Clay Clark | Business Conference | How Super Successful People Get So Much Done with Jay Papasan the co-author of the NY Times Bestselling Book, The One Thing + Join Tim Tebow At Clay Clark’s Dec. 5-6 Business Workshop!

Audio Transcription

Hey, my name is Dr. Timothy Johnson from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I first heard about Clay and his team from their podcast, the one he hosts with Dr. Robert Zellner. I was really impressed with what he had to say and reached out to them for business coaching. I went to a business conference and kind of became hooked. I’ve learned a lot in the process. The main thing I’ve learned is about search engine domination. I’ve learned the importance of being at the top of search engines such as Google and YouTube and Amazon and it’s really changed our business another thing that’s helped that he’s taught us is systemization and processes in terms of Just making sure to do the small things every day And so I would definitely check out his new book, Search Engine Domination. Thank you. Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay is the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is is is marketing on today’s show the New York Times best-selling author of the one thing with Gary Keller Jay Papasan shares why singleness of purpose is so important while we all need to be doing fewer things more effectively instead of doing more things with side effects why multitasking is a lie the path he took after graduating college to become a New York Times bestselling author, how he organizes his day, and much, much more. 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, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Times Show. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we have the opportunity to interview Jay Papazan. He’s best known for co-authoring the New York Times best-selling books, The One Thing with Gary Keller and for also teaming up with Gary Keller to write The Millionaire Real Estate Investor. Jay is both the vice president and the executive editor of Keller Inc. which is basically like the publishing arm of Keller Williams Realty. Jay, welcome on to the show. How are you, sir? I am doing fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. Jay, you have a long bio, but I want to start off by introducing you to the listeners out there because I love the books that you’ve written throughout the years. But for listeners out there that are not as familiar with you and your background, could you share your formal education experience and what compelled you to eventually move to France? Oh wow, so we’re going way back here. Way, way back. I love it. In high school the teacher that became kind of a mentor was the French teacher. He was coach Nixon and he taught me to love chess, he taught me to love some rock and roll albums and I was his teacher’s aide and he took us to France in high school and one of my best friends in high school for his junior year abroad went abroad and never came back. So when I was graduating the following year he was over there and he was coaxing me why don’t you come over for a visit and I ended up getting a job and spending a little less than three years living in Paris. Now you are a driver, maybe I’m misclassifying you, but you appear to be an ambitious person or one who knows what you want. But in France, my understanding is you’re only allowed to work 20 hours per week. Is that correct or am I getting that wrong? That was the only visa I could get to stay. And so I had to have a student work visa. So I had to attend college. I went to Nanterre and to, oh gosh, I can’t even remember the other little regional college that I went to there. And I could work for 20 hours a week in a biomedical company. That was actually a great deal for me. I wasn’t the person I am today then. I was still figuring that person out. That was a great space for me to experience the world and figure out who I wanted to be when I grew up. So, three years in France. When did it occur to you, okay, I probably want to go back to America and maybe enroll in New York University? I kind of had that planned when I went. I made that deal with my folks. I had my perspective. She wanted me to be on a faster track, for sure. But I looked up and I said, look, I’m going to go to grad school. At the time, I thought I was going to go possibly to law school or to become a writer. Like those are always hand in hand, right? But I really decided on writing while I was away and I applied to a bunch of graduate schools and New York University accepted me. And so I think I got that acceptance and I was heading back within, I think, three months of the acceptance letter. So when you got out of college, you then worked as an editor, an editorial assistant for, I believe it was New Market Press. Can you describe what this job was like on a daily basis when you first got out of college. This is the classic foot in the door, right? Publishing is notorious for, if you don’t know someone, it’s really hard to get in. And they don’t pay you well because there’s a line of people with more letters for their degrees behind their name, and they’re willing to take less because they all love books. So I had kind of a third cousin, Nancy Kenny, that had been in the contracts business, and she did contracts at New Market Press. So when I graduated from NYU, got a master’s in writing, she got me a job as an editorial assistant. An editorial assistant, depending on where you work, you can be doing a lot of photocopying, you’re writing a lot of, you know, rejection letters. One of the cooler things I got to do there, they at that time, the Merchant Ivory Films, I don’t know if you remember those, A Room with the View, that sort of thing, they were publishing all of their scripts. So I got to help an editor that was laying those, you know, going from movie script to book form. So I got a little bit of actual editorial experience, but from day one, they knew I was applying for a real job. That was a way station, it was a summer job, they were totally cool with it, and by the end of that summer, I’d gotten accepted at HarperCollins, which is a much bigger Big Five publisher at the time. So, when you started working at Harper Collins, my understanding is that you connected with a man by the name of David Hershey. A legend. A legend. Can you explain to listeners out there who David Hershey is, who he was? He was the third editor I worked with, and I was desperately trying to get out of the reference division and into what they call adult trade. And that just means all of the books that you like are pretty much in that, fiction, nonfiction, everything. And David Hershey had just joined the company and they were looking for an editorial assistant for him. He had been deputy editor at Esquire for 10 years. So he had, you know, we called it the golden Rolodex. He knew everybody. Because when you’re the deputy editor of functionally running Esquire Magazine, he knew all the great writers and he was there so that he could help them connect with better writers and better projects to do frontlist books. And I interviewed to be his editorial assistant and saw that he had a photograph of his daughter in a soccer uniform and I’m a soccer weenie and we started talking about soccer and that’s really how we hit it off. And he, at the time I didn’t realize it, he was definitely one of the most important important mentors in my career. Can you describe things that David Hershey did on a daily basis that were different from what most people do by default? I think when you’re being mentored, you’re up close to somebody who is great, who is ultra successful. You sort of, through osmosis, begin to observe how they organize their day, how they organize their life. I want to get your take on this and then Z has a hot question. No, no, before you go on that one, I’m a big soccer fan. Oh, really? So use the term, I’ve never heard that before, a soccer, what’d you say? Soccer weenie. Soccer weenie. Soccer weenie. What in the world? Please expand. What? I mean, you’ve got to, you’ve got to. Before soccer was cool, if you were a soccer fan, you were a soccer weenie. Oh, I’m with you. I’ve been calling it communist. If you like baseball or football, you must be a weenie, right? You must wear ankle socks. There you go. I grew up in the South. There you go. I’m fine. I’m talking with you now. This just in from our home office. All right. I’m talking with you. It’s like the old country songs back when soccer wasn’t cool, right? So I got it. Well, real quick, and Dr. Z is an avid soccer fan. You played soccer at the college level, Z. Yes. And you still… I still play the old man’s league. Dr. Z had his 50th birthday there, Jay, and we’re at this nice little restaurant, kind of a swanky British-themed restaurant. And the bartender goes, you know, dr. Z and I said, yeah, he says this guy is Intense when he plays indoor soccer like what do you mean? He got an epic argument with the ref and we So he he brings it on man’s like we have little walkers in with tennis balls on the bottom of we kind of ease on Down the thing you kick you call that a blue card Back to my serious question, Z, about David Hershey. What about him made him super successful in your mind? So one of my jobs was I would type up his new little index cards that would go on his Rolodex. And I just remember, it’d be like John Irving, right? And there’d be people, and whenever I would type one, I would type one for myself. But first off, I was like, this guy knows everybody. And people would walk by, and it was like a game. What about Condoleezza Rice? Sure enough, it was in there, right? And he just had this amazing network. So first and foremost, I didn’t appreciate it because it was a job I had to do. He was a relentless networker. I also had to do his expense account. And his expense account was more than my base salary when I added it up. And at the time, I resented it. But he would show up in the morning, he’d already met someone for breakfast and coffee, and he would have picked up like four newspapers and he would throw those receipts all balled up on my desk. And he wasn’t mean about it, he was just moving fast. He would go out to lunch, I would get those receipts or I’d have to call the restaurant and get them. He would go out for happy hour, he would go out for dinner. And this is Manhattan, right? That’s not abnormal behavior to eat out for every single meal. But I had to handle the cab receipts for all of this. And at the time, I thought, man, this guy is getting paid all this money and all he does is take cabs to nice restaurants. And that’s the mind of a 26 year old who just doesn’t know what’s actually happening. He was lead generating. He, every lunch was with an author or an agent and he was whining and dining so that when the great project was gonna show up, they wanted to pitch it to him first. And he was relentless at that. And so the huge lesson here is if you’re in business, I mean, it’s an old lesson, but I got to see it up close and personal. Every single day, it wasn’t one appointment. It was like four or five appointments every single day with new people. He was building rapport. He was building relationships so that when an opportunity showed showed up, they knew that he was their guy. And he did it with humor and good fun. And so, that was it, that was the massive lesson. And the other one, he would make me write his rejection letters, which is always the worst chore, right, who wants to write rejection letters all day? And he would throw them back at me and say, that’s not funny, make it funny. And his personal brand was funny. He’s a very funny guy, he’s known for his humor. The, I guess, in Texas Monthly copied the issue of Esquire. They call it the Bum Steer Awards. But there was a whole, every year Esquire had a whole issue that was kind of like the biggest flubs of the year. That was his issue. And it was always hilarious and everybody always picked it up. So he was known for being funny. So nothing went out of his office that was off-brand. And so there’s another lesson. I go back and I used to think about how hard it was and how late I worked and how much overtime. And there were some great projects. Got to work on Mia Hamm’s book and Bill Phillips’ Go for the Gold, some really big projects. But he was, first and foremost, he knew to grow his personal business and brand, he was gonna lead generate like crazy. And he was amazing at it. You know, we have a lot of listeners, hundreds of thousands of listeners, who are by and large, I would say, Chuck, Eric, Eric is one of our business coaches, they’re business owners or aspiring business owners, I’d say probably three-quarters of them are business owners, and your first book that I was aware of was For the Goal, A Champion’s Guide to Winning in Soccer and by Mia Hamm. Can you explain what your relationship with Mr. Hershey was and how it kind of related to you getting the opportunity to write this book? Was there a connection there? How did this opportunity come about? I alluded to it earlier. I looked up and he had a picture of his daughter, Emily, and she was like, obviously holding a ball and a flag, like on a field, giant stadium or something, right? Like she had gone on the field with a big professional soccer team. I said, oh, is that your daughter or do you like soccer? The whole soccer weenie thing, we started connecting. And I had remembered, so this would have been about 1994, 95, somewhere in there. And the women’s national team had recently won the first ever World Cup. And when I read about it, it had been like in the back of the sports section with the tire ads. And I just commented to him, I said, isn’t it crazy that our women’s national team are World Cup champions and nobody knows about it? And he goes, oh, totally. Well, you know, he really got into that. And I said, well, we just did a book, you know, in the reference division called Training a Tiger. And that was one of our editors there had worked with Earl Woods to write a book about what it was like raising Tiger Woods. I said, what would it look like if you think you do a book around Mia Hamm? And he got so excited. And he goes, I know her agent David Bober. I’ve got his number right here. Let’s pitch it. So I went from job interview to working on a potential project with him in a space of like five minutes. That’s where that book came from, was that conversation. He knew the agent, pitched him, and said, absolutely. That’s how we ended up writing that book. What a cool gift that was to get to spend time with her and her teammates in the run-up to, they called it the summer of love or whatever, when they won the World Cup again. That was amazing. I want to ask you, and I’m certainly not going to ask you for the specific amount, but I just want to let the listeners understand this because our listeners are always focused on the economics of things. When you’re a person who worked on this book with Mia Hamm that did well, how did you get paid? What are the mechanics of you getting paid? What kind of credits did you get on that kind of book? My name was on the inside. I got thanked. Aaron Heifetz was the guy who ended up being the ghostwriter for us. He was the PR director for the Women’s National Team. And David Hershey and I worked with Erin to kind of develop the book out, write it, and we rewrote tons of it, got the photographs, did all that work. So I got credit. I think my base salary was $27,000. And that year, I probably made $45,000 in Manhattan with overtime. So publishing, if you’re on the bottom rungs, is still very much an apprenticeship kind of job. David Hershey, I don’t know. I know that some of the senior VP level people who are publishers, they get overrides on the profitability of their books. I cannot tell you the details of that. I never got that high in the publishing world. Authors typically will get an advance against future royalties and those royalties can run on the low end from 5% for a mass-market book all the way up to 15% if it’s like a hardcover. So it’s a moving target. I would tell people, as a business person, writing a book should be a good thing. On today’s show, the New York Times bestselling author of The One Thing with Gary Keller, Jay Papasan, shares why singleness of purpose is so important. Why we all need to be doing fewer things more effectively instead of doing more things with side effects. Why multitasking is a lie. The path he took after graduating college to become a New York Times bestselling author, how he organizes his day, and much, much more. 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, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. Now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we have the opportunity to interview Jay Papazan. He’s best known for co-authoring the New York Times bestselling books, The One Thing with Gary Keller, and for also teaming up with Gary Keller to write The Millionaire Real Estate Investor. Jay is both the vice president and the executive editor of Keller, Inc., which is basically like the publishing arm of Keller Williams Realty. Jay, welcome on to the show. How are you, sir? I am doing fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. Jay, you have a long bio, but I want to start off by kind of introducing you to the listeners out there because I love the books that you’ve written throughout the years. But for listeners out there that are not as familiar with you and your background. Could you share your formal education experience and what compelled you to eventually move to France? Oh, wow. So, like, we’re going way back here. Going way back. Way, way back. Yeah. I love it. In high school, the teacher that became kind of a mentor was the French teacher. He was Coach Nixon, and he taught me to love chess. He taught me to love some rock and roll albums. And I was his teacher’s aide. And he took us to France in high school. And one of my best friends in high school for his junior year abroad went abroad and never came back. So when I was graduating the following year, he was over there and he was coaxing me, why don’t you come over for a visit? And I ended up getting a job and spending a little less than three years living in Paris. Now you are a driver, maybe I’m misclassifying you, but you appear to be an ambitious person or one who knows what you want. But in France, my understanding is you’re only allowed to work 20 hours per week. Is that correct or am I getting that wrong? That was the only visa I could get to stay. And so I had to have a student work visa. So I had to attend college. I went to Nanterre and to, oh gosh, I can’t even remember the other little regional college that I went to there, and I could work for 20 hours a week in a biomedical company. And that was actually a great deal for me. I wasn’t the person I am today then. I was still figuring that person out. So that was great space for me to experience the world and kind of figure out who I wanted to be when I grew up. So three years in France, when did it occur to you, okay, you know, I probably want to go back to America and maybe enroll in New York University? I kind of had that plan when I went. I made that deal with my folks. I had my dad back in the day. He wanted me to be on a faster track, for sure. But I looked up and I said, look, I’m going to go to grad school. At the time, I thought I was going to go possibly to law school or to become a writer. Like those are always the hand in hand, right? But I really decided on writing while I was away and I applied to a bunch of graduate schools and New York University accepted me. And so I think I got that acceptance and I was heading back within, I think, three months of the acceptance letter. So when you got out of college, you then worked as an editor, an editorial assistant for, I believe it was New Market Press. Can you describe what this job was like on a daily basis when you first got out of college? This is the classic foot in the door, right? Publishing is notorious for if you don’t know someone, it’s really hard to get in. And they don’t pay you well because there’s a line of people with more letters for their degrees behind their name, and they’re willing to take less because they all love books. So I had a kind of a third cousin, Nancy Kenny, that had been in the contracts business and she did contracts at New Market Press. So when I graduated from NYU, got a master’s in writing, she got me a job as an editorial assistant. An editorial assistant, depending on where you work, you can be doing a lot of photocopying, you’re writing a lot of, you know, rejection letters. One of the cooler things I got to do there, they at that time, the Merchant Ivory films, I don’t know if you remember those, A Room with a View, that sort of thing, they were publishing all of their scripts. So I got to help an editor that was laying those, you know, going from movie script to book form. So I got a little bit of actual editorial experience, but from day one, they knew I was applying for a real job. That was a way station, it was a summer job, they were totally cool with it, and by the end of that summer, I’d gotten accepted at HarperCollins, which is a much bigger Big Five publisher at the time. So when you started working at HarperCollins, my understanding is that you connected with a man by the name of David Hershey, who- A legend. A legend. Can you explain to listeners out there who David Hershey is, who he was? He was the third editor I worked with, and I was desperately trying to get out of the reference division and into what they call it adult trade and that just means all of the books that you like are pretty much in that fiction, non-fiction, everything and David Hershey had just joined the company and they were looking for an editorial assistant for him. He had been deputy editor at Esquire for 10 years so he had you know we called it the golden rolodex. He knew everybody. Because when you’re the deputy editor of functionally running Esquire Magazine, he knew all the great writers and he was there so that he could help them connect with better writers and better projects to do front list books. And I interviewed to be his editorial assistant and saw that he had a photograph of his daughter in a soccer uniform, and I’m a soccer weenie, and we started talking about soccer, and that’s really how we hit it off. At the time I didn’t realize it, he was definitely one of the most important mentors in my career. Can you describe things that David Hershey did on a daily basis that were different from what most people do by default? I think when you’re being mentored, you’re up close to somebody who is great, who is ultra successful you sort of through osmosis begin to observe how they organize their day how they organize their life I want to get your take on this and Z has a hot question. No, no, before you go on that one, I’m a big soccer fan Oh really? So use the term I’ve never heard that before a soccer what’d you say? Soccer weenie. Soccer weenie! Soccer weenie! What in the world? Please expand. I mean you’ve got it. If you were a soccer fan you were a soccer weenie. Oh, I’m with you. If you want to make a call in football, you must be a weenie. You must wear ankle socks. I grew up in the South. There you go. I’m tracking with you now. This just in from our home office. It’s like the old country songs back when soccer wasn’t cool, right? Real quick, Dr. Z is an avid soccer fan. You played soccer at the college level, Z. Yes. I played at Old Man’s League. I used to play in the old man’s league. Dr. Z had his 50th birthday there, Jay, and we’re at this nice little restaurant, kind of a swanky British themed restaurant. And the bartender goes, you know Dr. Z? And I said, yeah. He says, this guy is intense when he plays indoor soccer. Like, what do you mean? He got in an epic argument with the ref, and we still are here. I’m like, really? I mean, so he brings the bar down. Well, it’s an old man’s league. We have little walkers in with tennis balls on the bottom of them. You call that a blue card? You call that a, yeah. So Jay, back to my serious question, Z, about David Hershey. What about him made him super successful in your mind? So one of my jobs was I would type up his new little index cards that would go on his Rolodex. And I just remember, it would be like John Irving right maybe people and I whenever I would type one I would type one for myself. First off I was like this guy knows everybody and people would walk by and it was like a game. What about Condoleezza Rice? Sure enough it was in there right he just had this amazing network so first and foremost I didn’t appreciate it because it was a job I had to do. He was a relentless networker. I also had to do his expense account. And his expense account was more than my base salary when I added it up. And at the time, I resented it. But he would show up in the morning, he’d already met someone for breakfast and coffee, and he would have picked up like four newspapers and he would throw those receipts all balled up on my desk. And he wasn’t mean about it, he was just moving fast. He would go out to lunch, I would get those receipts or I’d have to call the restaurant and get them. She would go out for happy hour and he would go out for dinner. And this is Manhattan, right? That’s not abnormal behavior to eat out for every single meal. But I had to handle the cab receipts for all of this. And at the time, I thought, man, this guy is getting paid all this money and all he does is take cabs to nice restaurants. And that’s like, that’s the mind of a 26-year-old who just doesn’t know what’s actually happening. He was lead generating. He, every lunch was with an author or an agent and he was winding and dining so that when the great project was going to show up, they wanted to pitch it to him first. And he was relentless at that. And so the huge lesson here is if you’re in business, maybe it’s an old lesson, but I got to see it up close and personal every single day with new people. He was building rapport, he was building relationships so that when an opportunity showed up, they knew that he was their guy. And he did it with humor and good fun. And so like, that was it. That was the massive lesson. And the other one, he would make me write his rejection letters, which is always the worst chore, right, who wants to write rejection letters all day? And he would throw them back at me and say, that’s not funny, make it funny. Wow. And his personal brand was funny. He’s a very funny guy, he’s known for his humor. The, I guess, in Texas Monthly copied the issue of Esquire, they call it the Bum Steer Awards. But there was a whole, every year Esquire had a whole issue that was kind of like the biggest flubs of the year, that was his issue. And it was always hilarious and everybody always picked it up. So he was known for being funny. So nothing went out of his office that was off-brand. And so there’s another lesson, like I go back and I used to think about how hard it was and how late I worked and how much overtime. And there were some great projects, got to work on Mia Hamm’s book and Bill Phillips’ Go for the Gold, some really big projects. But he was, first and foremost, he knew to grow his personal business and brand, he was going to lead generate like crazy. He was amazing at it. We have a lot of listeners, hundreds of thousands of listeners, who are by and large, I would say, Chuck, Eric, Eric is one of our business coaches. They’re business owners or aspiring business owners. I’d say probably three-quarters of them are business owners. Your first book that I was aware of was For the Goal, a Champion’s Guide to Winning in Soccer and Life by Mia Hamm. Can you explain what your relationship with Mr. Hershey was and how it kind of related to you getting the opportunity to write this book? Was there a connection there? How did this opportunity come about? I alluded to it earlier. I looked up and he had a picture of his daughter Emily, and she was like obviously holding a ball and a flag like on a field, giant stadium or something, right? Like she had gone on the field with a big professional soccer team. I said, oh, is that your daughter? Do you like soccer? The whole soccer weenie thing, we started connecting. And I had remembered, so this would have been about 1994, 95, somewhere in there. And the women’s national team had recently won the first ever World Cup. And when I read about it, it had been like in the back of the sports section with the tire ads. And I just commented to him, I said, isn’t it crazy that our women’s national team are World Cup champions and nobody knows about it? And he goes, oh, totally. You know, he really got into that. And I said, well, we just did a book, you know, in the reference division called Training a Tiger. And that was one of our editors there had worked with Earl Woods to write a book about what it was like raising tiger woods. I said, what would it look like if you think you could do a book around Mia Hamm? And he got so excited. And he goes, I know her agent, David Bober. I’ve got his number right here, let’s pitch it. So I went from job interview to working on a potential project with him in a space of like five minutes. That’s where that book came from. It was that conversation. He knew the agent, pitched him, and said, absolutely. And that’s how we ended up writing that book. And what a cool gift that was to get to spend time with her and her teammates in the run-up to, you know, they called it the summer of, you know, the summer of love or whatever, like when they won the World Cup again, that was amazing. I wanna ask you, and I’m certainly not gonna ask you for the specific amount, but I just wanna let the listeners understand this because our listeners are always focused on the economics of things. When you’re a person who worked on this book with Mia Hamm that did well, how did you get paid? What are the mechanics of you getting paid? What kind of credits did you get on that kind of book? My name was on the inside, I got thanked. Aaron Heifetz was the guy who ended up being the ghostwriter for us. He was the PR director for the Women’s National Team. And David Hershey and I worked with Aaron to kind of develop the book out, write it, and we rewrote tons of it, got the photographs, did all that work. So I got credit. I think my base salary was $27,000. And that year, I probably made $45,000 in Manhattan with overtime. So publishing, if you’re on the bottom rungs, is still very much an apprenticeship kind of job. David Hershey, I don’t know. I know that some of the senior VP level people who are publishers, they get overrides on the profitability of their books. I cannot tell you the details of that. I’ve never got that high in the publishing world. Authors typically will get an advance against future royalties, and those royalties can run on the low end from 5% for a mass market book all the way up to 15% if it’s like a hardcover. So, it’s a moving target. I would tell people as a business person, writing a book should be more about planting a flag and saying, I wrote the book on this. It builds your authority. It builds your reputation. Unless you hit a runaway bestseller, it’s not a great way to make money in and of itself. It is a platform from which you can build an audience to make a lot of money, though. So you, in the year 2000, after gaining much experience working with Mr. Hershey, decided to move to Austin. Right. Was it the salsa? Was it the steakhouses? What made you want to move? The Pecanut Cakes, man. Was it Tito’s Vodka? What was it? Tito’s, yeah, another of our local billionaires. Now, my wife and I were travelers. We got married in 99, and we went on a five-month backpacking honeymoon. And we gave up our jobs, put through all of our stuff in storage. Another of those, like, let’s figure out who we want to be moments. And she convinced me that we should move to Austin, Texas. And we came here for one weekend in January, and that would have been January of 2000. And if you’ve been in New York in January, there’s like black slush up over the edge of the curb. It is not a pleasant place to be in the winter when it’s wet and it’s really cold, it’s an island. You come to Austin, it was like 80 degrees. People were, I didn’t have any clothes to wear. Like, I was wearing like a V-neck undershirt because we didn’t bring any clothes for how warm it was. And I remember like the first place we went, we sat outside, watched a pickup soccer game, and somebody dropped off like the rest of their six pack because they were going back to work. Hey, do you want this Lone Star? And I just told my wife, I said, we’re moving here. I love this place. So, I mean, there was soccer, giving away beer, the food was awesome. I remember looking and saying, there’s a lot of young people here. This feels like us. And we moved here without jobs. We were just freelancing when we moved to Austin in 2000. No income tax. Things are good in Austin. State income tax. State income tax. Uncle Sam is still going to get his bite of the apple. This just in. So you are down there in Austin. How did you meet Gary Keller? Did you finish drinking like beer four, five, and six, and you looked up and like a vision, oh, there’s Gary Keller? Or how did you meet the, you know, one of the founders of Keller Williams, the co-founder? I’m going to tell you the embarrassing story and then the funny story. So the embarrassing truth is I, that summer I was freelancing. I got to work on a couple of novels. I got to do a bunch of travel writing. I got a story about Mia Hamm published in Texas Monthly, which is a wonderful feather in your cap. And I think my total income, according to the IRS that year, might’ve been like 16 grand. Hot. I was having fun and failing at the same time. And my wife, you know, he was working for a living. We’re like, newlyweds, remember? I’m not really holding up my end of the bargain. She just came home and said, look, you need to get out. You’re not meeting anybody. Like I was playing Diablo in the afternoons on my computer because I’d already pitched all the stories I could pitch for the day. And I was an introvert, I’m a writer. And so she kicked me out of the house. She says, go get a job. And I was actually kind of relieved. So I actually got a job at Gary Keller’s company. Keller Williams was a really small company back then. It was only 3, it was 6,700 agents when I joined the day after Labor Day in 2000. And there were 27 employees, really small company. And I was a newsletter writer. And that’s how I got in a relationship. I got kicked out of the house by my wife and I was a newsletter writer. I just wanted the job I could show up at and the job seduced me. It was a very small company, very entrepreneurial. I had five interviews to get a job writing a newsletter when I had been the editor of record on books that had sold three and a half million copies. Wow. I was like, what is this company? I thought it was a front for the CIA. And so about two years into my tenure at Keller Williams, I was bumping from job to job. I loved the place and I kept saying, well, we should have a help desk. I’ll start it. Or we should have a research department. I’ll start it. It was that kind of small startup feel to it. You could just see that there was a need and go do it. And they would say, that’s your new title, go be that person. I ran into one of our designers who was clearly working on a book cover. And that’s my DNA. I’ve been in the books. That’s my favorite thing in the world. And my first jobs were in bookstores all the way through. So I’m like, oh, cool, are you working on a freelance project? And he said, no, Gary and Dave, who was our original co-author, are working on a book. I was like really and Like 30 minutes later. I’m in the bathroom. This is a funny story and Gary Keller is in this he owns the building. It’s a small commercial building and he’s plunging the toilet and He cracked some joke. He says see the chairman of the board isn’t too proud to do what needs to be done. Ha ha ha right Right, right. I just kind of Impulsively is sitting there. We’re washing our hands and I’m like, I hear you’re writing a book. Do you remember I used to work in publishing at HarperCollins? And he looked at me and I could tell he totally forgot, even though he was one of the people who interviewed me. It wasn’t on his radar, but he was writing a book. He said, come in my office, and he laid out a vision for writing 13 books. The first one was gonna be the millionaire real estate agent. And he laid out five books that he was using as a model and two of them were books I’d published. One of them was Go for the Goal and the other one was a book by Bill Phillips called Body for Life. And there were elements of each of those books that he was wanting to incorporate in his book. And so I just basically showed him my name and the acknowledgements and the job interview was over. So you make- Wait, wait, time out, time out, time out. There’s so much stuff. We got it. We got it. We got it. Rich. This is rich. This is rich. Okay. So was that Diablo I you were playing? Probably was. This is old school. I know. I know. I know. Okay. Purple iMac, you know, back when they were colored. Oh yeah. Do you remember one of the bad, one of the early bad guys in Diablo I called the Butcher? I don’t remember that far back. I know. I know. It’s okay. I’m pretty sure my wife made me throw it away when I did the real job. Of course, exactly. We’ve all been to that movie too, but I remember back playing that game and there was a bad boss, the first kind of one you went to, and I had never had that concept before, called the Butcher. And I fought with him for hours, and I finally defeated him. I defeated him. It was one of the high points of my life. And thank you for allowing me to finally get that on the podcast slash radio show. He’s been trying to work that in. I know. On the record now. Thank you. Your epic battle with the Butcher, the ultimate boss man in Diablo. We’re both soccer winners that played Diablo 1. This is, you know what, we’re going to be BFFs. You guys are in a good flow. It’s kind of neat. It sounds like you are. Oh, by the way, that $16K did probably not include all the free beer you were getting down there. See? See? I don’t know. How do you add? I don’t know. Jay, I want to ask you this because Gary Keller is so iconic. So many people have listed their home with Keller Williams. They trust the Keller Williams brand. He’s iconic at this point, is how I would describe him. What is he like up close, in person, on a daily basis, when you’ve interacted with him, obviously written books with him? What’s he like? He’s a very intense individual, and that’s a positive thing. If he’s with you, he’s with you. Wherever his focus is, it’s 100% there. That’s one of the reasons we ended up writing the one thing. That really is his gift, to understand what the priority is and to put all of his focus and energy on that thing. And so he’s got a lot of intensity. So he doesn’t go at anything kind of half-assed. If he’s going to do it, he’s going to do it, and everybody’s going with him, and we’re all doing it all day long. And so that’s actually really fun, and he intends that everyone around him are on the same journey he’s on, and that’s one of pretty intense personal growth. He kind of sees his mission in life as to kind of fulfill his potential, and you and I both know there’s no finish line on that game. Reaching your potential is something you always get to chase, and you never get there, and he’s totally cool with that, but to hang out with him, you’ve just got to be willing to take on big things and grow whatever, as much as you are needed to grow to make that possible. So I think he is the biggest thinker I’ve ever encountered. He’s always asking a bigger question. He wants big things for him and the people around him, but the opposite is also true. If you show that you’re unwilling to grow, you will find yourself on the outside. He’s very carefully manicures who gets to be in that inner circle and who he is growing with him. So that’s a lot to unpack. Great guy, very intense in a positive way. I picked up a copy of The One Thing. I was on an airplane and I saw it there at the airport, which by the way, I just got back from Puerto Rico and I saw it there again. I mean, the book is a perennial bestseller. I mean, it’s like an evergreen Z. It’s a great book. And Z, you talked to me years ago. We were having a man cave session. And Dr. Z and I would meet at the man cave at his house, and he would sort of educate me on profound nuggets of knowledge while we would sip on Lagavulin. That’s my favorite scotch. I really do like you guys now. Oh my God. Listen, I’ve got to clarify. He would drink a girly wine. Reasonably. I would drink, yes, which is a girly wine. Well, you would chastise me about not being a man. And you’d sip on Lagavulin. And I’d sip on Lagavulin. And occasionally you’d say, here, little alcohol weasel, alcohol weenie. Here, here, a little sip for you. So the point is, you’re sipping on Lagavulin, I’m having margaritas with umbrellas. You know, the point is, so we’re there, and you said, Clay, the inner circle. The inner circle. You’ve got to be very careful who’s in your inner circle. Can you explain to Jay your theories on the inner circle? Because I want to have Jay unpack this too. This is powerful. Well, I mean, the inner circle are people that have immediate availability to you, that you are available to them immediately. And that can’t be too many people. I mean, Jesus himself only had 12. So I don’t think you should have any more than half a dozen to 10 to 12 at the most and that’s how I try to live my life. So you have a lot of people that can’t get to you through certain channels, but those ones that are like super close to you that you’re doing day to day that can call you any time, that you can call them any time and you expect them to answer and they expect you to answer, that’s a limited number because you only have so many hours in the day, right Jay? That’s right. And if you open that up to everybody, then it blows your mind. How many people are in Gary Keller’s circle? How many people are in the circle? We talk about having your five. He has a thing, he calls it his three foot rule, and it’s kind of at the very back of the one thing. So if you didn’t get there, I won’t hold it against you. But that’s the average person’s wingspan, you hold your arms out, like who you let really close to you is exactly like it was just described. That is it. Like who’s in your day to day? And I’ll just say, what was the, I’m always losing the quote here, but you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn, baby. Jim Carrey’s kind of freshened it up. Same thing. Yeah. Yeah, that is true. And so who you spend the most time with will influence your trajectory, how you think about the world, how you see opportunities and challenges. So that’s it. We would manicure that relationship for our child. Why don’t we do better for ourselves is the question. So here’s, I want to have you unpack a few notable quotables from the book that I would say that you want to say that Gary wrote or you and Gary wrote. How do you want me to attribute these quotes because you did the book with him. You know, we write each other stuff. I often don’t know who wrote the first words. There’s a few lines I know were mine. So I’ll tell you if it’s 100% mine or his. Well, Jay, in the book, we edit each other pretty hard. In the book, the one thing, there’s a couple guys, whoever they are, they wrote various things, and this is what they said. They said, work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls, family, health, friends, integrity. They’re made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nixed, nicked, and perhaps even shattered. What does that quote really mean to you? I’m gonna tell you a curveball. That wasn’t me or Gary. That’s actually James Patterson. Wow. We found that quote and he said it better than we could, but I’ll unpack the quote for you. He gave us that quote for free. I thought his lawyers were going to charge us a million bucks. But that idea, we talked about a balanced life as a lie. And a lot of people are running around trying to make sure that everything is just so in their lives. And the reality is that’s not a destination you get to arrive at where everything is perfect. We imagine it that way, it’s just not true. You have to actively work to keep all of those things balanced. And the thing that is the most forgiving is work. And that’s what Patterson said so well in that. You can go to the absolute extremes with your work. And that’s what we called, you know, if you’re all in on your one thing, you’re leaving a wake of little fires behind you. But because you know that one thing is more important, you don’t put them out. You just let them burn out. And it can make you crazy at work, but work is forgiving that way. It rewards that kind of behavior. But if you’re doing that with your health, with your key relationships, like your kids, I know so many people say, I’m doing this for my family, and then they’re missing their kids’ like 12-year-old birthday party. Yeah, yeah, true, true. They’re making a bet that they get to make that up in the future, but they don’t get to control whether their kids are gonna wanna hang out with them then. So we say with those things, like your health and those relationships, you gotta actively be balancing those in real time. If you go out of town this weekend, take an extra day off, spend it with your kids, right? Get some downtime, actively counterbalance in your personal life, even if you’re willing to go to extreme at work. And that’s what that quote distilled for us. Now, this book was written at a time where social media was not super insane. Every year the stats get worse, Jay. You’ve probably seen this. Psychology Today reported about two years ago that the average person gets 85 interruptions per day. And Chuck will put that on the show notes. The average person gets 85 interruptions per day on their smartphone. This year, it’s now up to like 96, and it just keeps rising. I think back at the time when this book was released, it was like in the 60s. And in your book, you write something that seems so countercultural in this world of endless distractions. You, or somebody wrote, success demands singleness of purpose. You need to be doing fewer things more effectively instead of doing more things with side effects. It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. Who said it? What does it mean? That’s a pretty much a Garyism true and true. And he championed that idea before we knew that we could prove that it was right. And when we struck down to write this book, the idea for the book, it came out of an essay he wrote called The Power of One. It was like a little 10-page essay he wrote for another project and I was like, dude this is a book. He goes, yeah I thought the same thing. And as someone who’d worked in publishing, I said it earlier, the thing that has made Gary a billionaire, the thing that has made him so incredibly iconic in our industry as an entrepreneur, is his superpower isn’t that he’s smarty smart, it’s not that he works more hours even though he works pretty hard, it’s that he is willing to do the hard work of identifying the real priority, and then he will always give the priority everything that it deserves. And that’s the whole idea. If you understand what your one thing is as a business, then you absolutely go all in on it. I used to, when I teach classes, or I’m doing a seminar or a keynote, like an easy one is, forever and ever, when I was growing up, Southwest Airlines was the low-cost airlines. Yep. And they were all in on that. All in. That determined what hubs they were in. They had all of the same airplanes. That’s why you have the cattle call instead of assigned seating and you get snacks instead of food. All of that was about low-cost. Well guess who’s the most profitable airline out there? This just in, it is… Southwest. They were very clear about their one thing and it has unusual gifts the farther you go into it and I can give you a laundry list of examples of companies and people who because they went all in, there is rich rewards for people who go deep, especially in a world, and you just described it, where everybody is going like you read stuff on the web, you’re just going sideways. That’s a very shallow and broad pool of information. Going deep is a very different experience. Have you met Kevin Freeburg or Jackie Freeburg? Have you met those guys? Not that I’m aware of. They did a deep dive, all access, authorized case study on Southwest Airlines called NUTS. And I know it’s not polite probably to recommend a book to an author, but my uncle flew for Southwest Airlines for years. And he said, Clay, you got to read this book. It’s like a case that on how Southwest operates. It was written in 1998. And I’m going to be interviewing them here in a couple of weeks. And everything you just said blew my mind because it was unassigned seating, they only fly 737s. Everything you just said, and I went so deep into Southwest Airlines, I tried to implement everything I learned into my company at the time called DJ Connection, where we were doing 4,000 events per year. And so instead of having a ton of different packages and a lot of different equipment, I went to one set of equipment. Instead of having the, I just, I made it a very affordable and I would just encourage everybody to implement what Jay just said. Don’t go wide with your knowledge. Go deep. Jay, how do you go deep when getting prepared for a book or writing a book? Talk to me about how you put on blinders and go deep. I just have fun because we’ve been connecting a lot of stuff. So Nuts, our publisher Ray Bard published that book. Oh yes! Well of course he did. Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course. He’s got a particular taste. Like I had to court him for three years, but he goes all in on these kinds of books. He only publishes one book a year. He makes, he bets his whole business on every book he publishes. Damn. So there you go. There’s another example. So how do we go all in on our books? When we are going on a deep dive, I try to read 50 books every year. And I always fail. I ended up in the 40 somewhere, but the big goal keeps me going. I try to read one a week. But you know, you get a big book and I don’t cheat and read short books. What we typically do is we have our master outline and we will then come up with a list of books that we feel are absolutely germane to that topic and we start reading them. I have two full-time researchers. They will write book reports. If it looks like a great book, based on the book report, guess what, Gary and I will also read that book. I don’t just read the report. We have them pull research studies. We will then look for quotes and stories. So we typically, for every topic we tackle, there will be four binders. One is anecdotes and stories from books or the web or magazines that all relate to that concept. There will be a book of actual quotes. We’re taking notes on this. Definitions and stories. We’re taking notes on this. I’m taking notes on these. I want to make sure these get on the show notes, Chuck. This is hot sauce here. Jake, can you repeat that? The first one, the first binder was what? Stories and anecdotes. Got it. Right. Everybody, I mean, people learn through stories. And you look at any great Malcolm Gladwell, it always opens up with kind of the perfect story. That guy is genius at that. Oh yeah. And the whole story will unlock the book for you. So we always look for great stories on the topic. So we read very broad and deep in that topic to get those. We also look for great quotes, right? If Ben Franklin said something, or in this case, you just quoted him, James Patterson said it better than we could. I’ll attribute it to James Patterson, but also for the reader, now they know that it’s not just Jay and Gary thinking this stuff up, they’ve actually sourced it. The last categories will have binder after binder of research studies. So we have relationship with Baylor University, with UT, so we can go into their research database. This is where I’m really happy sometimes to have our research assistants because that stuff will make you go cross-eyed. But we often will go in and read those research studies and see if we can factually back up some of our hypotheses. And there were stuff that we thought was going to be true that just got disproved, and there were stuff that we thought was true that got proved. And we’re okay either way, but that’s kind of our process. And we interview people, that would be the other thing. Instead of just reading, we actually interview top performers and we ask the question, what do these guys have in common? These guys and gals. In your book, the one thing somebody wrote, multitasking is a lie. Did you write that? Did Gary write that? Did we all write that? Who wrote that? You know what? That’s in us. I don’t know. We knew that that was one that we suspected was wrong. Remember, we were writing this book in 2008. If you went back in time, like you could go on monster.com and deed didn’t even exist. You would have a suggested checkbox of multitasking to make yourself more attractive to employers. It was a big deal. Like every month in Entrepreneur, Inc. or Fast Company, there was an article about how to multitask better. So when we opened the lid on that, we thought it was a bad deal. But there was only just then research in 2009 when a lot of it came out, got in Clifford Nass, a lot of research showing that multitasking is a recipe for disaster. I’m not going to take it too deep. It costs you a minimum of 25% more time. If you’re multitasking, it’s going to take you longer. You’re going to do everything worse than you would if you were just monotasking, just doing it by itself. You make a lot more errors and your IQ is going to drop by about six points. It’s going to dumb down your work. I want to hammer home something real quick. There’s an article called, is your smartphone making you dumb? B18999. You can hear the office going, going, going, going. That phone, like, right before we were calling us, we got like five people on it. Yes, ma’am. The, okay. Are you ready? Let’s go. Okay. And then what is your domain? Okay, how much? Domain? Route66HVAC.com. Perfect. Do you have them in stock? Route66AV.com? HVAC. H-V-A-C. H-V-A-C.com. Please. Okay. You ready? Go for it. It’ll be two, four. Let’s go. Okay. Here we go. And it’s S-H-3. Sorry, S-C-H-Y-N-M. All right, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we’re talking to an HVAC man, an HV, what does the HVAC stand for? Brandon, I’m quizzed. What’s the HVAC stand for? Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Yes, this guy, I’m telling you, he knows his trade. He’s actually in his office right now. So folks, if you hear somebody on the phone, it’s because they’re always selling, they’re always doing customer service. They are a real company. Carter, I am fired up to have him on today’s show. Carter, this is your longtime client here, Root66 HVAC. Oh, yeah, I’m equally fired up. Oh, yes. OK, so I got to ask you, we’ve been working with you guys for a while, and my understanding is you guys are getting more leads. Brandon, are the Google, are you getting more leads at the recent service? Well I can say before we started business with you guys we didn’t really have any because we just weren’t using Google at all and now we’re doing. And now we’re having phones just going left and right, phone calls, and I need more phones or we’re just going to have to answer calls. I hear what’s up. You know, it’s gone crazy. If you see that board back there, that’s what it looks like right now in the schedule. So that’s your schedule behind you? Yes. So you… Look at how full that is. Carter, you had something you wanted to say there. Oh, yeah. No, I was just going to say, you’re going to have to get the whole two-phone situation going on at once, learn how to have two conversations at once. Yeah, definitely. Hey, let me tell you something real quick about this. This is a… Let me see here. This is a true story. I don’t know if I can prove it though right now. I want to prove it. The Tulsa World, they came out to my office back in the day and they did a, let me see, they did an article on me, see, local DJ spinning, let me see if I can find it. And they did an article on me and when they did the article, they took a photo of me and in the article I’m holding two phones. Because I’m literally, I’m taking a phone call and I’m on another one and then the picture guy took a photo and I wasn’t prepared for that. So back to your business now. You guys, your phone is ringing more than ever. Is that an accurate statement, sir? Yes. There’s like never a time in the day where someone’s not on the phone. And most of the time it’s two people on the phone at the same time. Now Carter, in addition to that, you guys have step one, we’ve been just trying to go over some of our stack of wins here. You guys, we’ve increased them for the lead flow. That’s wonderful. Next, is that you guys went from a startup to where you’re actually now on pace to, you know, head to a million dollar business. Tell us about the growth rate. Tell us about, because you really went from a startup to a success story? From the start point of where we got in contact with you guys, we actually did cross the million dollar mark from where we started with you guys. And I mean, we were also profitable, even though by like in the first year with all the mistakes that we made going in the business at the beginning, because we didn’t know, you know, we’re not business people. We’re HVAC people, right? And we made a couple of mistakes along the road and we’re still able to be profitable in the first year. This is a feat of itself. This is great stuff. Now, Carter, you guys are also rolling out recurring maintenance packages. Tell us about this because I think people, a lot of our clients we work with in the HVAC space, in the optometry space and the legal space. Clients who work with all different industries, they’re always trying to find a way to generate recurring revenue. Tell us about these recurring maintenance packages, Carter. What kind of the vision is here? Yeah, so the recurring revenue is great because as a business owner, it gives you a little bit of security, but it always has to be a value add for your customers. Otherwise, what’s the point? And so we have come up with, or they’ve kind of crafted it over time where we have two different recurring maintenance packages and just lets the customer choose which one works best for them. And it’s a lot of it. It helps the customers because it’s a proactive way to afford some HVAC solutions. And I think what happens is, Brandon, I think a lot of people think, I don’t qualify to have success. They watch a video like this and they go, ah, he’s a genius. Brandon’s a genius. He’s the golden baby. I can’t possibly do this. What do you say to somebody who’s thinking about reaching out to work with myself, Carter, and the team, what would you say to somebody who is thinking about coming to a conference or thinking about scheduling a 13-point assessment? They should straight up do it. I mean, because the advertisement that got us there on your end was a Facebook ad. It said, no BS. And we went to that first conference back in July about a year ago. And that’s exactly what it was. It wasn’t, you didn’t beat around the bush, didn’t try to do the upsells or anything like that to try to like, and like, and another thing you can be this tier or, and another thing we’ll add this. No, there wasn’t any of that. It was just straightforward. This is exactly what you need to do in order to make your business succeed. It’s really awesome that we were actually able to cross a million because I think the average startup in HVAC space, like Chuck in the Truck, whatever, by himself, is usually only like 100,000 for the first year, and we did approximately 10 times that. We charge a flat rate. We’re a flat rate service. It’s 1-700 per month. We have a weekly meeting with every client. So Carter, you meet with these wonderful guys every week. Yes, I do. And in the meeting, the purpose of the meeting is to help you grow your business. But it’s a flat rate service where we just charge you. How much does that help you, Brandon, as a business that went from a startup to where you guys are at, knowing that you’re only going to pay a flat rate of 1,700 as opposed to some variable, ambiguous fee that may or may not be charged? It’s predictable. I know exactly when I’m getting charged every single month, and I can arrange my expenses to be able to cover all that. It just makes it real easy on my end, trying to track it. That is the move. Now, I’m pulling this up here again. Other things, search engine optimization. I think a lot of companies, a lot of people, they want to do online advertising marketing. And, you know, Carter, they come to us and they have kind of a woo-woo idea of how it might work. Because there’s all these marketing companies that pitch these theories on what might work. You might try this, you might look at this. This might make it go viral. This might get some leads. This might create a TikTok thing for you. This might create an Instagram reel that really goes viral. You might get some, this might work. This might move the needle. This might, there’s all that kind of, this might get your name out there. There’s all those kinds of marketing jargon. But you guys have, we have a linear plan. We’re taking you down. Brandon, how much does it help for you to know that you have a linear plan and that Carter’s gonna help you track the results every week? It just, like I’ve been saying, it makes it predictable. I know what’s coming ahead because I’ve read ahead of where I need to be and where I can see in the future what’s coming up. It also keeps me on the same page as we’re going and the process of getting better because like we’re not perfect by any means, you know, as a company. That’s the whole point of training and the whole point of coaching to where we can get to that point. Now, the photography, videography, web development, search engine, graphic design, we do all of that included, plus we do consulting. So it’s kind of like you hire a CMO, a chief marketing officer, and a CFO, a chief financial officer, to work with you simultaneously to help you. How much does that help knowing that Carter and there’s a team helping you guys and you don’t have to go find separate vendors? Quite a lot because I don’t know anything about website building or coding or anything like I got to log into the background on the WordPress and stuff, but I don’t go anywhere into that because I could mess it up really easily. I don’t understand what’s going on back there, but it’s doing stuff and it’s working. And knowing that I have like an IT team or web development team is great because that means I don’t have to go out and spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a one-time purchase to go get a website that I don’t understand the back office, the run, or any of the coding. Now, video testimonials, one of the things we help someone grow their company, I want to encourage everybody, if you’re out there listening right now, there’s 14 steps is how I look at it. And Carter, you start with establishing the goals, then you move on to branding, then you move on to marketing, then you move on to sales, then you move on to fulfillment, then you move on to hiring, firing, training, retaining. It’s all of those systems. So when someone says, what’s the most important aspect of growing a business? I would argue it’s the execution of all 14 steps simultaneously. Talk about, Carter, the video reviews and why that’s been important for Team Root66 here. Well, to their credit, they’ve really gotten out there and just asked everyone for video reviews, and they’ve gotten some really good ones. And what that does is it just builds value prior to me going out to deliver an estimate. It’s like you already have 20, 30. I mean, you guys are, you had 10 last week, you have 20 or 30 people positively reviewing you on your Google listing, on your website, it’s like that helps the sales process on the back end a lot. And so that’s been really important. And to your guys’ credit, you’ve been great at getting, collecting those video reviews. I’m gonna pull this up here. We’ve got these 14 steps, 14 steps on how to grow a successful business. If you wanna download my newest book, A Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You can download it and you too can follow along here, folks. But here are the 14 steps. And I’m just going to go through these. I’ll try to zoom in so people can actually see it. One, we establish the revenue goals. Box two, we figure out the break-even goals. Three, we define the number of hours willing to work. Four, we determine the unique value proposition. Five, we nail down the branding. Six, we create a three-legged marketing stool. Seven, we focus on sales. And I told you about this picture. It does exist. Look, it’s here. It’s great. Paulson World came out and said, hey, could we do a photo shoot with you? And I said, sure. What time are you guys going to show up? They said, I’ll be around this time or that time. And they show up, and I’m literally on the phone waiting. I’m on the phone with a bride booking her wedding, but then there’s a DJ over here who just called in. And so I’m doing the two-phone thing. And that became sort of a legendary cover of the business section there. In my opinion, once you get into the sales part of the path, that’s where this starts to happen. Now, you’ve got to have a sober mind to help you figure out what is it costing to acquire a new customer, and are we being organized? You can’t build an organization if you’re not organized. Are you tackling that part of it, Brandon? Are you guys right there where you’re starting to cross the T’s, put the dot on the I? Are you starting to bevel and refine the systems now or where are you out of the process? We got, we’ve laid the groundwork and we are in that position where we’re flipping over into refining the system that’s working for us. And every single little day we find one little, like that 1% of correction every single day to make our system more efficient. And it’s just going, you know, and it’s working. Now, I’m taking notes here, so I’ll let you go in just a second. I’m taking notes. My final thing I want to clarify. I’m quoting you. I wrote this down, Carter. I typed it up here. So we’re getting so many leads and word of mouth leads and word of mouth leads. We’re having phones going left and right. And I need more phones. That’s what I think you just said. So I got to ask you here, what do you say to somebody who’s thinking about reaching out for a coach, for a consultant, somebody to help them in the way we’ve helped you. What do you say to somebody who’s thinking about going to thrivetimeshow.com, scheduling a free 13-point assessment, they’re thinking about coming to the conference, what do you say? You’re going to need to buy three phones after signing up with Clay Clark and then you’re going to have to figure out how to get your virtual phone so you can have a phone within a phone within a phone. Okay. So, I’m quoting you. I want to make sure this is right. It says here, you’re going to need to buy, this guy’s like a phone salesman, you’re going to need to buy three phones. I accept commissions. How would you describe the overall experience? Because you know how it is, people are thinking about working with us. How do you describe the overall impact it’s made on your business? Every single week, like as we’re going through it, it helps me form habits, right? Because this is not something normal that anybody is just gonna know day one. Like you’re not born with these skills. So like the first thing you’re going to learn is how to schedule your time and manage your time management right block out everything and figure out how your week is going to go do your to-do list and once you get that done you really start fine-tuning your marketing in the Google and once you do that then you start looking inward on your company to try to, via osmosis or just actively getting everybody working in your company to also reflect the habits that you build along the way. You know, this show is so hot, I must put on sunblock to watch it while editing. It’s so good. Brandon, I really appreciate you carving out time for us. I really respect you guys, the work you’re putting in. Carter, thanks for leading these guys down the proven path here. I’m super excited to check in with you at our December conference and see where you’re at. Perhaps we’ll have a new success story here in December to share. Again, thank you so much. And for people that are in the area, one more time, that website, you’re in Oklahoma. What’s the web address there, sir? The web address is www.route66hvac.com. And if you’re in Delaware, go ahead and call them. I mean, it’s worth the travel fee. You might as well pay for 18 hours of travel each way to have a guy fix your HVAC. It’s a tourist destination, folks. It’s Route 66 HVAC. Now folks, I don’t want people traveling to Tulsa just to visit the home office of Route 66 HVAC. So if you do that, at least hire them to fix somebody else’s AC. All right, thanks again there, Brandon. I really do appreciate you. We’ll talk to you soon. All right, bye-bye. Hello, my name is Daniel with Daniel’s Heating and Air here in Amarillo, Texas. The way Google has affected my business, we have got a lot of calls from Google. Right now it’s July and we’ve had the best month ever. Hello, my name is Daniel with Daniel’s Heating and Air here in Amarillo, Texas. I just want to tell you a little bit about how my life was when I was invoicing customers. It was total chaos in the office every time we had to invoice a customer a bill, they’d turn into a ninja. They’d ghost me. They’d take off. All of a sudden, they had things to do. And that caused the office to spend half the day, almost every day, chasing down customers that owed us. At one point, there was a time when we had a total of $60,000 to $70,000 that was owed to us. And we were chasing these people down constantly and after we stopped invoicing customers, we ended up coming up with a new game plan. And that game plan was to offer them that $7 diagnostic fee for first-time customers. And then we would, in order to save their spot on the schedule, we would need to take payment. So we would either take a check over the phone or the credit card number. And this has improved so much, taken away so much headache from my business. And now the people in the office can focus on things they really need to be focusing on instead of chasing down customers that owe us money. So this has drastically improved the business and a lot less stress definitely. Hello, my name is Daniel with Daniel’s Heating and Air. Having the group interviews has drastically improved my business. My employees are no longer holding me hostage. We have group interviews Wednesday and we bring in the best people with the best attitudes and just willing to work and be part of our team. And if the people that we currently have are not holding up their end, we let them go and we bring the next people up. It’s been a great process. My name is Vicky Mihalik and I own Capital Waste Solutions. Jumping out on my own was my biggest fear. I really love that corporate safety net of a consistent paycheck, knowing that we had the corporate background, structure to stay there, the standard operating procedures, you know, everything had a book and a policy of how things had to be done. Unfortunately, that puts you in a box sometimes, and Clay helped me to release that and understand that, hey, go, take off, explore, find new areas, and it was really the confidence to jump outside the box. Any time you start something new or you have to reach out, I feel it brings a level of exposure by admitting, maybe I don’t know as much as I put off about sales or marketing. When Clay came to speak with me, he said, it’s okay to not know everything. And that really was a game changer for me. You know, Clay’s helped me probably the most with our graphic design on our website. That’s one thing that I do not claim to know anything about. In fact, I’m better off throwing the computer out the window than I am using it. What was nice about working with the guys at Thrive15 and working with Clay was I could go in with a silly sketch on paper, pencil and paper, and I could say, hey, this is what I want to look like. Or they’d make it so simple. They’d pull up my phone and say, hey, FaceTime with me real quick and point to what you don’t like. And they worked on my level instead of me having to meet them at their level. And not only that, but the upbeat atmosphere is fun. You come in and it’s all about you. And it’s nice to be the one that gets to drink from the fountain instead of constantly pouring into someone else. Why not learn something new? Why not admit to yourself that, hey, I can learn more. I can be better. I can be greater. You know as a basketball player in college I was nothing without the coaches that invested me day after day after day to help me work on a move or a play But I maybe I wasn’t the best that and that fueled me to be successful in our game It’s those little battles that win the war and when you have clay Clark, it’s a coach It’s a general that helps you through the battles JT you know what time it is 410 it’s Tivo time in Tulsa, Roseland, baby. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the two day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business growth workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old. And a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Hmm. Well, they’re going to have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. You know, over the years we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of RusticCuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of RusticCuff.com, has spoken at the two day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we’ve had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop, December 5th and 6th in Tulsa Oklahoma and the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered yes we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15-minute question-and-answer session it’s interactive it’s two days it’s in Tulsa Oklahoma we’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show 2-Day Interactive Business Workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who have been able to go to multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at thrivetimeshow.com. You’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrive. Can you just go to thrive timeshow.com you click on the business conferences button and you click on the request tickets button right there The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket Yep, or whatever price that you could afford and the reason why I do that is I grew up without money JT you’re in the process of building a super successful company Yeah, you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa Ruslim. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa Ruslim, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office, and so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come! I’m talking to you. You can just get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com, and again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford, and we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical. It’s actionable. And it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russelaum. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies and I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California in the beautiful sunny weather of LA come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation. Really life changing. And I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine, I’ll see you in Tulsa. Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops. Because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13 point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. I mean, we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. Every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop all you gotta do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets and if you can’t afford two hundred fifty dollars we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you I learned at the academy at Kings Point in New York acta non verba watch what a person does not what they say good morning good morning good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. The definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing, but I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say? Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, and he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books, and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor, and I owe a lot of that to you. And I just wanted to take a moment to tell you, thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just wanna tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. You know, more than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there too, or bad influencers. Yeah. So anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.