Business Podcast | Profit First | It’s Not How Much Money You Make, It’s How Much Money You Keep + Best-Selling Author, Mike Michalowicz + Join Robert Kiyosaki & Eric Trump At Clay Clark’s March 6th & 7th Business Conference!

Audio Transcription

You could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here. 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 and moves that you can use. Because they believe in you.

And they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zunich. Two men. Eight kids, co-created by two different women.

Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and 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 pride, 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

Steve’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the C and 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 Revenue translates directly to stress. What I mean by this is the more revenue you generate for your organization, the more obligation you have.

These are sales. So the more obligation you have to deliver a product or service, well, the more obligation you have, the more stress that’s put on the organization. And if you’re the one operating the organization, that’s the more stress directly on you. So more sales equals more stress.

The balance for this necessity is profitability, and yet no one focuses on it. So that’s why I am so vehement about bringing profitability to businesses of all sizes. On today’s show, we have the opportunity to interview the best-selling author of the smash hit book for business owners all throughout this country. The book is called Profit First.

And the author, his name is Mike McAuliffe. And on today’s show, he shares with you and I why you must create a system for telling your money where to go before you spend it. Why you must pay yourself first. Why profit is a habit. Why the goal of every business should be to remove the owner from the daily operations profitably.

Why profit is a reward for the investors and owners of the business and why the biggest challenge for most entrepreneurs is knowing? Their biggest challenge today’s show can absolutely change your financial life So grab a pen and a pad let’s enter into the lab of the profit first dojo of mojo with Mike McCallum Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. What 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 Timeshow. Now, four, two, one, here we go! ♪ We started from the bottom, now we’re here ♪ ♪ We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get there ♪

Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Thrive Nation, on today’s show we are interviewing the best-selling author of the book The Profit, First, and the host of the Entrepreneurship Elevated podcast, Mike Michalowicz. Welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m doing well, Clay. Thank you so much for

having me. Hey, since last time I talked to you, I was actually on your show, you have added a button to the top left of your website that helps to help people understand how to pronounce your name properly. But just to clear it up for our half a million listeners, how do you pronounce your last name? Yeah, so it’s pronounced McAlowitz, but if you’re an old high school friend of mine, it’s McAllister. That was my nickname in high school. Oh, that is still still goes with me.

So occasionally people shout that out in an audience. Hey, it’s McAllister. Oh, my gosh, that is so funny. Well, I first ran into you in twenty sixteen when you so so graciously had me on your show. And during that time, I’ve ran into so many people, probably two or three dozen people at our conferences who are disciples of your program.

Could you tell the listeners though where you were at financially before creating the Profit First system? Yeah, yeah. I mean, so it’s critical. It became the inception of Profit First. We got to rewind back to 2008, so 12 years ago.

I had built and sold two companies. I was on top of the world financially and thought I had everything figured out, but admittedly was chock full of arrogance and didn’t realize how much ignorance I had. I started a business right around that period

that was a total calamity. It was an angel investing company and I wiped myself out financially. And what I realized, it was a devastating period for my life, I actually went through depression and I lost my possessions. The only thing I didn’t lose was my family. Thank God.

It was a it was an awakening for me that I really didn’t understand what made entrepreneurs successful. I thought I did but I didn’t know. And I didn’t understand finances. I thought I did but I didn’t. So I started to investigate how to drive profit consistently and here’s what I found. Most entrepreneurs wait till the end of the quarter, or actually in most cases the end of the year,

that’s what I was doing, to see what my tax returns were, to see if there was a profit. And if there was, it was an accounting profit anyway, and there was no cash there. So I decided to create a system that worked with how I naturally behave.

And what I did naturally was I was logging to my bank account every day to see if I had money. If I did, I’d spend it, and if I didn’t, I’d try to sell something to somebody quickly, a panic would ensue. And I decided to create a system around that behavior

of what I call bank balance accounting. So profit first is a system where money, as it flows into your business through sales, we immediately allocate money to its intended use before spending a dime. So some of it goes toward profit,

some goes toward the operations of the business, others goes to reserve for taxes and so forth. And by doing this, I was carving up the money at my bank, saw what the money’s intended use was, because these were all different bank accounts, it was very clear, and I started to work within the confines of what I truly had available for the different parts of my business and my life.

Now can you share with the listeners, what kind of businesses were you involved in? Because there’s so many listeners out there, I think, who can relate to this idea of being able to sell a lot, but being unprofitable, you know, being very busy, but not profitable. What kind of businesses were you involved in? Because I think on the outside you might think, wow, this guy’s really killing it.

Yeah, so my first business was in computer integration. It means I was in the tech space, setting up the hardware and configuring it. And I grew to like a $2 million company and it was growing consistently, but it was not profitable. You know, that top line is purely just a vanity metric.

It’s not the health of a business. I sold it to private equity. I made some money. I didn’t make F you money, but I did make F me money. My second business was in computer crime investigation. Right place, right time. I started that business. Six months later, the Enron trial broke, and guess who got the phone call? We did. Not for prosecution. That’s the FBI and CIA, but the defense attorneys for Kenneth Lay, Andrew Faster called us and said, hey, can you get involved in this case?

And sure enough, we did. And it put my little startup on the map instantly. We bootstrapped it. We did, I think our first year, first full year we did over a million dollars. Second year, we were approaching seven million on our run

before we sold it to a Fortune 500, I had a partner there. We sold it two and a quarter years in. Wow. Yeah. Oh, it was, and dude, it was a big deal. And I’m like, I, and I became a millionaire

in my early 30s, I’m like, I’ve got this all figured out, now I’m a genius. Oh, genius. I believed my own shiitake. Anything I touched turned to gold. That was ultimately the downfall.

Was, I was so full of arrogance and also ignorance that my third venture in 2008 was an angel investing company. I helped all these different startups, I threw my money into these businesses. And, you know, I’m like, if I’m there, we’ll be successful.

Yeah. And that was my downfall. I lost all that money. I lost my home, homes, I lost everything. And that was a wake-up call that I didn’t understand entrepreneurship.

I happened to be in the right place at the right time on that one big deal. Yeah. But that’s not fiscal discipline. That’s not a healthy business. That’s good fortune.

And listen, that is a part of entrepreneurial success, but it needs to be backed with discipline, understanding, prudence, and those things I had to learn later on. Did you watch the end scene of the jerk with Steve Martin? I mean, is that kind of how you felt when you hit bottom? I don’t need any of this! I don’t need this stuff! I don’t need you! I don’t need anything! This is the ashtray. And that’s the only thing I need is this.

I don’t need this or this. This ashtray. This paddle game. The ashtray and the paddle game, that’s all I need. And this. Remote control. The ashtray and the paddle game and the remote control, that’s all I need.

These matches, the ice cream, and these matches, and the remote control, and the paddle ball. Okay, so when you were at the bottom, though, I know we can kind of laugh about it now, but what did it feel like? Yeah, so in the moment, it was really hard.

I actually, like I told you, I went through depression. And by the way, this is self-diagnosed. I went through, well, I think it’s called functional depression. I never saw that therapist. After the fact I did, like once I got through that,

I’m like, oh, maybe I should actually have someone that specializes in how our mind operates and talk to that person. But so I admittedly started to drink. I started to, I became an insomniac and was really wallowing in this space.

The way I got through it or out of it was a friend of mine suggested journaling. And journaling is the male version of a diary. But just write down thoughts. And I thought initially I should just write down grateful things.

I’m grateful to be awake. I’m grateful to be alive today. But he explained to me, he’s like, no, no, no, write down any thought you have in your mind. And what happens is I started writing down these hateful and angry thoughts at myself,

at the world, and what happens is I write those thoughts down, is it relieved the steam valve. And for maybe five minutes, other times a few hours, sometimes even a full day, I was able to concentrate again on moving myself forward. And when I started to slip back into that depression,

I started journaling again, and it would relieve me, and I’d focus forward and push myself forward. And because of, I attribute a lot of my turnaround to that ability to relieve the steam of my bad thoughts and start slowly, consistently moving forward. I also found purpose.

Like I found that I gotta fix these entrepreneurial misnomers, you know, myself, but also for readers. And I committed myself to, as I call it now, eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. There’s this gap.

Like the day, Clay, you started a business, anyone listening starts a business, the world thinks, oh my God, you’re a millionaire now, you make so much money, you don’t even work, you just sit on the beach. And of course, that’s not the reality.

The reality is, we’re making no money, and we’re panicked, and we’re working day and night. True. That gap is entrepreneurial poverty. So I devoted, I made a commitment to myself that day forward.

I said, I will eradicate entrepreneurial poverty for myself, but for everyone affected by this. I realized I may not be able to do that in my lifespan, but I’m going to commit to building products, my books, putting things in place that every entrepreneur that’s affected by entrepreneurial poverty has a pathway to achieve what entrepreneurs deserve, which is success, which is wealth, which is comfort, because entrepreneurs are the providers for all of us. And if an entrepreneur can be stable and wealthy and happy, then so can the employees, and

so can our world. You know, you have gotten into fitness now. You’re looking great, by the way. Just look at you. You’re looking great. But you know how sometimes you go to the gym, and there’s a guy at the gym who clearly cannot

bench 250, but he’ll look over at you and go, bro, how much can you bench, bro? I can bench 250, bro. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs, you talk about it on page five of your book, Profit First, that people brag about the size of their business. They always brag. The business guys are, so how many employees do you have?

Oh, I’ve got 45 guys. You got 45 guys? I got 25 guys. You got 60 guys. Pastors brag about the congregation all the time, bragging about the top line. Can you talk about the danger of running around bragging about how many

employees you have? Yeah, yeah. It’s totally the how big is it contest. And here’s the reality. No one really cares. I mean, so here’s the problem. It is perpetuated in our media. So when I walk through an airport or something and I stop by the newsstands, every magazine oriented toward entrepreneurs are about these entrepreneurs that are wildly successful in regards to revenue. That’s how to define it.

This person went from 10 million to 100 million. This person has a 70,000 employee company. So all the bragging rights are attributed to size. And it perpetuates on through all business. I go to these entrepreneurial conferences and that’s exactly what they ask.

Like, hey, what kind of revenues are you doing? Or if they want to be that bold, they’ll simply say how many employees you have, which translates to revenue. And I used to buy into that. And I felt the competition,

I have to be bigger than these other people. Oh, yeah. I’ve subsequently flipped the question. Like, I really do not care about size. I don’t care if a business has 100,000 or 100 million. Neither of those impress me or deter me.

What impresses me is when I ask the question, I say, well, tell me how health debt business is. And that $100,000 business, that owner says, oh, it’s 90% profit. It’s all actually coming through to me. I build mechanisms that I don’t even have to work. It’s money on automatic.

That’s mind-blowing. And the $100 million business, that guy’s like, I’m stressed beyond belief. We have $7 million of debt. We’re highly leveraged. That sucks. Here’s the hidden truth that no one really considers.

Revenue translates directly to stress. What I mean by this is the more revenue you generate for your organization, the more obligation you have. These are sales. So the more obligation you have to deliver a product or service, well, the more obligation you have, the more stress that’s put on the organization.

And if you’re the one operating the organization, that’s the more stress directly on you. So more sales equals more stress. The balance for this necessity is profitability, and yet no one focuses on it. So that’s why I am so vehement about bringing profitability to businesses of all sizes. WeWork, you know, WeWork was a company everybody was talking about WeWork for a long time going, man, this was companies were 16 billion. WeWork. Woo. All of a sudden it comes out. Oh, we

work. Oh, oh, I know. So talk to us. Help the listeners out there go from the uh-oh to the practical. Page 19 of your book, Profit First, you start to get into the details and you start to talk about kind of your process. As you get into about page 40 of your book, you really start getting into the details about setting up all the different accounts. Can you help our listeners out there who are note takers and people who are implementers,

what should they do right now if they’re a roofer? They’re a dentist. They got a lot of gross revenue, the sales are high. Talk to us about your five accounts and how does that all work? Yep, yep.

So what we’re gonna do is first flip the formula. So first understand the traditional formula for profitability is sales minus expenses equals profit. And the reason that fails us is it tells us that profit comes last. Profit first, what I’m about to teach you,

is a behavioral mechanism. It works with our minds. And it’s human nature, when something comes last, it’s insignificant. So call and profit, the bottom line or the year end, are the worst things we can do,

yet that’s the common vernacular. The new formula is sales minus profit equals expenses. And mathematically, they’re identical, but behaviorally, they’re radically different. Every time a sale comes in, we’re gonna allocate a portion of that money to a profit.

Now, how we do it in practice is at your bank. And the reason we do this at your bank is that I found in my surveys of now I believe well over a hundred thousand entrepreneurs. Every time I do a speaking engagement on Profit First, I survey the audience. What I found consistently, that the vast vast majority

of entrepreneurs do bank balance accounting. We don’t read our income statement tied to our balance sheet and cash flow statement. We simply log into our bank account and if we have money we can spend it, if we don’t, we pay it. That’s the system. 100,000 people. You’ve interviewed 100,000 people approximately, surveyed them, and you’re saying that most

people, they just look at the bank account and they go, if I have money, I can spend money, if I don’t, I don’t. Is that correct? That’s exactly it. And listen, and these people are checking their bank accounts once a day. That’s the frequency.

And these aren’t just like micro-businesses, like doing like $50,000. These are half a million, million dollar companies. I just spoke at a conference with companies that are doing 10 to $50 million, same behavior. And they have a controller or a CFO, but the owner is still logging in

and is highly biased by the cash flow. A lot of depositors come in, they’re like, oh my God, business is great. Finally, the next day they pay their bills, business sucks. That’s this reactionary mentality. Mike, I have one quick thing I want to interject because I know the listeners out there would

benefit from this. You see this all the time. And when I first started helping companies with their marketing, I ran into a cosmetic surgeon one time who his card got declined for payment to me, you know, for some marketing. And he’s a big house, big, you know, big, nice cars, the whole thing. And we ended up finding out that he had something like a half a million dollars of accounts

receivable owed to him, and he literally was maxed out on every, he had no money in his account at all. I mean, zero. And I had to point out to this guy in his 50s, who’s a baller building a new house, that dude, the money that you told the lender that you had isn’t right because you were looking at accrual based accounting.

You weren’t going off the cash. And I seriously watched a grown man cry, and then I had to have my team try to help him collect. Is that uncommon for that kind of craziness as a company grows to happen? Sadly, it’s not that uncommon. I mean, it’s devastating.

And it’s a game we play at the outside world, but it’s a game we’re playing with ourselves. We actually try to convince ourselves we have money, and that it’s just a cash flow situation. Just one more big sale or one client will fix everything. And it never does. We’re looking at the top line only, and it’s a real problem.

We’re looking at sales only. So we need to address profit. Here’s what I tell people. Profit is not an event, meaning an eventuality that at the end of the year or a certain point is gonna happen.

Profit is not an event, profit is a habit. We have to bake it into every transaction, every day, every minute in the business, a small percentage of money must be constantly dripping out and that’s how you accumulate profit. Now in execution how we do this is we set this up at your bank and to your earlier point we set up five bank accounts. They are and these can all be

checking accounts for now an income account it’s called income you nickname income, profit, owners comp, tax and op-ex. The income account starting today is a depository only account. Money flows into your business it sits in the income account and you don’t touch it you do not pay a bill from there. It’s simply to reflect your inbound cash flow. So when you log in your bank account,

you see how much money’s sitting there every single day. Then, from the income account, we do an allocation. We call it carving up the cash turkey. Just like Thanksgiving, the turkey comes out, you don’t tell people, hey, everyone for themselves, fight for it.

You carve the turkey so everyone can get some meal, some portion of the meal. Now, with our bank, we do the same thing. The income account, that cash turkey, you carve it up, a portion goes into profit. Profit, just to be very clear, is a reward

for the investors or the founders of an organization, people that have shares in stock. You’ve taken on extraordinary risk, which, by the way, supports employees, it supports our economy locally, nationally, globally. You need to be rewarded for that.

Just like if you own stock in a public company, I own Ford. Like Ford sent me a stock distribution. I didn’t say, oh, Ford, I don’t deserve this, sorry. Take it back. No. And I didn’t say, oh, can I work the line for a day

or whatever. I simply said, I invested in you. I want the valuation to go up, but it could go down. This is my reward for the risk. That’s the profit account. Next account, owner’s comp.

Owner’s comp is different than profit. Profit is a reward for taking risk. Owner’s compensation is a payment for being an employee of the company, arguably the most important employee. If you are an owner operator, this is a person that owns a business but also works in the business, chances are you are the most skilled employee

the company will ever have. As in that role, we need to pay you a salary, and here’s the salary we pay you. If we had to replace you, hire someone else to do you, do your work, what would you pay them reasonably that’s yourself to do you do you do you you would pay them millions to do you and do you then the next the next account is called the tax count this is a reservation of money to pay your personal taxes and owner of a business the biggest liability or biggest bill a business receives associated to the business

inevitably is the tax bill. It’s the one we’re least prepared for. The business, regardless of your business formation, can pay your taxes. It can reserve it and through a mechanism it can pay your taxes for you. Just talk to an accountant to do that. And then the last step is an OpEx account. OpEx account is the money available to pay the operating expenses of a business. In summary, we have that one account income that feeds the other four accounts.

Those four accounts are based upon different percentages, and if $1,000, for example, comes into your income account, you now finally realize you don’t have $1,000 to operate your business. After allocating it, you may have $600 go to OPEX, but now you’ve also reserved for taxes, paying yourself, and a profit account. Mike, accountants get really surly with me. None of my accountants, just other accountants that I happen to be running into, no one I’ve actually talked to.

But, you know, they get upset when you try to set up five accounts. They’re like, it’d be easier if you just do the one account. It’d be simpler for us. I see that. And then bankers, when you start setting up all these different accounts, some of them get kind of defend accountants and bookkeepers.

They have been trained in the traditional process called GAAP accounting. Profit comes last. GAAP stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. It’s in every book, every magazine, every article, it’s in our vernacular, bottom line, year end. So we are steeped in this process of treating profit as an afterthought.

I’m simply saying we flip the formula, but when you hear, when an accountant or bookkeeper hears it, that has heard the other approach forever, it’s like getting hit by a brick wall. It’s unfathomable. So simply, here’s a challenge you can do

with an accountant or bookkeeper. Say, listen, I want to try this new approach, profit first. By the way, there’s over 300,000 companies that successfully have used it and more every day that are very profitable. But since you’re insisting this other system,

profit comes last, tell me about your client base. You tell all your clients this, correct? And they will say, yeah. How many clients do you have? Say, maybe say 100. Say, okay, of those 100 clients,

how many of them post a quarterly profit distribution? You know, none. Okay, how many post at least a 10 or 15% profit year in, year out? And they’ll be like, well, you know, a few of them, a handful.

Well, clearly the system they’re working with does not yield a quarterly profit distribution, it doesn’t yield sustainable profits on a yearly basis. Why would we want to keep doing a system that’s not serving them? Why don’t we try this new system? Now, here’s the other great thing. Profit First is not an accounting system.

It’s a cash management system. So it simply manages the cash flows to the bank, but the accounting works the same way. But the beautiful thing is you’ll be going back to your accountant, once you set up the Profit First system for yourself, and I surely suspect you’ll be the most profitable client they’ve ever had. Okay, now here we go.

We’re making a unicorn connection here. Ryan Wimpey, you love this guy. Yes, sir. You love Magic Mike. Mike, meet Ryan. Ryan, meet Mike.

Mike, nice to meet you, sir. Ryan, an honor to meet you, my brother. And Ryan, you tell our listeners and tell Mike how much that the profit first system has improved your life and the life of your wife and your business tip-top Mom my wife a lot when we got married She was like, oh no when she saw the bank account and the one account, but we we have six accounts We actually have a advertising account as well. Oh

nice because we have Revenue translates directly to stress what I mean by this is the more revenue you generate for your organization, the more obligation you have. These are sales. So the more obligation you have to deliver a product or service,

well, the more obligation you have, the more stress that’s put on the organization. And if you’re the one operating the organization, that’s the more stress directly on you. So more sales equals more stress. The balance for this necessity is profitability,

and yet no one focuses on it. So that’s why I am so vehement about bringing profitability to businesses of all sizes. On today’s show we have the opportunity to interview the best-selling author of the smash hit book for business owners all throughout this country. The book is called Profit First and the author his name is Mike McAllenance and on today’s

show he shares with you and I why you must create a system for telling your money where to go before you spend it. Why you must pay yourself first. Why profit is a habit. Why the goal of every business should be to remove the owner from the daily operations profitably, why profit is a reward for the investors and owners of the business, and why the biggest challenge for most entrepreneurs is knowing their biggest challenge.

Today’s show can absolutely change your financial life. So grab a pen and a pad, and let’s enter into the lab of the profit-first dojo of Mojo with Mike McEllis. 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 Time Show.

author of the book, The Profit First, and the host of the Entrepreneurship Elevated Podcast, Mike Michalowicz. Welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m doing well, Clay. Thank you so much for having me.

Hey, since last time I talked to you, I was actually on your show. You have added a button to the top left of your website that helps people understand how to pronounce your name properly. Just to clear it up for our half-million listeners, how do you pronounce your last name? Yes, so it’s pronounced McAllowitz, but if you’re an old high school friend of mine it’s McAllow-

shits. That was my nickname in high school. Oh, that is great. It still goes with me. So occasionally people shout that out in an audience, hey it’s McAllow-shits. Oh my gosh, that is so funny. Well I first ran into you in 2016 when you so graciously had me on your show. And during that time, I’ve ran into so many people, probably two or three dozen people at our conferences who are disciples of your program.

Could you tell the listeners, though, where you were at financially before creating the Profit First system? Yeah, yeah. I mean, so it’s critical. It became the inception of profit first. We got to rewind back to 2008, so 12 years ago.

I had built and sold two companies. I was on top of the world financially until I had everything figured out, but admittedly it was chock full of arrogance and didn’t realize how much ignorance I had. I started a business right around that period

that was a total calamity. It was an angel investing company and I wiped myself out financially. And what I realized, it was a devastating period for my life. I actually went through depression and I lost my possessions.

The only thing I didn’t lose was my family, thank God. And it was an awakening for me that I really didn’t understand what made entrepreneurs successful. I thought I did, but I didn’t know. And I didn’t understand finances.

I thought I did, but I didn’t. So I started to investigate how to drive profit consistently. And here’s what I found. Most entrepreneurs wait until the end of the quarter, or actually, in most cases, the end of the year.

That’s what I was doing, to see what my tax returns were, to see if there was a profit. And if there was, it was an accounting profit anyway, and there was no cash there. So I decided to create a system that worked with how I naturally behave.

And what I did naturally was I was logging to my bank account every day to see if I had money. If I did, I’d spend it. And if I didn’t, you know, I’d try to sell something to somebody quickly. A panic would ensue. And I decided to create a system around that behavior of what I call bank balance accounting. So Profit First is a system where money, as it flows into your business through sales,

we immediately allocate money to its intended use before spending a dime. So some of it goes to a profit, some goes toward the operations of the business, others goes to reserve for taxes and so forth. And by doing this, I was carving up the money at my bank, saw what the money’s intended use was because these were all different bank accounts, it was very clear, and I started to work within the confines of what I truly had available for the different parts of my

business and my life. Now can you share with the listeners what kind of businesses were you involved in? Because there’s so many listeners out there, I think, who can relate to this idea of being able to sell a lot, but being unprofitable, being very busy, but not profitable.

What kind of businesses were you involved in? Because I think on the outside, you might think, wow, this guy’s really killing it. Yeah, so my first business was in computer integration. It means I was in the tech space, setting up the hardware and configuring it.

And I grew to a $2 million company, and it was growing consistently, but it was not profitable. You know, that top line is purely just a vanity metric. It’s not the health of a business. I sold it to private equity. I made some money.

I didn’t like make F you money, but I did make F me money. I didn’t. My second business was in computer crime investigation. Right place, right time. I started that business.

Six months later, the Enron trial broke and guess who got the phone call? We did. Not for prosecution, that’s the FBI and CIA, but the defense attorneys for Kenneth Lay, Andrew Fasna, called us and said,

hey, can you get involved in this case? And sure enough, we did. And it put my little startup on the map instantly. We bootstrapped it. We did, I think our first year, first full year we did over a million dollars.

Second year, we were approaching seven million on our run before we sold it to a Fortune 500. I had a partner there. We sold it two and a quarter years in. Wow. Yeah.

Oh, and dude, it was a big deal. And I’m like, I, and I became a millionaire in my early 30s. I’m like, I’ve got this all figured out. Now I’m a genius. Oh, genius.

I believe my own shiitake. Anything I touch turned to gold. That was ultimately the downfall. I was so full of arrogance and also ignorance that my third venture in 2008 was an angel investing company. I helped all these different startups.

I threw my money into these businesses. And I’m like, if I’m there, we’ll be successful. And that was my downfall. I lost all that money. I lost my home, homes. I lost everything.

And that was a wake-up call that I didn’t understand entrepreneurship. I happened to be in the right place at the right time on that one big deal. But that’s not physical discipline. That’s not healthy business. That’s good fortune.

And listen, that is a part of entrepreneurial success, but it needs to be backed with discipline, understanding, prudence, and those things I had to learn later on. Did you watch the end scene of The Jerk with Steve Martin? Is that kind of how you felt when you hit bottom? I don’t need any of this! I don’t need this stuff! And I don’t need you! I don’t need anything!

Except this. This ashtray. And that’s the only thing I need is this! I don’t need this or this! This ashtray! And this paddle game! The ashtray and the paddle game, that’s all I need.

And this remote control. The ashtray and the paddle game and the remote control, that’s all I need. These matches. The ashtray and these matches and the remote control and the paddle ball.

Okay, so when you were at the bottom, though I know we can kind of laugh about it now, but what did it feel like? Yeah, so in the moment it was really hard. I actually, like I told you, I went through depression and by the way, this is self-diagnosed. I went through what I think is called functional depression. I never saw that a therapist. After the

fact I did, like once I got through that, I’m like, oh maybe I should actually have someone that specializes in how our mind operates and talk to that person. But so I admittedly started to drink. I started to, I became an insomniac and was really wallowing in this space. The way I got through it or out of it was a friend of mine suggested journaling. And journaling is the male version of a diary.

But just write down thoughts. And I thought initially I should just write down grateful things. I’m grateful to be awake. I’m grateful to be alive today, but He explained to me saying no no write down any thought you have in your mind and what happens is I started right down these

hateful and angry thoughts of myself at the world and What happens I wrote those thoughts down is that relieved the steam valve and for maybe five minutes other times a few hours Sometimes even a full day I was able to concentrate again on moving myself forward and when I started to slip back into that depression, I started journaling again, and it would relieve me, and I’d focus forward and push myself forward. And because of that, I attribute a lot of my turnaround to that ability to relieve the

steam of my bad thoughts and start slowly, consistently moving forward. I also found purpose. I gotta fix these entrepreneurial misnomers for myself, but also for readers. And I committed myself to, as I call it now, eradicate entrepreneurial poverty.

There’s this gap, like the day, Clay, you started a business, anyone listening starts a business, the world thinks, oh my God, you’re a millionaire now, you make so much money. Oh yeah.

You don’t even work, you just sit on the beach. And of course, that’s not the reality. The reality is, we’re making no money, and we’re panicked, and we’re working day and night. That gap is entrepreneurial poverty. So I made a commitment to myself that day forward.

I said I will eradicate entrepreneurial poverty for myself but for everyone affected by this. I realized I may not be able to do that in my lifespan but I’m going to commit to building products, my books, putting things in place that every entrepreneur that’s affected by entrepreneurial poverty has a pathway to achieve what entrepreneurs deserve, which is success, which is wealth, which is comfort because entrepreneurs are the providers for all of us. And if an entrepreneur can be stable and wealthy and happy, then so can the employees and so

can our world. You know, you have gotten into fitness now. You’re looking great, by the way, just looking great. But you know how sometimes you go to the gym and there’s a guy at the gym who clearly cannot bench 250, but he’ll look over at you and go, bro, how much can you bench, bro? I can bench 250, bro.

A lot of entrepreneurs, you talk about it on page five of your book, Profit First, that people brag about the size of their business. They always brag. The business guys are, so how many employees do you have? Oh, I’ve got 45 guys. You’ve got 45 guys, I’ve got 25 guys.

You’ve got 60 guys. Pastors brag about the congregation all the time, bragging about the top line. Can you talk about the danger of running around bragging about how many employees you have? Yeah, yeah. It’s totally the how big is it contest. And here’s the reality, no one really cares.

I mean, so here’s the problem. It is perpetuated in our media. So when I walk through an airport or something, and I stop by the newsstands, every magazine oriented toward entrepreneurs are about these entrepreneurs that are wildly successful in regards to revenue. That’s how to define it. This person went from, you know, 10 million to 100 million. This person has a 70,000 employee company. So all the bragging rights are attributed to size.

And it perpetuates on through all business. I go to these entrepreneurial conferences and that’s exactly what they ask. Like, hey, what kind of revenues are you doing? Or if they want to be that bold, they’ll simply say how many employees you have,

which translates to revenue. And I used to buy into that. And I felt the competition, I have to be bigger than these other people. Oh yeah. I subsequently flipped the question.

I really do not care about size. I don’t care if a business does 100,000 or 100 million. Neither of those impress me or deter me. What impresses me is when I ask the question, I say, well, tell me how healthy that business is. And that 100,000 dollar business,

that owner says, oh, it’s 90% profit. It’s all actually coming through to me. I build mechanisms that I don’t even have to work. It’s money on automatic. That’s mind-blowing. And the 100 million dollar business,

that guy’s like, I’m stressed beyond belief, we have $7 million of debt, we’re highly leveraged, like that sucks. Here’s the hidden truth that no one really considers. Revenue translates directly to stress. What I mean by this is the more revenue you generate

for your organization, the more obligation you have. These are sales, so the more obligation you have to deliver a product or service, well the more obligation you have, the more stress that’s put on the organization. And if you’re the one operating the organization, that’s the more stress directly on you.

So more sales equals more stress. The balance for this necessity is profitability, and yet no one focuses on it. So that’s why I am so vehement about bringing profitability to businesses of all sizes. WeWork, you know, WeWork was a company, everybody was talking about WeWork for a long time, going, man, these companies were $16 billion. We work.

Woo! All of a sudden it comes out, uh-oh. We work. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. I know.

So let’s help the listeners out there go from the uh-oh to the practical. Page 19 of your book, Profit First, you start to get into the details and you start to talk about kind of your process. And as you get into about page 40 of your book, you really start getting into the details about setting up all the different accounts. Can you help our listeners out there who are note takers

and people who are implementers, what should they do right now if they’re a roofer, they’re a dentist, they got a lot of gross revenue, the sales are high, talk to us about your five accounts and how does that all work? Yep, yep, so what we’re gonna do is first flip the formula.

So first understand the traditional formula for profitability is sales minus expenses equals profit. The reason that fails us is it tells us that profit comes last. Profit first, what I’m about to teach you, is a behavioral mechanism. It works with our mind. It’s human nature, when something comes last, it’s insignificant.

Calling profit the bottom line or the year end are the worst things we can do, yet that’s the common vernacular. The new formula is sales minus profit equals expenses. Mathematically, they’re identical, but behaviorally, they’re radically different. Every time a sale comes in, we’re gonna allocate a portion of that money for profit.

Now, how we do it in practice is at your bank. And the reason we do this at your bank is that I found in my surveys of now, what I believe, well over 100,000 entrepreneurs, every time I do a speaking engagement on Profit First, I survey the audience.

And what I found consistently, that the vast, vast majority of entrepreneurs do bank balance accounting. We don’t read our income statement tied to our balance sheet and cash flow statement. We simply log into our bank account and if we have money,

we can spend it, if we don’t, we pay it. That’s the system. 100,000 people, you’ve interviewed 100,000 people approximately, surveyed them, and you’re saying that most people, they just look at the bank account and they go, if I have money, I can spend money,

if I don’t, I don’t. Is that correct? That’s exactly it. And listen, and these people are checking their bank accounts once a day. Oh, yeah. That’s the frequency.

And these aren’t just like micro businesses like doing like $50,000. These are half a million, million dollar companies. I just spoke at a conference with companies that are doing $10 to $50 million. Same behavior. And they have a controller or a CFO. Oh, yeah.

But the owner is still logging in and is highly biased by the cash flow. A lot of depositors come in and they’re like, oh my god, business is great, finally. The next day they pay their bills. Business sucks. That’s this reactionary mentality.

Mike, I have one quick thing I want to interject because I know the listeners out there would benefit from this. You see this all the time. And when I first started helping companies with their marketing,

I ran into a cosmetic surgeon one time who his card got declined for payment to me, you know, for some marketing. And he’s a big house, big, you know. I would have to say that at first it did seem overwhelming, but the more I get familiar with all the little things

that the coach is telling us to do, the more I embrace it and it becomes like a natural. It seems natural to me now. These are not things that I learned in business school or anywhere else. It’s pretty amazing to me how you could follow your,

almost like a recipe in baking a cake. You follow the recipe and it works. And we have the growth to provide. Now, I say that we’re growing and we have new car washes in our little town. It’s only 80,000 people.

And we have two competitive car washes and still our numbers are growing. So that proves to me that not only do they work, but they work regardless of what the business environment is. If you follow these steps and do the way you

and your company lays it out to us, then it’s gonna be successful. Well, hopefully you know this and you feel this and this has become true for you, but we deeply care about you and your success. You personally, I appreciate you carving out time.

And for anybody who’s watching this conversation, helping people like Larry is what we like to do. It’s an honor because money’s a magnifier and money just allows people to be more of who they are. I’m telling you folks, if you’re somebody that’s got ministry aspirations, or you just want to be a consistent tither, or you want to be somebody who can put your kids through

school, whatever it is you want to do, money unfortunately or fortunately allows us to do that. You’ve got to build a successful company. To do that, it’s not just one thing. And so I would encourage anybody out there, A, if you’re in the area and you want to schedule

a time to visit the car wash, it may become a tourist attraction over time, who knows? Check out eastridgecarwash.net. That’s eastridgecarwash.net. And if you want to schedule a free consultation with myself, you just go to thrivetimeshow.com.

You can schedule that free consultation. And we always have a workshop coming up. I usually do four to six a year, four to six a year. This is my 20th year doing these business workshops. So our next one, which is coming up, I’m not sure when people will see this particular broadcast, but coming up here in March, we’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad.

We have Eric Trump, Robert Kiyosaki’s financial advisor, will be there and so many other great folks. Larry, I’ll give you the final word, sir. You got the final 30 seconds. What say you? Well, we already have our tickets for the workshop. My wife and I go and we’re taking one of our lead men.

So I recommend that as a place to jump off, meet people of your same, kind of like your same tribe. You have a business and you want to do better, and this is the place to go to get that inspiration and do some networking and then just learn procedures that actually work in their business. Folks, Napoleon Hill, the bestselling author of Think and Grow Rich, he once said that a goal is a dream with a deadline.

A goal is a dream with a deadline. And I think there’s somebody watching today’s show that you feel like maybe this is your year or maybe you think, I don’t know if this is my year, maybe my business is stuck. And if you’re watching today’s show, the purpose of today’s show is to encourage you that you too can get your business unstuck. And to join us today, we have as our featured guest, as our success story, is the founder

of EastridgeCarwash.net. That’s the founder of East Ridge Car Wash.net. With that being said, Larry, welcome to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m great, thank you. So first, tell us, what made you get into the car wash business? Well, I used to be in the sign business and we sold signs to car washes

all throughout the country and I really like the industry so I jumped out from the sign business into the car wash business. And Larry, just so people can verify you’re not a hologram, what’s your last name, sir? Edwards. Edwards, okay. And how did you first hear about our program or the business growth incubator that we have here?

Through some friends, the Whiteheads on the Flyover Conservatives. And so we’ve had the opportunity to work with you for a while here and you’ve been having some success but I think it’s a it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme it’s consistency. I mean you provide value for your customers, you provide great car wash services in exchange for profits and we’re just helping you do that at a faster rate. Could you share with the listeners out there what are the the products and

services that you guys offer there at EastridgeCarWash.net? Well we’re what’s called an exterior car wash where we don’t do the insides, but we do have vacuums available for the customers to use free of charge. And it’s a tunnel wash, 165-foot conveyor, so it’s larger than most. And we’re noted for high quality and speed. So I’m going to unpack the growth that you’ve had kind of line by line. We’ll go through about 12 items in 10 minutes

and I want to get your thoughts on these. So first off, it appears as though you’ve been able to increase the number of members that you have that are members of your car wash since we’ve been able to work with you. Could you talk about the growth that you’ve seen there, sir?

Well, when we started with you all, with Carter is my coach, and we went from 350, if I remember correctly, to 1,500 plus members. Now, every winter, for some reason, we lose club members because some people

go south for the winter. So we expect the cancellations, we have 18 cancellations so far. But we sold 24 new ones. So we have a plus, a gain there, even though we lost 18 people going to Texas

or going to Arizona or Florida, wherever they go. So that has been something we learned last year and we see it recurring again this year. So that’s just part of doing business. So you’ve been able to grow from 300 to 1,500 members. I want to get your thoughts on this.

To do that, we had to team up with you to build a website. And your website, I’m going to pull it up here. For anybody who’s in the area, I encourage them to check it out. What areas do you service there at EastridgeCarWash.net? Well, we service pretty much all of St. Joseph. It’s not a huge town.

We deal with, or we have a lot of customers coming from towns around, we have college towns, Maryville, Chillicothe to the east, and a lot of farm communities. So we don’t just wash cars, like in a large city we would do mostly cars, but where we’re at, we’re only 15 minutes away from a farm country.

So we get a lot of big farm trucks and mud, and so we have to be versatile to wash a Corvette and a mud truck right behind it. Now working with you, one of the things that we’ve tried to do is just get you more business, I mean help you reach more customers, and that’s a big part of it. And so when people now do a search for a car wash, St. Joe, Missouri, you now are in the conversation, Eastridge Car Wash.

You guys are now in the conversation. Your website is now in the conversation. You’re now relevant when people are searching in those search results. You now are coming up at the top or near the top of the search results. What kind of impact has that made on your business being top in the search engine ranking and having a website that comes up top in those search results?

Well, we’ve been enjoyed a growth in our club membership and a growth in our new people, new customers, and we keep track of that and we try to keep track of the source, like how did they hear about us, obviously. And most of everything everybody that comes in that’s new is word-of-mouth

So we do have advertising we have television and some radio Mostly our Google web page. I guess is the place where people search to see how we’re rated and ranked and So I believe the last time we look we were the most highest rated and most reviewed car wash in St. Joseph. Amen to that. Now, money is a magnifier. So if you’re watching today’s show, you know,

money is a magnifier. It helps you just have more money so you can do more of the things that you believe God’s called you to do. And I know you guys are a great family-owned business there. I want to ask you this.

Once you start getting more leads, then we have to do these online ads. And that’s kind of a tedious technical process where our team manages and maintains those ads that are running for you. Could you talk about what it’s like to know that you’re paying a team a flat rate every month to do what they do, as opposed to… I know in my life, en route to growing many, many companies, there were vendors that, you know,

there wasn’t a flat rate. Every time you called the web guy, it was a $250 charge. Every time you called the video guy, it was a $500 charge. Every time you wanted to get something done, it would take two months. Can you talk about the peace of mind that that has given you or not given you, working with our team, knowing that it’s a flat rate? Well, I’ve had the same experience that some companies that we deal with now will vary the billing and the rates, and it’s almost like whatever they felt like they should charge that particular day or

week and we never know how to budget or how to prepare for the next bill. And so having a set rate with you and your company is very comforting in that I can budget for it, I can plan on it, I know what to expect there. So yeah, that is a great comfort. Now my understanding is you’re needing to hire some people or you are hiring people. Your business is growing and therefore you need to always be hiring wonderful people and you guys

have a standard of excellence that you want to provide to the marketplace. I know we’ve begun implementing the hiring process with your brand, what we call the group interview process or the hiring process. Could you talk about the impact on your business that’s had implementing the hiring processes? Yes, we have lost three key players just since we’ve started with you. Two managers and our bookkeeper that have been with us

for 16 years. So we had to replace all those people and plus the normal comings and goings of the workers. So the group interview has been an amazing improvement in hiring for us because we’ve always had difficulties finding that A player or someone that we can rely on

because it is a hard work for the guys in the tunnel, but we do have an office and we do have other things. And so we have to get a variety of talents. And when we do the group interview, we are able to spot the difference between the likely workers for one area and the other.

So it’s been a really good improvement for us to do it that way. Now, you’re in the Kansas City area, so I’m not sure if you’re a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs. But I know that for people that are a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs, most people

look at the scoreboard like it matters. You know, they know that their team is ahead or their team is behind and most people know what down it is. They know how many minutes are left in the game. There’s a public scoreboard. Unfortunately, in many small businesses, there’s not a scoreboard. So people don’t know, is the company losing? Is the company winning? Are we getting ahead? Are we getting behind? How much time is left? My understanding is that we’ve worked with implementing a scoreboard system or maybe accountability, a tracking system where people know where they stand.

Could you talk about the impact that that system has made on your business? Yes, we have a whiteboard in our office in a location where everyone has to walk past. We’re keeping a score on the sales department and some of the other details that we have. When we first put it up, we were having a lot of pushback on people trying to get Google reviews.

And once we started keeping track, then all of a sudden all the sales staff really stepped up their game and started getting better numbers because they could see that maybe my numbers weren’t quite as good as the next guy,

so I’m gonna try harder and it worked very well for us. Now, signage. I know a huge thing for a business like yours that has a physical location. And so many of our listeners have businesses that have physical locations.

About half of our clients have physical locations. The other half does not. The other half has a virtual or online business of some kind. Can you talk about the signage and the importance of doing? We’ve worked together to optimize the signage so that it’s very obvious that you exist and hopefully

you can grab the attention of your ideal and likely buyers as they drive by there, sir. Well we, our coach talked to us about the purple cow concept and we tried to figure out what to put out there, whether it would be a 15-foot gorilla or something to be different. And what we’ve come up with recently is a car wash professor concept with our television advertising. So that’s going to be our mascot, and we are in the works of having a

14-foot tall professor cut out, And that will take the place of the purple cow or the 15-foot gorilla. We’re gonna have the professor. So that way we can use that as our mascot throughout all our advertising

and kind of maybe put us on the map a little bit more than our regular signage. Now, final two questions for you, sir, and I really do appreciate you carving out time for us, is, again, if you’re watching today’s show and you have a business and you just feel like it’s stuck I get it trust me folks I talk to at least five to ten wonderful

entrepreneurs a day who call me and say Clay I feel stuck in fact I’ll give you an example folks just switching gears one of our clients is called Revitalize Medical Spa and these guys they’re called Revitalize Medical Spa I never want to hop on a show like this and exaggerate the growth of what they do or how they’ve done. But I believe this company is now three times larger than where they were just a couple years ago. I mean, that’s, I know they’re at least three times larger than where they were a couple

years ago. And I think somebody out there, Larry, you know, they’re feeling stuck. And there’s somebody out there, they might have a medical spa, I think about one of our long-time clients, Kola Fitness there in Missouri, they have a gym based in Missouri. They have gyms all over the country called ColawFitness.com. They once felt stuck and now they’re growing.

I know of a brand, Oxifresh.com. We’ve had the opportunity to serve them. They’ve now grown to 550 locations, from a handful of locations to 550 locations. I’m trying to give people different examples because people always think, well, my industry is different. One of our clients grill blazer calm. This is a

Consumer grade blowtorch that is primarily sold online We’ve helped him to grow dramatically one of the speakers at the last in person of Thrive Time Show workshops Jill Donovan rustic cuff We’ve had the pleasure to serve her and help her with her apparel and her custom cuffs that she sells primarily online I think of brands like Winters King the law firm We’ve had the opportunity to work with for over a decade, wintersking.com. I can sit there and rattle off examples of clients that we’ve worked with and that we

do work with, and at the end of the day, I want to encourage somebody out there that this is the year to do it. You can do it. What do you say, Larry, to somebody out there that’s a little hesitant about coming to a workshop and or scheduling a 313-point assessment with me? Well, I’ll address the workshop first.

I’ve been to four, and I always come away motivated and full of new ideas. And I come back to our company, I implement those ideas, and I go back to the next one and get filled up with more good ideas. So I highly recommend those. And then as far as the weekly coaching, we were a little reluctant at first.

Carter had to spank us a few times to get us to do things that didn’t seem logical. And then all of a sudden it clicked and we started doing the things that he was asking us to do. And so surprisingly to me, these things work, these things that we can track,

our lead tracking, we can do all sorts of things that we weren’t doing before. And because of our position in Google and going after Google reviews, which that never crossed my mind before, but now we’re doing it and we’re getting,

sometimes we trade places. Yesterday we were in the number one slot. Today we see that brand X is in number one, but we jump back and forth. But we’re fourth, when we first looked at it, we’re in the fourth position.

And so now we’re one and two depending, so depending on the day. But our growth, our sales is up annually 33 percent and our monthly increase is 42 percent. So that we’ve broken records every month except November. Every month this year so far. So January through October we set monthly records.

And we were on a course to, and we’re very weather related, so should we get decent weather, we’ll finish out with the most cars washed this year than we’ve ever done. So obviously the revenue goes up the more cars we wash, the more the revenue goes up. So all these things that we’re implementing that Coach Carter has been telling us to do is starting to pay out. Now the final two questions I have here for you, or I guess the final question I have here for you is,

you know, there’s sales training. We work with your team on sales training, and, you know, we work with your team on search engine optimization. We work with your team on running these online ads. We work with your team on signage. And it’s a process. And just like growing a garden, you have to sow the seeds, continue to water the seeds, pull the weeds. It is a process.

And I think people want success to be an event. I’m sure our listeners don’t want success to be an event, but other people want success to be an event. They want it to be hit the button, growth happens. They don’t want to embrace the process. And I know you’re a guy who embraces the process.

Can you talk about the sales process? Just working with your team on a consistent basis, training the members of your team on a consistent basis to become the best sales people that they can be. Well, we have a sales meeting every week. We do have huddles, and sometimes the sales staff

doesn’t get in the huddle because the car wash crews are more of a huddle type circumstance. But when we have our Thursday meetings, sales meetings, we we go over anything new that we would have. Plus, we do some role playing. And are trying to increase

the effectiveness of the sales effort. We were a little different in that a lot of my competitors have automatic tellers where you don’t speak to a human, you just punch a button, put in a credit card and go on. We are old school so that we have a window with a real human, and every interaction there is with a human.

So we try to keep that touch going. The feedback that we get from the customers is one of my, is the best way for me to know how they’re doing. And we, people don’t tell me how wonderful my car wash equipment is. They always tell me how amazing the staff is.

They tell me that the girls always really take good care of them in the sales and that the guys are always smiling and they’re hustling. And so I get a lot of feedback about the people and nothing about the equipment because if it comes out clean,

they don’t care what I had in there. So it’s the people that really make the difference. 100% agree with. I agree with, I didn’t mean to cut you off. I want to say, I agree with you. And I think that what you’re doing here,

and I hope that our listeners are picking up on this. People say, what’s the most important ingredient to growing a successful company? Is it the marketing? Yes. Is it the branding? Yes.

Is it the customer service? Yes. Is it the sales training? Yes. Is it the customer wowing experience? Yes.

Is it hiring good people? Yes. Is it the daily huddles? Yes. Is it offering that personal touch? Yes.

Is it the new signage? Yes. Is it what it is, is it’s implementing all of those ingredients, or all of those processes simultaneously. It’s like a big symphony of commerce, and each part of the business is a different instrument.

I want to get your thoughts here in the final 60 seconds we have for you. How would you describe what the process has been like having a coach on a weekly meeting that has worked with you to implement all of these systems simultaneously? Because it could seem overwhelming for somebody

on the outside who’s hearing about you implementing all of these systems simultaneously. Well, I would have to say that at first, it did seem overwhelming, but the more I get familiar with all the little things that the coach is telling us to do, the more I embrace it

and it becomes like a natural. It seems natural to me now. These are not things that I learned in business school or anywhere else. It’s pretty amazing to me how you can follow, almost like a recipe in baking a cake,

you follow the recipe and it works. We have the growth to provide. Now, I say that we’re growing and we have new car washes in our little town It’s only 80,000 people and we have to To competitive car washes and still our numbers are growing

so it’s That’s proves to me that not only do they work but they work regardless of what what the business environment is if you if you follow these steps and do the way you and your company lays it out to us, then it’s going to be successful. Well, hopefully you know this and you feel this and this has become true for you, but we deeply care about you and your success.

You personally, I appreciate you carving out time. And for anybody who’s watching this conversation, helping people like Larry is what we like to do. It’s an honor because money is a magnifier. And money just allows people to be more of who they are. And I’m telling you folks, if you’re somebody that’s got ministry aspirations,

or you just want to be a consistent tither, or you want to be somebody who can put your kids through school, or you want to, whatever it is you want to do, money unfortunately or fortunately allows us to do that. And so you’ve got to build a successful company. And to do that, it’s not just one

thing. And so I would encourage anybody out there, A, if you’re in the area and you want to schedule a time to visit the car wash, it may become a tourist attraction over time. Who knows? Check out eastridgecarwash.net. That’s eastridgecarwash.net. And if you want to schedule a free consultation. We always have a workshop coming up. I usually do four to six a year.

This is my 20th year doing these business workshops. Our next one, which is coming up, I’m not sure when people will see this particular broadcast, but coming up here in March, we’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. We have Eric Trump, Robert Kiyosaki’s financial advisor will be there, and so many other great folks.

Larry, I’ll give you the final word, sir. You got the final 30 seconds. What say you? Well, we already have our tickets for the workshop. My wife and I go and we’re taking one of our lead men. So I recommend that as a place to jump off, meet people of your same, kind of like your same tribe.

You have a business and you want to do better, and this is the place to go to get that inspiration and do some networking and then just learn procedures that actually work in their business. Amen, Larry, thank you so much for carving out time for us. Have a great rest of your day, sir.

Well, folks, on part one of today’s show, we focused on how to grow your business, which is a great thing. Growing your business, that’s a great thing. More sales, more marketing, more branding, more leads. It’s a good thing. However, it’s not about how much money you make, it’s about how much money you keep.

And here to talk about it is Tyler Carson here, our credit card processor of choice here. He runs a company called Integrated Payment Services. Tyler, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m doing good, Clay.

Thanks for having me. All right, Tyler. We’re going to see if you can take the five-minute challenge. In five minutes, can you walk our listeners through how potentially you could save our listeners $5,000 a year? Again, what am I saying?

For anybody who’s watching today’s show, if you own a business, I’ve seen Tyler save business owners far more than $5,000 a year. But I would say as a minimum, as a very conservative average, I see you TylerSafe clients, you know, $3,000 a year or more simply by taking 15 minutes to compare rates with you. So with the five minutes we’ve got here, let’s walk the listeners through why should everybody check out integrated payment services?

That’s a great question. Like you just said, right, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep. And that’s what we’re in the business to do. We’re in the business to help put more money back in the business owner’s pocket. And so, it’s a pretty simple process, Clay. We just fill out the landing page, comes straight to us and our team here at IPS. We reach out, we consult with them. We have about a five or 10 minute conversation with them just about their

business. We try to learn more about their business, learn more about how they’re taking payments. For the most part, we keep that the same operationally, and unless there’s something we can do that will really benefit them or help them. And then we look at their current processor and what that current processor is charging them. We go through every single line item.

We make sure that they’re being charged what they should, because a lot of people don’t know or understand credit card processing. And so they think this is just how it is. And a lot of times it’s not how it is or not how it should be. So me and my team, we go through it line item by line item. We provide them with an in-depth analysis, shows them to the penny where they would be

monthly with us. And like you said, you’re exactly right. And you know most of the people that have come through Thrive Time, it’s anywhere from $300 to $1,200 a month in savings. And so, you know, that’s a great bit of business or, you know, great bit of money to keep as you the business owner, especially this time of year.

Imagine if you had switched to us back in January, it would be Christmas time, you could have, you know, $5,000 or $10,000 sitting there that, you know, you wouldn’t have had otherwise. And that’s ThriveTimeShow.com forward slash credit dash card. Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. I had you come to our workshop and speak and we’ll be having you come to other workshops

as well. We have Eric Trump and Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad joining us in March for an epic conference. Again, Eric Trump, that’s the son of President Donald J. Trump, the man who runs the multi-billion dollar Trump organization. Robert Kiyosaki, they’ll be joining us.

And you did a Q&A at the last event where you took questions and you provided answers for our listeners and our attendees. And I looked out over the audience and I saw a handful of people that you’re doing business with that you’ve been able to help them over the years. But your service is month to month. Could you talk about that?

Because there are people that you’ve worked with for years, including myself. We’ve used you for years. But you are month to month. Talk about the month to month nature of your service. Yes. So, all of our contracts are agreements, month to month.

You know, we don’t want, we want to provide you the best service that we possibly can while also proving to you every single month why you should do business with IPS. And so, we don’t, it’s very common in our industry for, you know, most processors to have you sign a three-year or a five-year contract. Ours is just straight month to month. And it was great.

The Q&A was great. And then after the Q&A, I was actually able to visit with a few people who I’d never met before and we’ve actually now picked up a few of them as customers. And they were shocked to learn, one, just how low our rates were and two, that we are month to month. And so, they can leave at any point, but I don’t think that they will.

Now if we look at your website again here we look at the landing page it’s thrive timeshow.com forward slash credit dash card people that fill out the form at thrive timeshow.com forward slash credit at credit dash card when they fill out the form you know name phone number email they fill out the form hit submit it takes about 15 minutes for you to sit down and do the consult with them I’m not trying to paint you into a corner but could you think of an example of a recent business that you were

able to sit down with and compare rates and save them more than $3,000 a year? Absolutely. I can tell you one right now. It’s a HVAC business out of our state. We sat down with them. We looked at everything that they were doing. They thought they had a great deal and it actually appeared that they did have a great deal. And then when we really started digging in to the processing statements that they provided us, we found some line items that they shouldn’t have had.

And so it ended up being for them right around $1,500 a month in savings. You know, and that’s just one of those things where they provided us all the information that we needed and we were really able to dig into it and find some stuff that maybe another processor would have just looked at that and thought, yeah, you got a great deal. But it turns out they did not. Unbelievable.

Again, folks, I say it’s unbelievable because it really is hard to believe. Some people tell me, they say, Clay, I went over to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. I filled out the form. I was a little bit skeptical. Tyler saved me four grand a year.

And I hear that kind of story all the time. And again, credit card companies, these processing companies, they assume that you’re not going to compare rates. They assume that you don’t know the fees you pay. They assume that you aren’t going to look at the statements and see how 1% here, 1% there adds up to a pretty significant number.

So, Tyler, I’ll give you the final word here, final 30 seconds here. Why should everybody go to the website today, go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit card and at least take the 15 minutes to compare rates? Yeah, because we’re going to save you money. Plain and simple, I promise you that we will be able to save you money from what you’re currently doing.

And, you know, a lot of people will say, oh, you know, the statements are hard to read. They’re hard to read for a reason. And they’re not with us. And we always answer our phones. We’re here to talk any time any of our customers ever have, you know, any issues. They’re not calling a 1-800 number.

They’re calling our office and someone here in the office is actually, you know, helping resolve their problem and their issues right away. So not only is it savings, but it’s going to be a far superior level of customer service than they’re accustomed to. Brother, I cannot tell you thank you enough for carving out time for us, also for saving our listeners thousands and thousands of dollars.

Again, folks, that’s Tyler Carson. Someone says, hey, I was trying to write down the web address here, trying to get that web address written down here, and I was driving down the road and I was struggling to find a pen. The web address is Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. That’s Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dot card.

Tyler Carson again, thank you so much for your time, sir, and we’ll talk to you next week. Love it. Talk to you next week. Take care. Bye-bye.

Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay’s 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 is like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. Okay, Aaron Antis, March 6th and 7th, March 6th and 7th, guess who’s coming to Tulsa,

Russia? Ooh, Santa Claus? No, no, that’s March, March 6th and 7th, you’re going to be joined by Robert Kiyosaki, Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, possibly the best-selling or one of the best-selling business authors of all time and he’s going to be joined with Eric Trump. He’ll be joined by Eric Trump. We got Eric Trump and Robert Kiyosaki in the same place. In the same place. Aaron,

why should everybody show up to hear Robert Kiyosaki? Well, you got billions of dollars of business experience between those two, not to mention many many many millions of books have been sold many many Millionaires have been made from the books that have been sold by Robert Kiyosaki. I happen to be one of them I learned from the man He was the inspiration that book was the inspiration for me to get the entrepreneurial spirit as many other people now since you won’t brag On yourself. I will you’ve sold

Billions of dollars of houses, am I correct? That is true. And the book that kick-started it all for you, Rich Dad Porter, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Porter, Robert Kiyosaki, the guy that kick-started your career, he’s going to be here. He’s going to be here.

I’m bummed. And now Eric Trump, people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. There’s not 50 employees. The Trump Organization, again, most people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees.

And while Donald J. Trump was the 45th president of these United States, and soon to be the 47th president of these United States, he needed someone to run the companies for him. And so the man that runs the Trump Organization for Donald J. Trump, as he was the 45th president of the United States, and now the 47th president of the United States, is Eric Trump.

So Eric Trump is here to talk about time management, promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build. I mean, everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products. The man who manages billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it.

You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint. I mean, who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand? I mean, look at it. And this is the man behind the business for the last,

pretty much since 2015, he’s been the man behind it. So you’re talking, we’re into nine, going into 10 years of him running it. And we get to tap into that knowledge. That’s going to be amazing. Now, think about this for a second.

Would you buy a ticket just to see Robert Kiyosaki and Eric Trump? Of course you would. Of course you would. But we’re also going to be joined by Sean Baker. This is the best-selling author, the guy who invented the carnivore diet. Dr. Sean Baker, he’s been on Joe Rogan multiple times.

He’s going to be joining us. So you’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Eric Trump, Sean Baker. The lineup continues to grow. And this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show.

If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that is because we want to make

our events affordable for everybody. I grew up without money. I totally understand what it’s like to be the tight spot. So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That’s how I do it. And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket now

We only have limited seating here with them the most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer Presentation Jim Brewer came here that the legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa and we had 419 people that were here for 19 people yeah, and I thought to myself, but there’s no more room I felt kind of bad that a couple people had VIP seats in the men’s restroom. No, I’m just kidding. But I thought, you know what, we should probably add on.

So we’re adding on what we call the upper deck, or the top shelf. So the seats are very close to the presenters. But we’re actually building right now. We’re adding on to the facility to make room to accommodate another 30 attendees or more.

So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. When you go to Thrivetimeshow.com, you’ll go there, you’ll request a ticket, boom. Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now.

Just text my number. It’s my cell phone number, my personal cell phone number. We’ll keep that private between you, between you, me, everybody. We’ll keep that private. And anybody, don’t share that with anybody except for everybody. That’s my private cell phone number. It’s 918-851-0102.

918-851-0102. I know we have a lot of Spanish-speaking people that attend these conferences. And so to be bilingually sensitive, my cell phone number is 918-851-0102. That is not actually bilingual. That’s just saying Juan for a Juan. It’s not the same thing. I think you’re attacking me. Now, let’s talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show workshop? So Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past seven, eight years. So let’s talk about it. I’ll tee up the thing and then you tell me what you’re gonna learn here, okay?

Okay. You’re gonna learn marketing, marketing and branding. What are we gonna learn about marketing and branding? Oh, yeah, we’re gonna dive into, you know, so many people say, oh, you know, I got to get my brand known out there, like the Trump brand. You want to get that brand out there. It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is and make it a household name? You’re going to learn some intricacies

of how you can do that. You’re going to learn sales. So many people struggle to sell something. This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell. So we’re going to teach you sales. We’re going to teach you search engine optimization,

how to come up top in the search engine results. We’re going to teach you how to manage people. Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your career and thousands of contractors, and most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people? Well, because first of all, you either have great people or you have people who suck.

It can be a challenge. Learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re really good at selecting great ones, and we have a process we teach about how to find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable, they’re driven, all of those

things, then you know you can get those people all pulling in the same direction. So we’re gonna teach you branding, marketing, sales, search engine optimization. We’re going to teach you accounting. We’re going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance. We’re going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time?

How do you get more done during a typical day? How do you build an organization if you’re not organized? How do you do organization? How do you build an org chart? Everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two-day interactive business workshop.

Now let me tell you how the format is set up here. And again, folks, this is a two-day interactive 15… Think about this, folks. It’s two days. Each day starts at 7 a.m. and it goes until 5 p.m. So from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., two days, it’s a two-day interactive workshop.

The way we do it is we do a 30-minute teaching session, and then we break for 15 minutes for a question and answer session. So Aaron, what kind of great stuff happens during that 15 minute question and answer session after every teaching session? I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops

because here’s what happens. I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them. And you go in there and they talk in vague generalities and they’re constantly upselling you for something, trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing

or this program or this membership. And you don’t, you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business, or your employees, or what you’re doing on your marketing. And what’s awesome about this is we literally

answer every single question that any person asks. And it’s very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we allow you, as the attendee, to write your questions on the whiteboard. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard.

And then we take a 15-minute break to stretch and to make it entertaining when you’re stretching. And this is a true story. When you get up and stretch, you’ll be greeted by mariachis. There’s going to probably be alpaca here, llamas,

helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone. I mean, you had a crocodile one time. That was pretty interesting. You know, I should write that down. Sorry for that one guy that we lost. The crocodile, we duct taped its face.

So that, right? We duct taped. No, it was a baby crocodile. And we duct taped. Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody.

But it was really cool. He passed that thing around and passed it. I should do that. I should. We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It’s going to be great.

And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs. So there’s not a lot of people in America today. In fact, there’s less than 10 million people today, according to US Debt Clock, that identify as being self-employed. So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3% of our population that’s even self-employed. So it’s you only have three out of every 100 people in America that are self-employed to begin with.

And when Inc. Magazine reports that 96% of businesses fail by default, by default, you have a one out of a thousand chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double the size. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. I have thousands of testimonials to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back it up.

But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size of the company within 24 months. And you say, double? Yeah, there’s businesses that we have tripled. There’s businesses we’ve grown 8x. There’s so many examples.

You can see it throughout timeshow.com. But again, this is the most interactive best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet. And then you add to that Robert Kiyosaki, the bestselling

author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You add to that Eric Trump, the man that runs the Trump organization. You add to that Sean Baker, now you might say, but Clay, is there more? I need more. Well, okay, Tom Wheelwright is the wealth strategist for Robert Kiyosaki.

So people say, Robert Kiyosaki, who’s his financial wealth advisor? Who’s the guy who manages, who’s his wealth strategist? His wealth strategist, Tom Wheelwright, will be here. And you say, Clay, I still, I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more. Okay, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days.

True story. We cater to food and because I keep it simple, I literally bring them the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Esconzito’s, an incredible Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen. And Jill Donovan, our good friend, who is the founder of Rustic Cuff.

She started that company in her home and now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products. That’s rustic cuff dot com. It’s what says I want more. This is not enough. Give me more. Okay I’m not gonna mention her name right now because I’m working on it behind the scenes here but we’ve got one guy who’s giving me a verbal to be here and this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma and nobody really knows who he is because he’s built systems that are very

utilitarian that offer a lot of value. He’s made a lot of money in the, it’s the, it’s where you rent, it’s short term, it’s where you’re renting storage spaces. He’s a storage space guy. He owns the, what do you call that? The rental, the storage space? Storage units. This guy owns storage units. He owns railroad cars. He owns a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis, but they’re not like customer facing. Most people don’t know who owns the mini storage facility,

or most people don’t know who owns the warehouse that’s passively making money. Most people don’t know who owns the railroad cars. But this guy, he’s giving me a verbal that he will be here. And we just continue to add more and more success stories. So if you’re out there today and you want to change your life,

you want to give yourself an incredible gift, you want a life-changing experience, you want to learn how to start and grow a company go to thrive timeshow.com go there right now thrive timeshow.com request a ticket for the two-day interactive event again the day here is March 6th and 7th March 6th and 7th we just got confirmation Robert

Kiyosaki best-selling author rich dad poor dad he’ll be here Eric Trump the man who leads the Trump organization it’s going to be a blasty blast there’s no upsells Aaron I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible and there’s somebody out there right now you’re watching and you’re like, but I already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin.

Do you think that’s going to change your life? I promise you this will be ten times better than that. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. Don’t do the Smoke Your Way to Thin conference. That is, I’ve tried it, don’t do it. Chain smoking is not a viable…

I mean, it is life-changing. It is life-changing. If you become a chain smoker, it is life-changing. It’s not the best weight loss program, though. Right. Not really.

So if you’re looking to have life-changing results in a way that won’t cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Aaron Antis. I’m Clay Clark. And reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I promise you, it will be a life-changing experience.

We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.