Business Coach | How to Brand Your Business to Attract More Customers

Audio Transcription

In this episode of the Thrivetime Show, Business Coach, Clay Clark, and Optometrist turned business tycoon, Dr. Robert Zoellner, have a local business owner Brian Ross on to help teach you how to brand your company the most effective way possible.

The business coach is ready to help you understand your business.

Announcer: And now broadcasting from center of the universe in the Thrive15.com world headquarters. Let’s go. Presenting the world’s only business school without the BS with optometrist and entrepreneur Dr. Robert Zoellner and a former Small Business Administration entrepreneur of the year in your ear, Clay Clark. It’s the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. Three, two, one, boom.

Clay Clark: All right Thrive nation. Welcome back to the inspiration station, your place that you go for that daily audio Doe Joe of Mojo. In today’s program, you are in as a listener you are in for a special treat. This is show 99 Dr. Zoellner, can you believe it’s show 99?

Dr. Robert Zoellner: To kick off the new year, how good is that?

Clay: I’m excited about it. Later tonight, I’m going to have some Jamaican jerk chicken at my house and so things could not be better for today’s show.

Dr. Zoellner: I think it would make it better if tonight you’d get some braids in your hair while you’re eating your Jamaican jerk chicken.

Clay: Add some plantains.

Dr. Zoellner: Add some plantains. That would– what a way to kick off the new year.

Clay: I tell you what I just thought today’s show could not make any better. Today we have an incredible guest on the show. It’s Mr. Brian Ross, he’s a financial educator, counselor, speaker, sort of a finance guru, a motivational guru. Mr. Brian, how are you sir?

Brian Ross: I am doing fabulous and it is a pleasure to be here with you all today. I’ve heard you on the radio and now I’m here. Dreams can come true. I just want to say.

[laughs]

Clay: Inside.

Dr. Zoellner: There you go, Brian. Hey, listen, I just want to say one thing. Today is the first show of the new year.

Clay: It is.

Dr. Zoellner: I wanted to say to every thrivers out there, a special happy new year and this is the year. We’re going to help you kick off this year and realize your starting your business– starting your dream goal, do you know how we’re going to do that, Clay?

Clay: How are we going to do it?

Dr. Zoellner: In about three weeks, let’s see, it’s January 20th and 21st. Get a piece of paper, I know you’re on your way to lunch, your thinking, “Where am I going to go to lunch today?” You’re probably off because a lot businesses are shut down today to– [crosstalk]

Clay: Really?

Dr. Zoellner: Yes. It’s a thing.

Clay: I felt I’m kind of alone in the box that rocks. I realize there wasn’t a lot of people in the building today.

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs] Yes. There’s a lot of people that are actually taking a day off, but they [coughs] excuse me, that’s okay. You’re going to lunch, you forgot what to eat, you might as rolled out of bed, it’s a long weekend– [crosstalk]

Clay: Two days [unintelligible 00:02:33]

Dr. Zoellner: Here’s the deal, write this down, January 20th and 21st. We are having a workshop and what goes on this workshop, Clay?

Clay: What we did is we sat down and we looked at all the emails and all the questions that were coming in from you– the listener. Many of you are asking some of the same questions to the business coach. You wanted to know, “How do you manage your time? How do you do sales? How do you do marketing? How do you guys get to the top of Google? How was it possible that Dr. Robert Zoellner has invested in a bank, he owns one of the top auto auctions in town, he owns up a thriving optometry clinic? Clay is involved in photography company? He has three stores of the Elephant in the Room Men’s Grooming Lounge?

How do you guys do all these stuffs? What is the secret sauce?” The good news is that I’ll speak on behalf of myself, I’m not that smart [laughs] so I can tell you, it’s not that complicated but we are going to teach you a proven system with a guarantee that there are absolutely no upsells. For 15 hours, we’re going to be working with you, teaching you how to start and grow a successful business. But we are not going to be upselling you stuff in the back in the room.

Dr. Zoellner: Here’s my heart–the thing I love the most is we partnered with local business people. Yes, there’s some business women also that have said, “This is good stuff.” If someone calls from pick a spot and says, “I want to come down to your workshop, I need this to help me with my business. We have gotten sponsorship money so it doesn’t have to be all out of your pocket. Listen, “I really want to come but I can only afford this.” We’ve got some people that have donated to the cause to make sure that nobody gets left out.

Clay: If you’ve got $7 in your pocket right now, one, you probably want to go to Oklahoma Joe’s and buy some baked beans.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, that’s a must.

Clay: But the remaining $2 or $3, you literally could afford to attend our workshop. Brian, I want to ask you this because you’ve spoken to a lot of workshops all over the country, you’ve spoken at many speaking events, what makes a workshop so magical, regardless of the Thrive15 workshop, why is a workshop such a great way to learn as opposed to by reading a book, what makes a workshop a fabulous place to learn?

Brian: It’s that dynamic between the speaker and the audience, that give and take, there’s an energy that you just cannot be duplicated in by reading a book. The workshop is a powerful dynamic that gives you– transfer of energy, really.

Clay: Now, for the people who are listening here, just getting familiar with you Brian, your website is takeabigstep.com and you teach how to improve your financial literacy, how to improve your customer service, how to inspire the workforce. What has you so passionate about these topics?

Brian: Absolutely. The thing that I am passionate about most is promoting financial education. I came from very humble beginnings. I saw a lot of struggles growing up and I became very motivated to learn how to overcome financial adversity. I want to be a part of the solution and not part of the problem. I become an advocate for financial literacy and financial education.

Clay: No, on today’s show, Z, we’re going to get into a powerful topic that we’re going to dive into on a deeper level at the workshop, but it’s how to brand your business to attract more customers. You might be listening going, “Why do I need to listen to this? Z, why do I need to listen to anything about branding?”

Dr. Zoellner: [coughs] Why do– what branding?

Clay: I think even a bigger question is– [crosstalk]

Dr. Zoellner: [unintelligible 00:05:54] brandy? [unintelligible 00:05:57] after dinner drink or– [crosstalk]

Clay: Are you guys going to be branding a cow in the air?

Dr. Zoellner: [cows moo sound]

[laughs]

Brian: Just weird.

Clay: No, but the thing is, what is branding? I’m going to give you an example. One of our Thrive15.com mentors, Michael Levine, he is the PR guru of Choice for Nike, for President Clinton, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. One thing he talks about is called the Tiffany Box Theory or the Tiffany Theory. He’s concept here is that when you present somebody with a ring, you present a young lady with a ring for your engagement there, you got there on one knee and you presented her that ring, if you pulled that ring out of the Kmart bag, her immediate perception of that ring would be, “Whatever that might be.”

If you take the same ring, if you’re kind of a dirty guy but you’re a great brander, if you took that ring that you bought from Kmart and you put that in a Tiffany Box, you got down on one knee, that same ring would be perceived with a different set of value. The bride-to-be might go, “Oh my gosh. It’s so incredible.” Even though you know and we all know that was cubic zirconia and not a diamond ring but the thing is it’s all about branding, Z. Branding.

Dr. Zoellner: I got a branding story.

Clay: Give it to us.

Dr. Zoellner: Okay. Buddy and I and our couples, we got to Las Vegas for New Year’s Eve, this is years ago. The move is they give you a gift, right? The casinos give you–the thing is give you a gift. They give me a gift at this Waterford Crystal Champagne Flutes.

Clay: I happened to know about Waterford Crystal because I used to help a company get to the top of Google for that term.

Dr. Zoellner: Wow. Okay, cool.

Clay: It is so expensive.

Dr. Zoellner: So expensive. Yes.

Clay: So expensive.

Dr. Zoellner: So nice, high quality. The box and the presentation just kind of like the Tiffany Box deal is so nice. He takes it home, he takes out his two Waterford Crystal glasses and cleans them up and put them in a shelf but he’s thinking, “That’s a waste of a fine box just to throw that thing away, right?”

Clay: Yes. So what?

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs] Because he gets out of his canvas, just two regular champagne flutes, right? Put them back in the box. Okay, you followed me?

Clay: Yes.

Dr. Zoellner: He closes it, wraps it up. He gives it to one of his workers. Who cherishes it to this day.

Clay: Really?

Dr. Zoellner: He’s move is– when he has a lady friend coming to the house, he takes that box out of the cabinet, sets it down, open that rascal up and her eyes just light up. He pulls out two champagne flutes out, fills them up with beverage of choice, hands it to her, she’s like, “I hit the home run here.”

[laughters]

Clay: That’s his move.

Dr. Zoellner: That’s his move.

Clay: That’s his go-to move.

Dr. Zoellner: It’s his go-to move. That’s like the Kmart sock in the Tiffany Box.

Clay: Now, Thrivers you’re listening right now and you’re trying to score points with the ladies. Roy, that’s what today’s show is all about. No, but seriously, here’s the thing is, if you have a business– maybe you want to start a business. According to Forbes, 57% of the audience listening today wants to start a business. But let’s say you already have one. I want you to go ahead and rate the following five things on a scale of 1 to 10. The first is your website, on a scale of one to 10, 10 being it looks world-class and one being it looks like you made it yourself because you’re a good guy and you– [crosstalk]

Dr. Zoellner: You had to have a website.

Clay: You had to have a website. Okay. Move number two are your business cards. I mean your business cards, do they look professional or do they look like my first business cards?

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs]

Clay: I went to [unintelligible 00:09:26] told the guy, type my name on there. It’s all white cards with black font. Didn’t have anything special to it.

The third is your brochures. Okay, on a scale of one to 10, rate your brochures on a scale of one to 10. Four is your signage. In the fifth is you personal brand in terms of what does the community think about you or what are your ideal on likely buyers think about you. Z, it is very important that we are self-aware of our branding if we do own a business.

Dr. Zoellner: Absolutely. People will think of you before they even get to know you.

Once again, those five things are website, business card, brochure, signage, and personal brand, and be honest. Here’s the thing about it, we can help people that are honest, we really can, and not just to show as– [crosstalk] [laughs] I know that. That’s what– How about I put a ten on each one of these and you just turn the radio off now-

Clay: Boom.

Dr. Zoellner: -and go at Oklahoma Joe’s barbecue. No. Listen to the show, be honest with yourself. Since you’ve brought up Michael Jackson a little, The Man in the Mirror. Be the man in the mirror and really write these down, you’re saying, “Well, I don’t really know what my website looks like”. You could get on same big time website, go to some major brands and look at those. Go to some hometown Hockey ones, look at those and you can say, “Okay, that’s about one, this one of Nike’s is a 10, Apple’s, i’m sure they’ve got a pretty good website, so you can get a feel of those and then really be honest about that and the rest of these also, okay?

I remember Clay, when I was coming out of school, the practice management classes back in 1990, when I was getting out of optometry school, our practice management gave us just a couple of three tips.

Clay: Okay. Three tips.

Dr. Zoellner: He says, “One, go out and get your business card and the more white on it the better, the less black you have on your card, the better. We’re just taking notes– okay. That shows professionalism. Your signage, your signage on your door’s small. That lets people know that you are a real professional doctor. You don’t [unintelligible 00:11:35] small, small on your door and that’s professionalism.

Clay: You don’t want to be a sellout after putting up bold letters [crosstalk] on doors.

Dr. Zoellner: No. Yes, and the third move and this is true. This is the honest truth about my [crosstlak] practice management teaching in optometry school.

Clay: No.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes. The third super move that I was taught coming out of school was, you join the largest church in town and you’ll want to do with the passes around the bucket.

Clay: You need to join– ? Are you kidding me? That was the move? [chucles]

Dr. Zoellner: Those are the three moves. The most white on your business card, a smaller signage you can put on your door and you pass the bucket at a big church in town. I was thinking of going, “Wow, that’s– “, for a second I was starting on thinking, “I think there’s more, I think there could be more than that– I think”.

Clay: I want to ask this Brian, for anybody who’s listening right now, who, maybe their personal brand– they’re known as the guy who’s always asking people for four bucks?

[laughter]

Clay: They’re known as the guy who’s always going, “Hey, do you have four bucks? Can I borrow $6? Can I borrow $4?”. If they were to take this new year, this new approach, this new lease on life and they want to make this the best financial year of their life, what do you have for them? How can people get in touch with you my friend?

Brian: Absolutely, takeabigstep.com is the best way to get in touch with me, again, that’s takeabigstep.com. The biggest new year’s resolution that someone like that could do is to create an emergency fund. Over half of the country is paycheck to paycheck, 67% of people earning over $50,000 a year cannot handle a $1,000 emergency, so creating that emergency fund has got to be one of your first highest priorities in the new year.

Clay: A fun way to think about it is if you don’t have enough money for an emergency, this may happen–

Voiceover: First of, I am 35 years old, I am divorced and I live in a van down by the river.

Clay: That could happen, that could happen, right?

Brian: Easily, easily.

Dr. Zoellner: Well, we have an office down by the river but we don’t live in a van.

Clay: I was telling the kids I want to buy an old van and I want to just drive it into the river and just leave it there. That way we can tell people we literally have a van down by the river. [chuckles]

Dr. Zoellner: Down by the river. Well, today it looks about half full of water so it could be beach front property, it could be down on the beach.

Clay: Thrivers when we come back we’re going to learn what Elon Musk has to say about branding. Elon Musk, the famous billionaire. We’re going to learn what he has to say about branding when we come back. Thrive Time Show.

[music]

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Announcer: Live, local, now. You’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: All right, Thrive Nation and Oklahomies, welcome back inside the box that rocks which is nestled inside the beautiful Thrive15.com World Headquarters located on the left coast of the beautiful Arkansas River. My name is Clay Clark, the voice of choice and the host with the most, joined here today with the guy who’s really the super host, he’s the guy who’s put the Z all over Tulsa like he is Zorro. He’s a big deal. He’s a father of three kids, he’s 52 but he looks 22, it’s Dr. Robert Zoellner.

Dr. Zoellner: What an introduction and business coach, Clay, I’ve got a question for you. Okay. It’s January the second, now I know on New Year’s even you did not stay up to bring in the New Year because I know your move, you are a early– at 8 PM you are done day, boom, out, out cold, boom. Yesterday is Sunday, you had the whole day, you facilitate your mind or what not. Are you a dude that makes new year’s resolution? That’s the question I’m getting to.

Clay: I have a list of things that I will definitely get done that I put on a list. This is different than a resolution because I’m a little bit–

Dr. Zoellner: Is that on your list, list? or is that a different list?

Clay: I schedule into my list and I’m not being difficult about semantics but there’s people that resolve to do things, but for me, I have found that if I don’t schedule it, it won’t happen.

Dr. Zoellner: We could do a show just on that one.

Clay: I have five moves. I am doing this year for sure.

Dr. Zoellner: Okay, I’m writing them down.

Clay: It relates to the five F’s. With your mentorship, I’m moving on to a sixth F as well. The first one is Faith. The Metropolitan Baptist is the church that we have discovered and we’re just going to keep going there, so every Sunday it’s in the schedule. Now, Family. We do family nights every Sunday night at 6 PM and it’s just more of a renewal of that move and I’m not traveling this year.

Dr. Zoellner: That’s right, you dropped the mic on that.

Clay: I don’t like traveling, I don’t like going places, so this year I said, “I’m not going to travel”. One more thing I’m committed to in March but that’s it. I’m going to stay in Oklahoma and just really be secure in my Middle Americanist, okay?

Dr. Zoellner: Now I said you dropped the mic and you’re not speaking anymore, but technically with our in-person workshops you’re going to be speaking, but right here, right over there, matter of fact, if you’re watching facebook live, you can actually see our studio or the Thrive15 Nucleus Headquarters right behind us because we’re in the box that rocks. You’ll still be speaking?

Clay: I will be. The thing is, at the workshops we do here, we teach very linear, like how to build the workflow, how to build checklist, processes, systems. It’s really very specific detailed stuff and typically the speaking events I did in the past, they would go, ” Could you come here and do a Jim Gaffigan meets business and then just make everybody laugh, make sure not to use the word Whole Foods”. [chuckles][crosstalk] and I’m going, “what?”

Dr. Zoellner: You can’t and you got to be like Jim Carrey with some physical stunts up here–

Clay: Yes. This is a different thing so– The third– you’ve got the faith, you’ve got the family, our measure relates to Fitness. Have you seen a lot of celery? A lot of peanut butter celery? You did that thing a couple of years back where you started off the year by not eating a whole lot of whatever you wanted to eat?

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, yes. January I go vegan and not any alcohol. January’s my cleansing month if you will.

Clay: I have got it all set up where the celery and the peanut butter’s being brought to the office every day and that’s what I’m eating.

Dr. Zoellner: Why did you decide celery and peanut butter? Is there some–

Clay: Because I don’t like it at all.

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs] Why do you do that freaking thing? Okay. Well, that makes a lot of sense there.

Clay: In that way, I’m not tempted to eat too much because I don’t like it at all. They’re just disgusting to me. That’s the fitness area, and then with Friendships, there are certain people on the list that I just want to take their relationship to the next level, really invest in and stay in touch there. On the finances side, we automate everything in my life. We automate our savings so it’s not like I have to get motivated about it. Just a certain percentage of every– then it goes in its safe, but we’ve decided that we’re going to continue to build a stay-cation. You’ve seen Camp Clark and the Chicken Palace? we’re building.

Dr. Zoellner: That is so fun You’ve got that wall going up, you’ve got the trees, you’ve got the tree house and the bath back there, the man path, some chicken following you.

Clay: 18 new trees are going in right now so I’m excited.

Announcer: You’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: We’re talking about Finances and Financial goals, we have a very special guest on our show today who-

–I could not be more excited to have inside the box that rocks because Brian Ross is a financial educator with over 20 years of experience and for anybody who’s listening right now who’s almost desperate for a little bit of financial coaching or help how can you help them Brian?

Brian: Well first of all I want to mention the website is takeabigstep.com again, takeabigstep.com. You mentioned something that is crucial and that is automation. 50% of people that are eligible to participate in a company’s 401k plan, do not participate.

Clay: Shame on them.

Brian: If they could discover the automation of investing in the 401k it would make a tremendous amount of difference.

Clay: Real quick that was a knowledge bomb. Automations, just set it and forget it thrivers. Set it and forget it that’s how you do it. Today we are talking specifically we’re deep-diving into branding we’re going to get more into it at the two-day workshop which– by the way if you’re listening go to thrivetimeshow.com while we still have some seats available and see if you could request a spot because we don’t make these things very big they’re very intimate, they’re very detailed, you could put your hand up, talk to somebody, reach across the way, give somebody a fist bump, you can meet guys like Dr. Z and myself we’re going to teach you the specific moves that we do to start and grow a business and we commit that everyone can afford it and we will never attempt to upsell you anything.

There’s nothing in the building to be upsold to you and so we’re talking about this personal branding and branding your business and here’s what Elon Musk has to say about it. He says, “Brand is just a perception and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind but brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.” This is the guy who started Paypal and Tesla and Spacex. Z talk to me about branding as it relates to Robert Zoellner and Associates. Your optometry clinic’s celebrating it’s 25th year in operations, what kind of things do you do as it relates to branding over there?

Dr. Zoellner: Well one thing you mentioned earlier is that we have made use of our signage and we’ve branded ourselves with the Z, we have a logo now that is– people can see it and they know it. Spent a lot of money on designing, I’ve spent a lot of money on [laughs] spreading it around I’m sorry Tulsa, but you see that and go, “Hey that’s that guy” right?

Clay: Typically if I go out to eat with you, and if you pay the person goes, “You’re the doctor?”

Dr. Zoellner: “You’re that guy with the thing”.

Clay: Yes the guy with the thing.

Dr. Zoellner: The thing with the thing and it’s all over town yes.

Clay: You’re intentional about that?

Dr. Zoellner: I’m intentional about that, I’ve stuck with it. When I started my auto auction which is Z66 auto auction, I used that same Z the same font, the same everything with that Z and put it back into that– put it back into a logo why? Because there’s value in it. Why is there value in it? Because we’ve built the brand.

Clay: With the new billboard we’re working on rumor has it Tulsa you might see a Z on there, you might see.

Dr. Zoellner: Sorry again.

Clay: Z, I want to ask this for everybody who’s listening who says, “Okay, I’ve heard some of your commercials, I’ve heard the Robert Zoellner and Associates commercials on the radio and I’ve heard about Brian just talking about hey you have to automate anything that you want to happen consistently” Do you recommend people commit to a year contract for TV ads, radio ads? You seem pretty consistent with your branding of your advertisements over the years.

Dr. Zoellner: Here’s what I found is that the more you commit, the better deal you get and if you’re going to spend it, if you’re going to say hey listen I’m making this year I’m going to spend money on marketing, I have determined my most likely buyer, I have determined the message I want to send to them, I have a good– I’m going to work on my branding and guess what? I’m going to be committed to it and that’s the only way– if you’re not that way in your advertising then don’t do it save your money. But if you want to do those things and so I have found that if you step up to either TV station, radio station you get them to allow the commitment they’ll give you a better deal.

Clay: Thrivers stay tuned, when we come back we’re going to talk about the law of credibility. Stay tuned, the law of credibility Thrive Time Show.

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[music]

Announcer: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: Hello Tulsa, hello Green Country, hello Oklahomies and welcome back inside the box that rocks your daily audio dojo of mojo where we talk about how to start and grow a successful business for sure. My name is Clay Clark, I’m the former SPA entrepreneur of the year in your year and as always I’m joined here with doctor Robert Zoellner, so how are you?

Dr. Zoellner: I am fantastic, happy new year thrivers. It’s the first show of the new year and you know what? Let’s just kick this thing off the right way, let’s kick off 2017 in the right way.

Clay: We’re going to kick it off the right way bu I’m going to tell you who kicked it off the wrong way.

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs] No.

Clay: Did you see what Mariah Carey did or did not do? Have you see this video?

Dr. Zoellner: No I didn’t.

Clay: She gets up there to sing which is a final performance before the ball drops and she no longer can sing because she obviously she’s more mature of a lady and she doesn’t have the range anymore but she quit a few years ago even trying so know it’s all piped-in tracks and the tracks with her lead vocals weren’t there so she literally didn’t even attempt to try to sing or to hold the mic and she basically just let it be known that she was drunk and she was not going to try and there’s a million people standing there in front of her in New York Times Square.

Dr. Zoellner: I’ve got to watch this video, I had not heard that, how did I miss that?

Clay: It is crazy, and then she does another song. She has a three-songs set-

Dr. Zoellner: Nice.

Clay: -but on song three she just pisses out, she just walks off the stage.

Dr. Zoellner: Walks off the stage.

Clay: And that right there, that was the highlight of my new year, it was the lowlight of her career.

Dr. Zoellner: No.

Clay: But then she laughed because she said something like, “And we look forward to more great headlines in 2017” and she just walks off but it was the master of disaster.

Dr. Zoellner: That’s not the way you kick off the year. Technically though, if she was singing it right before the ball dropped that’s how she ended her year not to get technical on you just a little silence–

Clay: Well she started from the bottom and now she’s working her way up there.

Dr. Zoellner: 2017 could only go one way for her and her performances can only go- because I think she’s coming to the BOK center right here in Tulsa next year.

Clay: She’s coming to the BOK and I might be doing the vocals for her.

[laughter]

Dr. Zoellner: It will unleash your waters to make sure they’re on the track. She’ll say you guys seem like you know what you’re doing with audiovisual so–

Clay: She’s going to want to take a big step forward with her personal branding and I’ll tell you a guy who knows a little bit about taking a big step. We’ve got Mr. Brian Ross on the show today. This guy is a personal financial expert it’s like getting Tulsa’s own– a Dave Ramsey almost. A guy who travels around the country speaking of ends, educating people. But before you did all that Brian, what would you have been doing throughout the last 20 years of your career? What kind of a– what has your career path looked like?

Brian: Well I have been a financial planner here in Tulsa for a while. After I sold my practice, I joined the department of interior and-

Dr. Zoellner: I’ve heard about those guys.

Brian: [laughs] exactly.

Dr. Zoellner: What is that, decorating stuff? What do they do?

Brian: Yes the balls go over here and this and no– I was there with the US government actually. I work with the department of the interior there and primarily I was involved in promoting financial education throughout and in country in fact I was fortunate enough to win an award from the secretary of interior for my work in promoting financial literacy.

Clay: I don’t mean this in a sarcastic way but why do you care so much about financial literacy? What is your deal?

Brian: It’s a very personal mission for me, I grew up in the poorest county in Oklahoma, Adair county. I saw a lot of poverty, experienced a lot of that and it had a profound impact on me. I know that people are struggling out there, I see it everyday and I know it’s largely a lack of Knowledge. Sometimes it’s personal choices, let’s be real.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes.

Brian: But at the end of the day a lack of knowledge can sometimes be the difference between success and failure and you all can speak about the importance of knowledge.

Clay: Yes. Thrivers if you’re listening here today, in today’s topic we’re going to deep-dive into– it’s specifically about branding and branding your business and so often I see this all the time and I did it with my first business and so I’m not here to judge I’m just going to tell you what I did wrong and then– but I also kind of brag on what I did right. I had an old Mazda MPV, it was a maroon van, I had no money but I had the ability to do painting, I was pretty good at painting and I had there’s some one shot paint enamel that I bought and I hand painted my van with the words, “Dj connection” on it and for those of you who maybe saw that and go, “That was a disaster” I actually booked about 10 weddings a year from that crazy vehicle and then over time I had it professionally painted.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: To quote George Washington Carver, “You need to start where you stand with the tools that you have.” However, because of-

–what we have going for you now in Tulsa with the Thrive 15.com, we literally have made the branding game very, very affordable for you and if you don’t like our services you can use somebody else but I remember Z when I first had my logo made, you tell me if I was way off base here, When I had my first logo built, my website built, my tab was 16000 bucks for the logo, the website, the cards, that was 16 grand. That was like in 2001, was that, you know, that I paid too much or is that right about in Tulsa?

Dr. Zoellner: If you got your money’s worth that’s what it’s all about. What I mean is sometimes you know you can overpay, you can overpay for anything to be honest with you. But if you got it professionally done and it was done correctly and that’s something you could keep for the rest of your career because one thing you want to do, you don’t want to re brand yourself very often because you spend a lot of money on getting that logo and brand out there. If you start with excellent then you can go forward with it. So is that too much to spend? No, if you got your money’s worth.

Clay: If you are listening right now, the Thrive 15.com experience, we’ve set it up with our scholarship fund where it’s 1500$ a month for people that need these tools. There’s a lot of great companies in town that will do it for you as well but it’s just not good for your business to not have professional branding. You’ve got to start somewhere, you have to have great branding because if not, Z, there’s this thing called the Law of Credibility.

I want to get into it but the Law of Credibility states that you should never say anything that you can’t prove. Here’s an example, I was there meeting with brides and grooms at McDonald’s. I meet them at McDonald’s and I have no sales material, I have no logo, I have no website, I have no collateral, I don’t have anything to prove that I am in fact real and I’m saying “Hey, if you give me 250$ cash deposit today to reserve me for your wedding, I will show up in 6 months”.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes here at McDonald’s and there’s kids running by the table.

Clay: But when I started wearing the suit and the tie and had the professional print materials made and a legitimate website, people started taking me more seriously and that led to actual sales. And so the Law of Credibility can really hurt you, it can work for you or against you but I encourage if you’re listening right now make sure the Law of Credibility is working to your thing.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes. if, you sit there with your baggy clothes, your loop earrings, meet me at McDonald’s.

Clay: It was hot.

Dr. Zoellner: That was a hot sauce right there.

Clay: I would say something like “Hey, you know I want to get this relationship off to a good start, can I get you something off the dollar menu?”

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, whatever you want so long as it is on that menu right there.

Clay: Rule number three from the business coach here as relates to branding, is it the power of the mastermind or the power of association? Let us give this concept a deeper dive here. Let’s say that, there’s a book called Your network is your net worth by Porter Gail. She is one of the ladies, she is a marketing expert for the Virgin companies. She says that if you take your network and you can’t determine the average, the average net worth of your network, that will probably be your net worth.

Basically the people you hang around begin to become the ceiling on your goals and connections and you begin to have to realize if you want to move up to the next level you got to surround yourself with people who are where you want to be and so Z what advice would you have for some who are listening right now who realizes their social circle maybe isn’t exactly the right crowd for attracting wealth and deals. What advice would you have for me?

Dr. Zoellner: Get out a piece of paper right now. If you’re driving pull over to the next truck stop. Get in quick trip and get somewhere. Pull out a piece of paper, here’s what you need to do. [inaudible sound] Sorry everybody. a little frog in my throat. A little froggy. Here’s the thing, you write down for 2017, we’re going to make your top 10 list. I want you to write down 10 people that you know that you want to do lunch with. Alright, that are people that you admire, that are people that you like to pick their brain. You just write it down right now. One to 10, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And when we get back we’re going to give you a few super moves and how you are going to take these 10 people to lunch this year and get them in your inner circle.

Clay: Because once you get them in in your inner circle thrivers, the opportunities it creates are game changing. Thrive Time show.

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Announcer: You are listening the listen to The Thrive Time show on Talk radio 1170.

Clay: Alright Thrive nation welcome back to the inspiration station. This is business school without the BS and yes my name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA entrepreneur of the year and i am here with the ma,n the myth, the legend and a guy that I once put on a sheet of paper because i said that i want to get to know this man, he was my wife’s boss. My wife was working there at Dr. Robert Zoellner and Associates.

She’s one of those front people that was greeting people and then she’d also occasionally get to be a tester I believe, a free tester and Dr. Z was on the list of people that I wanted to meet and thankfully he lost all sense of judgment and just agreed to meet me. Z, now before we left, you were telling people you said get out a sheet of paper and do what?

Dr. Zoellner: Write down the names of 10 people you want to take to lunch in the near future, alright? And we’re being this because we’re being purposeful, when the things that Clay just said is by association and if you associate with people that have a higher net worth than you, that are in your mind successful in their business, successful in their lives, successful in an area that you want to be successful in, okay, these are the kind of people you need to surround yourself with.

How do you do that? You have to be purposeful about that. You just don’t randomly walk the street and say “Hi Ma’am.” “I am Billy”, what is your net worth? I want to see if I can put you up no, you know who these people are. You look at them from afar. You said to yourself “Wow, they’ve got it going on”, put their name on your list and we’re going to teach you in this show right now on some moves so that you can do lunch with them, okay?

Clay: Dr. Z,but I like to do is to keep it real. I want to surround myself with people that are also real and i just want to, I don’t want to be fake. You know what I mean, I want to surround myself with people that carry a lead pipe in the car so if something happens they’re ready to go. You know what I am saying?

Dr. Zoellner: You’ve got a shovel.

Clay: And a bunch of concrete. I don’t know what we are even talking about but I swear if it things got out of hand, my guys would be available.

Dr. Zoellner: You would be working on a little a bit different organizational association group with that okay? And that’s probably a different show, I think that’s on another, that’s the Home and Garden network and something like that. You know that’s a different show.

Clay: I’m going to make an example. I have a story from my life I want to share here. Years ago I want to meet you right.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, right and yes you did.

Clay: Kylie, has Kylie worked for you for 20 years?

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, a long time.

Clay: Kylie looks like she’s 27. I don’t know how that is possible. Kylie if you’re listening right now Kylie, one of the managers for Dr. Robert Zoellner and Associates, she’s a great person and Kylie, she’s very beautiful, she’s very diligent, she’s consistent. I’m just trying to book a meeting and I tried moves like “Hey Kylie, how you doing?” and she “Good, Clay.”, and I “Could I set a meeting with Dr. Z?” and she says “I’ll pass the message to him.” I did that about maybe 4 or 5 times. And I realized, I don’t know if I, I don’t feel like I have met with him yet. Then I thought the whole voicemail move.

I’ll call in and say “Hey, I have a message for Bob”, and I figured maybe your friends called you Bob or maybe Bobby or Mac or Buddy. I’m like “I have to leave a message for Bobby, this is his friend Clay.” and “No, no”. And it gets weird because then you walk up and Kylie knows that you’re the one who’s left the voicemail that’s pretending to know a guy named Bobby because no one calls you Bobby, right?

Dr. Zoellner: No one calls me Bobby, when they do they do this is what they hear, [inaudible sound] crickets.

Clay: I went to the letter move, I thought I’d send out some letters. I didn’t get into smoke signals but I tried a lot of moves and then eventually she goes “You know we have an opening or a cancellation or something and he’d be happy to meet you tomorrow at Ruby Tuesday’s. He likes the croutons.”

Dr. Zoellner: Yes I like the croutons. And it changed your life too, if I remember it correct.

Clay: Yes, they are great. And I just remembered going, “What? Santa? Santa?” I mean I am not a kid and I was probably 30 contacts in and Z, why is that you have not made yourself infinitely accessible to everybody? Why is it that only at things at workshops or things where you’re very intentional about being there? Why have you not made yourself infinitely accessible as you’ve grown your businesses?

Dr. Zoellner: Because i want a life? I know, it’s crazy. Because I want a life, and I want to be able to do the things that I want to do, not the things that I have to do. Whenever you set up a bunch of these meetings with folks, they just want to get in and pick your brain. I’ll do those for–, there’s a portion of my life, I’ll do that. But the rest, I just don’t want to have everybody else controlling my schedule. I want to be controlling my schedule.

If someone reaches out to me like you did, and is purposeful and is intentional, and is nice and continues to do that, that’s one way to do it, just persistence. That’s one super move you can write down. You can just put down on your piece of paper, no need written names, be persistent. If you get a no, you don’t scratch them off your list. If you get a “I can’t. My lunches are booked for the next month,” “When is your first opening?”. Be persistent. That’s one move.

Clay: I want to ask you guys. If you do get the meeting, Bryan, if you get the meetings, Z, if you get the meeting, and I’m sure you’ve seen this before. You’ve agreed to meet with somebody, and they get a little bro-mantic on you. You’re like, Dr. Z, I want to talk to you about 37 things, and I’m thinking about going on a spiritual quest to Alderaan. You go,”that’s such a planet in Star Wars?” [laughter] But I’m just going to be going to Alderaan, part of a diplomatic mission, and I want to open this coffee shop, but it doesn’t serve coffee, as much as it serves spiritual wholeness to the city.

You’re just like, “Whoa”. You’ve been to those meetings, right?

Dr. Zoellner: It’s coffee from Alderaan. Yes.

[laughter]

Clay: I want to ask you guys –

Dr. Zoellner: And you’re calling [unintelligible 00:41:33] you can’t get out of them quick enough. You’re just like, “Someone text me, someone’s calling me. There’s an emergency out there.”

Clay: I want to start with you, Z, and I want to ask our guest here. I want to start with you first, though. What are the things you don’t do, if you beaten somebody who’s way out of your league. If you’re fishing in a dingy, and you find yourself meeting like you and I have with David Robinson, or you’re meeting with a George Foreman, or you’re meeting with some Tulsa unicorn that you’ve been chasing. What do you not do? What are the rules? What do you do?

Dr. Zoellner: What the rules you don’t do is talk about intimacies of your life. Talk about you a lot. You’re there to pick their brain, you’re there to ask them open-ended questions. You’re there to get to know them. You’re there to present yourself in the best way possible, and hopefully, if things go well, you might get another meeting, you might start building a relationship, you might get the opportunity to send some emails. You might be able to take that little step forward. Don’t assume it, and don’t over-estimate their interest in you. [crosstalk]

Clay: Don’t over-estimate their interest in you?

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, does that sound mean?

Clay: It did. It felt mean.

Dr. Zoellner: I didn’t mean for it to be mean. Let’s continue enjoying lunch, I’ll rewind that, and I’ll say it in a nicer way. Don’t over-estimate their interest in you. [laughs]

Clay: Nice.

Dr. Zoellner: It’s the same thing. I just tried to say it in a nicer–

Clay: Bryan, our very special guest, we have Bryan Roslyn on the show here. He is a financial expert. He travels around the world teaching financial literacy, inspirational messages, customer service training. Awesome guy. Bryan, what are some rules maybe you have if you’re going to set a meeting with the unicorn? Some of those kind of a big deal, what are some rules? How do you need to approach that meeting?

Brian: What I found is that you don’t have to stick with the same approach. You can think outside the box. You can try a different approach. I wanted to be–, this isn’t my first time on the radio, believe it or not. I know. I know what you say. I wanted to be a DJ so bad when I was in college, that I submitted tapes, after tapes, after tapes. Wasn’t getting anywhere, until I went through my college guidance counselor, what have you, to become an intern. Now they had to listen to me. They have choice. I showed up. They had to give me a grade. Lo and behold, they gave me a chance to be on the air. I was a DJ for about a year.

Clay: Now Thrivers I have a little steps here for you. I want to make sure, just kind of go over with you really fast. These are my big five. I would encourage you to show up with at least these fives, that with the person that you’re talking to knows that at some point you have a point. By thinking about your conversation ahead of time, it should keep you from panning yourself into a verbal corner which we’ve all done at some point. These are the five areas, write it down. Rapport. Just write down maybe four or five questions you want to ask them to build rapport. You don’t have to ask them all. But for example, like you might say, “So, tell me about your family?”

“So, tell me about your occupation, how you get started?” Recreations, F-O-R-E. Family, occupation, recreation, enjoyment. You want to have some rapport building questions. The second is some needs. What are you goals for this year? You’re meeting someone for the first time. What are your goals for this year, Mr. Foreman? I actually met George Foreman years ago, and I’ve never asked him that. It was fascinating to hear him talk about how his focus has shifted to ministry. That’s his favorite topic is himself. He was a kind guy and asked me questions in return. He was really passionate about that. But asked him the goals, things I want to–.

The next is benefits. You want to find some way to offer some sort of benefit to them in exchange for them taking the time to meet with you. Maybe just a little Starbucks gift card, or a little handwritten thank you, or a book, or just something. The next is the call the action. When you leave the meeting, if you do want something, whether it’s a second meeting or an interview, or a chance to be on a radio show, or whatever, you just want to know what you’re asking for. You’re able to ask it succinctly. The final one is, I would go ahead and do what I call a rude interview with yourself ahead of time. Think of all the objections or rude questions they may ask you, so that you don’t go, “uhh”.

Because I’m just telling you, the higher up the food chain you go, the more candid the people you’re meeting with are, and candor is something you’re only going to find at the top of the food chain. Sometimes, I’ve met with some few that are very successful, and they ask you some pretty brutal questions pretty quickly. You just got to be prepared for that.

Dr. Zoellner: They want to vex you, they want to see if they’re wasting their time. The other thing, too, is always whatever time you’ve booked for it, don’t go over your time. Don’t push the time limit. What I have found is when you’re in a situation that you’re enjoying and you want to be back in that situation again, always leave them wanting a little bit more. That makes sense?

Brian: Absolutely.

Clay: Z, we’ve been here together for about three hours, but I was going to see if an hour or four, if I can keep you for one more hour, and I really wanted to get into your feelings about marsupials. Is that okay? [laughter] I know it’s a long time but–

Dr. Zoellner: I love marsupials, but here’s the deal. Come back, we’ve got more super moves for you on how to book those meetings. It’s a Thrive Time show.

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Announcer: Broadcasting from the center of the universe, featuring optometrist turned entrepreneur, Dr. Robert Zoellner, and US SBA entrepreneur of the year, Clay Clark. This is the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: Thrive nation, welcome back inside the box that rocks. Your audio dojo of mojo, it’s the Thrive Time Show. My name is business coach, Clay Clark, and I’m joined here with the co-host with the mo-ost, Dr. Robert Zoellner. Dr. Z, we were talking a lot about personal branding, and specifically we were talking about how to get a meeting with the unicorn. You realize, hey, I got to improve my branding.

I have to make sure that I know the right people so that I can build associations and connections, alliances, business development deals with different social circles. One of the moves that we’ve talked about was you got to call people you don’t know. You actually got to make a list of 10 people that you don’t know, and in 2017, couldn’t book that lunch appointment with them.

Go ahead and be intense. But occasionally, people will shut you down. When you get to shut down enough and you find yourself as an aspiring young movie buff, named Mr Steven Spielberg before he was a big deal, you know what, [unintelligible 00:48:57].

Dr. Zoellner: Absolutely, you just show up.

Clay: Here’s the deal, Thrivers. I got my Steven Spielberg music ready, here we go. Here’s the story. Steven Spielberg wants a job at a major movie studio. But he doesn’t have an actual connection. He doesn’t have a job. He doesn’t have a place to go. What he does one day, he just shows up, and he gets denied by the toll booth Willie. You know, the toll both guy.

Dr. Zoellner: Oh, booth Willie.

Clay: He realizes, wait a minute, how are these people getting in? They have name badges. They got little name badges white cards. They’ve got– and they seem like they know the guy. And they’re all dressed in a certain way. I know what I’m going to do tomorrow. I’m going to dress up nice. I’m going to have a little name badge that I’m going to fraudulently make. He committed some kind of fraud, he did a little forgery action. The next day he walks in, kind of nod at toll booth Willie, next thing he know he’s inside the major studio.

Dr. Zoellner: He’s inside. He’s in.

Clay: Now he could just to use to go in– well, I guess I’ll just follow everybody else. He puts down his briefcase and he just begins working. Except he’s not getting paid, and no one’s his boss.

Dr. Zoellner: No one knows he’s there.

Clay: And no one knows he’s there. He does this day after day for about a week or so and if you want to read this story you can get the Think and Grow Rich, the new updated version it tells the story or you can just look up the life of Steven Spielberg, I think Biography has as a special where he explains this. After about two weeks of playing this game he realizes, “I got eventually have an office, everyone else has an office”.

He goes to the janitorial closet any orders a name plate and he takes off the name “Janitor” and he puts on place of it he puts “Spielberg”. And this continues for a long time and eventually after working for free there for months, one of the guys, one of the higher-ups comes and goes, “Spielberg, who hired you?” He goes, “One of the boys up top. One of these–” No, no. Spielberg, I get this new video with this new commercial working on I need you– I love your style, love your energy, love your– need you to get that done.

Only when it came time to pay him they realize this joker never work here. That is the story that is so indicative of how many of the top people you think about today. Specifically, let’s think of a music, Puff Daddy he now goes by the name Diddy or Sean Combs, he got started with just straight-up walking in Russell Simmons the founder of the hip-hop music culture basically Def Jam. That’s how he got started.

Oprah, Internship. Z, there’s so many people who are unwilling to work for free to build that connection but why is it so important to me. In your optometry clinic right, now there’s a young man listen to show, young woman listen to show, they have no money and no discernible job skills but they say, “I’m willing to work after– I’ll work 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week for free. I’ll do whatever you want.” Why is it such an appealing offer as an entrepreneur?

Dr. Zoellner: It helps your bottom line. It’s hard to turn that down. That’s the move. That’s one of our other secret moves, super moves Brian touched on it earlier and that is the intern move where you show up and say, “Listen, I want to work for you and you don’t have to pay me any money” and you might say that is crazy. You see, I work– I know you’re up in seven for me personally, I’m open seven days a week.

You have your job doing your thing, right? But you have weekends off. You come and say, “I work weekends for you for free, I just want to intern because I want to learn about your business. I want to learn about you.” And so by doing that, they come in and start, it’s like Steven Spielberg did pretty soon. You’re there working, you get to know them and if they’re in– you gotta be a diligent worker, you got to show up on time, you got to go through my– when I call my five A’s.

Clay: Five A’s. Give us the five A’s. Give it to us.

Dr. Zoellner: Well, your appearance, you can’t show up and look like I haven’t had a shower like three weeks.

Clay: Do I have to wear pants?

Dr. Zoellner: You have you wear pants.

Clay: That’s ridiculous.

Dr. Zoellner: Sometimes people coming we give them scrubs and they wear those sometimes it can look like they’ve slept with him for the weekend. You’re like, “No, no, no. That’s not–“[crosstalk]

Clay: I woke up on a couch somewhere and I have these on. It’s crazy.

Dr. Zoellner: But I made it here so I’m okay. Appearance, okay?

Clay: Okay.

Dr. Zoellner: Attitude. You’ve got to have a great attitude. You don’t bring all the negative stuff that’s happened the day before in your life, right?

Clay: Is it not cool to fight with people I work with?

Dr. Zoellner: That’s not cool. So your second is — you got to have the attitude, all right?

Clay: Got it.

Dr. Zoellner: Above and beyond, do more than what’s required of you. That always makes you stand out and especially if you’re an intern.

Clay: Does Bernie Sanders approve of that? I mean working and doing more than you’re supposed to? I’m just supposed to be done at 36 hours. I mean, sorry I was– I didn’t realize what show this was I’m going to hop back to the other network. See you guys, bye.

Dr. Zoellner: Accuracy. Now why is accuracy important? Guys, catch on that– [crosstalk]

Clay: Well, if just playing with hand grenades, if you’re just doing or horse shoes I suppose getting close enough is okay. But in business– let me talk to you about what happen when you build a repeatable system. I’ll talk to you about my– the company DJ connection I used to own. We had in Christmas of whatever year it was maybe 2005-2006, we got to where we are doing 40 corporate parties at the same time.

Well, all the corporate parties they said, “Hey, we want this thing called karaoke” and I’m going, “Okay, I got it. I can do– this one karaoke was the boss there for a while. It was the thing you did at the holiday party. I bought a system and then I bought this thing called the duplicator which I bought from the distributor which allows you to mass duplicate the CDs that you bought licenses to for karaoke.

I put the the job– the assignment of doing it on the the task list of a guy who was a phenomenal DJ but whose accuracy I had not yet tested. he mass-produced 40 sets of karaoke music and systems. We went out to the– and this is back before I understood quality control and feedback loops and layers of redundancy. This is why I wasn’t in-charge of an airline, okay? Because people would have died.

Dr. Zoellner: Not good.

Clay: Not good. We went out there and one by one the calls start coming in. It’s at the back on the old flip phone thing, I answered the phone, “DJ connections, this is Clay” and they’re going, “There’s no music on the CD and there’s no words on any of” –like 400 disks in the collection. I’m going, “Okay, well I’m just tell the event planner that we’re sorry.” Phone rings, I’m looking– another DJ is calling, “DJ connections this is Clay”, “There’s no music on these discs”.

Phone rings–basically all 40 of them. I end up doing almost a complete refund for that weekend. A big goose egg during the busiest time of the year. And then I got home and my wife reminded me that if you do your events for free and you have to pay people, you go backwards.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, that is not the way to build a business.

Clay: You don’t want to spend more than you’re making. Whatever, Socrates.

Dr. Zoellner: Typically. I was making up in volume.

[laughs]

Clay: That becomes a problem. Z, do you have another A?

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, attendance. If you tell them you’re going to be there Saturday morning at 9:00 AM, be there at 8:45 Saturday morning. Don’t show up at 9:15 and go, “Well, you’re not paying me what’s the big deal? I’m going to show up when I’m going to show. It’s like I want to ask your paycheck. Let’s go over the five A’s again.

Clay: Okay. A number one.

Dr. Zoellner: If you’re going to do an internship, I highly recommend that and the other thing that cool about internship, you get a taste of that business. Because you may save yourself, “Hey, I want to be an optometrist but you know I really don’t know.” Go intern with an optometrist. “Hey, I want to be a financial planner but I really don’t know” so you call Brian, go intern with the financial planner. I want to be a DJ, you come up DJ connection back in the day. “Hey listen, I just want to work for you for free and want to help load, unload work some of your stuff management by intern for you. Then after a little bit that you go, “I don’t really– I don’t get this. I don’t want to do this.” Then you say I don’t want to do this.

Clay: I bet you half the people that went to college with Oral Roberts University, upon their senior year was the first time they intern. At least half of the people that I know as seniors they’re wrapping up their degree realized, “I don’t want to be a school teacher at all. I don’t want to work at the media at all. I don’t want to be a lawyer. I don’t want to”–intern as soon as possible.

Dr. Zoellner: Intern as soon as possible and here’s the five A’s when you are interning. It’s what we’re talking about here. These are the five A’s you want to be purposeful about and do with excellence. One is attitude, great attitude. Above and beyond, do more than what you’re– required to do for the day. Accuracy, make sure you’re doing it correctly. Like in my optometry clinic whether it’s a plus or minus is a big difference, it’s like just one little piece of ink but it’s a big difference.

Clay: I didn’t know if you wanted diesel or unleaded so I put both of in. I kind of swirled them around.

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs] I figured it couldn’t go wrong.

Clay: Swear on you. That actually happened when I’m in landscaping business. One of the guys, he literally did that and he say swirled them around. It’s stuck in my mind. You swirled them around?

Dr. Zoellner: It’s called mixing.

Clay: I said, “No way”.

Dr. Zoellner: And parents make sure your high and tight looking good. You’ve been to Elephant in the Room and got your first free– first haircut for $1.

Clay: $1.

Dr. Zoellner: Got your straight razor shave and you’re looking high and tight. And then attendance, be there early stay a little late. Be there on time and those are the five A’s.

Clay: I want to ask our special guest here Mr. Brian Ross because he helps teach financial literacy, educate people about how to become successful in the world of business, goes into a lot of companies where they have up many, many young employees of all different ages and they want to educate all of them at one time about some of these financial principles. Talk to me some of these A’s here Mr. Brian.

Brian: Absolutely. The one that stands out Dr. Z is accuracy because there is such a thing as compliance. Companies that offer 401k savings retirement plans for example have to comply with certain standards and that accuracy is crucial. Making sure that they provide a certain amount of financial education on certain levels of competency for that.

Clay: Some of the businesses that Dr. Z and I are involved in– so some people listening to the show going, “Yes, it must be easy for you guys because you have a hair salon and a DJ business and he’s got an optometry clinic– [crosstalk]

Dr. Zoellner: Auto auction.

Clay: But my sister-in-law recently started working over there at your auto auction.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, she’s doing a great job by the way.

Clay: She’s loving it by the way.

Dr. Zoellner: Good.

Clay: Talking about– she goes– because I guess the Fridays are the big rush over there.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, that’s the day that we have the auction. That’s the action day.

Clay: She has — the title work has to be clear and accurate.

Dr. Zoellner: It has to be.

Clay: So what would happen if you didn’t do accurate title work in– let’s say it happened for one week in a row or maybe two weeks in a row, enough to make a row, what would happen?

Dr. Zoellner: Oh, dogs and cats to start living together. [laughs] It would rain fire down from the sky. I mean it would be an epic shutdown, meltdown of the universe as we know it. I mean it’d be bad. Know what happens is that you have to go back and redo it. On another busy day because you’re selling 500 cars a week with maybe we run 800, 850 cars and not all of them sell but 500, that’s 500 deals, the title has to go boom, boom, boom every weekend so if you do it wrong one week, now the next week, you’ve got a thousand to do I and then those wrong, it just snowballs on you and the deals have to get unwind. It’s money out of my pocket, because by law we have to give them a good title within so many days and then they’re trying to sell the car.

Clay: You always come back to money. You’re always talking about money on this business show.

Dr. Zoellner: I know it’s crazy, isn’t it?

Clay: It’s so bizarre. Now, Z, I have a confession I want to make for all 37,000 people roughly who are listening to the show at any given time. Z, are you ready?

Dr. Zoellner: Wait a second. Can I get confessional music?

Clay: I have a little bit of apology. [crosstalk]

Dr. Zoellner: Can I get confessional music- [crosstalk]

Clay: Yes, you could–

Dr. Zoellner: -cued up.

Clay: You could cue up there. I’m okay.

Dr. Zoellner: Okay. Well, I’d tell you what, let’s do this one.

[background music]

Clay: Okay, here’s the deal. I went to Oral Roberts University and I got kicked out of Oral Roberts University.

Dr. Zoellner: I thought you’ve just asked to leave.

Clay: Yes, for writing a parody song about school’s president, Richard Roberts. Long story short, the song was disseminated on Napster, various things. Now, thousands of students are listening to and I got us to leave. But I just read the Spielberg story, true story, and I realized that my wife was a cheerleader at the Oral U basketball. A program there for all Orals on scholarship and the only way to attend the game because I was on that watch list that can’t come to the game list-

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs]

Clay: -was to pretend like I was a member the coaching staff. I swear to you- [crosstalk]

Dr. Zoellner: What’s up? [crosstalk]

Clay: -and I used to just take my briefcase.

Dr. Zoellner: I never heard this story.

Clay: I used to dress up and I would just walk right in and it worked, and I couldn’t believe it. I find myself sitting oftentimes at the scorer’s table at the game.

[laughter]

Clay: People thought that I must be part of the team. He must be part of the Oral marketing team and over time I got a chance to meet some of the higher-ups. I end up mixing their music but they never put two and two together until after the fact that I did sneak my way into many. I say many like 20 of home Oral U basketball games per year for about two and a half years during my great exile from Oral Roberts University.

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs]

Clay: Thrivetimeshow.com. Check it out.

[background music]

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Announcer: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: As always, we’re playing that ’80s for the ladies here in the Thrive Time Show. Your audio dojo of mojo, my name is business coach, Clay Clark and we’re excited to be teaching you how to start and grow a successful business. Dr. Z, the only thing that I can be more excited to talk about in today’s topic which is personal branding and business branding. The only thing that I could be more excited to possibly talk about than branding is Oklahoma Joe’s.

Dr. Zoellner: Well, I tell you what, if you’re still deciding what to do for lunch today, it’s not too late. You can drive. You’re in Broken Arrow. Drive over by the Bass Pro Shop. Oklahoma Joe’s is there. If you are in South Tulsa, you can drive over 61st and Sheridan, find the Oklahoma Joe’s right there, or if you’re downtown, you can go over the Cain’s Ballroom, the iconic Cain’s Ballroom and right next to Cain’s. For lunch, Oklahoma Joe’s is open which is right now and you can go in there. My move and you can thank me later for this.

Clay: Yes, this is a move. Write this down. [crosstalk]

Dr. Zoellner: This move is the burnt ends and the baked beans.

Clay: Someone needs to write that down or not. You’re saying, “Burnt ends”? Burned? What did they burn? They burn birds. Is it burned? Or burnt ends? [crosstalk]

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, and Joe Davidson, the founder, owner, proprietor of Oklahoma Joe’s just figured out a way. He figured out that a lot of people’s favorite part of the barbecue is at the end that’s got the burned tonic.

Clay: He worked directly with NASA to do this. He worked with NASA– [crosstalk]

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, rocket scientist and engineering. [crosstalk]

Clay: In Russia, the cosmonauts came in.

[laughter]

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, in their suits and put their visors up and ate the burnt end. He’s figured out a way that all the meat in that dish has got a little burnt end on it, and they are fabulous and those baked beans are. We have done it before and I think it’s a good way to kick off the year. The burnt them, not the burnt, the bean challenge.

Clay: The bean challenge, here’s how the bean challenge works. If you’re listening right now and you go on over there right now, just today, he’s got a very limited amount of time left here. You got to run on over there. To good old Oklahoma Joe’s and you get yourself some baked beans. If they are the best in the world which they advertised to be and they’ve won many, many awards for. If they are the best, then you come here to the thrive15.com world headquarters. Just Google it on your phone. It’s in beautiful Jenks America. I’m going to give you a free copy of my newest book, Start Here.

Now, if you go there and you say, “I am a pathological liar and they are not the best thing ever,” if you can say that, if you can actually just say that, I’m still going to give you a copy my book for being just a skilled actor or for having a psychological problem. [laughs]

Dr. Zoellner: You give him a high five. Right? [crosstalk]

Clay: Yes, you got to give me a high five at Thrive.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, a high five. [crosstalk]

Clay: High five at thrive and a book

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, a high five. Will you sign it? Or you’ll say?

Clay: I will sign it.

Dr. Zoellner: To Billy.

Clay: The other day, we a gentleman come by, who works in the air conditioning and heating industry. He came by, he took the challenge. True story. He came, boom, it was awesome. I felt like we’ve connected

Dr. Zoellner: You have.

Clay: It was ecstasy when he was next to me and now it gets weird but it was–

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs]

Clay: But anyways, Thrivers, we’re moving on. We’re talking about today, Thrivers, is how to do branding. Branding which is how to change the perception that people have about you and your business in a positive way because branding is all about perception. People are willing to pay more for products and services when they see quality branding and one of the areas of branding is the association you have with other people.

Dr. Zoellner: That’s right.

Clay: The other people that you’re around, begin to impact the opportunities that you have and so, Z, were talking about how to set an appointment with a big kahuna.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes. This the third move in our discussion today. It’s power of mastermind association and the point here is that you surround yourself with great people that inspire you, that their net worth is more than your net worth, and therefore, that’s a way that you can step yourself up in life if you can help get a decision. If you think yourself, “Well, If could have Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and few other people in my inner circle guys. I could call them with the question.” Yes, that’d be awesome.

Now, the odds of getting those big fish in your inner circle are pretty tough, so the idea that you can write down 10 people that you know now or know of and you say to yourself, “I want to book a lunch. I want to book a coffee. I want to get 30 minutes. I want to get an hour of their time.” We’re teaching you on how to do that right now. The first move was persistency and that is just keep pounding in a pleasant nice way. Not mean, but just keep, “You don’t ever answer my phone call. Well, I really want to beat you.” Not like that, but kind of nice and persistent. That’s the first one.

The second one was super move was go be an intern. Say, “I can work for you for free. I can just work for you for free. I just want intern. I just want to be in your business. I want to learn about your business. I want to get in your business. I just want to work for free.” Intern.

Clay: Move number three that I love. This is the introduction. Let’s say that I want to meet Brian, by the way, we have a very special guest on the show. Brian is a personal financial educator, a motivational speaker, his name is Brian Ross. Brian, how are you doing?

Brian: I’m doing fantastic and I am honored to be between two giants literally and figuratively here. You guys are fantastic.

Clay: Well, I’ll say this, if people listening right now and they go, “I want to meet Brian. My New Year’s resolution is to fix my personal finances. I’m ready to do it and I don’t want to do it in a big group setting. I want to talk to him one on one.” The thing is Thrivers, if you were to call us, you just email [email protected]. When you do that, we could introduce you to Brian because I know Brian. Now, if I say, “Brian, hey, there’s a listener who wants to meet you.” It’s not weird. It doesn’t put a cold introduction.

Dr. Zoellner: That’s right and so you may know the top 10 you put on your list, right? You’ve pulled over and you wrote down those 10 names of the people you want to do. Now, that said, that’s when the move, you know somebody who knows intimately and they can introduce you to do the hand-off, and that’s super move number three, and that’s a great way to do it. Because then you get bona fide and say, “Hey listen,” and that’s what happened with me a lot. My brother or somebody that I know intimately that’s in my inner circle say, “Hey listen, here’s a dude and he wants some of your time.

Clay: He wants inside your circle. He wants to come inside the circle.

Dr. Zoellner: He wants to pick your brain a little bit and he’s a good dude, and he’s not weird and it’s going to be okay.” I’m like, “Okay. You’ve just got bona fide. All right, you can give him my number and I’ll give my schedule when he contacts me. Okay?” That’s another one. Another one is a fun super move that I’ve seen people do is just send them cool things.

Clay: Send them cool gifts.

Dr. Zoellner: The second move is interning where you’re basically, you’re giving them time. You’re giving them resources. You’re giving them something that you and time. You may say, “I’m too busy. I can’t intern. I can’t.” That move is, “I can’t do that move. I don’t have the time to do that.” Then, what you do is you just send them some really cool stuff.

Clay: I started sending somebody of a song of me singing this song. [background music] I just send them audio discs, Z, of me singing Careless Whisper to him. He was a man and charges were filed. No, I’m just kidding.

[laughter]

Dr. Zoellner: We don’t send audio tapes of us singing Careless Whispers. That’s not the gift I’m talking about. But I’ve known people that have done some really fun stuff. They send flowers or chocolates or

cards or gift cards or–

Clay: I have one I want to brag on a guy.

Dr. Zoellner: Get me.

Clay: Winters and King, it’s a great law firm in Tulsa. We’ve been doing their search engine optimization, getting over the top of Google for a long time. When I first met him, they sent me a really nice holiday. It was like a carriage. It was a really nice gift. It was carriage and then inside the carriage, there is a wooden carriage. Probably, about the size of two feet by two feet, and then inside are Roy’s decorative chocolates and nice accouterments, and snacks and things that the kids would love.

It jumped out because I had to bring it home. You got to carry this nice wagon of awesome and it’s a move. If you’re listening here, Thrivers, what we want to do is we want to empower you. We want to help you take that next step and make this New Year the best year in your career. Brian, I want to ask you, if they’re listing right now and they want to make a positive step in the area of personal finance, how can they get a hold you?

Brian: Absolutely. The website is www.takeabigstep.com and 2017 is an ideal time. You’re making New Year’s resolutions. It’s a great time to make the New Year’s resolution, to take a big step in your finances, and I’d love to help you.

Clay: Just a super move, I want to make sure we’re learning something. Please don’t send an audio version of yourself romantically singing Careless Whisper to somebody you want to get to know. It’s just a move.

Dr. Zoellner: You know what? I’m pretty sure we can stamp that, “Don’t do that.”

Clay: We endorse that.

[background music]

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[background music]

Announcer: Live. Local. Now, you’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: Hello, Talk Radio 1170 listeners. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show. We’re listening to some Michael Jack and we are excited. We’re excited to help you enter into this New Year and to make 2017 the best year of your life. I’m not just saying that for hyperbole. I really do mean it. Dr. Robert Zoellner and I, we take time out of our schedule every day to hop on the radio and to have a conversation with you because when you email questions to [email protected], the questions that you’re asking become the format for each show.

These shows are made for you, and today, we’re talking about branding and how to really take your branding to the next level with your business and your personal brand. We’re really focusing right now on how to meet new associates. How to meet new people? How to build those personal associations in that network, Z? Because that personal network is so important.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes. There’s a saying out there that says, “If you run with the dogs, you’re going to get fleas.” It’s on the flip side that we’re talking about.

Clay: Awoo-awoo.

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs] That’s the negative side of what we’re doing. If you run with billionaires, odds are you’re going to become richer because of their habits and the way that they rub off. Okay, so we maybe can’t get billionaires on our radar. I could call Mark Cuban probably quite a few times and apart. I’m not going to book that lunch with a thing. But–

Clay: I have called him many times.

Dr. Zoellner: There you go. But maybe we can share off with millionaires or hundred thousandaires or successful peopleaires-

Clay: Or carnies.

Dr. Zoellner: -or carnies. What’s wrong with carnies? [crosstalk]

Clay: Okay. I was a disc jockey which is one step lower than a carny.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes.

Clay: We look up to the carnies.

[laughter]

Dr. Zoellner: We’re just aspiring to be a carny, so surround yourself with carnies and maybe get that break. We went over some different moves. The first one is, be proactive. Write down the 10 people you want to spend some time with, lunch or coffee, or just hang out with them a little bit. Okay? Then, we talked about how we do that. We had four super moves. One was persistency. One was interning. One was the introduction and the last one we just discussed that is, send them stuff. Send them gifts. Just send them stuff, random stuff. Yes. I knew you got to pay for it. You got to get it there. Another thing is I know some guys that would send a big blow up thing and put it in front of their business. They just–

Clay: That’s how Arthur Greener got to meet me. He forked my lawn. He put forks over my lawn.

Dr. Zoellner: Okay.

Clay: Those you don’t know what that mean. He’s taking forks and putting them all over my lawn, like plastic forks, and then he put up a massive six-foot tall Chick-fil-A cow. He owns the Chick-fil-As. He put that on my lawn and said, “Happy Birthday.” These kinds of things just kept happening and I’m going, “What in the world?”

Dr. Zoellner: He’s this guy.

Clay: Yes, but you almost become curious.

Dr. Zoellner: Did you press charges? Or what did you? [laughs]

Clay: After the charges were dropped, we– I want to tell you, the final benefit that I see of really taking your associations to next level, I see this is a huge home run, is who you’re around, begins to affect your normal. If you watch the Christmas Vacation movie, okay, one of the things that make it super funny is cousin Eddie is impossibly clueless about social decorum. What to say? What to do? Social nuance, any type of grace at all.

Clark is a middle-class guy trying to have a nice Christmas and cousin Eddie is emptying his RV, his waste into his sewer. He’s staying there for the month. But one of my favorite scenes, I’m going to play a little clip from it, okay? He brings his dog into the house and you can’t do that. A little networking tip, if you’re trying to meet a multimillionaire or somebody that you’re trying to connect with someone of a higher net worth than you, don’t bring your crazy, rabid dog to their house.

Dr. Zoellner: Don’t do that.

Clay: But here is the audio. Just marinade on this for a second.

Audio Clip: No. Don’t worry about it, Clark. Little tree watering going to hurt him. Where we left, he drank a half of quarter of Pennzoil. Boy, he lifted his legs the next morning. [laughs]

[laughter]

Clay: You just can’t.

Dr. Zoellner: You just don’t do.

Clay: You just don’t do, but the thing is I see this a lot of times and I think back in my early days. Just getting started in my career. There’s a certain locker room humor that exists when you’re a young man and you’re around college guys.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes. There is.

Clay: You make jokes you shouldn’t make. You do things you shouldn’t do and really you’re practicing what I call the dark art of jackassery. It’s a mixture of the force from Star Wars, the dark side. But worse than the dark side is this wealth repelling force called jackassery.

Dr. Robert: I didn’t know it had a name, I guess. Yes, it’s a thing.

Clay: It repels wealth and so you do little moves where you look angry at people. You make inappropriate jokes with around people of high net worth. You show up late for things. You just sort of repel wealth. But when you’re around people who are successful over time through observing how they carry themselves, you can learn some things.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: One of the things I’ve been educated by a Dr. Robert Zoellner here is the rule of six. Z, you have this rule of six, so when you’re trying to network and meet some other couples or meet some other people, and you want to organize a dinner party. There is some logic in having a few people. But you have this thing called the rule of six. Can you break that down like fractions my friend?

Dr. Zoellner: Like fractions? Like a square root of 497? Like fractious?

Clay: He’s good at math.

Dr. Zoellner: Here’s the deal. If you want to be purposeful and you want to spend some time with someone, and you get a dinner with them. You don’t want to have too many people there that it gets fraction into a different conversation. Six is about all you can handle in one conversation. If you get much more than six and if you’re at a dinner party or if you’re at a dinner, and there are more than six people there, you’ll notice if you’ll look around the table, there’ll be multiple conversations going on.

But six is one we can keep everybody tied into one conversation. I found, so six or fewer. If there’s somebody there you say, “I want to really get to know this person. I want to spend some extra time with them. I want to deep dive in their brain.” If you have many more people than that, then you’re going to be really competing for that time and space with them.

Clay: Z, you’ve been in business for years, 25 years with Dr. Robert Zoellner and Associates. You’ve seen presidents on the left and the right, come in and out of office. Economically speaking, is this one of the better times to be in business since you’ve been on the planet?

Dr. Zoellner: Well, I’ll let you know. Inauguration is in a few weeks and a lot of things had been promised and good things, hopefully, are coming down the pipe. But whatever the rules are, whatever the windows we have to jump through, just because a promise is made, doesn’t mean it’s going to be fulfilled. You have to say to yourself, “Listen, tell me the rules and I’m going to adjust my business to take advantage of the playing field that’s out there right now.”

Clay: I saw a guy the other day in the parking lot and he pulls me aside he says, “Hey, how’s the online education market?” I said,”It’s great.” I’m just going to my car and he goes, “Oh, man. I tell you what. Right now, remodeling is just in the toilet. The economy is just a complete disaster.” I know the guy enough to know that he’s not asking for right feedback, so I’m not going to argue. But I know that he’s around people that are all systemically poor and they believe that the economy has been bad since Reagan, through Clinton through Bush, back to– It doesn’t matter who the president. They believe the economy cannot get better and that’s one of the things Brian that you do when you go in and you help young people you help people in the workforce you come and you teach financial literacy.

Brian: Absolutely.

Clay: People grow up poor are surrounded by poverty and you helped break that poverty mindset.

Brian: You absolutely nailed it is. You model who you hang out with and people of wealth take care of their money. They’re not frivolous with their money and so if you want to model that behavior, you want to hang with people who are good with their money.

Clay: Now, Thrivers, if you’re listening right now and you’re going, “Okay, I want to take my branding to the next level but I want to have a specific checklist of the things that I should have together and have high and tight before February. The things I have to get done to take my brand to the next level before February.” Good news is Dr. Z and I we sat down. We’ve made a list of the things that you definitely have to have in place if you’re going to take your brand to the next level. Because if you’re motivated, you’re inspired, you’re educated but you still have some pretty nasty branding, Z, it can affect your bottom line.

Dr. Zoellner: Absolutely, and I tell you what, we talked about ways to meet people, ways to network, ways to increase your net worth by networking with people that are successful people like you, people that want the same thing and we have a great opportunity for you to do that. Jump on a plane, get in the car, walk here if you need to but January 20th and 21st, we’re putting on our next thrive15 workshop. We’re talking about practical steps and everybody in the room, guess what, you look left, look right. There are going to be people that are trying to do it right.

Clay: There’s no upsells. You don’t have to feel like someone who “I’m pressuring you to make millions overnight with some real estate seminar or some sort of tricks to success.” It’s specific actionable trainings 15 hours of power spread over two days marketing, sales, accounting, search engine optimization. It’s all there thrivetimeshow.com.

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Announcer: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: All right, thrive nation, welcome back to the Thrive time show. We are super excited to be here with you today. Z, unfortunately, to start this New Year, we’re missing two members of our listening audience. We’re short two members. Miss Carrie Fisher is not with us. She’s not with us. Princess Leia, she’s not listening to the show today and George Michael is not listening to the show today. We’re going to miss you guys but we are going to play a Careless Whisper whenever possible and I watched the Star Wars there to sell up to bring in the New Year with the kids, and so we’re doing our part to show us more respect for Carrie Fisher and the late great Mr. George Michael .

Dr. Zoellner: It just points out– they’re both relatively young builder the existing– George was just a year older than me and Carrie was what? 60 and I’m 52 so you look at that and go, “Wow, that’s really young.” But the point I’m trying to make is this is that you look at that and death is something that comes to all of us eventually someday, and so we’re here on this show because Forbes did a little study. Forbes is a big deal. They did a little study that said about 60%–

It’s actually about 57% but I will say about six out of ten of you out there listening right now have that little goal, that little dream, that little desire to start in order to grow a business, okay? You know what? What we’re here to do is to try to make this day until your last day the best days they can be and we feel like giving you practical business steps and how to start and grow that business, encouraging you to do it and giving you the tools to do it. Guess what, between now and that day, you can have a better life.

Clay: I’m going to tell you this, Z. The thing about our 13-point business system that we’re going to teach here at our thrive15 workshops, our two-day workshops on January 20th and 21st right here in our headquarters. There’s no like Charlotte and smoke and mirrors. We’ll meet you at some hotel room because we don’t have our office.

Dr. Zoellner: Or your original move at McDonald’s?

Clay: Yes, we’re not doing that.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes, we’re not doing that.

Clay: But not Charlotte’s and McDonald’s move I used to do. But we’re going to meet you at the thrive15.com world headquarters and one of the things we’re going to teach is going to teach you our 13-point system that we apply that system to every business that was involved in. The thing I want to share with you and this is something I want you to write it down. Someone needs to write this down because “It’s not complicated but it’s not easy.”

Dr. Zoellner: Correct.

Clay: It’s not complicated. We’re going to teach you a system that step-by-step. It’s linear you can do it but it’s not easy, okay?

Dr. Zoellner: Right.

Clay: I have a checklist of the things you have to do right now if you own a business to take your branding and marketing to the next level, and if you don’t do it, we can help you. But if you’re willing to take the action steps, this is going to change the game for you. One, you have to have a professional logo.

Dr. Zoellner: You have to. You just you just have to do it and there are people out there to do it. It’s not “Listen, you’re going panicking.” Going, “I don’t know how to do that?” That’s okay. It’s okay. Professionals that do that every day and they’re good at it.

Clay: “My third-grade son made that back in the ’60s and I’m not going to change it, Z. Because the offsetedness to it has become part of my culture.

Dr. Zoellner: [laughs]

Clay: Z, we got to get that logo. You’ve got to get that logo. Now, the second is you got to have a website. Now, here’s the deal. There are some really crazy– I was doing my show prep for today and I was looking up the percentage of small businesses that don’t have a website and I want you to– I want Thrivers, you need to go look that up right now. It’s going to blow your mind. There’s people going, “I don’t need a website, Z. I sell hoagies and grinders. Why would I need a website? You can’t taste a hoagy and a grinder on a website, right?”

Dr. Zoellner: That’s right.

Clay: Unbelievable the geniuses on the internet. You can’t taste food on a website. Now, the third though is you got to have one sheet which is a way to quickly articulate what you do to your potential buyers, Z, or you call this interior signage or you could call these internal brochures. At your optometry clinic, you have signage?

Dr. Zoellner: Yes.

Clay: Big visuals. Why is it so important have clean and big signage everywhere?

Dr. Zoellner: Well, when people come in they– you’re educating them and you’re really just going to be crazy I know. Don’t take this the wrong way, “You’re selling. You’re always selling.”

Clay: “I will tell myself which is why I live in a van down by the river.”

Dr. Zoellner: You’re a doctor, you’re not supposed to sell. “No.” Yes, you’re always selling whatever business you have, and so when they come in point-of-purchase selling, the point of purchase branding is very important because now you’ve done the hard part. You’ve got a man the front door, “sh-boom.” You got him in there, okay. Now, you want to continue that process, okay? You want to lead them down the line of purchasing and selling so that’s what you do it subliminally, you just –

Clay: “I’ve got a story. Got a story here. I got hot– you’re–“

Dr. Zoellner: You got a hot sauce? You got a little hot sauce? I can see you’re marinating”

Clay: When my wife was working for you– What are the things you do when you’re married? Your wife comes home from work and you don’t talk about work. I’m not saying that’s what you should do, I’m just saying that’s what you do when you first get married a lot of times you’re not talking this. My wife comes home from work and I say, “How is your day?” and she goes, “Good, can we talk about something else?”

Dr. Zoellner: Right.

Clay: I have no clue that you offered a very generous discount to your employees and their immediate family members-

Dr. Zoellner: Correct

Clay: -on glass. I can’t remember what it was but all I know is I didn’t know about it. I was working at Target making maybe $240 a week after taxes.

Dr. Zoellner: Show off. [laughs]

Clay: I go in there and I saw those Nike glasses, the one with the switch on the sides?

Dr. Zoellner: Swoosh. Just do it, baby.

Clay: But it wasn’t– it got a big huge print. It’s probably what? 10-foot-tall print on the walls, big print and I look and I’m like, “I want to be like Mike. If I could be like– It’s a dream,” and they’re going, “Sir, what kind of glasses?” I was going, “He got to see that’s how I dreamed of me.” I am going, “I want those,” and it was like Excalibur and I’m just– and I walk over and my wife’s like, “No,” and I go there and I just, “I want those.” I get out my Discover card and I just discovered the magic of that thing, bought those glasses. You’re probably still living off the high-interest payment.

Dr. Zoellner: We put you together like a cheap suit that day. It was fun. That’s good.

Clay: But, no but seriously–

Dr. Zoellner: Rang the bell on that one.

Clay: But the branding brought me in those seriously.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes.

Clay: The way that you brand things and you guys have great products but I would not even have known about anyhow to deal this is the final part that was awesome. I get a second pair of my Eddie Bauer edition for some sort of a discount and she goes, “Hey, do you know about our yada-yada special?” I’m going, “What is this special?” I’m not kidding. I got my Nike, my Eddie Bauer.

Dr. Zoellner: I feel special.

Clay: You felt special Z all weekend. I’m sure as a result of that purchase.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes. We went out with the kids and we celebrated. We bought pizza and party, and we called it the Clay Pizza Fest.

Clay: Got him, got him. That’s my mark.

Dr. Zoellner: Ring the bell kids. Daddy is bringing home some new shoes.

Clay: That sucker, his wife works here and he doesn’t even know what the –

Dr. Zoellner: We’re stuck putting together. What a moron?

Clay: [laughs] Then, you have your business card. You get those business cards and you were in a digital age and you’ve got to have to check it, check it, check it out video testimony.

Dr. Zoellner: “Well, I don’t have a video team. I don’t have guys that can go out and film that and edit it and put it on– this is crazy. I don’t have all this stuff.”

Clay: Well, here’s the thing is back in the day, you used to have to go to a video company paying about $4,000 just to do the video. You spent about $6,000 for the website but then you got to put it all together. You got to find a guy who’s a graphic designer, then you got to go find a guy that help teach you how to sell, and I hired all these people by the way. My wife was with the Office Depot and she worked at your facility.

I’m working at Applebee’s and DirecTV and Target and all of her income is going back to buy this stuff. You and I sat down and said, “What if we could find a way to make it super affordable?”

Thrive15.com, we teach you the online education of how to start and grow a successful business. But for $5800 a month, on a month to month basis, you can have all of the marketing and branding team that builds our swag that you and I own. They’ll do it for you at like half or a third of the cost we can find anywhere else and it’s all available for you right here at thrive15.com in beautiful Jenks America.

Dr. Zoellner: Beautiful Jenks America. A couple of years ago Clay approached me and said, “Hey listen, I want to scale business coaching because that’s my passion. I love to do,” and I go, “I love mentoring young business people too and I don’t have enough time to do as many as I’d like to do and there’s a lot of people that asked me to do it as I don’t have the time to do it, but I like your idea of scaling this.” What we did is we put together Thrive15.com, which I like to refer to as the Netflix business school coaching if you will. What I mean by that is it’s a monthly fee it’s minimal $19. We spend more at Starbucks on a pumpkin spice latte whatever your thing is.

Clay: By the way, so people know our motivation. You and I grew up poor. We didn’t have money.

Dr. Zoellner: Yes.

Clay: We even have a scholarship with that’s $19 a month. But literally, if you’re in a spot, you just go in there and you click a little button and we have many people who are paying five bucks a month because that’s what they can afford. We want to help you. That’s a handout.

Dr. Zoellner: That’s our heart out to help you and so what we’ve done is we’ve gone around the country and we’ve gotten all these swag Elisha’s guys. We’re talking about Lee Cockrell who managed 40000 employees at Disney World. Yes, that’s the thing. We took from him. We opened his brain surgically and we went in there. We got all of his time management goodies. We took all those time management goodies and now, we’ve given them to you okay, in the Thrive15 platform. We went down to San Antonio and hooked up with David Robinson. That was a fun deal.

Clay: Now, David Robinson, a lot of you don’t realize, but since he won the MVP of the NBA and since he won two gold medals, since he won two championships, he went on in and started at I think the admiral capital fund. He started a school that was set up to provide world class education for inner city kids that couldn’t afford it, called the Carver Academy. Then, he started this investment fund, Academy of Sports right here in Tulsa. He owns that.

Dr. Zoellner: That’s a thing.

Clay: That’s his thing, Academy Sports. He owns hotels, he owns– He’s done better off the court financially than on the court. He teaches you leadership and sale. He’s awesome.

Dr. Zoellner: We also mind our little local area. Believe it or not, Tulsa’s one of the number one cities for entrepreneurship in the country. We’ve got a lot of great minds right here but we’re not got Jill Donovan. We filmed her. We chopped it up in the videos. If you’re out there, you’re thinking, “Well, I don’t have time.” or “I can’t do it.” Her story is inspiring. We got Sean Kouplen, who’s a CEO of Regent Bank to talk about raising capital and how you present yourself to a bank to raise money. We have all these videos that you can watch as much as you want, as often as you want. By the way, when you get a membership, well, give a free one to a military personnel, okay? That’s pretty awesome.

But then, we also found out that some people want more than that. That’s when we came up to one on one business coaching that Clay was just talking about. Yes, you say, “Listen, the figures are great and all that but I want to feel you, touch you.” Then, on top of that, we said, “Listen, I don’t want to one on one but I do want to feel you, touch you,” so that’s why we have our workshops. The next one’s coming up when Clay?

Clay: January 20th and 21st right here at the beautiful Jenks River Walk, Thrive15.com world headquarters. We have scholarship pricing available. There’s no upsells so anybody can afford to be there and no one will be upsold a bunch stuff when you’re there. There’s always a three –

Dr. Z and Clay: -two, one, boom.

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