What Are the Steps to Getting Rich? – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

On a consistent basis. People email us and say, hey, you know, what are the steps to I need to take to get rich? On today’s show, I’m going to demystify the steps to getting rich. There are four specific steps that you must take if you want to make the copious amount of money that you’re saying you wanna make. If you want to make millions, this show is for you. If you want to get rich, these are the four specific steps that you need to take to get rich in the next five years

Good morning thrive nation, or maybe it was good afternoon to you. I’m not sure when you’re going to hear today’s a Hummer of love edition of the podcast, but here’s the deal. I am driving to work. The official time right now is three 43 in the morning and I had a thriver yesterday. I talked to who emailed in a question to info at thrive time, show.com wanting clarification on the four ways to get rich that I’ve talked about. There are the four steps, the four phases to getting rich that I’ve spoken of at great length at workshops as well as my, a business coach friend, partner in colleague Michael Levine, the PR consultant for Michael Jackson and Nike and Prince and myself. He also has spoken about, so let me just go over these, these four steps to getting rich. If you have a business in America today.

So step number one, you have to be willing to work for free to get your early adapters, your first followers, your first buyers, your first people who believe your restaurant’s not terrible. The first people who believe your haircut makes sense. So if you had, I’m just going to use a, a an example. Let’s just say that you’re out there today and you have a product that you want to sell. The product can be sold for about a hundred dollars. Well, I cost you $60 to make it after all materials, everything. It costs you a maximum of a $70. You have to be willing to put that thing at, at a trade show or in front of buyers in some capacity and sell that thing at cost. Because if nobody knows about your products before, there is no evidence that it works. There’s no there’s no really proof, no reviews, no testimonials, no worried about nothing they need.

There’s an overwhelming bias for people to not want to buy from you. And the of sales you’re sort of guilty until proven innocent. And so Michael Levine has talked about this before both on the podcast and at the conference, but he has explained that, you know, when he started out doing consulting PR Consulting, branding, public relations and marketing for huge celebrities, he moved from New York to California to Hollywood. Nobody moved to Hollywood. It wasn’t like there was a big parade waiting to welcome him. There wasn’t a, didn’t roll out the red carpet for him. People didn’t just call them and say, Oh wow, you have this idea to be a PR guy. Wow, you’re the first one ever. We’ve been waiting for you. Here’s our credit cards. No, he called. He called, called some of the biggest business coach names in Hollywood and offered to work for them for free.

Do the work for free. Well, how long do I have to do that? Well, he did that for over a year. Now that’s the same story with a puff daddy and now goes by diddy. He was an intern at Howard University for free. Brian Tedder, my friend from college, he’s a Grammy Award winning musician who’s gone on to his group. One republic just dominates the airwaves. He writes songs for Beyonce and Adele are just huge artists. He interned, works for free. Oprah interned and worked for free. But what happens is a lot of people have a degree and now they can’t afford to work for free. They believe, or they believe that they had the golden ticket and they don’t want to work for free because they’re entitled because they feel like, because I have a degree, you need to pay me. However, what you need is an experience. You need to get net reputation going.

So when I started DJ connection, DJ connection.com I worked at Applebee’s target and direct TV. You say, oh, what’s the secret? Well, my secret was I worked at Applebee’s target and direct TV, three, three Applebee’s, target and direct TV. Say with me now, Applebee’s, target and direct TV. And you might say, well, where’d you have the time to ever work on your business? Well, I wanted to point out, we started recording today’s podcast before four in the morning and that’s how I did it. And that’s how I continued to do it. And that is how I do it. If you go to bed at night and you wake up at three, that’s six hours on, maybe you need seven hours. He, you wake up at four maybe you need eight hours, wake up at five but at least wake up at five and give me a high five on social media.

Just get up, move, move, get up. Most people aren’t up yet. It’s awesome. The idiots are not awake yet. It is. You’re uninterrupted. You have the time to work on your business, but you gotta be able to work for free. You’re gonna have some sort of income source coming in as your building. Building that, building that reputation. Now what you want to do is as you are working for free delivering that product or that service, you want to gather Google reviews and Amazon reviews from real buyers. One, it affects your rank on the search engines, but also the 90 according to Forbes right now, 88% one study said and 91% another study said 91% or 88% of consumers read reviews before buying something. That is an amazing number. Now step two, step two for getting rich and remember step one worked for free for a year or under market or as cheap as possible or you know, just get your product or service in front of your ideal and likely buyers step two year to be willing to work for under market, which means you still charge less than everybody else, but you’re not doing it for free.

Why? Because you have a little word of mouth, a little bit of Mojo, a little bit of swag, people, people like you a little bit. So Michael Levine started pointing out that people started reaching out to him you know, around his second or third year saying, Hey, I understand you work with this big name. I’d like for you to work with me. Or at least they were less scared when he called them about landing their account. So again, you will use the first year as you worked for tree and the second year you worked for below market value. Now you’re three, you’d like to work for market value. You’d like to be able to work at at least the pay structure that the average person in your industry makes. So as a public relations marketing guy, he wanted to charge at least a fee that is normal for his industry or with my company DJ connection.

I wanted to charge at least $600 for most events because that’s what my peers in the industry were charging. But you’re one, I mean, I DJ parties for a dollar a dollar, you know, you’re crazy. That is to be deejaying a corporate holiday party for a major company for a dollar. I did it though. I did not. In year two though, you wanna be able to go in there and worked for under market value. You know, you’re not as clearly established yet, but you have a little bit of a reputation to build on. I I DJ connection.com was not the monster that it is now. It was just a, it was like we had myself and three dudes working for me. Year two, you know, and I no longer had to work at Applebee’s target indirect TV. I think I just had one side job there.

The time I was working at a company called faith highway faith highway previously called impact ministries in a call center where I sat next to a man named Gareth. My direct boss was Jeremy Thorn. His boss was Larry McLarty and then his boss was Shane Harwell. Why am I saying these names? I don’t know. I’m just giving them to you. So that’s that. Step three. Okay, so you got, now you’re working at market value. Now step four, step four, assuming you’re still in business four years later, you should be, if you do this system, you can now charge more than market value. You can now, people will overpay you. You see if you’ve been [inaudible] over-delivering the entire time. So again, step one you’re working for below market value for that first year, but you still want to over-deliver. You want to exceed the expectations of every single person you get in contact with.

That’s how you do it. Now step two, we’re working for below market value but not for free, but we are over-delivering. We are continuing to exceed the expectations of every person we come in contact with WHO’s paying us. Year three we charge the market value of what was normal for our field, but we still deliver better service than anybody else. And then year four the market is chasing you because of your reputation. Yeah. And the habit that you have created over delivering. Now there is more demand for you then the time you have. And then you can either hire a team of people or you can charge a little bit more and that’s how you do it. But I think, I think people want it to be easier. I’m sure that you you don’t feel that way and our business coach listeners don’t feel that way.

But other people, I just see people all the time. I mean, I meet people who will email me or people I’ve met at conferences years ago who would say, I just can’t fund my business. I don’t have the money to, to advertise right now. I don’t have the mind that does launch ad words or retargeting ads or to do mass mailers or to do Facebook ads or do a billboard or whatever kind of marketing you want to do. What advice would you have? And my advice would be get a job at Applebee’s, target and Directv, all three at the same time. You know that pretty much [inaudible] pretty much always. Target is pretty much always hiring. They’re always looking for somebody to pay. Not Minimum wage, but clothes and Applebee’s is was, maybe Applebee’s isn’t the spot anymore. I don’t know. I never got side, but Applebee’s a, you know, I was like, I see now hiring signs in front of restaurants and direct TV, the call centers, they’re always hired.

They’re always, so what play, why did you choose those three jobs? Because I had no discernible skills. I didn’t have a college degree, I didn’t have a reputation, I didn’t have a big resume. I had nothing. And so I took the entry level jobs and when I worked at target I tried to overt once I, once I read thinking grow rich and kind of figured out how life worked, I decided just to over deliver it at target. I want to know a lot about retail, which I still use today to display the products that we sell and some of our businesses I, you know, like elephant in the room, men’s grooming lounge. I like the things I learned when I was 19 years old, working at target. I still use that today. How to make call scripts and how to call people properly and phone etiquette.

I learned all of that work in there, in that call center and direct TV direct TV. I learned all that, you know, Applebee’s I learned, I definitely don’t want to be a waiter, but also learn how to sell with some sizzle. I remember my boss used to run around all the times and sail with some sizzle sound with the CSL. You got to bring the [inaudible]. So I’m running around trying to sizzle everything on the menu for chancel because everybody who worked there, you got paid almost nothing. You know, you got paid below minimum, but I’m not sure how they’d can do that. But the restaurants you get paid almost nothing, but then you get tips if you’re good, you know, and the goal is to try to convince every adult that comes in there to start off with a beverage. It’s not water and you’re trying to bust every diet in America.

You’re trying to convince them to do a coke or orange juice or an alcoholic beverage. You’re just trying to get every single person to get an extra beverage to start. Then the next game is you want to convince people to get an appetizer. You know, the next game you want to convince everyone to get an appetite. Do you want to break that diet? And then step three, you want everybody to get a nice entree, no splitting, no splitting males. We’re trying to destroy diets and get tips here, people. And then step four, you want to sell that dessert with the sizzle and this guy, no kidding. Ian was his name. This dude could sell virtually anybody, anything. Every time you’d go in there and that guy would just somehow racking up three or four times more tips than I got the, rather than getting bitter about it, I asked him, you know, how do you do it?

What do you say? He said, well you could shout at me if you want to after your shift. Well, I didn’t get paid to shadow him. I hope somebody is having like an epiphany here. Nobody wants to help you. Nobody dies. You’ve gotta be willing to work for free. So I shit you didn’t do anything that our top waiter one wanted to pay me to shadow him, to learn how to sail. No, but he let me shadow him. And I worked at faith highway. I was terrible at sales. So I asked Ron Hood if he would train me. And do you think Ron Hood, our top sales rep wanted to pay me? No, he didn’t want to pay me. So I had to shadow him, buy him dinner. I had to, if you want to learn a new skill, nobody’s running around with a burning desire to pay you or to teach you new skills that are going to help you pay your bills.

So you’ve gotta be willing to work for free. That, that right there, my friends, those are the four steps that you need to take over the next three, four years. If you want to become rich again, be willing to work for free, to be willing to work for free, to learn the skills and the reputation needed. Step to be willing to work for below market for trying to get that jeep dream job. Go in there and say, I’ll work for free. Step one, step two, salary wouldn’t work for below market year two, year three, I’ll be willing to work for my normal wage. You know? And then you’re for everyone will be chasing you. You’ll have so much reputation and swag deliciousness that the market will come to you. And that my friend, those are the steps for getting rich. We’ve got all this, we’ve got all this fun together and it’s only three 57 in the morning.

Now you’re saying to yourself, I don’t have time to do these things. I suggest you would wake up at 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM or 5:00 AM or any am you want. Just wake up early enough to get stuff done. You only need six or seven hours of sleep. And then also also I would suggest if you don’t have the money to get started, I would suggest as a bonus idea, you would get a job at Applebee’s, target and directv all simultaneously. Get yourself at 80 hours a week on the books. Get Yourself, you know, 900 to a thousand bucks coming in. Maybe get just a second job, get a side hustle, getting some kind of payment coming in here so you can afford to fund. Let’s start up because the world didn’t care about DJ connection. When I was trying to start it didn’t care about Oxi fresh when Jonathan Barnett was getting that going.

They didn’t care about you know, to think of businesses that I’m involved in. They didn’t care about elephant in the room when we started that the market didn’t care about thrive when we started that podcast and you just got up, he make time for what matters. And I would humbly suggest as a business coach that you make time by getting up earlier. Just why don’t we, why don’t we just get up tomorrow at 4:00 AM can we do that? Can we get up at four, maybe five? I don’t know. I just find the time that works right for you. Make sure you get enough sleep and then get that, get those jobs, Applebee’s, target and direct TV. Those are the four steps for getting rich. My name is Clay Clark, I am a business coach. I appreciate you so much. Hopefully that answers your question and I hope you guys have a great day.

Yeah, well, it would almost be unethical if we did not end the show with a boom. So now that any further I do free one, boom, boom.