps they get, Steve Jobs ruins them. You’re making CDs and one day he comes out with a P3 player that you can innovate it out. But you said the average business that you and I deal with. I would agree. Most people get blown out of the water and destroyed and their business fails because of not looking at the numbers intensely enough, not because of a competitor that comes in all of a sudden and shocks people. Dr. Green, so many of our listeners have enjoyed today’s interview. I know that I have. And I’m just telling you this on the air. I’d love to have you on as a guest in the future. Or if you ever have a hot topic you want to talk about, I’d love to have you on again. But for our listeners who want to know how they can learn more about you or maybe upcoming projects you’re working on, what’s the one website or the one place that you would direct all of our listeners to go to to learn more about you and the projects that you’re working on? Well, thanks Clay for that opportunity. Obviously, drstevegreen.com is the easiest way to get me and I would love for people to connect there. drstevegreen.com, Loveleaf’s book is another way of connecting with me. Either one of those two would be great. I just appreciate it if anybody even picks up the book that you find controversial. You know, if you’re out there listening and you’ve listened to the show for any amount of time at all, you know this, but we’re kind of indoctrinating Dr. Green into our Indorek cultish culture here. We like to end every show with a boom. Can I ask one question before we do that? Yeah, sure. No, do it. Yeah. Doctor, this is Eric. I have one question real quick. Oh, wow. Earlier in the show, Steve Carrington said something to you about tracking people that eat McDonald’s more than seven times per week. Holy cow! And he said you labeled those people super heavy users. Did you do that on purpose? Yes. No, that is the actual acronym of McDonald’s users. That is hilarious. Super heavy users, Clay, are the ones that eat seven times or more a week. This just in. Yes, I just had to clarify. I wanted to know, so thank you for that. We like to end every show with a boom, and boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. I believe that’s what it takes to be successful. You could learn all the things you need to learn, but Thomas Edison says that without – he says, vision without execution is hallucination. Vision without execution is hallucination. So Thrive Nation, don’t be a hallucinator, be a doer. And so we’d like to end the show with a boom. And so now without any further ado, we’re gonna say three, two, one, then we’ll say boom. Steve Currington, are you ready to do this? We’re gonna go crazy. Dr. Steve Green, are you ready to do this? I’m here, sir. Eric Chouf, are you ready to do this? Let’s do it. All right, Paul Hood, are you ready to do this? I am on it. Here we go, three, two, one, boom! Two, one, boom! My name’s Nick Holman, I’m with Holman’s Custom Cabinets. I want to tell you about our Dream 100 marketing system that we started with PlayClark through the coaching program. We’ve increased our repeat clients, our repeat builders that we work for. And we’ve got a lot more potential for growth since then. And it’s very scalable. And I’ve taken this young boy that I started this with, this 18 year old guy, who is my dream 100 marketing guy, who’s just making phone calls, taking donuts, taking cookies out to new contractors and clients to try to reach them to making repeat sales with them. And I had a lot of concerns just at first with trying to maybe train somebody to do this. We had a repeatable process, a script for him to call, and he’s doing that over and over. He calls anywhere from two to 300 people a week. It’s been over 3,000 calls since the first of the year, and sometimes he’s kind of switched over into sales because we had so many sales coming in that he had to help handle those sales and take away from the you know the Dream 100 marketing because of that. We’ve been doing it about seven months. It took about two to three months for us to break even to hit the break-even point and from the three to six month mark three to seven months now we’ve got a 300% return on my investment. I’m paying this young man, this 18 year old boy, a salary and then a 5% commission on these jobs and he’s just literally been killing it. And we’ve increased our profit by 8%, increased our sales by 10%. And these are repeatable, most of them are repeatable clients. New contractors that I’m doing repeat business on. Some of them I’ve sold four to five jobs to since January when we started this and it’s a been a 335.6% return on for this campaign and we’ve spent about a little over $30,000 and made over $100,000 in sales just from this Dream 100 process. And I can’t explain enough how much of a blessing it’s been and how well it works. I’d encourage you to start doing it soon. Thanks. All right, Thrive Nation, I know that a lot of you watching this show on a consistent basis or listening to the show have a business or have aspirations to grow a business. And if you’re not careful, your business can own you rather than you owning your business. You might find yourself at a place and space where you work all the time and you have no time freedom, although you earn financial freedom. And I know for anybody out there that’s never owned a business before, the idea of achieving financial freedom itself may be very exciting. But if you achieve financial freedom and you don’t have any time to enjoy that, the question is what was the point? And so on today’s show, we’re going to be joined here with an actual thriver, an actual longtime client who’s been able to achieve a time freedom to build a sustainable schedule that he loves. And here to share the story is Nick Holman. Nick, welcome to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? Thank you for having us. Hey, Nick, what’s your website for anybody out there who wants to verify you’re not a hologram? HolmansCabinets.com, H-O-L-M-A-N. Okay, HolmansCabinets.com? Yes, sir. And where are you based there, sir? We’re in Sparta, Tennessee. We cover the middle Tennessee area. And how long have you been in that area? We’ve been here nearly 40 years. My dad started the company when I was just a little kid. Awesome. And so you, you, you, did your dad kind of mentor you in the ways of cabinetry? He did. I grew up from a, from a little kid doing the business. I didn’t plan on doing it. Didn’t want to, but it ended up that way. And I really enjoy it. The Lord’s really blessed me. Now, how did you initially hear about us and what we do in terms of growing businesses? I was listening to a podcast called Entrepreneur on Fire and heard you interviewed on there and just sought you out. Well, you know, one thing that we’ve had a pleasure of working with you on and so we’ve enjoyed is we here at the Thrive Time Show, we call them diligent doers is who we work with. People that frankly are hardworking and all they want to know is what do I need to do? The best way I would describe it or kind of analogous way would be if you’re going to the grocery store, we’ve all been to the grocery store where there’s somebody at the store who has no intention of buying anything. We’ve all been to the mall where we’ve seen somebody who doesn’t want to buy anything. They’re just hanging out. And there’s a lot of people that kind of view entrepreneurship like that. They’re entrepreneurs. And there’s other people that actually are entrepreneurs. They actually implement. We call those diligent doers. And Sean’s had the pleasure of working with you. Oh yeah. And Sean, so tell us, tell listeners out there, what kind of big improvements have you and Nick worked together to implement within the company Holman’s Cabinets.com? Yeah, so we, I actually had the pleasure of working with Nick for several months here, but he has worked with several different consultants in our program. So by the time I got to him, I’m just going, hey man, what is, at this point, what is your biggest limiting factor? And at the time he’s saying, I’m pretty close to this ideal schedule, but there’s about 15 hours on my schedule of stuff that I don’t feel like I can delegate, but I’m kind of stuck there. So it’s been probably three months, three months or so, Nick, that we’ve been working at trying to get those hours off your schedule. It was more of a high level task that we systemized week by week, working on training employees and refining the system itself. And that’s now resulted in Nick having that time back to use for other things. Now, Nick, before we worked with you, how would you describe where the business was at? I was all over the place, very, very busy. I worked about 80 to 90 hours a week, never home, running, doing jobs, working late at night, at home on my laptop, drawing cabinet jobs, quoting cabinet jobs, and just really had no free time whatsoever. And so now how would you describe your schedule versus how it was then? A little bit laid back. I’ve even found myself bored a time or two. And that doesn’t last long. I’ve always, always can find something to do, but I’m looking at other business ventures, which I’m into different things and excited about that and have a little bit more time with my family. Of course, I love that free time. I’ve got four children, the Lord’s blessed me with, and some time to do ministry work that God’s allowed me to do. All of this is because of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I just thank Him, thank y’all for the time that I’ve gotten back to be able to do that. It just frees up so much time, the time freedom. I don’t really need it financially, but the time is invaluable. So if you could describe for anybody out there that’s listening, what was the process like that we’ve kind of guided you through? What are some of the improvements that you’ve made in the business? Well, the first thing y’all did, of course, was the website, and you started encouraging me to get Google reviews. We’re the highest rated cabinet shop in the state of Tennessee now. Come on now. And that’s, it’s just, it’s just been a blessing to see people call and they say, well, so how do you find us? Well, we see your reviews, they’re just unbelievable, the video reviews, and then also me training. I guess the last few months is hiring and training new people. I did not think that I could ever get anyone to replace a lot of what I was doing in measuring and learning all the different options of cabinets, appliances, the different ins and outs on different houses, different ins and outs of different cabinet options, whether it was custom or prefab or semi-custom, all of those different things. I didn’t think I could train anyone, and it’s been possible to do that. And now I’ve got two guys that are doing that. It’s just really relieved a lot of my time, the hiring, the group interviews, doing that has really been helpful, delegating and being able to train and writing down a process of how they can go through and learn what I’m doing. And it answers a lot of their questions before they ever have to ask me with what we’ve written down. I can’t think of the term of it right now. The schedule and how they’re to do that, it’s just made it so much easier. So let’s talk about the branding for a second. When we first started working with you, did you already have a website in place, or did our team have to help you with that? We did have a website. it and made it much more Google canonical where Google could read it better. And of course the reviews and all that and you all are riding on the back of it all the time. And it’s been a lot more profitable when people look up our website. All over Nashville now, even in that, we’re almost two hours away. People call us all the time from Nashville, Brentwood, Franklin, and then even in our areas it’s just constant because of our website. And before we started working with you, how many web leads would you get maybe in a given month versus how many are you getting now? I’ll look off the top of my head. I don’t know, but I know that I don’t know. We’re getting on average eight to 10 a week. Now I probably got one to two a week before. So maybe four or five times more leads? Yeah. I was looking at the tracking sheet before we hopped on here and it’s actually, this year, 34% of all of your leads have come from that. So that’s a significant amount. Now what we try to do at the Thrive Time Show is for anybody out there that goes to thrivetimeshow.com and you click on the testimonials button, no exaggeration, I’m just going to show this here, we have over 2,000 client success stories on video. So if you go back and watch some of these people, you’ll go, wow, that was 10 years ago. Wow, that was five years ago. Wow, that was six years ago. The reason why we do that is A, it inspires confidence in potential buyers. Somebody watching this show today might go, well, you know what? This seems credible. The second is we want to build the faith of an entrepreneur, not in a religious sense, in our biblical sense, but the faith that they can do it. How has that aspect, the coaching or the mentorship, helped having somebody that is showing you, hey, this is a proven path. We’ve done it before. We’re going to do it again. We’ve been coaching clients since before search engine optimization was a big thing. Now we’re doing it, now that search engine is a big thing. We did it before social media was a big thing. Now that it is a big thing, we’re still doing it. How does it help? How has it helped you knowing that you’re following a proven path and not moving just off of guesswork? It’s been tremendous. Just having a plan, I can follow a plan if that plan’s laid out. And you could see that, I could see that with other people. You know, you had another cabinet shop that was doing the same thing, I think, in North or South Carolina, you were working with, I’ve seen that, and I thought, I can do this. And then having that same plan from learning from y’all, taking that the same thing and being able to teach my guys in much the same way, and they’re picking up on it and learning it. And it’s just, it’s teaching one that’s teaching another, and it’s just, it’s passing that along. It’s been tremendous. Now we’ve worked on the online reputation, the online reputation enhancement, gathering Google reviews, video reviews. On your site, one thing that’s been nice, and I’ve heard about this through the coaches, is you guys do a good job. And it turns out that matters. And I hate to say this, but I’ve worked with a lot of restaurants in the past, where when we start, we go in through the, I have a proven process I take people through. So somebody schedules a 13-point assessment with me, I hop on the phone call with them, just like I did with you there, Nick. And I try to go over, you know, okay, I want to ask them what kind of revenue did you do last year? What kind of revenue did you do the year before? How would you rate your website on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the best? How would you rate your branding? How would you rate your accounting? We go through all these systems. And I’ve worked with a lot of restaurants who said, you know, the one thing though, is our food’s terrible. And you know, so when people show up, they typically leave mad or upset. And you guys have always done a great job. And we would call that the quality control loop. And so when we go to your website here, you guys have gathered testimonials. How has having video testimonials from actual clients impacted you? When people call all the time, they say your testimonials are unbelievable. And that helped set us apart from all the other shops that don’t have that. And I’m friends with a lot of the other shop owners and we do 10 times more than most shops around us. Yeah, I think it’s due to the reviews, it’s due to the testimonials. They can look us up and see that we’re credible. Some of my workers came on board because of the reviews and they saw the credibility that we had among other people and they wanted to be a part of the team because of the great work and the satisfied clients that we have. Now if we go to the bottom of your website, we do ongoing search engine optimization for you which is kind of a big task that if we do it right, no one knows we’re doing it. It’s kind of like pulling the weeds in a garden. I see so many inspired patriots. They say, Clay, I planted a garden. I was so inspired by your wife. Woo! And then I’ll see them a couple months later, and they’ll go, I’ll say, how’s the garden? They go, don’t talk about it. Didn’t weed it, didn’t feed it. It’s dead. Going with the rock garden, baby. A rock garden! So there’s ongoing pruning that has to, we have to run the online ads for you, manage that. We have to get the search engine going, optimization. Then we have to track what we’re doing on a weekly basis and track order. How has tracking implemented you, just knowing that all these things are happening behind the scenes? Well, you can continually see where you’re at and what you need to improve on and what you’re doing well at and see how it’s growing. It’s just, I love the numbers. I love to see the numbers and see how you can track that. And it just continues to increase or say, hey, I need to work here on this area because we’re having some problems in this area. And that helps you to see that and what you need to work on. And that’s what Sean’s really helped me to do each week. And he points those things out to me. And, but it’s easy to fix once you know what the issue is. But if you don’t know it, you don’t know what to do. You don’t know what to work on. Now, one thing that blew my mind years ago is I had a chance to interview the NBA Hall of Famer and fellow Christian, David Robinson. And David Robinson was jacked. And if you’re watching this show and you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m gonna pull up this video here, pull up this photo. He was so jacked. He was so physically fit. Do you remember this? Oh yeah. If you Google David Robinson, jacked. David Robinson, just jacked. I mean, this guy just, oh, he was huge. And I remember talking to Dave off camera and then some on camera. I’m like, Dave, how did you know that it was time to retire? How did you know, I mean, it was time to go. When did you know it was time to go ahead and retire?” He said, Clay, I was hitting the weights every day at the peak of my career. Every day. He’s like, I’m in the gym, never cheating on my diet, following my diet, always hitting the weights, just… Those guns. It’s the consistency. It wasn’t that he had this super complicated workout program. It’s the consistency. The Bible speaks to this a lot. It’s called Proverbs 10.4. For anybody out there that hasn’t read the Bible in a while, Proverbs 10.4 says, he who has a slack hand becometh poor, but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. And that’s the one thing that I have found over the years that I cannot really train. I can show, I can show people, but you know, today I woke up at three, came into the office about 5.30 today after organizing my day, hopped into our staff meeting at six and every single day. Can you talk a little bit about the diligence of maybe having a coach, if that has helped you or as far as, or maybe your dad taught that to you or just the consistency of putting in the work every day? Yeah, my dad did teach it to me. I wasn’t raised in church or anything like that. Literally my dad worked seven days a week. We had a cattle farm with about, at one time, 500 head of cattle, the cabinet shop, and we had a tree nursery. So literally, Dad worked us seven days a week. And so I grew up with that diligence and just have brought that into my work life, and I enjoy work. Work is fun. I’m very hyper and energetic, and I’m always doing something. My mind never shuts down, even so it’s hard to sleep sometimes. Just being a diligent doer, which is a biblical principle I’ve carried over into my work life, and even in other businesses, the Lord’s truly blessed because of that. Sometimes that can go the wrong direction too much if you’re too busy in the areas you don’t need to be in. All of this helps to organize that and to free up some time where you’re not too involved in that. And I’ve been told all my life, you don’t have to spend so much time in work, and you can balance that out. Well, this has helped me balance that out, because there was no way I could have kept going the way I was, and it ever worked out. It’s freed up so much of my time and allowed me to have really a more balanced life, be more biblical in my life as a husband and as a father, as a Christian, as a church member. It’s helped me to balance my life in every area. So it could be safe to say you’re getting five times more leads and working five times less? Yes, sir. I mean, that’s pretty powerful. That’s a pretty powerful success story. Now, have you guys started documenting all the checklists and systems on the back end of the website yet? Is that something you guys have tackled yet? No, no, but that’s something that’s coming right up here, just getting them all organized on the website for the employees to be able to access those systems. Well, I would just say this, just housekeeping note, when we hop off here, maybe you guys can hop on a call real quick. I’d love to book a 13-point assessment with you just to touch base on a few things. Because what’s happening is a lot of our clients, I’ll just give the listeners an example, this would be a Tip Top K9, and they are a franchise, and they’re a client that I’ve helped to franchise. And I think they have 16 locations open maybe now, I’m probably getting that wrong, maybe it’s 17 now, but they’re all over the country, they’ve got different locations on the Tip Tops. And one of the things that has to happen is as the company begins to grow, it’s, you know, we have to come up with a system to organize the systems, you know, to organize all the documents so that everybody can find them. And there’s so many core documents they’ve made over the years. And it’s like, we’ve got to be able to find those quickly. If someone’s looking for the system for how to train a German shepherd or how to write up an employee or how to find the core values document or how to find the goal sheets or how to find the insurance processes or the intake checklist or the bootcamp checklist or the closing progression or the sales manual. He have all those documents organized in one place and that really does help. And so we get off, I’d love to book a time. Yeah. So you and I can hop on a call and we’ll talk about kind of phase 2.0 as we take you from time freedom to maybe opening up multiple locations or scaling or whatever it is that you want to do. But thank you for carving out time for us today. And for anybody out there that’s listening, who’s contemplating scheduling a free consultation by going to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire. That’s thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire. Or thinking about coming to one of our in-person business workshops. What would you say to them? I would encourage you to do so immediately. It would, it would free up your time and give you more freedom. I’d encourage them to contact Lake Clark, Shawn Thrive Time Show, and come to one of those business meetings. And I will say this too, housekeeping note, a final note here. Our consulting, it’s $1,700 a month. So everybody out there listening, say, what do you guys charge? It’s 1,700 a month, 1-7-0-0 per month. It’s all month to month. And we have business conferences and we have VIP tickets and general admission tickets, and we make it affordable for everybody and we have scholarship tickets so everybody can afford to go. Thank you so much for carving out time here. I really do appreciate you. Thank you. And we’ll talk to you soon. Take care brother. Yes sir, thanks. Great job. You have questions? America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your Broda from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of Ask Clay Anything on the Thrivetime Business Coach radio show. Radio Show. Yes, yes, yes, and yes, Dr. Z, we have a hot question in here from the Thrive Nation. A hot question. Andrew, this is a hot question. It’s hot. Andrew, you know how hot this question is? Pretty darn hot. Oh, yeah. There we go. Step into the business coach’s saunas. That’s right. Okay, now, here’s a question. The question from the Thriver was, how do you deal with a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? And how often do you guys have these? So we’re going to go around the horn. We have Paul Hood, a CPA with thousands of clients on the show. We’ve got Dr. Z here on the show. We’ve got myself. So let’s go around the horn and let’s talk about it. How often do you have the things, the variables, the bad things happen to you that some would consider to be, you know, you’re a positive guy, so you don’t let it get you down, but how often do things happen to you where it would be easy to say, wow, that was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? Short of resetting my watermark, as I call it, there was a period of my life that I had a series of very unfortunate things happen to me and my family and my business, and that was pretty much my high watermark of stress and bad day. So once you kind of reset that watermark pretty high, it was a pretty high one for me that time, everything else you kind of go, you put it in perspective and go, well, you know, compared to that day, it’s not so bad. Could be worse. Could be worse. Oh, it could be worse. In Minnesota, by the way, if you ask anyone how they’re doing, you have about a 40% chance that they will respond with, oh, it could be worse. It could be worse. No matter what’s going on. That’s about the peak of the optimism. Yeah, exactly. It could be worse. But what I do is this. A lot of times, depending upon what category it’s in and how to process it, it can be pretty daunting. It can be pretty debilitating. And if you don’t get on top of it with your brain pretty quickly, it can kind of really shut you down for a little while. But when you have a really, really bad day, one thing that I like to do is I like to think about all the positives in my life. I like to pray also and be thankful for all the positive things in my life. I’ll just go through a checklist of all the home runs, all the games won, all those positive memories in your life. You go back home and look at that big fat head of you, the full size photo of you and go, well done. That’s the only head I know that’s bigger than yours, by the way. It’s a big head. I don’t think it’s that big. My head, do I wear a size 14 hat size? I thought it was 18 and a half. 18 and a half, okay. Well, you were like, your hat’s loose. You’re right. But I think the key is that you have to understand that if you’re in control of your joy, and this is a word for everybody listening out there, if you’re in control of your joy, then nothing can take it away from you. Nothing can take away your happiness. If you’re waiting for something to make you happy, you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you let something make you unhappy, you’re doing the wrong thing. So you need to be in control of your joy. You need to be in control. If it’s a bad day, how are you going to fix it? Is there a problem that needs to be fixed, or is it just a bad day? But if there’s a problem that needs to be fixed, and I go into problem-solving mode, step one, what do I need to do? Step two, what do I need to do? Step three, what do I need to do? Oh, and by the way, I’m really thankful because I’ve got three healthy children. I’m really thankful that I’ve got all these things I’m thankful for. I’d like to get Paul’s take on this because, Paul, you manage a team of employees. Yes, sir. And your core team at your three offices, how many people approximately are we talking about? Between the three offices, because you have other offices and locations, yours expanding, but maybe between Bartlesville, Tulsa, Claremore, how many people are we talking about? Well, we have a total of probably about 40 employees, but my key group is probably 12 or so. So let’s think about our 12, let’s think about your 12. Z, think about your core 12. I’ll think about my core 12 for a second. It seems as though there’s always something going on in the lives of one of those 12 people because there’s 12 people. There’s so many people, there’s always something. Now, Z, with a team of like 50, there’s usually two or three bad things happening every day between those 50. Unfortunately, yes. And with thousands of customers, there seems to be usually, if you have a thousand customers that you provide service for a month, if you’re awesome, you have like a 1% or 3% complaint rate. So think about that. Elephant in the room, Paul. We have 4,000 members. And see, if we make a mistake with somebody’s hair, even only 2% of the time, that’s 80 bona fide complaints a month. Sure. So we had a guy shout at me from Minnesota. I remember him saying this. He goes, how many complaints do you get a day? Did he say it could have been worse? Well, this is really funny. He goes, how many do you get a day? And I said, like three. He goes, three? I said, yeah. I mean, they only get to me if they’re like next level. But he goes, just for that business? And I said, yeah. So you get like, how many complaints a month? Do the math. Dozens. I mean, you know what I mean? And you start, but he goes, I don’t think I could handle that. And it was very good for him to like know that he emotionally could. I said, why not? He goes, I just, it bothers me. Like if I get a bad review, it’ll bother me for like a month. Which is unfortunate. So I want to ask you this, Paul, with your clients, you do your best to serve your clients. I know you want to do your best, but if for whatever reason, like our haircut business, we make a mistake 2% of the time, or if there’s a misunderstanding or whatever, how do you process that when a customer is frustrated? How do you emotionally and mentally process it when your business occasionally misses the mark like my business does and I think any business does. Well, Clay, you know, just like anything, you have to separate real issues with fake issues. You know, you have a family member die. That’s something that, you know, there’s not a lot of positive that comes out of that. But most business downturn, you know, issues or complaints or bad things, you know, really what I try to do is embrace that and accept that and appreciate that as a learning experience. Because, you know, if you’ve got an issue, it’s kind of like, let’s say you’re driving down the road and you have your family in the car and, you know, the car starts sputtering and everything and you can get really upset, but the reality is maybe that sputtering helps save you from having a wreck. And so the way I look at things is I try to find the positive in it and I try not to get real upset and just try to say, well, this is something that’s strengthening my team. It’s a learning opportunity. It’s an opportunity to fix something. I’m a registered investment advisor and a personal financial specialist and I get audited every year by a government entity or whatever. I embrace that because if I’m not doing something to the best of our abilities or missing something, I want to know. I don’t think it’s… If I’ve got a client that that complains and honestly and I don’t say this to be mean two-thirds of the complaints are Really not valid, but it doesn’t really matter because Marketing to me is top of mind It’s how that person feels when they walk out of my office and what they’re gonna say to other people And so the old adage the customer is always right is kind of right But I embrace it, I approach it head on, I personally make the phone call and what can I do to solve this to make you feel better, to make you happy? It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a valid complaint or not, it’s a complaint. I was taught a long time ago, do I want to be right or do I want to be rich? So I’d rather be rich than argue with a client all the time. I just want to make them happy. I have found for me, and Zee, I want to get your take on this. I’ve got a few notable quotables I want to read to you. The first one will be from that controversial book known as the Bible. In the Bible, Matthew 5.10, I love that verse, Matthew 5.10 says, Blessed are those who are persecuted because of their righteousness. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So blessed are those who are persecuted for being right. All right, here’s an example. You have an employee that works for you, Z, and you know, they’re supposed to be on time. And they’re not. So your job as the owner, manager, whatever, is to bring it up. You say, hey, you know, Doug, I need you to be on time. And Doug goes, oh, come on. Come on, man. Yeah, what? What? And there’s this blow up, you know. Yes. And you would, some people attack you when you call them out for being wrong, you know, when you hold them accountable. Oh, I know. I know. So I think part of it is just embracing that if you’re going to hold people accountable, aka run a business, you just have to get really good with knowing that a lot of people won’t be happy with you all the time, right? I mean, don’t you have to get to a place where you just say, hopefully there’s a reward in heaven because I’m certainly, you know what I mean, blessed are those who are persecuted because of their righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I think you have to just go, well, hopefully there’s a reward up there because, whoa! Well I like the reward could be in the bank statement because all of a sudden you’re cracking the whip and you’re making your business run better. But for everybody listening out there, if you’re thinking about, we know 67% of you are, according to Forbes, that is our business Bible, by the way. Not taking anything away from the actual Bible, but that’s the business Bible. What happens is that if you go into this owning a business with the idea that you only get to wear the white hat, and you only get to be the good cop, you’re going to lose. At times you’ve got to put on the black hat. At times you’ve got to be the bad cop. At times you’ve got to call people out, and you’ve got to correct them. And pruning and correction is good. Don’t you agree though that it’s kind of like raising kids. You can be a lazy parent and let them play in the street because you don’t want to upset them and correct them. The same thing applies with employees. If you hold them accountable, that’s actually good for them. It’s good for your business, it’s good for your other employees, but it’s good for them. When you’re not holding them accountable, you’re accepting their slackery, and therefore it’s bad for them and they’re never going to achieve and reach their potential. I think about our office and just people on my team. There’s a guy on our team named Matt. Matt always says, how can I get better? At least he does that to me. He says, how can I get better? I give him the same information as I might give somebody else, the same coaching, and he says, thank you. Thank you. How can I get better? I think a lot of bosses feel like they’re being a bad guy, quote unquote. I don’t I hate to be the bad guy, but just by telling somebody, hey, you need to follow the script. You need to show up on time. This is what I’m paying you to do. And I feel bad about holding someone accountable because they’re the bad guy. You’re not the bad guy. You’re the right guy. You’re the righteous guy. Here’s another thought. Robert Green, bestselling author of the book called Mastery, bestselling book called Mastery. He writes, The most effective attitude to adopt is one of supreme acceptance. The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. Some people have really dark qualities that are especially pronounced. You cannot change such people at their core, but you must merely avoid becoming their victim. Do you agree with that, Z? Absolutely. People change seldom. It’s one of my core things. If they’re a bad apple, they’re typically going to be a bad apple. Instead of sitting there worrying about trying to life coach them into being a good apple, just get them out of your space. The quote that Z gave me years ago was so good. I love this quote. I’m going to high five you. This will set me free. High five. This is a good quote. You said to me, you said, Clay, unless you’re a life coach, don’t life coach them. I was going, whoa, whoa, because that’s where I was at for a long time as a young man. I kept trying to fix everybody. How many businesses have you coached over the years where the owner comes up to you and they’ve got a bad apple working for them? They refuse to fire them because they just know it’s maybe poor management, it’s poor people skills on their part, and they reflect the fault back on the den. I would say it’s two-thirds of what prevents businesses from growing. It’s the inability of the owner to hold people accountable. The complete refusal to hold people accountable. And as we get back into this root topic of how to deal with the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, I’ve got a couple quick tips here for you and I’m going to give them to you. One is there is a Joel Osteen quote from the book called The Best Life Now that set me free here. Okay. It says, live your best life now. He says, do your best and forget the rest and just give God the stress. So for me as a Christian, I go, I did my best. Okay, God, if you want me to be going through this whole Job phase of my life right now, if this is like some teaching part of the Bible where I’m getting punished or something, let that happen. If not, whatever. But I used to, once I just realized, you do your best and forget the rest. That helped me a lot. Probably because it rhymed. That’s a rapper coming out of you right there. But seriously, it helped me just to know you do your best and forget the rest. And now, I don’t care at all. I don’t care if somebody’s not happy and I did my best. I just don’t care. I don’t care. But I used to care a lot. Don’t you think a lot of that, though, comes from your core values of what’s important in life? We make good money, but it’s not about the money. You know, I grew up, I’ve lived in trailer parks, nobody on either side of my family graduated high school besides my mom and I. I can be happy living in a trailer park. Not that there’s anything wrong with a trailer park. The point is, it’s not the money, and I have confidence in myself to rebuild. If something falls apart, I’m going to do my best, and if other people can run along with me, great. But the reality is I’m going to be happy regardless. So this is what I want you to do right now. This is what I want you to do. This is the action item for all the listeners out there. See, here we go. Okay. If somebody out there, if you’re having something bad happen to you today, tomorrow, the next ten minutes, whatever, if something bad happens, I want you to do this thing called the five minute rule. This is the rule I live by. All right. I try to do it, I’d say by 99% of the time I do it. Okay. Don’t make any decisions ever when mad. Okay, that’s good. Like, don’t make a decision. Just do not make a decision when mad. Okay. Then, during those five minutes, think about the decision you’re going to make. How will it affect you a year from now? Will it affect you? Okay. So, as an example, when I went in the other day to a local fast food restaurant and they totally jacked up my order, you know why I didn’t freak out, Z? Because you did the five minute rule. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Five years from now, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. The other day I was in a parking lot at Atwood’s and a guy cut me off. You spend a lot of time at Atwood’s. Well, a guy cut me off with a big monster truck wheel thing. Oh, yeah. He gives me the stink eye. I get out of my car and he’s following me into the store with the stink eye. You know why I didn’t say anything to him? Because it doesn’t matter. It’s a five minute rule. Because you have a big monster truck. I can make a decision while I’m mad. I don’t want to get beat up in the parking lot of Atwood’s so that I can write the wrong… Don’t give me that shovel I was telling you about. So next time you get upset, take five minutes, think about that. If it’s a bigger decision, if it’s a big purchase, if it’s a big… Don’t go buy things when you’re angry. Just don’t take big action when you’re angry. I promise your life will be better if you have more of a long-term perspective to everything. And that is how you deal with a no-good, terrible day. If you’re out there today and you’re having something bad in your life, don’t make it worse by making immediate action while angry. Don’t, don’t, don’t make it worse. Yeah, when you fight yourself in a hole. You know what they say, see a broad to get that booty, yak him. Lay her down or smack him, yak him. Stop the digging. And now, without any further ado, we’d like to end each and every show with a boom. So here we go. Three, two, one, boom. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Rosalim, baby. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Thrive Time Show, two day interactive business growth workshop. 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. And a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field and off the field the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now the big question is JT how does he do it? Hmm well they’re gonna have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well I’m just saying Tim Tebow is gonna 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. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business. That is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of RusticCuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive ThriveTime show business workshops. We have the guy, we have had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the ThriveTime show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. The way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question-and-answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15-minute question-and-answer session. It’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks. It’s gonna blow your mind Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show today interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop See the thousands of video testimonials today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com, you’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. 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 Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.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 Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com. Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to Thrivetimeshow.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 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. You started 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 any 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, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell Oklahoma. It’s supposed to be Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrivetimeshow 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. Who? You. You’re going to come. Who? I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com. And again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical. It’s actionable. And it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Jerusalem. 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 L.A., 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. 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 systems 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. They’re like, oh but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’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’ve 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 King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Herbert Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. As Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man and there’s so many ways we could take this thing but I thought since you and Eric are close Trump what were you saying about what Trump can’t what Donald who’s my age and I can say or cannot say what I have to 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 name of Jeremy Thorne who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. He said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? I said, no. My father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. I went from being an employee to self-employed, to the business owner, to the investor. 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, but I just want to tell you thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. 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. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa!