U.S Olympic Team Member Nick Symmonds on How to Get Your Product Into Major Retail Stores

Audio Transcription

How do you get your products into major retail stores like target? How does the division three athlete from willamette university make it onto the United States Olympic track and field team? What would happen if you could infuse caffeine taurine and b vitamins into gum and perhaps most importantly, Navan Johnson.

Yes, yes, yes and yes. Thrive nation. Check this out today, Joe. We are interviewing the former division three athlete, turned two time Olympic athlete and the founder of run Gaba, the man, the myth, the legend. Mr Nick Symmonds my friend. How are you?

I appreciate it. I’m good. How are you?

Oh Man. I’ve been preparing myself psychologically and stretching physically to get ready for this intro, so I feel I’m doing good. Who got kind of a good, a good flow going and I’d like for you to share with listeners out there who haven’t cyber stock do you like? I have about your background and your history and kind of when you first developed your love for running.

Yeah. Boy, that’s a good question. Um, so for your listeners, I’m 34 years old. I live in the Pacific northwest. I grew up in Boise, Idaho and I loved playing soccer, ice hockey, you name it, but I was a pretty late bloomer, about 90 pounds five feet tall when I started high school. So I had gotten murdered on the soccer pitch, so they said why don’t you go run cross country? And so that’s what I did my freshman year of high school. I ran cross country and I think I was number five in state that year. So I just kept running for 20 years. Took me to a, to college I seven Ncaa titles, six US outdoor titles in two Olympic teams. So kind of funny. I ended up being built like a soccer player. People have seen me run, I look more like a ice hockey or soccer player, but I ended up being a pretty good middle distance runner.

Nick Symmonds, I’ll have a one in 226,570 a chance of getting this right. Do you know Brett Denton? I don’t. Should I? Oh, he lives in Boise, Idaho at cavell fit and uh, he would love you. He has a very successful gym there. At some point you have to meet it’s fit and Boise, Idaho. I was just curious there. Anyway, struck out. So Mike, my family is still back there so I go back quite frequently.

I would like to get your thoughts on. I know that none of that now that we’ve established you’re from. Can you share with me, share with us through your thoughts on the Blue Turf? Are you offended by it?

You know what, I, I’m not offended by it, but what I, a lot of people don’t know. We used to train there a lot, but ducks and geese try to land on it and the winters they think it’s actually a pond and it was pretty, pretty tragic to watch these tucks try to come in for a smooth landing and, and eat it. It’s a, it’s, it’s, it’s unique. I guess I would say, but it’s a, you know, I, I’ve fond memories because we used to run the Idaho state track meet there every year. You know, you, you, uh, attended, uh, will, will Marshall’s. William meant laminate will, am they always say it’s Willamette damn it. It’s hard to forget. You went to will willamette university where you won seven Ncaa division three titles and outdoor track. When did you realize that you had what it takes to compete with any other track athlete on the planet in, in your category?

No, that’s a great question. Division three athletics is unusual for people that want to go on to run pro, but it works. It worked for me and I think the senior year I had just graduated from college and I went out to the US championships and I was ranked I think 31 going into it out of 32 people and I finished second and that’s the one. One time I had been beaten and I think it was seven years. First time I’d been beaten in seven years of the 800. And so I was really tested that day and I thought to myself, well damn, I know when I get tested I can run with the best in the US. I wonder what happens when I run with the best in the world. So that was really the first time I knew I could be really great. It also is what caught the eyes of Nike and got me my first professional contract. I, I want to ask you this because so many people are dreaming of being a pro athlete or being a paid athlete. And how, when, how old were you when you first got paid for being an athlete? How old were you when you have that Nike deal? Twenty two and a half. How, how have you supported yourself since getting that deal? Have you been pretty much a pro sponsored athletes since that time that you signed with Nike? I just thought because I was a business show, we have a lot of listeners out there, business-minded people. How have you been able to support yourself?

That’s a great question. You know, those early days was kind of rough. Fortunately, Nike came on board and a couple other companies and, and the Oregon track club here was helping them out, but I mean I wasn’t living like a, like a league minimum pro, pro ball or anything I was struggling to get by, but I had enough to train full time and so I was able to really put myself, you know, all in, on running and uh, my second contract was it a little better. It was a six figure deal. But, uh, I was able to live on my running income from the age of 22 to 30 4:33, excuse me. I retired from track and field this time last year and it was a brutal transition, um, from taking all that running money to not having any running money come in. Fortunately I recognize that I was going to age of the sport. Um, and when I was 30 I started a company called Ron Gum and so that’s been able to pick up the slack when the running money evaporated.

I’d like to, I like to get into, to run gum. And before we transitioned to that, I have one more. One more question for you, is it right Marshall? And I said, yeah, we’ll, we’ll animate question. Do you do again, I hate to be the guy who’s asking random questions. Do you know this person do to that person, but do you know Josh Erickson or Grant Lesley?

I know grant Lesley.

Yes. Yes, yes I will. There’s like a three out of 240,000 population. Oh, Boise has 226,000 people. Will Am. It has a population of how many people go there guys? Like $400. I’m serious that I was one. I mean that’s pretty awesome right there. And I won the lottery here. How do you know grant? Lesley?

I honestly, I just know the name. Did he go to, did he go to it?

He was the quarterback that lead them to what it was for the country or something like that. Well, uh, what’s your mascot? What was the mascot at Willamette? What was your man’s bare bear? Cats. The America. Wow. Okay. Okay. So now we move on. So you, you, uh, you know, you six time United States national, 800 meters champion, two-time Olympic athlete. Have you ever taken a step back and thought, I cannot believe I did that we have you ever thought, have you ever pinched yourself? Have you ever had a speaking event? Anything where you thought, wow, I cannot believe I did that,

you know, so I stopped running last year and uh, I immediately put on like 25 pounds, right? Like every pro athlete does when my hang up, their spikes and I looked in the mirror the other day and I’m like, how in the world did I break four minutes in the mile, you know, how in the world did I make it to an Olympic final? Not that I’m not fit right now, but I’m just so far from where I was when I was ranked number two in the world. So that was kind of a moment, you know, and I think, Eh, you know, a lot of guys when they get into their mid thirties and start to get that dad bod there, like I remember when I was pretty fit. So I’ve actually gotten back into like a regular workout routine to try to, you know, at least so I can look in the mirror and feel, feel proud of the body that I got. But uh, you know, I mean,

yeah, I just want to say that Nick Symmonds, you, you look better right now than you used to. Look, I’ll tell you. Well, you filled out. You have too skinny, too skinny, too fast. Anyway, so that’s

girlfriend said she’s like, you are way too skinny as a runner now you actually look like a normal person. So I guess he got going for me.

Okay. Now is there a time in your career? I remember when I was starting to Dj connection.com if you get a chance to do google it and with you’re in front of your computer Dj Connection Dot Com. Before I sold it, it was the largest wedding entertainment company on the planet. Okay. So we would do like 80 weddings on a weekend. A Marshall, you worked with me and it’ll be nine years ago. Marshall work there, and I remember when I started though, Dude, I was working at applebee’s target and direct TV. I remember coming home, my wife had two jobs. She’s worked at office depot and at a division one college has a cheerleading coach called Oral Roberts University. I remember saying we need to turn off the air conditioning so that I can afford to advertise in the yellow pages. That was the low point of my life turning off the air conditioning. It was over 100 degrees in Oklahoma. Marshall, you know that. It’s 100 degrees in the summer. Hot, hot. That was the low point and I thought, man, I am out of my mind. We’ve got to do this. But Vanessa said, yes, we turned it off. Turned on the ads. Things started happening. What was your low point in your career where you hit rock bottom and you thought, man, this was, this is bad.

Well, as a business owner or as an athlete,

let’s go with a athlete first. Business owner second.

Yeah. I mean, as an athlete, um, 2014. Um, I was ranked number two in the world. I just signed this fat contract with Brooks running and I’m like, I, you know, I, I was as high as I’d ever been. I’m just about to go. Just, I mean, literally every time I stepped on the track may directors were paying me $10,000 cash. It was insane. I was minting money, um, and I thought I’ve never gotten a real injury. I’m going to be able to do this for another 10 years. And then I got a really bad injury called an avulsion fracture in my knee, which really probably could have been a career ending injury. I ended up running a couple more years after that, but that, that summer as I was turning down $10,000, checks, you know, to fly out to Monaco to race. It was, it was pretty bad. Low Point. And I’ll be honest, I wasn’t even a little bit suicidal at the time. I just didn’t have any sense of purpose. I woke up and just stared at the ceiling knowing that I was missing out on this money and missing out on the travel and couldn’t do what I felt I was born to do. Um, and it was, that was probably the lowest I’ve ever been in my life.

Nick Symmonds, you, you strike me as a guy that’s pretty resilient. Um, and so once you push through, you know, injuries and track, you’ve probably pushed through a probably mental injuries either. I think to be an entrepreneur, Marshall, you’ve seen this. Do we not have to push through mental injuries, rejection, constant setbacks, adversity. I mean, it’s brutal, man. A ton of adversity and my partner and I, uh, you know, between the, the port, my partner and I, uh, nick, we built 13 multimillion dollar companies. So there’s a bank, there’s an optometry clinic, there’s a chain of men’s haircut businesses. There’s just a lot of businesses and a it, but we’ve fought through a lot of adversity. Talk to me about your business career. When did you first run into some serious business adversity? The look, the bottom.

Well, you know, I guess the first business I started was, you know, you mentioned you did a chain of, of haircuts, salons. We actually had a chain of tanning salons and I had never actually been tanning, uh, in my life, but I owned a couple of tanning salons. So, um, we ended up selling those to start run gum and you know, not that we’ve ever had a rock bottom moment because we’ve really consistently grown over the last four years. But as you, as any good entrepreneurial entrepreneur knows there’s those cash crunches you find yourself in. And every time we’d gotten into a cash crunch it’s felt like, Oh God, we’re going bankrupt. And I always find a way to get us out of it. Whether it’s raising money or increasing sales or uh, you know, scaling back temporarily. It’s the cash crunches that scare you. And I’m reminded of of shoe dog.

I don’t know if you read it shoots, great book. And he talks about the early days at Nike and he said, you know, there were, there were multiple days where he knew that if his accounts receivable, if it’s the money that was owed to him didn’t land the next day, that he wouldn’t make payroll and they’d have to shutter the business. And he said that he was so heavily leveraged that, that happened multiple, multiple times in the early years. And I, I really lean on that now as a business owner, as we scale our business, I’m like, there are going to be more cash crunch crunches and I’m going to have to be comfortable with that and have to, like you said, be resilient and get us out of them. So it’s not a, it’s never a smooth line, you know, to uh, to riches. You’ve always got these ups and downs and when you’re up, you know, you’re probably never as up as you actually feel. And when you’re down, you’re, you’re often times never as down as you actually are.

Nick, I want to give you a one. Would you like to one up Nike Real quick here? I just want to give you kind of one up here. Okay, so here we go. Your company’s called run gum. Yeah. Uh, and how long did it take you to think of that idea gum?

Well, I’d been tinkering around with it for a couple of years. It took one summer to bring it to market that summer that I was so depressed. I went to my business partner and my coach, I said, I don’t know what to do. I’m just so sad. He goes, well, now that you’ve got a summer free, why don’t we start run gun? We’ve been talking about doing this for years. Now we’ve got the time and the energy, let’s actually bring it to market. So from the time we committed to it, to the time we brought it to market, took about six months.

I’m going to allow you to, to one up Nike here. Okay. Is this is your opportunity. You can one up Nike’s. Here we go. I’m Marshall. I’m going to give the listeners out there to tips for not succeeding. Okay. Deal. It will be typical tip eight and nine. What? We’ll skip the first seven tips, but tip eight and nine, nick for not being successful. Here’s tip number eight. Probably my best tip is tip number eight. Uh, always keep bags of your own poop collected throughout your stay and just have it ready. That’s tip eight for not being successful. And tip number nine is don’t name your company Blue Ribbon Sports. Yeah. How bad is that name from 1964 to 1971 seven years. Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman are calling it blue ribbon sports. That is whack.

Isn’t that incredible? And here’s the, here’s the something even more credible. When they finally came to the conclusion that they were going to call it Nike, none of them liked it. And I think it was Hollister, is like, this is the worst name ever, you know, but look what they’ve made it into. It’s, it’s one of the most recognized brands in the world.

The lady who designed the Nike Logo, Carol, it’s Carolyn Davidson, Carolyn Davidson, and she created the graphic, the little swoosh, and I believe they paid her 35 bucks

in that incredible. I think that in the end she got some stock options that were worth a lot more of. Eventually they retroactively.

Well recently the anniversary, they gave her a big ticket. They gave rats big, but that’s. I mean, so again, you’re ahead of Nike in my mind, I mean six months in you came up with that name. That’s great. Boom you’re up. But it took him seven years. So run gum. A lot of our listeners out there, we have, just so you kind of know, we have about a half million people that download our podcast every month and they’re entrepreneurs that where we listens to us entrepreneurs, people who want to be an entrepreneur. So let’s talk about run gum. Run Gum. What is gum? Why should we all buy run gum?

Well, I mean chances are you’re one of the 90 percent of Americans that uses caffeine every day and we’ve got 50 milligrams of caffeine per piece and I’ll tell you why. I decided to create this product. So I was sponsored by a few, a few different companies, but a few of the energy companies were sending me their product, the energy drink company specifically, and I’m like, this is great. I’m going to drink my energy, drink and lace up my Nike’s and go crush a workout, and I did. I loved the way the energy drinks made me feel from an energy standpoint, but having that heavy acidic liquid sloshing around my stomach, it just really bothered me and I studied biochemistry. It will amie university, so I knew that these stimulants could be absorbed sublingually through the lining of the mouth if we could just figure out a way to get it into your to your gums, and I was watching this commercial for Nicorette and I’m like, there’s a reason nicorette shows chewing gum to deliver nicotine to the system because it’s so efficient.

And so I was tinkering around and I figured out how to infuse a piece of chewing gum with caffeine towering and b vitamins. If that sounds familiar. It’s very similar to what you’d find in most energy drinks and then I started showing this stuff and let me tell you, it just hits you like a train. It’s unlike any other energy product on the market because every other energy product pretty much has you swallowing something, right? You drink an energy drink, you drink an energy shot, you drink coffee, you’re going to swallow that and it’s going to take about 30 to 40 minutes for you to absorb it. Yeah. But the sublingual absorption so much faster. You’re getting 50 to 100 milligrams of caffeine straight to the brain essentially. And, and so it’s just, it really wakes you up. It’s great for athletes because they don’t have anything their stomach sloshing around.

But what I use it for now that I’m not really training is that one or 2:00 PM slump, you know, after lunch I just want to take a nap. I chew it, pack or run gum and I’m good to go. But uh, you know, busy moms and dads love it when they’re running errands. Business people love it when they’re running into a meeting, so we call it run gum because it keeps your engine running. And uh, I think when people try it, they’re like, holy cow, this, this really does work and we have a very high customer attention because of it.

Here’s the deal. This is not a passive aggressive attempt to get a new sponsor here. Marshall, this is not, I’m not, I’m just saying to you, nick it. Could you send me a sample? Can I get some lists here? Yeah. Shoot, shoot me an email and I’ll send you guys a bunch. Yeah, I’ll do it. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll do it because I would love to just. But again, I would like to contrast red bull versus run gum for a second. So I’m going to play up a clip here and you tell me how this clip is different from someone who’s taking run gum. Okay. This is an audio clip. Let’s cue it up. Marshall, I’ll it up. And then nick, breakdown how you run gum is it creates different results than this clip here. So here we go.

Here we go. Let me get it. Let me get. Let me kind of cue through here. Here we go. He’s a male nurse. We hit a couple of raised last night. It was totally off the Hook Heifer. I had a couple of red bulls. If you ever had a rebel. I never had a red bull before, but I had a red bull last night and I really liked my book. I got a new necklace, glows in the dark. You can’t really see it right now. Let’s you do this. That’s really something. Doesn’t make you crash pretty hard. No, no, no, no, no. I don’t think so. No. No. Hey, after we thought we should go to a red bull, you can get a bull. I get irritable. We share ribble. Okay, that’d be great. That sounds good.

So Red Bull, red bull. And they become jittery. A borderline crazy delusional. And then they just crashed. Talk to me about how your product is different than red bull.

You know, most of the crash associated with a lot of energy products is the sugar. And uh, you know, I know there is a sugar free red bull, but they’re sugared version has a ton of sugar in it. We’re a sugar free product, whereas zero calories were gluten free or Vegan. We really tick all those boxes, but we’re just, we’re just the stimulants. You want, not all the other crap.

What I’m going to do here is I’m going to, um, our offices. If you get a chance, are you, are you in front of a computer? We can google something real quick. Yeah, absolutely. If you do a google search for thrive time show space, and then the word Jinx, j e n k s thrive time show jinx. You’ve got about a, it should pull up on the Google maps there. We’ve got about a 20,000 square foot facility. If you click on, you can see photos of it there. If you, if you, Marshall, I’m committing on the air here for. Oh Wow. If you can send us some samples there to our river riverwalk office. What I’m going to do is I’m going to be true in some of this, uh, on gum before broadcasting. I love that I’m going to be to Marshall, I want to be talking about run gum and you know, I’m going to do it.

I know you’re going to talk a lot about them. Yeah. You’re all of a sudden you’re gonna get a lot of sales from random parts over the world from all of our listeners out there. So, um, see I, with the energy you brought, I figured you were already hyped on it. I’m not. This is not. I’m not hydrated. Did you imagine your listeners? Right. And you’re going to feel a passion coming from just a next level. Okay. So now let’s, let’s think about this run gum. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a product you’ve created it. Talk to me about the most challenging aspects of running the company, managing on a daily basis because you had the ideal. It’s a one day thing, but great

question. So, you know, my, my background’s in running and marketing and, and science, you know, biochemistry. I’m running a business with something that was kind of new to me. Um,

but we hired a great business manager by the name of Nathan Woods. He’s our coo and he, he really holds down the fort so I can go out and talk with investors and drum up new business. I would say that this year the most challenging thing for me was learning how to. Because actually we were self funded, believe it or not, we were uh, we were, we were launched with the founder’s round and then we grew up basically on revenue. But uh, this year we had kind of one of those cash country crunches I was talking about. We had to, um, invest in machinery, so that was like $70,000 of our cash on hand for a new machine that could handle our, are increasing demand and then we got into target. So we’re nationwide and target and it was the first real moment we had to deal with net 90 and

business listeners. Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, whoa. I want to make sure we get this. Marshall, have you ever heard of target Tarjay Latarsha? Yeah, I’ve heard of target. So targets and national store. And you just said the phrase net 90 and I think that I know what that means. I know you know what that means, but can you explain to the listeners out there what does, what does it mean? Because this is a real real. Yeah, it’s a real kick in the balls

if you’re an entrepreneur is what it is. So we launched as a direct consumer business and we’d sell on [inaudible] dot com and we’d sell on Amazon and when we made a sale there, we got the money within 24 hours. So it was awesome because we can use that money. All of a sudden when you go to a big account like target, you start dealing with what’s called net 90 and that means they place an order and you have to ship the gun within a week, but then they don’t have to pay for that order for 90 days. So that first order from target, you know, we’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars and it’s out of our warehouse. The inventory is gone and we sit around twiddling our thumbs for 90 days waiting for that cash. So it led to a cash crunch and fortunately it, it also kind of woke us up that, hey, as we expand, as we scale this business, we’re going to need more cash on hand.

So we went out and uh, and started raising money, which is something that’s a consumer package. Good companies in most startups have to have cash on hand. So I kinda got thrown into the deep and I don’t have a background in finance. Say I’d never raised money for a company before. But, you know, like any good entrepreneur, you, you, you talked to some mentors and you read some books and within a few months we had a, we had a seed round put together and uh, you know, we, we got ourselves out of that hole and now we’re all, you know, the machines are fired up and you know, this month we’ll actually probably, I don’t think we’re on track to do our best month ever. Um, you know, gross sales wise this month. So it’s, uh, it all worked out.

You know how like when you were on the track and field circuit, you’re competing on the world stage, you know the cameras are everywhere. You know nick there, they’re invasive, they’re everywhere. They’re getting your, you know what I mean? If you, if you might have, I’m not saying, I’m not suggesting you might’ve ever cursed while running, but you know what I mean. They’re on your grill. They’re right up on. Yet the whole time. The camera’s everywhere. I hope you’re not offended by this, but Marshall, without Nick’s permission, I put a mic in his brain. Oh Wow. And when you heard net 90 from target, I, if it’s okay, I’d like to play the audio clip of what I heard your brain saying when they said, give it to us today and we’ll pay you in 90 days. Nick, can I go and play the audio clip is okay, please, please do. Here we go.

I’ve heard so many people tell me that net 90 just sucked their soul. Is it not the worst thing ever? Dealing with A. I mean, it’s great now on the other side, right? But is it not terrible when you have a product that’s making money and you get paid and then you may not make a crazy profit, you might make a 20 percent margin or whatever your margin is, but you’re, you know, you buy the product, you sell the product, you buy the product, but the craziness of getting paid 90 days after you sell something, what that felt like, Bro, I mean when you heard this

brutal, but you know, for a company like target target’s a brand building partner and when they partnered with us, they didn’t beat us up over price. They buy it almost full wholesale. Um, and we do have a pretty juicy margin. So you know, that that was nice. And then um, you know, they’re just, they’re just, they give us data every single day on our sell through velocity. So it’s something that I can go out to investors and say hey, today or this week we’re up x percent over last week. So they were really, really helpful in that way. And so I don’t mind offering net 90 to accompany like target, but it is still really challenging when you have to deal with that at first and it totally took the wind out of our sales for about 90 days.

Okay. Now you come across as, as a person who’s very methodical and very regimented, obviously like to have fun. But again, my outside perspective researching you, it seems like, you know, you committed to a goal and then you broke it down into steps, okay, this is what I need to do to do track and field at the next level. Okay, this is what I need to do with this product, here’s what I need to do to take this product to the next level. Can you walk us through your daily routines and what your first. What was the first four hours of a typical day looks like for you?

Yeah. You know, I think one of the nice things about having been a pro athlete for 12 years, there’s a lot of the characteristics that make up a great pro athlete or athlete or what makeup a great entrepreneur and and a lot of us do like that structure and so I structure my days very similarly to how I did when I was a pro athlete. I go to bed every night at 8:30, you know, which was really hard as a 23 year old, but it’s what I’ve done my entire life. I’m in bed by 8:30 asleep by nine and this allows me to get a full eight hours of sleep. So I’m up at five and I go straight to my computer. I know a lot of psychologists would recommend against that, but I just. One of the things I love most about being an entrepreneur and you guys will appreciate this is every morning I can go open my computer and look at my inbox and I might have an email that will radically change my life forever.

I remember when I woke up and saw that target email, that was a life changing moment for me. Sometimes I’ll open it up and I’ll have a new investor that’s excited, you know, it just, it’s almost like a Christmas morning. Every single morning I get to go look and see what kind of emails I have waiting for me, so I look forward to it. I have a cup of coffee in the morning. I know that’ll sound crazy because I’ve got this awesome caffeinated gum company, but I still liked the tradition of having a cup of coffee in the morning and uh, and so I checked my emails, respond with you emails, have my coffee, and then I go and workout. And I think this is arguably of the best things that any human can do to jump start their day is to go and get 30 minutes to an hour worth of workout.

And some days I run, some days I swim, some I bike, some days I lift, but that really helps me kind of get my brain ready to go for the day. Then I’m in the office at nine. I work a nine to five as a pro athlete. I used to get to take a nap everyday at one and I missed that a lot, but, uh, I’ve got this, uh, this unique caffeinated product that can keep me going through the afternoon. I go home at five. I used to know it was one of the reasons I think I put on so much darn wade is that I was having like two or three beers everyday when I got home. Um, you know, just because I was so stressed and I’ve learned a more healthy ways to deal with that. Now I’ve cut my alcohol consumption by three quarters, which has helped a lot as well. Have a nice homemade dinner and then, you know, I’m back at it the next day. Can I,

I want to ask you this. You’re a guy that, you know, again, you’re methodical, you’re organized, you have a routine. Where are you physically located when you plan out your day? Oh, you know what? What does that process look like when you get back from working out and you’re planning out your calendar for the day or making your to do list? Where are you physically located when you do that? Typically?

No, no, it’s while I’m working out that I’m planning out my day. It’s like my days are this, this horrible chaos of phone calls and meetings and places I need to be. And so for an hour every morning I get to say, okay, how can I, how can I get through this day most effectively? And that’s my like one hour of preparation time and I think clear and, and, uh, I’m able to really kinda like, you know, get that energy up a wall. I’m actually working out, especially if I’m running running is by far the best for doing that. It’s a little bit harder when I’m, when I’m lifting or moving around a lot.

Now you, you come across as a well read person and maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’ve never read a book in your life.

No, my mom’s an English teacher so she sends me a new book almost every week.

So what are wonder one or two books that you would recommend for all of our entrepreneurial listeners out there when you said, you know what, I read that book and it really did help. Oh

yeah. I mean, this’ll, this’ll be a go to for anybody, but a four hour work week by Tim Ferriss Kinda gets the juices flowing. It might be a little outdated now, but the, the, the, uh, the tips and the life hacks and just the messaging in there is all really, really good to kind of light that fire in an entrepreneur. And I remember when I read that and I’m like, I can take on the world, I can hack my way out of anything, you know. So that’s a great one. I’m Mba in a nutshell, you know, for those of you who didn’t go out and get an Mba, that’s a nice one. If you want to really understand kind of the more, the book smarts behind business. But to be honest, this system, you know, it’s not a book or anything, but the best, best resource on the planet for an entrepreneur is investopedia because you’re going to be thrown a hundred different terms every single day and I just smile and pretend like I know what some of them are and I immediately go and look them up on Investopedia, you know, cap table series a tpr. Everything’s

an acronym and you don’t, you don’t want to be the guy that doesn’t know what you’re talking teaching moment. You just said you smile and act like you know what there. So yeah, I’m not going to pretend like I don’t know what I know. That’s big, Bro. That’s huge Marshall. That’s monumental that we talk about this a lot. A lot. People always say to me, clay clay, clay, Clay Clark, former Dj Clay, how are you doing? I said, good. I said, hey, people ask if I was in a meeting today and someone said, what’s your cap rate on your real estate? And I said, what’d you say? And they said, I told him, I don’t know what that means. I’m like, no, no, no, that’s not a move which you say, as you say, that’s a very good question and tomorrow morning I will give you the answer, but I want to think about it.

I didn’t ever want to misquote. I want everyone know this is my secret on that. I always say, you know, that’s just, it’s a really, really important question. I don’t want to give it, you know, any, any data that might be misleading, so I’m going to go back and pull the numbers and then I’ll make sure I have an accurate quote for you or something like that. You are. So they go off for at least a half hour if you want to. This is so powerful. No Man, you got you. I mean because here’s the thing. Ninety nine percent of entrepreneurs are going to find 100 percent of entrepreneurs are gonna find themselves in that moment and there’s nothing wrong with not knowing every single term or sometimes I actually know what the term is. Like I, I always called it a temporary price reduction to temporary price reduction and then the sales guys, they all throw around tpr and I was like, oh my God, I don’t know what a TPR is.

Sure. I did know what it was. It’s just everyone likes to use these, these darn abbreviations and so you’d go to investopedia. You can figure it out in about five seconds. Can you talk to us about tpr real quick? What’s tprs is someone out there who’s listening right now? They’re going, what’s DPR? I don’t know. It’s a temporary price reductions. So like at target right now run into target. We’re on TPR, were on temporary price reduction. It’s a fancy way of saying we’re on sale. So we marked down the price by 20 percent. Now if it’s okay, I know I’ve really known you for about 30 minutes here, but I have a. I have a confession. Can I make a confession to you, my friend? Yeah, sure.

Okay. Here’s the Marshall and you can guys can just forgive me and I moved back in the day Christmas parties that I ever booked was Boeing Airlines. Their anniversary of it, I’m 21 years old and Alice Hargrove, h a r g o v e, she reaches out to me. She says, clay, I just have a concern, are you fully insured? And I said yes with some of the best insurance providers in the world, which I said plural, which is probably not a good move. And I said, what kind of insurance do you require? What? We just, we don’t, we require at least a minimum of a million dollars of liability and the umbrella insurance. I’m writing these. What else do you need? She says, well, I need umbrella, I need worker’s comp. I need liability. And if you can send that to me, I am going to say the yes, yes, because I really like what you’re saying. And I

said to her, you know, I have workman’s comp, I’ve got umbrella, I’ve got liability, I have all that. I mean, it’s like I’m almost to insured, Nick. I almost have too much insurance. I immediately came back to my house and I called the insurance guy, boop boop. And I’m like, Hey, I need workman’s comp. Umbrella liability in effect. Now I need it now, but if I would have, so if I would’ve said to her, I don’t know what you’re talking about, what would have happened, nick?

She would have been like, well, I’m gonna. Go find the next guy that knows what I’m talking about and has all this. You bought yourself 24 hours and as an entrepreneur, do you know how big 24 hours is? You know how much I can get done with 24 hours if you know my back’s against the wall, so just buy yourself a little bit of breathing room, do your homework and you’ll be much better for it.

Oh my, that. This right. This Marshall, this might be the most profound knowledge bombs we’ve ever had. We just, we just interviewed John Maxwell leadership expert. Like what? Forty five minutes ago and this rivals the John Maxwell interview. I’m just super move. I’m gonna. Hit the bottom button. I’m going to try to get together some Harry Carey some Air Horn. The whole thing is too much. I’m gonna. Try and get back together. Okay. Hi. Pointing Nick. Yeah, I heard you talking about high pointing. I thought to myself, I’m gonna go to Investopedia to look a up. I’ll look it up and there’s nothing there. Can you explain to us what high pointing is and why you’re into high pointing right now?

So. Hi. Hi. Pointing is a weird group of people that like to try to climb to the top of every state. So scared. I’m, I’m in Oregon right now. So I had to go stand on the top of Mount Hood just to see what it looked like. And you know, I, I’d actually done a lot of the climbs in the west coast and I thought, you know, it’d be cool to stand at the top of every single state. So I’m a state high point or I’m trying to stand on top of every state. I think I’ve got about 25 right now. Um, and for me some of the climbs are really hard. Like climbing Mount Rainier was one of the hardest physical things I’ve ever done. Some of them you can drive to the top of a. But my favorite thing is I get to see every single state and I’ve seen parts of America that I’d never, ever would have seen for any other reason. And it just kind of cool because it really allows me to, to feel, you know, like, like a true American. Uh, I, I don’t, I don’t, I’ve never lived in coal country, but at least I’ve visited Western Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky and western West Virginia and I know, you know, what that part of the country looks like. And I’ve met people there and I’ve talked to them and I, I don’t know, like any politician that goes around and visits their constituents. I just feel like I’ve connected with more Americans by having done this,

Nick Symmonds, uh, February eighth and ninth. I’m not, I’m not sure what your calendar holds there, but if you want to do some high pointing, we have a, a workshop Marshall, the in person workshop and the thrive time show workshop where we have hundreds of Americans that make your, make their way to Tulsa, Oklahoma to learn how to take their business to the next level. And the last one, Marshall, can you explain to nick who we had speak at our conference? We had the previous pr consultant for Michael Jackson, Nike Pizza Hut, Charlton Heston, Prince George, Michael, George, Michael Cameron Diaz. His name is Michael Levine. Okay. He’s uh, he’s out in California. And then we also had Ken Schmidt who was the former communications director for Harley Davidson. And he was the one that was responsible for turning around the company when they, when they were competing against the Japanese bikes and really five to 99. Yeah, he turned the company around. He completely turned it around. And so they came out and spoke at the conference, which was just incredible for all the attendees there. And we bought and we bought all their books. So. So, uh, nick, if you’re free on the February, what? April eighth and ninth, um, I would recommend you do some high pointing at the thrive time show offices. I’ll get you.

No, it’d be, it’d be an honor. Actually have the high point of Oklahoma, but I still don’t hang out with you guys.

No, seriously, if you want to be there. I think we’re going to have an awesome event and a seriously, we will buy your book of life outside the Oval Office. I guarantee you will sell what will sell every copy that you bring with you.

Absolutely. I’ll bring some run gum and hand them out. You know, one of the things I love about Ron gum is it’s a really affordable way to sample. You might pay three bucks for a red bull, three bucks for a, for a five hour energy, but run gms only a buck 99. So we undercut our competition and it’s a really easy product for me to sample so I can hand it out to thousands of people at, at time. And I always say, you know, the first taste is free. The second one will cost you make a lot of addicts that have my, uh, out of people that try it.

Well, nick, I promise you, you send me a sample and I’m going to be typing it up on this show each and every show off into a bunch. No, I’m serious. I’m, I’m a big fan of what I’m hearing so far. Final question. I have for you and then I’ll give you the floor to talk about whatever you want to talk about the next 12 months of your life. I’m sure you’ve thought about it. I’m sure you’ve thought about where you’re going to go run gum, where it’s headed, your life, where it’s headed. Are you dating right now? Are you single? What’s going on?

I’ve got a girlfriend we’ve been dating for just over three years and I’m getting the full court press on marriage. So I’ll be married, uh, here in the, in the near future I’m sure.

So tell me about the next 12 months. What do you see, maybe, maybe marriage, maybe you’re a bunch of new poetic tattoos. What would tell me the next 12 months? What are you thinking about?

You know, for me it’s all about the business right now. I knew that the day I looked back on my running career, and I can tell you the exact moment that I really set the ball, you know, everything in motion to become very, very good. I woke up one day and I, I just, I hated my course of study. I knew I didn’t want to be a doctor. I felt lost, I felt scared and I said, well, I’m going to put everything I got into running and you know, maybe it’ll be my way out. And I decided to pack my bags up and move to central and lived there for three months so I could lose weight and build red blood cells at altitude and train like, like the Kenyans trained. That’s the moment that I set the course for the rest of my life, you know, to be a pro athlete, that, that was the defining moment.

And recently when I retired from running, I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, I need to have that moment with run gum. Now I need to look. I need to show up to the office every day as though this is the most important thing in my life. And it is right now. So right now for next 12 months, certainly an end. And for the foreseeable future, I need to continue to have that all in mentality with run gum. And if I do, you know, as history shows that you know, will be successful. So that’s what the next 12 months in my life I have explained it to my girlfriend, Hispanic, explain it to my family. I said, Hey, 2019, as is the year that I scaled run gum. And we really find out what we have

debt right there, thrive nation. If you are not processing what he’s saying, that the level of focus and commitment, that determination, that right there is what separates the intenders from the people that actually get it done. Uh, nick, we’d like to end each and every show with the boom. Which around here stands for what? Marshall? Big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. So it’s okay. Uh, nick, where are you physically located right now?

Beautiful. Eugene, Oregon. Tracktown USA.

By the way, I used to work with a maytag, a store in Eugene, Oregon. So I am vaguely familiar with Eugene, Oregon. Are you, are you prepared to bring the boom from Eugene, Oregon? Let’s do it. Marshall, are you prepared? Unprepared. Here we go. Three, two, one. Boom. All right. Thrive nation. If you’re out there and you have a company that’s doing well, we want to help you take it to the next level. And Andrew, are you familiar with Shaw Holmes? I am. In fact, what do you know about Shaw Homes Dot Com? I know that show homes.com is the largest home builder in Oklahoma. And Are you aware that we helped them grow this year from $48,000,000 in sales to $53,000,000 in sales? That’s very impressive. And if you were Mr Shaw and I came to you and I said, hey man, for a flat monthly fee, let’s say $1,700 a month, maybe $2,000 a month, depending upon the kind of client.

It could be $3,000 a month or $2,000 a month, but for a flat monthly fee I could help you grow your business by $5 million dollars in sales. I it help you go from $48,000,000 a year of sales to $53,000,000 a year of sales, all for a flat month to month fee. That could be $2,000, could be $1,700, depending upon the situation. We have different packages. Would that be, would that be something that you’d be interested in? A little bit, Andrew? I’d be. It sounds like a no brainer. Well, let’s do the math real quick. Angela. Just say that you were contemplating whether to hire a business coach or to a higher, a $10 per hour employee. Got It. Now have you hired a $10 per hour employee? Right. And typically, typically fulltime employee works. How many hours do you think? Forty hours a week. Okay. So. And then they work four point three weeks.

A month. There you go. That would be $1,720. Wow. Now if you hired a fulltime employee, do you think you should pay taxes and insurance and provide them an office? Okay. So they have a phone for the office to make college, didn’t have a computer, should the. Should we have an an office? Yeah. So really what does it cost you to have a $10 per hour employee? I don’t know that hard cost, but I can tell you this, this just in even a $10 per hour employee is going to cost you as an employer more than 1700, $20 a month. It’s true. The mass shows and would your mind be blown to know that you could have a coach and the entire backend support team needed to help grow a company from $48,000,000 a year to 53 million? I mean, would that. Would that be pretty outstanding? It would be pretty mind blowing. Again, a no brainer and Andrew, that’s not all. What if, what if, what if I threw in complimentary high fives at each and every meeting? What if that included an in person thrive time show workshop. Wow. What if that included a copy of the boom book? That’s impressive. What if it was a month to month? Again, that’s even more impressive.

Ah, if

you’re interested in business coaching, we only have 160 client spots available. We are probably booked out right now, but if we might have a spot available or maybe another spot opening up in February or March, but if you’re interested in one on one business coaching, I would encourage you to go to thrive time show.com and schedule a free 13 point one hour consultation with a member of our team or if you want to attend an in person workshop, let’s just say, you know what, I don’t want to commit to hiring a coach because I want to meet you guys. I want a bonafide. You guys. Would it not make sense to attend a workshop? Absolutely. And you know for the workshop Andrew, you paid $250 and you get a year of the thrive time show videos. That’s true. You get access to all the videos, all the downloadables.

There’s over $300,000 of downloadables and the workshop all for tutor and 50 bucks. That’s the deal. Now, what if I told you, you know what, Andrew, are you going through a tough spot? Are you in a tough spot? Financial? I am a andrew. Can you come up with 37 bucks? Yes. If you want to attend to the workshop for 37 bucks, let me tell you how all you gotta do is look for the thrive time show on itunes or on Google map. Okay, so you need to just do a search for thrive time show and the word jinx, or for thrive time show on itunes. Either way, leave us an objective review on the podcast and send us a screenshot of it so you subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a review or just leave us a review using your g mail and thrive time show.

Take a screenshot of it and email us to [email protected]. And then we’re going to give you a ticket for $37 my man. Wow. Think about that. Wow. Thirty $7. And if you don’t, you feel like you kind of want to hear though a real testimonial because I’m telling you that shaw homes is happy, but what don’t, doesn’t it kind of better if I’m not trying to sell it, but we have a member of the shaw teams actually telling you how it went. Yeah, I’d love to hear that. So we’ve got Aaron [inaudible], the head of sales and marketing for Shaw homes, sharing with you how we’ve been able to absolutely transform and change of the company and less than a year and a half’s time.

Hi, I’m here with Shaw homes. I first heard about clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them and uh, actually noticed he was driving the Lamborghini all of a sudden. So I was willing to listen. Uh, in my career I’ve sold a little over $800,000,000 in real estate. So honestly I thought I kinda knew everything about marketing and um, homes. And then I met clay and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed after doing 800 million in sales over a 15 year career. I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw homes. And I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area.

And that was without clay. So when I came to know clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four month period of time, has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to a hundred and 80 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly, probably never would have come up with on my own. So, uh, I got a lot of good things to say about the system that clay put in place with us. And it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with clay.

You know, I’m, I’m going to interrupt here real quick. Andrew. You know what I don’t like about this testimonial. That one I wasn’t there when he filmed it. I didn’t get a chance to coach him through what to say. That’s true. He’s not complimenting any in any of my humbleness. He’s not saying anything about my humbleness, my classiness. That’s my self awareness of my non braggadocious nature. He doesn’t it all talk about my complete inability to self promote. He doesn’t talk about just my looks, which is really what I use for selling. Yeah. So again, I will go back to the testimonial, but on a little bit disappointed in what he’s saying.

So the interaction with the team and with clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builders’ shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry, but the thing that I’ve found working with clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do. I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing and clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with them. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made.

Now he doesn’t share again. Again, I’m just, I hate to critique the testimonial, but I was not there to coach him through this. He didn’t share how. I definitely have invited him to my new year’s party featuring my son, yet he hasn’t shared with him how I’ve invited him to, to Patriots Watch parties. It’s unbelievable. Uh, he didn’t talk about how I ordered a Mariachi band and alligators to come to our office. You did on a day he was there. These are all things he’s not sharing and he hasn’t shared how we’ve helped create the group interview process. He’s not talked about the group interview process yet. And how we’ve helped them. Staff is companies not talked about this. He’s not, uh, uh. Did he talk about my beauty? Did you miss something there? Nope. Didn’t hear anything. It’s interesting. No one ever says that.

I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company. That’s definitely one of the largest in town and so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing and I think for a lot of people they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with clay, I mean the thing is it’s month to month, go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35-year history of Shaw homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us and I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way.

You know I’m going to call him as soon as we finish wrapping up the show. He doesn’t compliment my beauty, compliment my humbleness, and he doesn’t compliment my lack of ability to self promote. I never self promote. Come on, man.

I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with clay is I would have missed out on literally an 800 percent increase in our internet leads. Going from 10 a month to a hundred and $80 a month, that would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it because we sure haven’t.

Thrive nation, this is your year to thrive. We absolutely believe in you. We know that you have what it takes to become successful and we’d love to see you at our next in person. Thrive time show workshop. The next one is coming up here. I’m pulling it up on the big screen on the big computer. I know it’s an audio show and it’s exciting when a host of the show spends his time tooling around on the computer trying to find something, but that’s the kind of quality of come to expect here. So if you look it up here. Okay, February eighth and ninth is the next workshop. Book your tickets [email protected], and without any further ahead to share this podcast with a friend.

Oh, oh. Oh wait, we’re going to sell fast.

Can we pull them again? Oh, we done booming. I. So what’s happening,

Mr. Johnson, you don’t become a millionaire overnight. How are you? Johnson? Neva doesn’t a complex personality as are most of the small breed modern day renaissance millionaires.