Business Coach Clay Clark talking about his son’s lawn-care business..
Clay Clark: He brings in about nine dollars a week and it takes me about four hours of my weekend to get to the locations. But he now can attach the trailer and detach the trailer without his mother doing the work. Or without me during the work. Progress is occurring.
Dr. Zoellner: Progress is occurring. I love the fact that he loves to mow. That’s just awesome.
Clay Clark: Hey now, Vanessa. I don’t know if Vanessa can hear me. Okay, we’ll kind of wave at her there. We’ll see. Lets see, I’m knocking on the window inside the box that rocks to see if I can get the attention of the bird here. Lets see if I can get her attention. Is it possible, through sights and sounds, quick question here, Vanessa. Quick question. What is Aubrey’s domain for his website? What’s his domain?
Dr. Zellner: It’s gonna bother me until we get it.
Clay Clark: MowtownTulsa.com. I don’t think it is mow town Tulsa. Can you find what that is real quick here? Okay, so inside the business coach box that rocks we will find out my son’s domain for website very, very soon but again, you wanna schedule time to proactively design the life you want for faith, family, fitness, finances, friendship, and fun, those F-6 goals. Faith, family, fitness, finances, friendship, and fun. And I wanna ask you this, Chris. When you decided to join the US Navy, did you do it because you woke up drunk in a bush one day and you realized oh my gosh, I’m in the military? Or did you plan it out, or what was the process like of deciding to join the US Navy?
Chris: Well I’ll tell you it took about 11 months before I actually shipped out, what they call shipping out to bootcamp but, I joined the Navy for the SEAL program.
Clay Clark: When did you, how long did it take you to decide that’s what you wanted to do? Was it like an overnight thing or did you kinda plan that out? How did that decision occur?
Chris: It took some planning. Basically, I think I ran out of college money. That was my big thing. So, I decided well okay, I’m gonna take advantage of some of the things they have to offer in that area.
Clay Clark: So now that you’ve built a business with the help of a business coach, Anchor Financial, obviously that has taken time to build. When did you decide you wanted to get into the financial planning game and then how did it take you from the time you had the decision until you actually became a financial consultant for businesses and business people?
Chris: Well, two things. Number one, I had a father in law that was in the business at the time and he helped mentor me in. The second thing was the fact that my grandfather had gone his entire life, didn’t believe in life insurance, worked probably two jobs his entire life and died broke. You see that first hand and it’s exhausting to go through the process of passing away and, seeing someone pass away and then having to take care of the remainder behind. It was definitely a two fold thing for me so it was good timing and it was like right, worked out wannabe at the time I believe.
Clay Clark: Now, Z, this just in. We have my son’s domain. It’s mow town but m-o-w. So not like the record company, but mow town mowtownTulsa.com and the slogan is, if you want the nine year old to mow your lawn, call his mom. As a business coach and his dad, I am so proud.
Dr. Zellner: That’s, that’s nice. You’ll have to change that every year. Unless you’re just always hiring nine year olds.
Clay Clark: I wanna ask you business coach to business coach, from the time that you had the idea to become an optometrist. So, you had the idea. How long did it take you before you graduated with a degree that would allow you to practice optometry?
Dr. Zellner: Well I did four years of undergraduate and then four years of optometry school so that was eight. And I really locked it down probably my second year of undergraduate. I knew I wanted to go into the medical field and so I did a little research and thought optometry’s the perfect blend of, people are happy when they come in. Some doctors where you’re sick or you’re hurting, so people are, on the most part, happy when you help people see better. Vision is so important to people in their life. And then also you have that business side of it too where you sell glasses and contacts lenses. I thought that’s a nice mixture of the two.
Business coach Clay Clark: When did you decide to open up your own practice? When did that happen?
Dr. Zellner: When I got out of school I was gonna buy a practice and then put my print on it, so to speak, and then I couldn’t find the money from the bank and that’s a whole ‘nother story. And so I had to go work for other folks for about a year, year and a half. Then I finally saved up some money, just scraped it up.
Clay Clark: And we’re just flying through all the things you had to do. You had to design a sign, had to choose a building. Make a logo business card, graphic design, checklists, workflows. You had to set up all those things. And so you had to wake up every morning or stay up late, to make a to-do list for the items you wanted to proactively get done, because when you get to work there’s all this reactionary work. So when did you find the time, Z, proactively to get all these things done? What was your schedule? What was your flow?
Dr. Zellner: Mine was at night. In the evenings, I’m more of a night owl. I know you’re a morning lark.
Clay Clark: I am a morning lark.
Dr. Zellner: I’m more of a, I’m going to bed while you’re getting up, kinda thing.
Clay Clark: If we just text each other for 3 am we’ve covered the entire-
Dr. Zellner: It’s so funny, whenever we’d be filming here for our website, Thrive15.com, sometimes you’d have to film in the evenings.
Clay Clark: Like 8 pm. Crazy.
Dr. Zellner: It’d get about that 8:30, 9 o’clock and you’d be over there making funny eyes and you’d be like nodding and you’d be like looking for a blankie and a corner to get into and suck your thumb in the fetal position. And I was just waking up and it was just so fun to look at you and go, I’m awake and you’re not.
Clay Clark: So you did it a night though?
Dr. Zellner: Yeah, I did mine at night. I would stay up and that was kinda my mood. It was easy for me to stay up then get up like you do at like.