Clay Clark | Business Coach | Specific Steps You Need to Take to Both Nail And Then Scale Your Business + Celebrating Paul Hood / HoodCPAs.com 7X Case Study & Success Story + Tebow Joins Clay Clark’s Dec 5-6 2-Day Business Workshop!

Audio Transcription

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, when you and I first met, I said, people don’t look for CPAs on Google. 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, 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 was 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. 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. 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. A lot of people like to go, and they’re, 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, seven times almost the size we were when we met you a few years ago. 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. This started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time show starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zolmack. Two men, eight kids, Eight kids co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We took life, 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 hoops, I break down the books. She’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive, so if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the C and Z up on your radio, and now 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we here We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here We started from the bottom, now we here We started from the bottom, now we here We started from the bottom, now we here On today’s show, we are interviewing a man who has had the prolific success during his entrepreneurial career that most only dream about. How many 9-volt batteries could he have possibly purchased? Hey, I realize that you have a huge head, but is it possible that it’s hollow? Hey, it’s only 11 and 3 quarters. Look at the size of that boy’s head. Could you guys tell Jeff that I once knew a guy named Jeff? It’s crazy. What are the chances? Probably one out of a hundred. Wow. I’m not kidding. That’s like an orange on a toothpick. Hey, quit picking on the man with the massive melon. Well, that’s a huge noggin. That’s a virtual planetary. Has its own weather system. Throughout Jeff’s career, he’s helped to create the self-check-in software and technology used by airlines all around the world. And he’s the best-selling co-author of the book, Scale, Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back. proven principles to grow your business and get your life back. Throughout Jeff’s career he’s been featured on Fox, CNN, Bloomberg News, CNBC, Forbes, Inc., Time, Fast Company, and many other leading media outlets. Unlike most entrepreneurs, Jeff has actually spent personal one-on-one time with many of the most iconic entrepreneurs on the planet, including the founder of Walmart, Sam Walton. Do you think he knows Colonel Sanders? Colonel Sanders is dead. So you won’t even try. I mean, what if they have a spiritual connection? If you could leave the studio right now, that would be awesome. I can’t leave the studio. I know. I can’t. Do it. I can do it. I dare you. I’m picturing myself as a quiet, Great. Board. Grand. And boards don’t make any noise at all. Tremendous. But I’ll be a board that breathes. Here we go. Let’s find the Cardinal. Heed! Move! Is it really necessary to give him the nickname Head? I know it’s a massive cranium, but don’t be so harsh. Move that melon of yours if you can. Holland might come get you and cranium about. Stop talking about the size of his cranium. I gotta finish this read, man. Jeff Hoffman has also spent time with the co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak. I also knew a Steve. In addition to being a top entrepreneur, Jeff has also produced movies and musical events with such artists as Elton John, Britney Spears, NSYNC, and others. Jeff Hoffman has been the founder of multiple successful startups and has played critical roles with the company made famous by William Shatner, Priceline.com. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you Mr. Jeff Hoffman. Don’t forget to ask him about Colonel Sanders. I hated that Colonel with his wee beady eyes and that smug look on his face. Oh, you’re gonna buy my chicken. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men. Eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow. Now, three, two, one, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, let me 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. Jeff Hoffman, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I am excellent, and thank you very much for having me on the show. Jeff, for the listeners out there that are familiar with your career now, but are not as familiar with your background, I’d love for you to share about your childhood and what kind of environment you actually grew up in. Sure. So I actually grew up in the Arizona desert, a very small town feel, single mother with four kids. And I grew up in an environment where nobody really wanted to do anything. People were happy where they were and doing what they were. And, you know, I wasn’t surrounded by people with big ambitions. Most of the people I grew up with never left literally the area we grew up in, which is fine. We’re not judging anybody here. It just wasn’t fine for me. I had these big dreams and big plans, and I was going to go off and see the world. I just had literally no means to do that and no idea how. When I would talk about those dreams, I didn’t get support. I got laughter. You’ve worked with many huge companies today. You’ve had so much success with your career. Could you share with the listeners out there who maybe can identify with how you grew up, growing up where you don’t have access to a lot of capital or a lot of opportunities, when did you feel like you first started to gain traction with your career? Well, it wasn’t… I’ll separate that. The first time I gained traction in life wasn’t my career It’s when I decided my way up and out with education and I set this Absurd goal from where I was coming from from a big giant public high school where you know percentage-wise Not everybody not a lot of people even went to college And I decided I was going to go to an Ivy League school and I wanted to go to Yale which even my guidance counselor laughed at me instead of encouraging me and said, let’s all not waste our time. My mom had to call the school and order her to fill out the school side of the application. And when I got to Yale, because we were broke, I basically got sent home. They said, hey, you know, you didn’t pay enough. We applied the scholarships you got, but it’s not enough. And you can’t afford to go here and you should go home. And that’s how it started and I wasn’t about to go home. So the first traction I ever had in my life was I decided I wasn’t quitting and I sat there on day one of my freshman year, couldn’t go to class, and I said, you know what? I’m just gonna start a business and find my own way to make money. So I started a little software company, literally the beginning of college, and I wound up graduating in four years and funding my whole Yale degree by running a little business. That was my first feeling of traction. I set a goal and I found a way to accomplish it by myself and that led me to believe that maybe other goals were able to be accomplished. Big dreams could be realized if your work ethic was as big as your dream was. What kind of a service or problem did this software solve? What kind of problem did the software solve? Well, ironically, one of my biggest customers was Yale, rewriting their whole sort of tuition, billing, and reporting system. But the software that I made a living on was at that point in time, reporting and quote, business intelligence didn’t exist. So lots of small businesses were running a business without a top-down meta overview of how things were going. So I was developing a first level of intelligent reporting that would look for trends in data and say, these type of customers you’re putting too much work into and they’re not worth the money. These type of customers never stay with you so stop selling to them. Data that gave you intelligence about the way you ran your business. I developed software that could read through all your company’s data and give you business intelligence and that field didn’t exist then which is why I was successful with it because most of the time I’d show it to a small business and they’d say we’d love that, sign us up. Did you teach yourself how to code? I did at the beginning. And so now I’ve got to be really honest, I sucked at it. My self-teaching made me at best an average coder. So I switched my major in college and that’s the degree I got, software engineering. But again, be honest with you, when I got out of college and when I started my first company, I was informed quickly by my own employees that I was probably the worst coder in my own company. And so what they told me was, Jeff, this is not your expertise. I said, guys, I got the same degree as you. And they said, and yet somehow we’re all good at this and you’re not. And I said, what is it you want me to do? And they said, you’re gonna have to move away from coding. And I said, such as, and they said, when we finish building this product, someone’s gonna have to figure out how to market it. No one in this building knows what marketing is. Go do that. So I became a technical marketer, which it turned out I actually was good at. And despite my degree, I was on a good day in average coder. Now, throughout your career, I mean, you’ve worked with so many well-known companies, Priceline.com, UBid, ColorJar, and others. I’d love for you to share about your role with Priceline and the story behind how the team started that company. Sure. So the company was started by a guy named Jay Walker. Jay had an intellectual property company where they patented business processes to improve industries. That’s still what he does. So Jay had this idea of really reducing, well, actually let me rephrase that, increasing revenue in the travel business by selling, auctioning off, reverse auction, auctioning off empty hotel rooms and empty seats. So Jay had the idea and Jay assembled teams of people, contacted a bunch of people and that’s it, this is the beginning, that’s where I came in and we all went to work for Jay to try to build companies out of his intellectual property ideas and that’s where Priceline came from. We had a team of people that started assembling a new buying service that used the reverse auction to sell excess inventory and we tried a bunch of things in the early days. We had a consumer company that I was the CEO of, Jay was the CEO of the travel company, we had a wholesale company trying to wholesale other products, we had a different CEO of. And so we spent time with the consumer markets trying to find what things people were comfortable buying and the one that rose to the top, which is the one that’s the big one today, is the travel product. How big of a role did William Shatner’s personality have in the success of Priceline from your perspective? I think it actually had a lot. And the reason that I think that it had a lot was it was hard to, when everybody was launching an internet company, it was hard to break through the noise. And it was hard to be remembered. And the Shatner campaign, which people may not remember now, the Shatner campaign originally came from the fact that Shatner won an award when some people in the music industry asked people to vote on the single worst album in music history and it was William Shatner’s Christmas album. Oh, come on. Yep. So the idea of the Priceline marketing team at the time was let’s have William Shatner sing on television since he got labeled the worst album and that would be funny. So he intentionally, the original commercials were William Shatner singing in a fake nightclub and people yelling, get out of here, get out of town, right? Cause he was a bad singer and Shatner finally saying, okay, fine. I will, I will get out of town, but I’ll do it at 40% of what you would have spent and the people in the nightclub saying, well, wait a minute, don’t leave. Tell us how you can get travel for 40% less. So the thing that resonated is his intentionally bad singing was viral. People said, Oh my God, did you see William Shatner on TV last night? So I think that those commercials with Shatner’s sense of humor played a large role in Priceline’s immediate memorability. People remembered it and talked about it. There’s so much internet mythology out there about the Priceline deal with William Shatner, and I’m not asking you to divulge the secrets of the contractual deal there, but did he earn some equity in Priceline or was he paid as a traditional sponsor? No, that part of the folklore was true, that he did an equity deal and not a cash deal. And that equity wound up being, obviously, at the time Priceline IPO’d, we were the third largest IPO in stock market history. So his equity turned into millions of dollars instead of hundreds of thousands which he would have been paid which is why you saw him for so many years still as the Priceline spokesman and then every celebrity in Hollywood after that news got out wanted to go work for an internet company. Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Stevenson on Arutz Sheva Radio. Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Stevenson on Arutz Sheva Radio. Let me ask you this. When did it occur to you that you were wealthy? Well, before that, we had another travel company. I did other products like we created the first, when you go to the airport now and you check in at a kiosk and print your own boarding pass, that was one of our first products many, many years before there was a price line or anything. And so that was a tech company that I started. And the company did well, we were able to sell the company and sell the company to where the little group of founders, everybody made millions of dollars. And that didn’t, I was never money driven or material driven. Yeah, I get that. It was, it was the freedom day is what I related to that. After we sold the company and everyone said, now what are you going to do? And I sat there and thought, man, I have a wide open, I have a clean slate and I was so excited by the fact that for once in my life I didn’t have to be driven by what I have to do right now I could be driven by what appeals to me to do I still have to make it work But I got to ask myself. Well, what do you want to do? What are your interests and what are your passions and that was the day I made the relationship between Working hard enough to accumulate wealth Equals freedom to not have to do things you really hate doing just to pay your bills. That was the day I said, okay, this making money thing ain’t so bad because now I’m free to focus on things that actually mean something to me. How old were you at that time? Still in my 20s. Again, I’m not a material person, but we sold the company to a Fortune 500 company, and so I made my first millions while I was still in my 20s. So you, in the late 20s, started to realize, hey, I don’t need to necessarily work for the dollar. I want to work for something that inspires me, something that you care about. I heard one, and I’m paraphrasing, so if you can correct me if I’m getting the spirit of this wrong, but you’ve talked in some of your YouTube videos I’ve seen, in some of your speeches about the importance of chasing excellence versus the importance of planning an exiting strategy when starting a company. Can you explain what you mean by that? Sure. It is amazing now when I go to these various startup and entrepreneurship things and it’s a startup entrepreneur and everybody is asking about their exit strategy. And I’m sitting there thinking exit strategy, what is your entrance strategy? What are you exiting, your PowerPoint? People are so focused on selling their business that I literally saw a startup entrepreneur, he doesn’t even have a company yet, but he was looking online at new BMWs to see which one he was going to buy when he got wealthy. And so people get so focused on the pursuit of money that it distracts them from the only thing that’s ever going to make you rich, which is excellence. You have to go out in the world and create something amazing. If you are heads down focused on being amazing in your industry, you’ll never worry about money because it shows up. People say, wow, you built that? That’s what happened when we created those ticket kiosks. Every airline in the world said, ìWait, wait, wait. You built these? We want those.î So we focused on making the product deliver the promise. If youíre focused on excellence and you achieve it, the money always shows up. We were blessed that Iíve built other companies that were acquired because we had excellent products. But I never sat and thought about the exit strategy because it doesn’t matter. If you don’t create excellence, you’re not going to get rich anyway. And if you do, you probably won’t have to worry about the money because it always shows up. People say, ìWow, you created this. We want it.î So that’s why I tell people, stop counting your dollars and start focusing on doing something amazing so that everybody in your industry is talking about you. You were talking in one of your speeches about these entrepreneurs who have no net worth, no traction, no customers, nothing really going on now. But they are worried that somebody is going to steal their idea, Jeff. You know what I mean? People are just so worried. They’re gonna steal my idea. Can you explain how we get over that if you’re an entrepreneur out there with no traction, no customers, no revenue, why you have to ultimately get over that fear of people stealing your ideas? Yeah, so here’s a couple of things. First of all, choose who you’re talking to. So if you’re talking to reputable investors, right, and I’ve had this, I’ve had somebody pitching me as an investor. And I said, Tell me your idea. And they said, Well, we can’t really talk much about it. And I said, Well, I’d be happy to write you a check right now. And they said, Really? I said, not in a million years. You’re not even sharing the idea with me. And you think I’m going to fund this thing? Is it the concept is ridiculous. So if you did any homework on me and discovered that not once in the history of my life have I ever stolen anyone’s idea or been accused of it or been sued for it, you should rest assured that reputable firms and reputable investors don’t remain reputable by being sued for stealing ideas. So do your homework. If these are reputable people, they don’t steal ideas for a living, they fund them and they funded many and you can’t find a lawsuit against them. If you can, then talk to someone else. So that’s my first thing, is don’t talk to people that you don’t know enough about to trust. The second thing though, is I always tell people this, that in life, you only have a limited amount of time. So you should pursue things that you have an unfair advantage in. Anytime you can. You don’t always have that, but let me explain what that means. After we did the, for us to build those ticket printers that printed your boarding pass, we had the airline back end systems are written in a proprietary programming language that is intentionally not taught, not documented. Why? Because the airlines don’t want you breaking into the back end of their systems. So it’s a really difficult language. It took us the better part of two years to reverse engineer it. It’s like learning Chinese with no teacher, no course and no book by just wandering around the streets of China and saying, okay, by the time I get home, I’m going to speak Chinese. Good luck with that. We did that. It took two years. But they worked and every airline bought my product. So years later, when we’re talking about a price line or something, and people say, don’t tell me your idea, they’ll steal it. What I was saying is, okay, good luck with that because if you want to steal my idea, first of all, you’re two years behind already because I already know how to write this mysterious airline language. We spent a long time learning it and second, when I pick up the phone and call the CEO of an airline, they actually answer my call because I took good care of them last time. If you pick up the phone and say I want to talk to him, you’ll never even get a meeting. So I have two unfair advantages. I know the proprietary language, and I have great relationships in the industry. So I’m likely to be more interested in pursuing business ideas that I already have an advantage in than saying, I’m going to launch a health care thing, even though I know nothing about health care. I’ve never worked in a hospital. I don’t know any doctors. Someone that’s in the business is probably going to kick my butt. So if you have an unfair advantage, who cares if someone even did try to steal your idea, they’ll never catch you. You know, throughout your career, you have been intentional about networking or master mining or investing time with people that are very, very successful. And one of your friends, the founder of Amazon, Mr. Jeff Bezos, you’ve talked about how he had to become the world’s best book salesman before he could become the world’s best everything store. What do you mean by that? Absolutely. So the lesson I’ve learned from studying so many people, as many success stories as I could, was I noticed a common element. And that’s that those people won a gold medal in one thing before they tried to do everything. And so let’s use that Amazon story from talking to Jeff way back in the early internet days when Amazon was just being built. Excuse me, his focus was to be the best bookseller on the planet. In the same way Tony Hsieh early on, Zappos, they were gonna be the best darn shoe seller. And the companies that scaled, remember I’m not talking about someday, I’m talking about from small to big, the scale happened when these companies became the best darn something in the world and they picked something they could win a gold medal in. And what happened was by staying focused on only selling books, you know, just like the other Jeff Skoll and Pierre Omidar, they stayed with collectibles for quite a while on eBay. By picking something you could be the best at, so Bezos sold us books and nothing but books for a while. But he became the best darn way to buy a book anywhere. And he was so good at it that you and I as a consumer said, wow, it’s just a book, but I love doing business with them so much, sell me something else. So instead of a push strategy, where you as a seller have to push the next product on me, it’s a pull strategy where the consumer says, please sell me something else. So the woman buying shoes from Zappos said, ìI love Zappos. Can I buy a handbag? Can I get some earrings? What else you got?î So when you win a gold medal at something, you get a reputation for being able to deliver excellence and people want to do more business with you for more things. That is the lesson I learned from studying those people. Pick one thing. If you look at price line today, I think 93% or something of price lines, multi-billion dollar revenue comes from one thing, hotel rooms. The company became the gold medalist in hotel rooms. They don’t sell luggage. They don’t sell travel insurance. They don’t sell maps. They sell hotel rooms, but they’re such a good gold medalist at it that they didn’t really need to ever do anything else. You have had personal conversations with people like Sam Walton throughout your career. I’d love for you to share about the time you spent with Sam Walton, the man famous for wearing the John Deere hat and a pair of jeans and driving the beat-up truck while running the world’s largest company. What did you learn from your time spent with Sam Walton? So Sam taught me one of the most valuable business lessons that I’ve ever learned and we were spending a day together and I was asking Sam that his business concept, which was big-box retail in small town America, farmers and little towns, was a death sentence, suicidal, according to Wall Street and everybody in retail. You can’t build big box retail in small town America. So no one did it. Sam did it anyway and it worked. And I said, Sam, how did you know it would work when everyone said it wouldn’t? He said, easy, Jeff, because I didn’t listen to Wall Street, I listened to farmers. And I said, what do you mean? And Sam said, I wasn’t building a store for people that work on Wall Street. And I wasn’t building the store for analysts in the in the retail industry. I was building the store for small town farmers. And he said, so I got my little truck in my in my jeans and my work boots, you know, and put on a John Deere hat. And I drove over to their side of town. And I hung out in cafes where these people spent their day eating apple pie. And I bought people apple pie and I listened to them. And he said, instead of listening to the experts or even people that work for me that are not the demographic customer, if you hang out with farmers, they’ll tell you how to build something for farmers to shop at. And so the lesson that I learned was every one of my companies, I would spend time, I still do this, schedule time out of your office to go spend, like I would do this once a Friday, one Friday a month. I would tell the team, I’m not gonna be in the office Friday. I’m gonna change clothes, put on my John Deere hat and go hang out where our customers hang out. Immerse yourself in their life without selling. You can’t wear a Walmart shirt when you’re there. You’re just there hanging out and listening and talking and getting to know these people, where they live, how they live, and what they want and need. And you are much better able. In early Priceline days even, I visited some, you know, we went to some discount stores to listen to discount shoppers and see how they make brand decisions, which were different than my well-paid employees’ own decision-making process. Right. You know, you spent time with, you’ve spent time with the co-founder of Apple, the world’s most valuable company, most would say right now, Mr. Steve Wozniak. What did you learn from your time spent with the Wizard of Woz? Woz had a lot of, for me, a lot of reinforcement on the focus on excellence. According to what Woz told me, jobs focused a lot on, was stressed a lot on how we’re gonna market and present things. And Waz always said, I’m going to build something that was so amazing it’ll pretty much present itself. And if you think about it, whether it was the Mac or just handing somebody an iPhone when it first came out, it didn’t really need the presentation. The products were so amazing that you couldn’t wait to get your hands on them. And user intuitive use, right, and user interface and all those things, that was the kind of stuff that Waz said, to create excellence in the world, I got to build something that my average customer just picks it up and immediately falls in love with it. And so he focused on product excellence and let jobs go do the marketing, but they really did create amazing and excellent products. That’s what Apple was known for. Even people that didn’t use Macs would acknowledge the amazing interface of that or an iPhone, whether they use them or not early on. And so that’s one of the biggest things I got. The other thing I got out of him and from another friend named Nolan Bushnell, Nolan’s the founder of Atari, who’s the guy that originally hired a job for me. Nolan’s a little wild. Nolan has a great, everybody out there does not know about the history of Nolan. Nolan has got an exciting career right there. That is a guy you could spend years reading about. Oh yeah, he’s amazing. So Nolan’s a friend as well, and spending time with him, the same as with Waze, these are other people whose childlike curiosity never ends. I was literally, Nolan and I were being interviewed together at an event by the media, and while we were talking, somehow we migrated over to this table where there are all these parts of something, and we were both, I didn’t even realize it until the reporters and the television crew started laughing and I said, what? And they said, well, both of you spotted peripherally all these tools and parts over on that table. And during the middle of the interview, you drifted over there to see what you could make out of all these loose parts. And he and I were assembling things. And I was laughing because I was thinking he’s one of the guys that taught me to don’t tune out your curiosity, follow it and see where it takes you. There are days where you should be picking up every shiny object and seeing what it is, and then there’s days where you gotta tune everything out and finish the project you’re on, but schedule time for both. That’s what Waz does, he schedules time to be curious, and that’s what Nolan taught me. Schedule some time where you can let your mind wander and follow your curiosity, and just make sure you’re getting your projects done too. Jeff, I could spend entire hours and hours losing track of deadlines interviewing you because I’m infinitely curious about you and your career, but I’ve got three final rapid fire questions for you. You got it. You are a very intentional person today, even despite having massive success. You continue to be a proactive person versus a reactive person. What time do you wake up every day and what are the first four hours of your typical day look like? So, when I am in the middle of a product, when I’m on an idea, I can never sleep. And I always tell myself I’ll sleep when I get older and I keep getting older and I don’t. What happens is, and it’s for the right reason, I’m not stressed, I’m excited. And I’m so excited about the idea and see if I can make it work, but I’ll wake up at three and I’ll look at the clock and I’ll see, you gotta be kidding, it’s 3 a.m. And then I’ll say to myself, look, you’re not going to sleep anyway, so you might as well just get up and go in. So when I’m building something, I have a tendency to get up in the wee hours and work. And if I fall asleep early, fine. When I fall asleep, when I get tired, I’m not productive anymore. So I just follow my body. If I go to sleep at 10 at night and get up again at four, that’s fine with me. When I’m excited and passionate, I’ll create. But today, since I’m not currently building a product, my day, every day starts with my info sponging thing, which is I take the first 15 minutes of every day, and I try to learn one new thing every single day. But here’s the important thing. I try to learn one new thing that I do not need to know. And at the time I learn it, I have no idea why I’m learning it. Every day I go read something that catches my attention somewhere that I don’t know why I’m reading it other than it caught my attention. I follow my curiosity and then I write down one sentence of what I just learned. And over time, if you think of every piece of new knowledge you acquire as a puzzle piece, if I were to give you a piece of a puzzle and say, what is this puzzle? You’d say, Jeff, you gave me a blue puzzle piece. I don’t know. If I gave you two or three, you still wouldn’t know. But if I gave you a piece of that puzzle every day and every day you moved them around your desk, one day you would call me and say, I know what this is. These pieces are forming a castle in Ireland. I can see the pattern forming. That’s the goal of info sponging. Just learn one new thing every day that the world has brought to you outside of your industry and outside of the stuff you’re gonna work on the rest of the day. If you’re in healthcare, get out of healthcare for 10 minutes a day. And so that’s what I do every day. I go and I follow my curiosity. I read one new thing. I write down one sentence about what I learned, and then I toss it in the pile with the other puzzle pieces. I move them around the table, and I try to see if I can make something new out of the new piece of knowledge that connects the other pieces in a way they never connected before. Most days it’s no, but if 99 days in a row you can’t come up with anything and the hundredth day is Uber or Airbnb or Priceline or whatever it is, it’s worth your time to do it. That’s how I start every day. My final two questions for you are this. You’re a very well-read person, so I’d love to tap into your wisdom about maybe a book or two that you’d recommend for all of our listeners, and I’d love to hear about your vision for the next 12 months of your life? You know, the books that influence me a lot don’t tend to always be business books. They tend to be fiction and I read a lot that opens my mind and makes me think differently. A prime example being when I read The Alchemist. I read it on an international trip, so I read the whole book on one trip, but it made me reassess the way I was looking at the world around me. So I’ve had books that influence the way I attack problems that have been more important to me than any one business book per se. Got it. And what was the final question? I’m sorry to do the two-part question. I know that’s always a brutal way to go there, the two-part question there. Part two is your next 12 months of your career here. You always have so many opportunities, so many things coming at you. The listeners out there are very curious. What are you going to be doing in the next 12 months of your career? What do the next 12 months of your career look like? Sure. I’ll tell you what we’re focusing on. I’ve spent the last almost six years traveling around the world in my commitment to giving back, mentoring entrepreneurs. But what I’ve really done is learn 10 times more than I taught. By seeing entrepreneurs all over the world, the problems they’re attacking, the ideas and the resources and the way they’re attacking those problems. So what we’re focusing on now is we’re going to try to turn that into deliverable content. And right now that’s looking like TV, two different TV shows, shows that will share with everybody what we’ve spent the last half decade learning. Stories of amazing, resourceful, innovative entrepreneurs and show you the problem they attacked, the way they attacked it, and ultimately how they got it done so that people can one be inspired to go do something themselves and two can learn from other people’s struggles and triumph and shortcut their own path to success. Jeff, I cannot thank you enough for taking time out of your schedule. When I first read your book, Scale, I thought to myself, I want to interview this man. As I built my own multi-million dollar companies. I kept thinking, I have to harass and interview this man. And so thank you for allowing us to chase you down in Ohio. I just, you’re a blessing for so many people. Your parking space theory, your concepts on scaling systems, so many of the things in your book, Scale, have helped me tremendously and a lot of our listeners. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you very much. And I really appreciate you taking the time and I hope that for your listeners’ sake that we have added some value. All right, my friend. You have a blessed night and be safe. Thank you, sir. Now, I know we just heard an interview that was filled with knowledge bombs. Jeff Hoffman is a very wise guy, but I wanted to still one action item, Andrew, for all the listeners out there. You coach clients, but before coaching clients, you have shadowed me coaching clients, and before that you were a photographer for our business, Epic Photography. That’s correct. Let’s talk about Epic Photography. Now, I know I don’t own the company now, so things are a little bit different, but when I own a company, let’s go with elephant in the room, or Epic Photography or anything. How often do you hear me obsess about writing content for the website, adding content to the website. All the time, you’re always talking about adding content to the website to increase the Google ranking. How often do you hear me obsessing about asking customers for objective reviews? Again, every day, every single customer that walks through the door. How often do you hear me preaching the good news of the group interview? Every single week we talk about it because we do it, we see it every single week. How often do you hear me in our team meeting mention in some way the idea of automating your savings whether it be passively, aggressively, aggressively, aggressively whether it be through a teaching moment, whether it be through a a lyrical miracle, whether it be through a poem, whether it be through a haiku. How often do you hear me reference automating your savings and the importance of doing so at our team’s staff meetings? At our team staff meeting that is weekly at 9 a.m. Why? Why do I do it? And do I do it every week? Yeah, we do it every week and it’s on, it’s actually an item that’s on the agenda because it’s an important part of being successful and you want your team to be successful and if you remind them and keep, hold them accountable and keep track of it, they will become successful if they, you know, follow up and do it. Now Jeff Hoffman though, he talked about this, he said it’s a very important that you pick one thing and stick with it. You got to become excellent at a thing instead of chasing every new idea that comes into your mind. And if you don’t do that, Andrew, what if you are an entrepreneur out there who’s an idea hopper? You hop from one idea to the next, to the next. You do whatever feels good, but you never stick with a particular course of action, a particular business. What’s going to happen? You won’t gain any traction. You’ll keep finding something new and you’ll never get any further in your main item. Are you saying you might not get ahead if you keep jumping from new idea to new idea? You’ll probably actually go backwards a bit. Are you saying that you… So let’s say that we opened a full package media right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A business that we’re helping to franchise. Let’s say that you bought a full package media right here in Tulsa. How much is the first shoot? It’s a real estate photography business, right? Yep. So the business model does a lot of things well, but let’s say we do the first shoot for a dollar, okay? So we’re calling every realtor in Oklahoma to ask them if they’d be willing to try out our services, and we’re gonna do the first shoot for a dollar. Right. Even if you had a busy week, your first week out of the gates, and you had 25 shoots, how many dollars will you make the first week? First week you will make a whole $25. Now if you’re paying a member of your team to make those outbound calls, you know, let’s say $500 a week or whatever that is, if you brought in $25 and you spent $500, how much did you lose? $475 that week. And should you go ahead and try it out for maybe a week or two if you’re thinking, if you say, I’m going to try out this franchise model for a week or two to see if it works. Should you try it out for a week or two? If you’re going to try it out for a week or two, you probably shouldn’t even try. You’re just going to try just a week. So are you saying that you wouldn’t actually want to try buying a franchise unless you’re committed to it? I think that’s what I’m saying. How long do you think it would take you, Andrew, if you owned a full package media, to gather 100 reviews from real, ideal and likely buyers, real customers who’ve actually tried your service. At the absolute best you could possibly go, the fastest pace possible, what is the most number of objective reviews and shoots that you could possibly do in your first 30 days in business? First 30 days? I wouldn’t know the exact number, but reviews, I think I can get probably 75 to 100 reviews in the first 30 days for sure. So you think you could probably get out there, you’re saying, and I’m not holding you accountable, I’m just curious, you’re saying, hey, look here, if I’m aggressive, I’m cold calling every realtor possible, I could probably get 75 shoots, probably get 75 reviews in those first 30 days. Absolutely. Now, how many months in a row should you keep doing that? Until you become profitable. Really? And then once you’re profitable, should you keep doing it or should you switch to a new business idea? Well, you probably should keep doing the thing that’s profitable that’s bringing in the money. Papa Gallo is a great pizzeria we work with in beautiful Florida. Where in Florida are they located? They are located in Satellite Beach. Every week you talk to those guys and every week they do such a great job of gathering objective reviews and making fresh pizza and great salad and why can’t they just, you know, change up the format of the restaurant, make it Italian tomorrow and then make it Mexican the next day and then maybe Asian food the next night. Why do they have to be consistent with being a pizzeria for the good people of Satellite Beach. Yeah, because if you’re not consistent, then first of all, you’re going to confuse your customers when they walk in and they’re like, what is going on? This is not what I expected. So you’d have to re-educate your customers every single time, which takes time. You’d have to re-market everything. You’d have to re-do everything. So it’s a better idea to stick to it. I’m not sure who out there needs to hear this, but you’ve got to pick one thing. Find a need and fill it. Find a problem that you can solve and stick with that business until you achieve the success you want. And then once that business is achieving success, don’t move on to the next business until you’ve found a way to make your business scalable without your direct involvement. My name is Clay Clark. I’m a business coach. We like to end each and every show with a boom. Andrew, without any further ado, here we go. 3, 2, 1, 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’s 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. All right. 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, well, because he’s got these nice cars and you really need to meet him. So I met Steve. And the first time I met him, he was dressed up in a Hulk outfit at a fundraiser yelling Hulk smash over the place. And 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? He said, you’ve got to meet my guy. Then he got me to one of your workshops. I said, holy smokes. I went to one of the best accounting schools in the country. They didn’t teach anything that you were teaching. I was lit from day one. I remember when you came to the conference and watching you take notes, you were smoking out that, they had a notebook for taking notes and it was like the piece of paper was gonna 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 gonna 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, you know, 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. How do you take a wisdom-based business and scale it? And it was actually pretty simple. 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. And maybe that seems like it’s a backhanded compliment. I don’t want it to feel that way. 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 I hear what you’re saying, Clay. You’re saying is, 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. And when I remember the first time we met individually, you said, well, let’s look at your website. And I said, what website? Because I’m a professional, and professionals get new business off of referrals. And dude, you turned on that website, and we started getting Google reviews and videos. And 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. And that’s all because of what you’ve done with social media, with content, and that website. So bravo. Now, we talked 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 implemented so many of the things quickly, and so you actually went through the process of renovating your office 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 in to 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. And 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 you. I told you one time, Clay, I could live in your office. It’s the success and the positive 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 brag on some of the wonderful things you’ve been able to accomplish, is you and I had 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 there. 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 are 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. 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. 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. 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 made a change and said no to being abused and alcoholism, you know, I’d probably be some drunk Indian smacking a woman around, you know? Wouldn’t be my wife, because she’s German, she’d cut me, she’d hurt me. But that, 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 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, that 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. 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 CPAs and they looked at reviews and videos. You and I first met, I said, people don’t look for CPAs on Google. 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 a 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, 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 of the conferences had on your business? Yeah, so the main thing is, you know, as a business owner, you know, there’s plenty of times I felt like I’m alone. You know, there’s nobody that thinks like me. You know, I’ve got great staff, but, you know, they go home at the end of the day, you know, and you fight negativity and all that. And then, and you don’t know what you’re doing. I mean, 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. 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 – 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, 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. Seventy-five percent 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 the 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 ya, 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 here. My business 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 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 successful in school. What I’ve learned is my college degree is great for preparing me for, 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 need to go to seminars. I’m 49, I’ve gone to seminars for 30 years, and this first seminar I’ve gone to that is entertaining, both entertaining and it’s very usable information. 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 plays 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 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 it 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 Ben Hood in from Mexico 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 a 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, 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 the whatever it’s a safe room we can come in it’s going to have security cameras everything else in there built in. Now down this hall is my favorite room well the two favorite rooms one there is a 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. I’ll spend a lot of time in here. And of course right out here, 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 and it’ll massage you from your neck to your to your back you know because when you’re out being successful making money you 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 of the master is up there, which we’ll go up there 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 and you program it for Paul’s summer shower, Paul’s winter shower or what have you. It also in the top there it’s got a builder 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. And 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. Still part of the master. It’s got a separate balcony out there. Every room in the house is wired for speakers for entertaining. It has a lot of speakers, I can tell you why. 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. 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 OK, 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. I’d 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. 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 three million. This year, we’ll do 24 million. Which is more than… He’s an accountant, so we’re going to talk about that. 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. He needed to get some sales going. That’s how… If we tell… Paul, from the accounting perspective, I’m going to pass the mic to you. You do accounting. You do accounting. Why do you have to have a website that makes 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. This is, we have 17 offices across four states, we have in every state, but this is our face. Like what you were saying, it’s visual. And it also has to say why we’re different. That about us from there is spectacular. And it’s an industry that is changing, we’re modifying it, we’re going to a, we offer our services in a, a subscript model, uh, to where it’s all inclusive and it’s just been awesome. Will determine the level of success. So success in business is not what you know how to do. It’s actually doing it. And so the thing that I would tell you is stop it, get, get 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, as contacts. And I’m not, 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, and he makes one, 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 want to 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 want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchising. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockerill, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. Think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up, and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. 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 of critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. Amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go and that’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten 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 $350,000 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 four, maybe six hours a day, and literally the rest of the 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 Kola with Kola 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 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 a 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. The Thrivetime Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re gonna teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re gonna teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner, and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same system that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it.