Clay Clark | Honest Tea Founder | How Seth Goldman Grew a $150 Million Brand & Got His Product In 10,000 Stores Starting In His Kitchen + How to Market Your Product + Join Tebow At Clay Clark’s Dec 5-6 Interactive Business Workshop

Audio Transcription

My saying is, if it’s important to you, hire a coach. And I think that’s one of the reasons people are not successful is they, you know, they eat a cheeseburger instead of hiring a coach, you know what I mean? And so my coach pushes me, they’re younger than me, they push harder, they’re trained. And as my rich dad always said, you know, amateurs don’t have a coach, but professionals always have coaches. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important. My rich dad was one of those persons. I wanted to learn how to play Monopoly in real life. So he was my coach. 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 Zunder. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we here We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here Started from the bottom, now we here We started from the bottom, now we here We took flight, 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’ll bring down the books, see if we get 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 CNC up on your right, T-O. And now, three, two, one, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Today, the founder of Honest Tea, Seth Goldman, shares how he started the $150 million Honest Tea brand out of his kitchen, making tea one thermos at a time. He explains why the time will never be just right to start that business. Seth Goldman explains why he had to drive all around Northeastern America in a 1998 Saturn station wagon in order to search for the perfect bottler. He explains the story behind the Honest Tea name, how he raised the money needed to fund the growth of Honest Tea, and how he emotionally was able to push through the thousands of rejections it took to build the $150 million dollar company that you and I now know as Honest Tea. All this and more during our exclusive interview with the founder of Honest Tea, Seth Gold! co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow. Now, 4, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Thrive Nation, on today’s show we have an incredible guest, Mr. Seth Goldman, how are you sir? I’m great, Clay, good to be with you. Hey, I am very fired up to have you on this show because your story is so epic and it started off with such humble beginnings and I’d love to ask you, my friend, what first inspired you to start Honest Tea? Well, it was pretty simple. I was thirsty. I looked at the beverage cooler and I said, there’s a lot of drinks here, but there’s nothing that was going to quench my thirst. I was looking for something that just wasn’t as sweet as all the other drinks out there and I didn’t find it. So that’s why we created it. Your products are now in the Chick-fil-A stores, Wendy’s, 100,000 stores all around the world. Where did you, where did you, what was step one to launch Honest Tea? What was the very beginning? I understand you were making this at home? Yeah, so the first step was I brewed some samples in my kitchen and I brought them in thermoses to the local Whole Foods buying office in Rockville, Maryland, which was close by to where I still live. And I got an empty Snapple bottle and pasted a label on it and said, this is what it would look like. And then I poured out the samples from the thermos and said, this is what it would taste like and I want to sell it in your store. What kind of jobs were you doing to support yourself while you were starting what would be a $100 million tea company out of your kitchen? Yeah. So I had been in the investment business before I launched, when the ideas were, we’ll say, brewing. When I finally felt like there was enough of an idea to launch a business, I resigned from the investment fund I worked for and started out of my house. It was a full-time undertaking when I was going for it. How did you know that it was the time to quit the other job and to go all in with Honest Tea? So many people struggle with knowing when to make that jump and when to pull the trigger. How did you know it was time? You know, I think there’s never a perfect time. In fact, my wife and I had just had our third son. So you can say that’s absolutely the wrong time to do it. But it felt like there was a point in my life where I had enough confidence that I believed in my skills enough that I was willing to try. There was enough of an idea that I felt like it was, and it was an idea that I was passionate about and believed in and felt like I could make into something. And, and other than that, it was like, all right. The other thing that very totally, you know, coincidental or coincidentally happened was that I ended up getting a check from an investment my father had made, oh boy, it was like literally 20 years ago. And it just ended up that I got some money from that investment and that was kind of my feed capital. And I said, all right, well, there’s a sign. I got, you know, it kind of fell into my lap and that will be my startup capital. How much money did it cost to start up Honest Tea? We’re talking tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? Well, I put in $50,000. That was the check I ended up getting. Yep. But we raised a total of $500,000, and that basically got us through our first year and a little bit more. And that was enough to make the product and to do some very minimal marketing and buy all the inventory and labels and that kind of thing. Where did the name Honest Tea come from? Were you thinking about going with Dishonest Tea and then you thought, no, let’s make an honest company. Where did the name come from? So actually my co-founder Barry, he was my professor from the Yale School of Management and he had been in India where he’d been doing a case study of the tea industry and he came up with that name and it was just the perfect name to capture what we wanted the brand to be, an authentic, natural, healthy brand. And once we had that, you know, initially when I spoke to Barry, we weren’t thinking tea, we were just thinking about a less sweet drink and it could have been a seltzer and juice drink. But when he came up with the name Honest Tea, I’m like, oh, that settles it. That’s what we’re going with. Now, what was your relationship like with Barry before teaming up to build Honest Tea? Yeah, well, he’d been my professor and we had always hit it off as student and professor. And we were, you know, I would say, we’d like to have intellectually spar with each other and just sort of talk about ideas and challenge each other. And then we stayed in touch after I graduated from Yale School of Management and would send emails or sometimes I’d ask, you know, or I’d share a fun idea I’d come across or maybe ask for some advice around, you know, maybe if I got a job offer and that kind of thing. So it wasn’t like I emailed him out of the blue when I was ready to do something about this idea. Now, a lot of people out there, a lot of entrepreneurs, we have half a million folks that will listen to this podcast every month and I know a lot of them are saying, well, man, how did you even know what terms to offer people when you’re raising capital? Is there a certain formula you give people out there? Because I’ve heard so many different approaches. I’d just like to get your approach on, if you’re an entrepreneur out there trying to raise capital, what’s the best… We did something a little different and it was creative and it worked out, but it was risky and it’s, as one of our investors said, it was an equity structure that only a game theorist would love. Well, Barry is a game theorist, so that made sense that we offered it. What we did is we said, look, we don’t know how valuable this company is going to be. What most entrepreneurs do when they start up is they basically issue themselves what’s called penny stocks and just give themselves a ton of equity. And we said, we’re going to invest in this company at the same terms as all the other investors. And we’re going to give ourselves warrants, which are basically options that say as the value of the company grows, we’ll have the right to those options. And when they become in the money, when the stock price grows past the price of the options, then we end up getting more of the company. So we were incentivized to grow the value of the company, and we did grow it, and that was how we came to benefit. But the point was we only benefited when shareholders benefited. We weren’t giving ourselves free shares that weren’t earned. Now you, you know, Barry was a professor and I understood that both of your parents were professors. Yes. So your family conversations growing up typically were not about sports and celebrity gossip, but what kind of conversations were your parents having around the dinner table? And how did that impact the way you see the world now? Yeah, no, you’re right. My dad was an economist and my mom’s a historian of China. And so we were always sort of thinking in a global context. And I think that did inform the way I approached Honest Tea. It wasn’t just a company trying to, you know, make money or just trying to move around some cases of tea. It was thinking about how can we create a business that had a positive impact on the world and on the people involved in the supply chain, the people picking the tea leaves, as well as the environment that we source from. And that really has, I’d say, come to be what we’ve done with the business and what we strive to do with the business. I would say, oh, the other thing I got from my parents was also a sense of humility that, you know, they always expected a lot. And so I never got the feeling, I never got like the great job, you know, if I got an A-, if I got an A-, and it was, well, it wasn’t an A, or if it was an A, it wasn’t an A+. So I always have that feeling that, you know, we’ve got more work to do with honesty and with our impact. You know, some people who are raised in homes where there’s very high expectations, they tend to go the other way. Are you a secret lover of Adam Sandler films now? I can laugh at things like that. I think, you know, I did a good job of not taking it too seriously. I did feel a lot of pressure to succeed, but I also found I had enough other interests that I came to understand success is not just in a grade. It’s certainly not just in a dollar figure. There are other ways to measure it, and I certainly tried to pass that on to my kids as well. In 2012, I was reading this book called The Startup Playbook, the yellow-covered book that sits behind me on my bookshelf. In that book, it did a profile on you and your company, Honest Tea. There’s one line in that book that really blew my mind. You set out to build a beverage company that would change the definition of what a beverage should be, that the standards you set for the company are immovable, fair trade, low sugar and caloric content, and a commitment to organic. I circled it, I highlighted it, I dog-eared it, and I thought, I want to interview this guy. I would like to go through these three, because it sounds like you’re reading my wife’s brain and you’re scanning her brain and making that your value. So let’s talk about fair trade first. What does it mean for you to be fair trade? Yeah, well there is a real definition of what fair trade means and our products do get certified as fair trade by a group called Fair Trade USA. And what it means is it starts with the wages and makes sure that all the people involved in our supply chain, whether it’s the people picking the tea leaves or processing the tea leaves are paid a living wage in the country where they’re working. And it also means that a portion of the sales, when they sell the product to us and we buy the tea or sugar, a portion of our purchase goes back to that community for them to reinvest in their own priorities, whether it’s their own infrastructure or healthcare or schools. We’ve helped finance everything from eye care in India to ambulances in Paraguay, things that help them become more economically self-sufficient. Where are most of your beverages made now? Are you still making 95% of them from your kitchen? No. No, we have bottling plants around the country. We got bought by Coca-Cola in 2011, so we have bottling plants that work with other Coke products. There’s one in Virginia, there’s one in New Jersey, there’s one in Massachusetts, there are a few in California, there’s some in Texas, and some in Michigan as well. And so now are all the employees today Coca-Cola employees or they are original Honesty employees? We have some that work out of our office in Bethesda. We still have the original office that Honesty was in before we sold the Coca-Cola. But then, yes, a lot of the sales people we work with are part of the Coca-Cola organization as are some of the operations people, too. We have a lot of fitness experts on our show, and if I could summarize what they say, they say sugar makes you fat. You know, they’re always talking about the sugar makes you fat. Avoid the sugar. You decided to make your company low sugar and to manage that caloric content before it was the fat. You were kind of like way ahead of the game. People were drinking this Honest Tea going, what in the crap? This doesn’t have sugar in it. Can you talk to me about your commitment to be the low sugar and low caloric guy before that was a move? You were the inventor of the move. 21 years ago when we were starting this company, every bottle of tea was at 100 calories per eight ounces and so they were all super sweet. And so it really was starting from a place of just let’s just have something that doesn’t taste as sweet. And of course, within that, a less sweet taste obviously doesn’t mean less sugar. And so yeah, we definitely were doing it from a health perspective, but there was also just a taste profile perspective that we felt was relevant. And of course today, we’ve got even more varieties that are zero calorie or unsweetened. And it is where consumers have shifted, but you’re right, when you start out that way, it’s hard because it’s not where the majority of consumers are. And when people picked up our bottle in the beginning and they were looking for what they thought was just a regular bottle of tea and they taste ours, it didn’t taste like what they were used to. You are an educated man. I know you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about food and thinking about health and being proactive about these things. But a lot of our listeners, they’re great at business, but they’ve never thought about organic and what it means to be organic and why it even matters. So let’s just say that the listeners out there, let’s say you have a plumber you’re talking to, an electrician, some corporate head who’s like organic or shmanic. Can you explain why organic matters and why it’s… My wife would love to pile on after you take a deep dive here. Here’s a simple way to talk about it, and this is a way that I would say is not necessarily scientific, but it’s easy to understand. In most non-organic agriculture, they will use things like pesticides and herbicides, chemical compounds that are pesticides and herbicides and the word side of course is the same root word as suicide and homicide and which is to kill in the case of herbicides killing herbs and pesticides killing pests and so they are compounds designed to kill living organisms. Now the science, the companies that sell those compounds will tell you that they are regulated to sell those products and they are allowed at diluted levels, they are safe to the consumer and I won’t dispute that. What I will say is that although they may not reach significant levels on the plants, they do build up in the earth, they do build up in the ecosystem, they build up in the water and they build up in the air and as a result when you look at humans, whether you look at the spinal fluid of a newborn baby, they’ll have the residues of these compounds in them, even if, you know, obviously the baby hasn’t consumed anything. So these compounds do build up in our systems and they are, as I said, compounds designed to kill living organisms. And our point of view is the earth and people are better without those compounds in them. And so organic agriculture seeks to have a lighter environmental footprint that doesn’t rely on chemical compounds designed to kill living organisms. Do you eat only organic food? I do with my best. It’s not perfect, but certainly wherever I have a choice to buy organic, I will do it. But of course, here’s what’s interesting about organic is that obviously it often does cost more. One of the things we’ve had as our commitment and honesty is to democratize organic. What we’ve done is, and this is one of the reasons we partnered with Coca-Cola, is to bring these products to scale in a way that does not make them price prohibitive. As you mentioned, our products are sold at McDonald’s, at Wendy’s, and Chick-fil-A, and Subway. These are outlets where the organic offering is not at a premium to the rest of the market. We’re very proud of that because it means we’ve, both through distribution and pricing, we’ve been able to make organic more accessible, more affordable. In 2012, when I began cyber-stalking you, I discovered that you guys were one of the first beverages out there to have the official seal as being an organic beverage. Yeah. The first organic bottled tea. Can you explain why that was such a game-changer for the growth of the young Honest Tea Company at the time? Well it was totally consistent both with our name and our aspirations as a brand and of course what we also learned we looked at tea leaves and we realized that unlike an apple or a tomato, tea leaves are one of the few agricultural products that never gets rinsed. So if chemicals are sprayed on tea leaves, they stay on the leaves until hot water is poured on the leaves and basically washing the chemicals right into the drink. So we said that’s something we’ve got to do. And we moved quickly to make the rest of our line organic. And it has helped differentiate us and helped us stand apart. And of course everything we sell today is certified organic. And then what happened is a few years later the USDA created the USDA organic seal and then that helped brand it and set it apart. And at the time, consumers didn’t have much knowledge, but we see them continuing to learn more and gain greater awareness about the organic seal. How did you land your deal with Whole Foods? Because my understanding is that in 1998, Whole Foods made an order for 15,000 bottles of tea. Were you just sitting around one day and then the phone rang and they said, ìIs this Seth Goldman?î How did it happen? No, so what happened is their head of marketing used to be, he went to the Yale School of Management and so I had gotten to know him in DC and so when I had this idea, I went out to lunch with him with some thermoses and I said, ìI think thereís an opportunity to sell this in your store.î He said, ìWell, I can help you get the appointment. I can’t help, you know, you have to convince the buyer. And so I got to the buyer and I, you know, poured out the samples and as I said, use that Snapple bottle with the label on it and showed it to him. And he, the buyer was willing to take a gamble. He said, well, we’ll take 15,000 bottles. What was funny though, is he said, we’ll take the 15,000 bottles and we won’t pay for them, but if they sell, then we’ll pay you.” I said, well, I appreciate the part about taking the product. I need you to pay for the first bottle. I don’t have, you know, the whole company is just me and these services and this bottle, so I really need you to pay for everything. To their credit, he agreed. Now can you explain how retail works for people out there that don’t know? Because typically, if you have a product, and let’s say a company like a Whole Foods or a Target agrees to carry your product on their shelves, typically you as the creator of the product don’t get paid for 60 to 90 days after the product is sold. Can you kind of explain how that works for the average listener out there? Yeah, so different stores work differently, but in general we’ll ship the product to them and then they’ll pay us and as you said, sometimes it’s 30 days, sometimes it’s 60 days and early for entrepreneurs, sometimes what they’ll let us do is if they will let them pay in 10 days, but they take a little discount and so if the store is well established, they can do that and for the entrepreneur, the reason that makes sense is because you need to have cash to pay the rest of your bills even if it comes at a discount. Sometimes we have that arrangement with some of our retailers. I mean, when you’re an early stage entrepreneur, every penny counts and every penny is precious and you just have to find ways to get money. And so sometimes what we would also do is we would talk to some of our suppliers, in particular our bottle supplier, who is a very well-established supplier. And I’d say to him, during the January, February, I said, this is our slow time of year. We’re not gonna sell as much tea right now. So what I need you to do is give me longer terms. Sometimes he’d let me extend to 60 days. I would pay, I’ll pay him 60 days rather than 30, and that was basically like a loan where, you know, that enabled me to pay my other bills and pay our employees, and then of course when the weather got warmer, then I’d return and pay him back everything I owed him. Now when you got the order for 15,000 bottles, you’re still making it out of your kitchen, I believe. So what did you do? Did you expand your granite countertop? Did you knock out a wall and make the kitchen bigger? How did you do it? I sprang into action and traveled up and down the East Coast, and I went to every type of different facility that did bottling. So I went to soda plants, I went to a beer brewery, I went to a place that made jelly, and eventually, and I had a friend helping me, eventually we ended up at an apple juice packing plant up in Buffalo that had some extra line time available and they let us make tea in their facility. Did you drive to all these places or did you call them or how did you get a hold of them? I drove, yeah. I mean I had to meet with them in person. I would talk to them first on the phone and explain what we were looking for. First of all, if they returned my call, sometimes they wouldn’t return the call. But when they did return the call, then I would have the conversation and if they felt like there was close enough alignment, then I’d go meet them in person. And so much of this, like any entrepreneur, when you’re starting out, because you don’t have much to go on and so you have to meet these people. You have to be able to demonstrate that you’re a genuine person and doing this the right way and have the right ideas behind it to build it. These bottling plants, they have a lot of people who come through and they don’t know if someone’s for real or if someone’s going to be able to pay them. That’s often the case. They would insist on being paid up front because I’ve seen it happen so often that the entrepreneur gets something and then disappears. What kind of a sweet vehicle were you driving back then? Were you driving like a hatchback? Ah, we had a Saturn station wagon. Nice! In fact, what happened was I picked up our spices for our first production run. We had this wonderful chai recipe, but I ordered and picked up the spices from a spice warehouse in Baltimore, and I had to drive it up to Buffalo for eight hours, and it was a freezing cold day, so I had to keep the windows closed for that eight hour drive. And by the time I got up to Buffalo, that car had a permanent aroma of chai spice, which was very fragrant, but very strong. Strong with the ladies. Okay, so you’re driving the Saturn station wagon. What year was this? Oh, so this was 1998, right at the beginning of the business. Are you a big music guy? Oh yeah, I was listening to music, but partially because it’s an eight-hour drive, so I just had, I had just, um, there was a, you know, a whole soundtrack for that year, because I spent tons of time in the car. It was, it was pretty intense. Did you listen to My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion till your brain exploded that year, back there in 1998? No, that was not the song that kept me going, but, um, you know, I heard a lot of U2 there was Matchbox 20 at 3 a.m. which felt like it was it was my I was hearing that at 3 a.m. so I related to it. Who are some of your favorite musicians that you like to listen to? Are you still a big Matchbox 20 guy? Well there’s not as much of their recent stuff but I love Tom Petty I still like U2 but yeah. A buddy of mine I went to college with, Ryan Tedder, he went to Oral Roberts University with me. His goal someday was to write a song with Bono. He actually got it done. And so OneRepublic has opened up for you too. And Ryan Tedder has won himself a couple of Grammys. But he had this goal. He kept saying, I’m going to write a song someday with Peter Gabriel, Bono, and Paul McCartney. And he actually pulled off the trifecta. And so he did it. So for any listeners out there who think that your dream is not possible, what advice would you give them there, Seth? For anybody out there who says, you know, I’m driving around this 1998 Saturn station wagon, I’m listening to Tom Petty, I’m driving around trying to find money. What advice would you have to encourage the entrepreneurs out there? I’ve got a lot. No, number one, when you walk into our office at Honesty, the first thing you’ll see on the wall is a quote. It’s from one of our bottle caps. It says, those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the people doing it. So, you know, there’s always going to be skeptics out there criticizing or second guessing you. And, you know, if you have a passion about what you want to do, you got to do it. I think the other thing I would say, and this is another quote, this is from Oscar Wilde, it says, be yourself. Everyone else has already taken. So there’s no point in trying to bring a brand to life if it’s just copying what somebody else has. You’ve got to really succeed. You have to have a clear point of difference, a clear competitive advantage over whatever else is out there and to stand alone. And then the third one I would say is, this is a quote I once heard on a cartoon show, which was from Fat Albert and it said, ìHe who throws mud only loses ground.î You never want to try to elevate yourself by disparaging others. See what you can do to shine your own light. What was the most difficult aspect of scaling Honest Tea, looking back on it? For us, it was the distribution. We had a product we knew consumers wanted. The problem was that we couldn’t get it into their hands. We needed distributors to do that. And that’s where we had that challenge. And so we went to the distributors and they would say, oh, we don’t like this because it’s not what we’re used to. It’s not sweet enough. It’s a little more expensive. It’s a different taste. And so we had to basically go around the beverage distributors to get to market. And we ended up working with charcoal distributors or cheese distributors or corned beef distributors, anybody else who was going to the shelf. And eventually the beverage distributors started taking us on, but we had to earn that opportunity. And we did it by basically, you know, going around them. When the wall was put up in front of us, we went around it. Did you cold call everybody? Did you show up? What was your moves to get ahold of these distributors? There was a little bit of everything. I would say I was pretty good at stalking as well. So there was one particular distributor here in the DC Mid-Atlantic area, and I would hang out in their lobby. And the general manager would come in and say, you here again? And eventually he got the message. I wasn’t going to go away until he gave us a shot. And it was a big breakthrough for us when we got it. So why was, looking back on it, why was owning a bottling plant such an epic disaster for you guys? Oh my gosh, yeah. So not too different from the distributors. The service was the toughest, but after that, the bottling plants were tough. I said we got that chance with the apple juice plant in Buffalo, but then the problem was when it got to apple season, they said, ìWell, we canít make any more tea.î Iím like, ìWell, wait a minute. Weíre going to be out of business.î So we ended up buying a portion of a bottling plant and it was just a total distraction. It was building something, it was putting my time and energy into something that wasn’t building the honest brand. And so it was just really a drain on my energy. It wasn’t where my heart was in terms of what I love doing. It wasn’t where my expertise was and it was also two other owners so no one was taking the full responsibility and it just was the wrong use of my energy and the money we had raised from our investors. So it was only when we got out of that plant, we ended up selling it at sort of a distressed asset sale. Once we got out of it, the business really started to take off and I could focus on building the brand, building the business. Seth, I don’t know when you’re going to start to get serious about your academic career, but apparently you only have degrees from Harvard and Yale. So you could have done other things with your career. Why are you so committed to Honest Tea? Why didn’t you go do something else? Well I love this work. I love our impact. I love what we’re building. I love the relationships we have with the consumers and with our suppliers, which has just been wonderful. I have recently also become involved in another company as executive chairman of the board. It’s a company called Beyond Meat. And so between Beyond Meat and Honest Tea, I have two really what I think are important and meaningful enterprises I’m involved with that are having a positive impact on the world. And there are different stages of growth. One is earlier stage and growing quickly, and the Honest Tea is more scaling and going global now. And so still the opportunity to have an impact and address issues I care about is really satisfying. What does Beyond Meat actually do? It sells a plant-based protein. We have a product called the Beyond Burger that really tastes and chews and sizzles and grills like a beef-based burger or animal-based burger, except it’s made entirely from plants. And so it’s, as people have looked toward, you know, both healthier options and options with a lighter environmental footprint. There’s been a ton of interest and excitement about what Beyond Meat is doing, and that’s been a really fun enterprise to be part of. Is it a comparable prices as meat? If I’m going to get like a Beyond Meat hamburger, does it taste similar? Is it a similar price? Yeah, it tastes similar and it is, I would say, slightly more expensive as any new technology is, whether it’s a phone or going back to what we talked about with organics, you know, it starts out that way. But we just launched the Beyond Burger at Carl’s Jr. across the country and that’s exciting because 1,100 restaurants and, you know, that is a, it’s called fast food and so it is, you know, priced at a, you know, it’s more expensive than the typical beef patty, but it isn’t out of, you know, it’s not out of an affordable range. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t taste like wood or something? No, exactly. No, it tastes, it chews and grills just like a hamburger. So it’s really, it’s delicious. I had one just last month when I was out in California. Now, for the listeners out there who are saying, gosh, I would love to be the next Honest Tea, the next Beyond Meat, that kind of thing. Could you talk about how many cold calls and how many meetings that you went to, that you made, the calls you made, you went to the places and nothing happened. Times when you drove somewhere on that Saturn and you got stood up. Times when you… How many rejections did you get en route to getting the wins? I think the… If I were writing a book, I wouldn’t call it this, but I did write a book about honesty, by the way, called The Mission and the Model, but the back of me might have been 50 shades of rejection. We got rejected by every, you know, certainly by the distributors, as I mentioned, but also by investors, right? I needed to raise money. I mentioned we raised $500,000 for our first launch, but over the course of the next 10 years, we raised $10 million. And for every, you know, every dollar I raised, I had at least 10 conversations with people who chose not to invest. So that was always a challenge. And then, of course, retailers. We’d go to retailers and restaurants that we wanted to carry the product and they, for whatever reason, wouldn’t do it. And so it just was a continual battle. But frankly, you know, that’s what the fun is. That’s where the challenge is. If everyone said yes the whole time. Somebody else would have already done it. And so it takes the entrepreneur to bring a new idea to life or bring an existing idea in a different way. So look, with Beyond Meat, as you said, there have been veggie burgers out there, but there haven’t been a veggie burger or plant-based burger that tastes like Beyond Meat. And so it’s creating something new and exciting and helping people understand, and what’s been the breakthrough for Beyond Meat isn’t just the taste, but because it tastes as good as it does, we were able to get it carried in the meat section of the grocery store as opposed to in the veggie burger section. And so that really reaches a different customer and is a much bigger growth opportunity. As I was cyber-stalking you, and I was looking at the terms and the buyout from Coca-Cola, it appeared to me, from my perspective, that you decided to team up with Coca-Cola and to sell the business to Coca-Cola so that you could increase the distribution. Is that correct, or am I misinterpreting why that deal happened? Absolutely. I mentioned we have this commitment to democratizing organics, and so for us, we want it to be available not just to healthy people and wealthy places, but to people everywhere. That was what Andy Warhol said about Coca-Cola, right? Everybody, whether you’re the king of England or a factory line worker, they all enjoy the same product. That vision of making great products accessible to people at affordable prices is something that we’ve really been able to help make happen, and Coca-Cola has been part of that. So now that you have teamed up with Coca-Cola, what’s your official title and role on a daily basis now? So my title when I ran the business was the TEO, like CEO, but of course I was focused on T. And now I call myself the co-founder and TEO emeritus. I work half my time with Honest Tea now and half my time with Beyond Meat. And it’s a way for me to, as I said, be involved in both businesses, but also help to sort of spread myself over the two as well. When they did buy you out, did they wire the money to you? Did they give you a nice big oversized check? Did they give it to you in ones and tens? How did the transaction occur? I think what happened was because we were bought by the entire thing, we just had our CFO write the checks. So we wrote checks from Honest Tea’s bank account because it became Coca-Cola’s bank account. So it was just checks from Honest Tea written. So I ended up signing, or I guess our CFO signed the check to me just to make sure there was a stand on. But it came out of the business bank account that had been funded by Coca-Cola. When you finally got that big check, did you go out and buy as much ice cream as you wanted? Or what do you do with all the extra money now? We really made a point of not doing anything. We just said, you know what, it’s there, but let’s make sure we all understand what makes us happy as a family. In fact, what I did, and this was a little unusual, is I invested the money right back into Honest Tea. We had an arrangement with Coca-Cola that let me continue to have some risk capital in Honesty and that was a way for me to continue to stay focused on the business. Thinking about it like it was still my money and still my business. And I think that helped keep me engaged and helped me keep me connected to the brand. And of course, I’m speaking to you now 11 years since Coca-Cola invested and I’m still involved with the brand. And that’s unusual, right? Most of the time when an entrepreneur sells a business, they go on to the next thing or go golfing or bowling or yachting or whatever. I thought you were going to become a rapper. I thought you were going to become a rapper. That’s what I thought you would do as your career 2.0. We do have a rap line there, by the way, if you haven’t seen it. But we did that from Honest Tea. It’s a fun one called Rethink What You Drink. Nice. But for me, this is work I really do enjoy, and this is what has enabled me to feel a sense of completeness and happiness. So why change what makes you happy? Well, final three rapid fire questions for you here is how do you organize the first four hours of a typical day? Or how did you, when you were growing Honest Tea, before the business was acquired, what time did you wake up? How did you organize the first four hours of your day? Mostly the same, you know, same as it was 20 years ago. So, you know, my wife and I wake up early, usually before six o’clock, because at least when the kids were home, we had to get up and exercise before they were awake. So that usually meant we would get up, we’d make the bed together, because no matter what happened in the day, we could get home and at least go to bed in a bed that looked like it was well made. Then I’d go out and exercise for usually an hour and that always gives me a chance to clear my head to be able to usually by myself just get out, work out my tensions, physical tensions or sort of psychological tensions and then be able to spend some time when the boys were at home, be able to talk with them and just share a few ideas about the day or just read a little bit about the news going on in the world. Then, and this is something that still is the case, I would bike to work. And for me, that was just a great transition. So it sort of, I’m not stuck in traffic, I don’t have to worry about parking. How long are we talking about here? Are you biking like a half hour or an hour or? No, so in here in Bethesda, with Honest Tea, it’s literally just a 10-minute ride. In California, where it would be on me, it is probably closer to a 30-minute ride. But for me, the ride is this wonderful transition, either from home to work or from work to home. And it just lets me, so that when I walk in the door of either place, I’m able to be ready and be present. Now, you’re an educated guy. You’ve read tons of books, but is there a specific book for any of the entrepreneurs out there that are maybe struggling to get that traction with their product? It’s a great product. Everyone says, oh, I love your product, but they’re struggling to kind of get that traction. Is there a specific book or documentary or something that you would recommend all the entrepreneurs should check out? Well, the book I love is called The Wild by Jack London. You may not think of it as an entrepreneur’s book, but basically it’s a story about a dog who kind of reconnects with his instincts, instincts that are ingrained in him but have kind of been suppressed. I think most entrepreneurs do have to go with instincts on a lot of work and a lot of times, especially in a corporate environment, you’re often discouraged to go with your instincts and so I think part of being an entrepreneur is getting back in touch with your instincts and so I love that as a way to spur people toward more creative thinking and more feeling it from the gut versus just sort of, as I said, a company like Coca-Cola would never have come across the idea of honesty on its own because the market research isn’t going to tell you people want a less sweet drink. Market research and focus groups would have highlighted that people like a sweeter taste. Of course, we’ve demonstrated there is an appetite for a less sweet drink, but it wasn’t through any focus groups. My final two questions here, it’s kind of a two-part question here. Here we go. You right now, all the entrepreneurs out there are listening. You’ve got the mic here. Our listeners are very action-orientated. Do you want them to check out Beyond Meat? Is there a certain website to go to? Do you want to direct them to check out one of your books? What action step would you invite all the entrepreneurs to take? Well, certainly as an entrepreneur, if you’re serious about being in food, you should see our book, Mission in the Bottle. It is a story of the first 10 years of Honesty and it’s written as a comic book so it was a really fun and engaging way to share our story. And then I think I would encourage people to buy or visit honesty.com for honesty and beyondmeat.com because these are two products each in their own category that are disruptive. They went into existing categories and in case of bottled tea or beverages and then meet and found a new way to bring a product to life. And you have to really look for whatever category you’re going into and think about, can I bring out something that is distinct and different enough that it clearly represents something new in the marketplace? And if you can’t answer yes to that, I would encourage you to go back to the drawing board. Final part of my question here. You’re a guy, you have the time, freedom to do what you want to do now. You’ve probably thought about your rap career. What would be your rap name if you launched your rap career today? What would be your rap name? I don’t even know how exactly it came across, but for some reason my friends named me Dr. Bette McGee. I don’t really know what that came from. So that’s the name of record. If you go to YouTube and you look up Honesty Rap, you’ll see that’s what… What was the name? What was the name? Dr. Ben McGee. I think it was a… I’m not a doctor, but it was this… I can’t even explain the origins of it. It really was one of those… It just sort of came up. I would have guessed that. It seems like a reasonable guess. Well, thank you so much, Ted, for being on the show. We’d love to have you on again sometime in the future, and we hope that this really benefits your organizations. And again, just thank you so much for investing your time and your energy into this. And we’ll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. in the future. We hope that this really benefits your organizations. Thank you so much for investing your time with all of our listeners today. Thank you, Clay. It was really fun to be with you. Now, if you have just listened to today’s podcast, I want you to be a doer and not just a hearer of what we just learned. You see, Seth Goldman, if you listen to the podcast, he got rejected by hundreds and hundreds of people en route to building a hundred and fifty million dollar brand that we know today. But he got hundreds and hundreds of rejections. It wasn’t like that he had some amazing sales pitch that allowed him to avoid rejections. He got rejected all the time and then when he’s trying to raise money he got rejected all the time. When he tried to get in stores he got rejected all the time. And if you’re out there and you fear rejection, so therefore you never ask for the deal. You never make the cold call. You never make the pitch. You ultimately will end up living your entire life as a rejection. So the key to not becoming an intender who loses all the time is to actually get a ton of rejections. Think about that. The most successful people that we’ve interviewed on this show all have been rejected more than anybody else. Therefore, the people who many would say are the biggest losers, the people who are rejected the most, actually are the biggest winners. So I ask you today, how many times are you willing to be told no before you get that yes? How bad do you want it? How bad do you really want it? How many rejections are you willing to get today? And I’m willing to get rejected, so I ask you each and every week, maybe every other show, every specific show that I can recall in recent memory, I try to mention, encouraging you to share this podcast with a friend. And so at the risk of being rejected, I would ask you, who could you share today’s podcast with? Could you share it with them on Spotify? Could you share it with them over there on Facebook? Could you share it with them on Twitter? Could you share it with them via email? Could you text it to them? Or maybe you just reject me, but either way, like a bamboo, like a weed, like bamboo, like rhubarb, I’m coming back tomorrow and I’ll be asking you to share today’s show with somebody else because I give a crap, because I want to mentor millions, and because I know there’s somebody out there that needs to hear the content on today’s show. My name is Clay Clark. I’m a man-bear pig and a business coach. And as always, we like to end the show with a boom. So without any further ado, Andrew, are you psychologically ready to bring the boom? I’m so ready. Are you spiritually ready to bring the boom? I am spiritually ready. Are you physically ready to bring the boom? So ready. Are you metaphysically ready? No, just physically. Okay, here we go. We’ll move on with that. With great trepidation, we move on. Here we go. Three, two, one, boom! All right, Thrive Nation, I want to tell you a story today about a gentleman I had the opportunity to meet years and years ago, and he has really scaled his company. He’s been just a great friend, and he’s a guy who money is a magnifier. So when you help somebody make more money, it just makes them more of who they are. He’s a generous man. He’s a hardworking man. He’s actually a CPA. Some people tell me, Clay, doesn’t a CPA stand for a certified pain in the ass? I don’t think that’s always true, folks. There are some good ones out there. And we’re joined here with a long time client, Paul Hood. Welcome to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? Hey, like my old friend, R.D. Mercer, said CPA stands for Certified Professional Ass Kicker, not Certified Pain in the Ass. I’ve got 11 questions for you in about 10 minutes, so here we go. Let’s get it. Let’s get it. How did you and I first meet? I guess maybe when did you and I first start working together? Back in the day, I had… I still do, I have a really nice car. I was sitting at a restaurant and the manager came up and said, hey, do you know this guy Steve Currington? I said no. I said, why? He said, because he’s got these nice cars and you really need to meet him. I met Steve. The first time I met him, he was dressed up in a Hulk outfit at a fundraiser yelling Hulk smash over the place. I had been searching, Clay. I had built a business that was doing about $3 million, had about three offices, and I wanted to go from successful to systematic. And I asked Steve, who do I talk to? And he said, you got to meet my guy. And then he got me to one of your workshops. I said, holy smokes. You know, I went to one of the best accounting schools in the country, and they didn’t teach anything that you were teaching. So I was lit from day one. Now I remember when you came to the conference and watching you take notes, I mean, you were smoking out that, they had a notebook for taking notes and it was like the piece of paper was going to set to fire because you were taking so many notes and you were engaging with all the different successful entrepreneurs. And I knew that your business was going to scale because previous to meeting me, you’d already built a successful business. You were top of your class in college. But I knew you could scale. Just to give the listeners some sort of an idea in their mind, how much have you grown from the time that you and I first met to now? Just to give you some context. Yeah. So last year, Clay, so we went from about $3 million in revenue with three offices to now we have 17 offices across four states. And last year we did $20 million. And we’re poised now, my industry’s in a kind of a change or die scenario, and we are literally fighting off private equity companies that are wanting to throw money at us to be a part of what we’re doing, because you helped me create what, in my world, they call the platform firm. business and scale it. And it was actually, you know, pretty simple. You know, it’s actually made me angry. I’ve told you multiple times. I went to college and they didn’t teach me this stuff. And you’re saying have a meeting with your people. What does that mean? And you played a massive role in our expansion. Well, Paul, I want to talk to you about this. This might feel like a backhanded compliment, but that’s not the way I mean it. You were graduating near the top of your class. I mean, you have been a very successful accountant before I met you. But I believe that when we met, you didn’t have a website. Or, and maybe that seems like it’s a backhanded compliment. I don’t want it to feel that way. I just, I’m saying, you were like top of your class CPA, but yet the marketing didn’t match how quality of a service you provided. Maybe I’m getting that wrong. I’d love to get your just, can you hear me talk about that? Because I believe you were a top of the class CPA with a non-existent website. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it’s, I hear what you’re saying, Clay. You’re saying this, oh my God, how’d this guy ever become as successful as he was before he met me. But the reality is, again, business school, they teach you how to be a technician. They don’t teach you how to grow a business, how to manage people, how to create leads, how to create that marketing funnel, that sales funnel that goes into it. I remember the first time we met individually, you said, well, let’s look at your website. I said, what website? Because I’m a professional, and professionals get new business off of referrals. Dude, you turned on that website and we started getting Google reviews and videos. I’ll tell you, in the three months of the beginning of this year, my sales team closed 400 new clients in three months, all off of inbound calls, meaning they called us. That’s all because of what you’ve done with social media, with content, and that website. Now we talk about, you know, one of the things that you did, which I loved, is you, there are what we call passive learners, people that watch information and they don’t think about how to apply it to their lives. Then there’s active learners. You are an active learner. You think, you see something and you think, how can I apply this to my life? And so I remember when you came to the workshop, you almost immediately, we started talking about renovating your offices on the outside and the inside. So, basically renovating the brand, like the website, the digital marketing, but also renovating the way your physical CPA practices looked inside. I think in your Claremore office, you renovated your Claremore office. I’m going to try to pull it up on the screen so people can see this, but you actually went through the process of renovating your office inside and outside. Why did you decide to renovate your office on the inside and the outside after having been to workshops and conferences? Why did you decide to do that? Because very few people do that. Well, it was two things, Clay. The first thing is when I had clients come into me and they’d say, you know, they’d rather go to their dentist than see me. And, you know, people buy what they want, not what they need. And we were selling what they needed, not what they wanted. And so, we needed to portray a success-minded, an anti-CPA environment, if you will, to, you know, with the slogans and the positive saying and the financial things. It’s kind of weird though, Clay, because if you compare your office and my office, they strangely look alike. I’m not saying I copied off of you, but they strangely look alike. Well, you know, and the other thing- We wanted to sell success. We don’t want to just do tax returns. We wanted to sell success. That’s what I jumped all over going to your, I told you one time, Clay, I could like live in your office. It’s, it’s the success and the positive and, and the motivation that’s created. And so I wanted to recreate that in my offices. Now, other things that you implemented successfully. And again, I’m just trying to, to brag on some of the wonderful things you’ve been able to accomplish and, um, is, you know, you and I talked and you said, Clay, I have a desire in my heart to write a book. And so you and I worked together on writing your first book, Take a Look Under the Hood, which is a phenomenal book. You and I did that together. And then the next book here is called Roadkill Tastes Like Chicken. And again, I can’t help somebody to typeset a book or to make a cover if someone doesn’t write the book. And so you were willing to put in the work, and then we were able to work together to produce the end result. What would you say to somebody who’s on the outside of the website right now, who’s thinking about becoming a client of ours, and we have sort of a, our business is designed, I only take on 160 clients, and so I work with a lot of the same people year after year after year. So what would you say about the amount of effort you had to put in to something like the website or writing the book, and then maybe what would you say about how, what kind of work we put in, just so you kind of explain how that relationship works. Yeah, Clay, I’m still astonished at what all you guys were willing to do. The, you took, and you proved to me that you can do this with any business, a business that wants to grow, a business that wants to be seen, a business that wants to measure profitability, a business that wants to start with the end in mind, you have all the tools to do that. And again, I’m Clay, I’m waiting for the check in the mail, but you’re not paying me to say this stuff. It’s reality. And I always said, and we’ve sent you a lot of clients over the years that you’re the offense, I’m the defense. You show them how to make it, I show them how to keep it. I wrote the first book, really, frankly, you wrote most of the book. I went through, you did a lot of stuff, and I added some verbiage and made it more towards CPA, the defense side, if you will. In the second book, you taught me that it’s not about making money. It’s about sowing seeds. It’s about changing people’s lives. It’s about one of the first things that you and I talked about is why am I wanting to do this? What’s the intent? What difference am I going to make in the world? With wealth, when you create wealth, you get attention, and therefore people give you credibility, and they’re more apt to do what you advise. I have a great lifestyle, but what I wanted to do is, with the book, with you, with my business, is how do I break generational sin or generational punishment? Or in my book, I call it, pigs don’t know pigs stink, because if my mom hadn’t have made a change and said no to being abused and alcoholism, I’d probably be some drunk Indian smacking a woman around. It wouldn’t be my wife, because she’s German, she’d cut me, she’d hurt me. And now I’ve got a college degree and all my kids have college degrees. And so it’s beyond just, I feel like people owe it not only to themselves, to their community, to their family, to people they don’t even know, to be successful and to sow those seeds of success in other people. And frankly, Clay, I admire you. I am astounded by your knowledge and how you can take a business from where I was to where I am now. And, you know, it’s all about sharing life’s successes, because you can create wealth and, you know, benefit the world. But if you can teach other people to create wealth and how to benefit the world, that’s amazing. So bravo to you, Clay. I appreciate that very much. I have three final questions for you. Three final questions. I want to tap into your wisdom on this. One of the things about your business that blew my mind is that if we typed in Tulsa CPAs into Google or whatever market you’re in, we couldn’t find you. So it’s kind of hard for people sometimes to grasp the idea that the best accountant isn’t findable, the best dentist isn’t findable. People typically, they go to Google, they type in the search term, and whatever comes up top, that’s who they call. And I wanted to ask you if you could share about the impact that search engine optimization maybe has had on your business, because I think a lot of dentists, doctors, lawyers, photographers, web developers, people I meet at conferences. We just had a big conference with Tim Tebow last week. I meet these people who are the best chiropractor in their area, the best neurosurgeon, the best whatever, and people can’t find them. Could you talk about the impact that the search engine optimization has made on the business? It’s immeasurable, Clay. You know, earlier I had mentioned we brought in like 400 new clients organically in three months, two and a half months. All of them were what’s called inbound liens, meaning they reached out to me. They weren’t referred to me by another client. They were actually Googled, you know, CPAs, and they looked at reviews and videos. And so, you know, when you and I first met, I said, you know, people don’t look for CPAs on Google. You know, they call their friends or whatever. And you smiled and shook your head and said, okay. And you set out to prove me wrong and you did. And so anybody, especially in the service business, you can call me and I’ll tell you that I didn’t believe Clay Clark for a minute, but it has magnified the reach that we have. And what it’s done for us, Clay, it’s allowed us to be selective on what clients we take. And these clients are calling us. They literally, we don’t have to pick up the phone and call them, they’re calling us. And it’s 100% off of Google, Google reviews, Google searches. So I’ll admit it right here, and you proved me wrong. People do look for CPAs off of Google. They look for doctors, dentists, attorneys as well. Now, my final 90 seconds here for you in the hot seat, you know, the conferences. Dr. Zellner participates in the conferences. You know, we’ve had Tim Tebow, Michael Levine. We’ve had the head of Harley-Davidson. I mean, over the years, we just continue to bring in new folks. But when you get past the big names, could you maybe describe what the conferences are like or what kind of an impact have the conferences had on your business? Yeah, so the main thing is, as a business owner, there’s plenty of times I felt like I’m alone. There’s nobody that thinks like me. I’ve got great staff, but they go home at the end of the day and you fight negativity and all that. And then, and you don’t know what you’re doing. And you know, nobody taught me how to be a successful business owner in business school. And then I go to your workshop, it’s positive. I’m surrounded by forward, positive thinking, hardworking, success-minded people. And then you start laying out the very simplistic methodologies because Clay, you taught me there is a pattern to success. And here’s what you do. And in your workshops, for the private… My gosh, you need to quadruple the cost of that going in there. Because if somebody… Now, here’s what I really like about it. I’m not an excuse maker. I don’t make excuses. And a lot of people like to go and, oh, I can’t do it. I don’t know what I’m doing, or my mama couldn’t, my dad couldn’t, so I can’t. And your workshops take all excuses away. All you got to do is be willing to put in some effort and show up. There’s a pattern to success. It’s teachable, it’s replicatable, and it’s engaging. I would absolutely recommend anybody and everybody to go to your workshop. Because one, you’re going to walk out of there, you’re going to be on fire, you’re ready to go. But Clay, you give practical steps on what to do. And all I got to do is do it. And that’s what I did, even though I didn’t believe you. You proved me wrong. And here we are, we’re five times the size we were when, like seven times almost, the size we were when we met you a few years ago. Final question for you. People when they think about growing a business, they think about sales, they think about marketing, they think about accounting, they think about workflow, they think about human resources, they think about public speaking, they think about PR, they think about social media ads, and people always ask me, they go, okay, so you help people with workflows, or they’ll go, okay, so you’re the website guy, or you’re the book writing guy, or you’re the whatever guy. How would you describe what it is that our business coaching platform does or what it’s done for you? So, what you’ve done for me and what I’ve seen you do for clients is you clearly define the success pattern. The success pattern that you taught me is you define where you’re at, you define where you want to go, you create a plan, you execute the plan, you measure results, you modify the plan. In that plan, there’s a lot of consistencies, no matter if you’re a pool business, if you’re a lawn business, or you’re a CPA. And so, what you did was, and I’m a proponent of going to college, you know, especially the CPA, you have to. But if I didn’t have to, I could have skipped all that crap and hung out with you for a couple of years and learned every step of the way because every business that I’ve sent to you or that I work with, maybe they’re good in this area, but they’re not good in these areas. And so to be able to bring the thing full circle, regardless, and Clayton, and again, this is a compliment. You’ve done this with many, many different businesses. So you’re the guy that takes away excuses. If you want to be successful, there’s a pattern. Show up, do the work, modify your plan, and reap the rewards. Paul, I really do appreciate you. I want people to know about the resources that you provide. You have a wonderful team there at hoodcpas.com. We have typically about a million listeners that will listen to this show on a typical week or every couple of weeks. What are the solutions that you provide there at PaulHood.com? PaulHood.com. Well, so what we do is we’re different than most CPAs because my industry is in a really a change or die scenario. 75% of CPAs are at or above retirement age. There’s about 90% of the firms that are out there are potential acquisition targets. So what we have to do is we have to re-envision, and you help me with this, re-envision what we do. We sell success, Clay, just like you do. We’re not marketing people, though. So like I said, you’re the offense, we’re the defense. We teach people how to minimize their income tax, how to maximize returns, how do you keep more, save more, and protect more. And we do it in a format, Clay, that’s a membership type model to where it’s a fixed fee so every time you call us, you’re not getting a bill. And same thing, it’s very predictable. Keep more, save more, protect more, not just do your tax return. Paul, I really do appreciate you carving out time to join us today. Again, folks, that’s paulhood.com. You say, what’s that website? It’s paulhood.com. If you need a CPA in a major way, check out paulhood.com. Paul Hood, thank you so much for your time today, sir. We’ll talk to you soon. See you, brother. See you. Bye-bye. My name is Paul Hood, and I’m from right here in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I’m a CPA with offices in Bartlesville, Tulsa, and Claremont. I originally heard about the Thrive Time Workshop through some friends, a guy named Steve Carrington, who has a very successful business. He said, if you want to be successful, you need to be. My business, it consists of I’m a CPA and a financial advisor, and we’re very successful. I want to go from successful to systematic. I want to learn systems and processes so that the business can run without me. The atmosphere here at Thrive and Clay’s office and the team is very upbeat, very positive, very proactive, very forward-looking. They have very specific things that they can offer. Clay’s delivery is very unique. He’s very, he’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, but he’s also one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. So he combines those in a very, very awesome way. One of the most valuable things I’ve learned at the workshop is to be very deliberate, to be very specific, to have a plan in mind, and then they can help you put together the processes to get it done. A favorite aspect is probably just how entertaining it is, and the fact that I pick up one or two or three things every time I come to take my business to the next level. Well, if people are missing out on basically a plan, a guaranteed plan, pretty much, if you’re willing to work it, to be successful. Most people, I think everybody should attend one of these workshops at least once because you don’t know what you don’t know, and we’re not taught to be a technician but to be a business owner and to create a process or a business that can continue without me. I’m not there. I’ve been looking at it looking for such processes for a while and what Clay is showing me is how to do that step by step. Well, I’ve enjoyed the entire workshop. What I’ve liked the most is Clay’s presentation style. You go to seminars. I’m 49. I’ve gone to seminars for 30 years. And this is the first seminar I’ve gone to that is entertaining, both entertaining and it’s very usable information. The atmosphere of Thrive Headquarters is really actually kind of convincing me to change the atmosphere of my offices, even though they’re traditional CPA practices. The static, non-inviting environment here, I want to come back. When I came here a few weeks ago, I couldn’t wait to come back. Clay’s presentation training style is really like nothing I’ve seen before. Most business seminars I’ve gone to, suit and tie, very, you know, try to stay awake, drink a bunch of cups of coffee, but Clay’s very entertaining and the information he has is, I haven’t heard before, I’ve heard pieces of it, but the way he puts it together in a total package and his presentation style is both entertaining and very knowledgeable. Well, I guess what people are missing out if they don’t come to Thrive Conference, it depends on them. If they like working 60, 70 hours a week and barely getting by or making decent money but you can’t replace your time, that’s fine. If you’re in a position like me, you make good money, but you like to buy back your time. You like to still make the money but not have to show up, not have a business that’s dependent upon you showing up. Coming here, if you don’t come here, you’re not going to get that. What we’re going to do today is we’re going to give you a little tour of the house that we just bought. In Oklahoma, this is what we call a big old house. So come on in and check this out. We bought this house about a year and a half ago and we’ve been finishing it. It was partially constructed and so everything’s under construction. So this is kind of a sneak preview for everybody. So follow me. This right here is the living room, family room, whatever you want to call it. It’s got a bar for watching football, of course, go Cowboys. It’s got, you know, 50-foot ceilings, windows out to the pool, really, really nice kitchen over here. We flew the the vent hood in from Mexico, it was handmade. Let’s go this way, this is a really unique room. There’s a six-story tower in the middle of the house. Don’t know why, it’s got six rooms straight up top, you can go 85 feet in the air, shoot deer, take pictures, whatever you want to do. See the sunrise, sunset. This will be a photography studio actually, but you see it’s got 25, 30 foot ceilings up here. It’s got a, we had to get a special permit. It’s got an elevator that goes up six floors. Normally in a residence, you can only get like a three or four story elevator. Again, just six rooms like this. On the third floor, I’m gonna have, I suck at golf, I love golf, but I suck at golf, and we’re gonna have a golf simulator up there so I can play golf for 30 minutes, I get mad and I can leave, but it’s all inside and air conditioned. Over here off of the photography studio, there’s actually a safe room, it’s all concrete walls. We had a steel door made for it, and so tornadoes come, or people we don’t really care, you know, whatever, it’s a safe room. We can come in, it’s going to have security cameras and everything else in there built in. Now, down this hall is my favorite room. Well, there’s two favorite rooms. One, there is the pantry and there’s a stairwell right there in the back of the pantry that actually leads from my bedroom. So if I want a snack in the middle of the night, it comes straight down from the bedroom. There are 109 interior doors here, 33 exterior doors, 25,000 square feet. It’s got five garages, different garages. This is the best room in the place. We teach success principles at Hood & Associates CPAs, and one of them is just to have balance between your personal life, your finances, your fitness, your friends, your family. And so for fitness, I’ve got this This is I’ll spend a lot of time in here. And of course right out here. It’s again. It’s all under construction There’s stuff everywhere, but about a 70,000 gallon swimming pool We’ll have it’s got a swim jet so you can exercise against the current or it can make waves It’s got a huge hot tub that you can to place you can stand in a massage from your neck to your to your back you know, because when you’re out being successful making money get get kind of tensed up. It’s got a layout shelf, a walk in a beach entry, and water shooting everywhere. It’s got about eight different waterfalls. It’s got a cave in it. It’s got a little lazy river, a little lake thing, pond thing up on top where you can lay out and play in the water. So you know all the necessities of life. Now we’re on the second floor. This is the master suite. It’s actually two stories and has three staircases to the second story, one over here, one there, and then one in another room. It’s got five fireplaces in the whole house, just one here in the master. Second story, the master’s up there, which we’ll go up there here in a minute. This is the master bathroom. Just a little bathroom. If you notice in the shower, there’s no knobs to turn the water on. Everything is digital. We have to have Wi-Fi for it, so it talks to your phone or a tablet. You program it for Paul’s summer shower, Paul’s winter shower, or what have you. Also, in the top there, it’s got a build-it where if you want to take a shower in a thunderstorm, it has sound, lightning, thunder, all of that good stuff. I guess that’s the thing. Take a shower in a thunderstorm. The bathtub is heated. It’s actually heated, not just the water, but it’s heated. And then over here is the bathroom, and there’s two things in there. I know what that one does. That one is called a bidet. Does anybody know how to work a bidet? I don’t. This is the master closet. One of them. I think there’s six closets, but this is, I don’t know how, it’s probably a thousand square feet or give or take. All over here. Keeps going over here. I don’t know who needs that many drawers, but apparently we do. This is the wife’s craft room. She likes to craft. We have grandkids and daughter-in-laws and this will be full of stuff and they’ll sit in here and make things and make memories. Of course it’s off to the balcony. There’s a balcony off to the pool all the way around. Those of you that know me or that will get to know me know I like shoes and so there’s tons of places to put my shoes in that closet. That’s what I’m excited about. This is, the house has three laundry rooms. This is the master bedroom laundry room. This is just part of the master suite. So we do laundry right here. This is just a little storage room. You know, you got to have a place to put suitcases and shoe boxes and stuff like that. Just a little extra thing. It’s wired for the smart home, so this is one of the brains. Now we’re circling back. If you get lost, we’re circling back to the master bathroom. Another closet. Right here’s that stairway I said that goes down to the pantry in case I want a snack. This room here I’m excited about. This is… We have three grandkids and a fourth on the way. The house is so big that if our grandkids come and stay with us, we want them to be close. So this is just like an extra bedroom attached to the master suite. Now let’s go upstairs to the second floor of the master. This is a stairway, one of the second or second of three stairways to the second floor. It’s actually third floor of the house, second floor of the master. We think we’re going to make this a slide, because that right there, where we just came from, was the grandkids’ bedroom, so they’re going to be able to come up to our second floor, slide down into their bedroom. What do you think about that? I think that’s a necessity. This is the third story of the house, second story of the master bedroom. This room right here is kind of cool. It’s going to be like a little spa room. We’ve got a commercial tanning bed that goes in there and a massage chair and all the relaxing music and all of that. This would be like a library or reading room off of the master. It’s still part of the master. It’s got a separate balcony out there. Every room in the house is wired for speakers for entertaining. There’s a lot of speakers I can tell you what and they suck putting them up. I’d put a bunch of them up but there’s a lot of them. These fans are really cool. They spin like this and then the fans inside of them spin. So it’s got like three different motions going on at once. Okay, we’re now back on the second story of the house over by the tower. This is my office. This is where my office will be. And then we can go over here and you can see the second floor of the tower. Now on the third floor of the tower, I’m going to put a golf simulator, like I said earlier, because I suck at golf, but I want to play. But you can see, we just got to keep our grandkids, because we have three granddaughters, they’ll be okay, but I have a grandson coming, and I know he’s going to want to be climbing. We’re going to have to be careful of that. This is a, this will be just an entertaining room, a game room. There’ll be a pool table here. Kids play Fortnite. Now, over here is when you have a game room, you also got to have a place to have snacks. So this is our snack kitchen. This is one of three kitchens in the house. Like I say, there’s three laundry rooms, three kitchens. There are 13 bathrooms. This is kind of cool. But this is for entertaining. I was looking to learn how to take my business, like they’ve said today, from being very successful to being systematic. I’ve got a very successful practice in three different cities. I make good money. I just want to take it to the next level with systems and processes to where I can drive my cars more. Paul Hood. I’ve been a CPA for 33 years. And what kind of growth have you and your great team had here over the past, let’s say, five, six years? The last five, when I met you five years ago, we were doing 3 million. This year we’ll do 24 million. Which is more than, which is more than anything I counted. So we’re going to talk about that. So Paul introduced me to Bob because he said there’s a guy that came into my office looking to raise some capital. I think that was the thing. And he needed to get some sales going. That’s how, and so we, if we tell Paul from the accounting perspective, I’ll pass the mic to you, you do accounting. Why do you have to, you have to have a website make sense and all that branding stuff. How has that impacted your brand having websites and all those branding things in place? Well, when I met you, like most CPAs, I thought my clients only come from referrals. But we get five leads in a two-month period, every month, just off of Google. And so this is my face. We have 17 offices across four states. We have them in every state. But this is our face. Like what you were, it’s visual. And it awes us to say why we’re different. That about us from there is spectacular. It’s an industry that has changed. We’re modifying it. We’re going to offer our services in a subscript model to where it’s all inclusive. It’s just been awesome. Well determine the level of success. Success in business is not what you know how to do, it’s actually doing it. The thing that I would tell you is stop it. Get a guy like this guy and let him go after it. It’s insane because then you can be doing what you do well and take that time and invest in something else on top of that. On top of that, he has contacts. This is not, I don’t get anything for selling his. Just telling you what he’s done for us so that we could focus. And then he’ll come in and I’ll say, you know, I think I’ve got it all. And he listens for five minutes and he makes one thing and I want to slap myself in the face. Well, why didn’t I think about that? That’s idiotic. But they’re sick freaks. They just get it done. I don’t know. I think it’s just merit-based pay in our office. So the people here, like they get paid. So if we were taking on your account, and someone else to do this, but if you hired a different marketing company, I’m just giving you best practices, you wanna make sure that they win when you win. So like in our office, if we grow Dave Basie’s podcast, that benefits our company, to the extent it benefits them, but we actually benefit if they benefit. Does that make sense to you? Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I wanna tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like running the business, building the systems, the checklist, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockrell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours on the day-to-day. He does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every 6 to 8 weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every 6 to 8 weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system, critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, like Clay is like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time, a coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing is when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. Anyways, just an amazing man. So, anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve got nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns, because our clubs were all closed for three months and you have three hundred fifty thousand dollars of bills you’ve got to pay and we have no accounts receivable. He helped us navigate that and of course we were conservative enough that we could afford to take that on for a period of time. But he was a great man. I’m very impressed with him. So Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing and I encourage you if you haven’t worked with Clay, work with Clay. He’s going to help magnify you and there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps for maybe six hours a day and literally the rest of time he’s working and he can outwork everybody in the room every single day and and he loves it. So anyways this is Charles Cola with Cola Fitness. Thank you Clay and anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay it’s a great great opportunity to ever work with him. So you guys have a blessed one. This is Charles Kola. We’ll see you guys. Bye bye. Hi, I’m Aaron Antis with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate. So, honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay, and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15-year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us, and it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic, and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean we’re a big company That’s definitely one of the largest in town And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing and I think for a lot of people they let their ego Get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs I would just really encourage you if you’re thinking about working with Clay, I mean the thing is it’s month to month Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35-year history of Shaw Homes This is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot I think you’ll feel the same way I know for me the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1800% increase in our internet leads. Going from 10 a month to 180 a month, that would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing, I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full-time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide what do I want to do. My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people. I love working with people. I love building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things, the processes and the advertising and marketing. I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time, and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago. And in that time, we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents, but I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started the business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school, I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. JT, do you know what time it is? Um, 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Russia, my 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 in 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 have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field, and off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. 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 Thrive Time 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 Thrive Time 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. And 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 December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught 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 interactive, it’s two days, it’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show 2-Day Interactive Business Workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who’ve been able to build multi-million dollar companies watch those testimonials today at thrive timeshow.com Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at thrive timeshow.com You’re gonna see thousands of people just like you who’ve been able to go from just surviving to thriving Each and every day we’re gonna add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup But I encourage everybody out there today get those tickets today go to thrive timeshow.com again That’s thrive timeshow.com and some people might be saying well, how do I do it? I don’t know what I do, 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. 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 can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a business, and you’re in the process of building a business that’s going to be able to pay you $250. And you’re going to be able to pay me $250. And you’re going to be able to pay me $250. And you’re going to be able to pay me $250. 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 an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it. And I am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton. I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you 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, Jerusalem, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russelham. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russelham, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrivetimeshow and 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? You! 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. We do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. 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, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies 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 beautiful sunny weather of LA come to Tulsa because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation really life-changing and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine. I’ll see you in Tulsa. Thrivetime show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops. Because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13 point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get small business loans? 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 gonna leave energized, motivated, but you’re also gonna leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars. And they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying 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 businesses can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever. And we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. 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 in Kings Point in New York, octa non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say? First of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. He said, ìHave you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad?î I said, ìNo.î 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 and I owe a lot of that to you and I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success and I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump I just want to tell you thank you sir for changing my life. 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 a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changing my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.