Business Podcast | Why Your Business Systems Will Not Work If Your People Won’t Do the Work | The Importance of Having a Weekly Staff Meeting & Weekly Staff Optimization

Audio Transcription

Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you. And they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zilmer. Eight kids co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show. We started from the bottom, now we hit it. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get it. We started from the bottom, now we hit it. We started from the bottom, now we hit it. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks. I bring down the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now three, two, one, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re so high. Yes, yes, yes, and no. Sometimes you have to say no. Sometimes you have a successful company and you have to say no to grow. I want to talk on today’s show, I want to get into it today. There Devin, I want to ask you some things here. Would it be shocking for you, is it shocking at all to you to know that, again, you went to college, you know people, you’ve been around people, you’ve worked here, you’ve worked other places, that 85% of employees lie on their job resumes, according to Inc. Magazine. Is that shocking? It’s really not shocking. It’s not? I wish it was shocking, but it’s not. Why is it not shocking? Just because, I mean, 85%, so it happens all the time. You’re not shocked by this? I’m really not. Okay, now 75% of employees, and I’m not trying to depress anybody, I’m just trying to give people facts, 75% of employees admit to stealing from the workplace. Is that shocking? It’s shocking and disappointing. Is it shocking? Yeah. It is shocking? It’s disappointing. It’s disappointing? That’s the word. Okay. Well, the reason why I bring this up is because on part two of today’s show, we’re going to talk about how to find good people and these sorts of things. But I run companies, I run real businesses, and these are real things. And so every once in a while, something happens and I think, wow, I should do a podcast about that to share with our listeners so that people don’t feel like they’re alone and or isolated in a world where they alone are plagued by Jackassery from time to time. So let me give you an example. This, I’ll just be kind of vague here, but in the last month, we have a weekly staff meeting every week, right? And every week, the purpose of that staff meeting, if you’re listening out there today and you have the staff meeting, there’s a really a purpose to have a weekly meeting. One is to just, you want to engage everybody, shake their hand, how you doing, build that kind of camaraderie, build that team. Second is you want to make sure you go over, you know, things that need to be discussed. You want to make sure everyone knows, are we taking off for the 4th of July? Are we on? What holidays are we working? What holidays are we off? What’s the new schedule like? We want to go over those things. So you have that weekly meeting every week. And I’ll type this on the show notes so people can have, kind of see this, but you have to have a weekly meeting. And someone says, why do I have to have a weekly meeting? Again, you want to go over, just that it’s that weekly touch base. It’s to build rapport with your staff. The second is to go over scheduling. You know, what needs to happen, who’s working, who’s not working, that kind of thing. Third is you want to be able to motivate slash train everybody. You know, if there’s any new product or service you’re offering, you want to train your staff. And then finally, you want to be able to go over payroll concerns. Like if someone didn’t get paid or they need to turn in a new deduction, or maybe they had a child and they have a new update to their tax situation. So you want to have a weekly meeting. So you have that weekly meeting. In my case, it’s Monday. Do you remember what time our all staff meeting is on Mondays? 9 a.m. Okay. So you have a Monday morning meeting at 9 a.m. Then approximately how many people are in our Monday morning meeting? Probably anywhere from 80 to 100. Okay. So we have this importance of having a weekly meeting, okay, having a weekly staff meeting. Again, the purpose is to go over, to build rapport, to go over scheduling, to motivate, to go over payroll concerns. Again, build rapport, you go over scheduling, this is very important, to motivate and train, and then to go over any payroll concerns, updates, right? And if we didn’t have that meeting, what would happen very quickly? Things would get left behind, like payroll, for example. I mean, people wouldn’t be motivated, scheduling would be a nightmare, all kinds of things would just lose, would be lost. And sometimes the meetings are kind of funny. Yes. And sometimes they’re not kind of funny. And sometimes we always go over the wins of the week as we’re building rapport, we always go over the wins of the week. And were you at the meeting where we had a staffer during this meeting, during the wins of the week that literally declared that that was their final day of work? Yes. Okay, so that’s happened. So the way the wins, I’m just walking people through how the meeting should go. So you should, if you have a meeting today, if you have a business and you want to have a weekly meeting, this is how you do it. You gather all your staff and the meeting needs to start on time and you go, hey everybody, we’re going to go over wins of the week. What wins of the week do you have? And usually it’s somebody who’s like, you know, I’m moving to Houston, you know, next summer. Or I just got promoted or my wife’s having a baby or we just got a new car or I got promoted. I got a bonus. There’s always usually something positive. This person puts their hands up and says, ah, this will be my last day of work. Remember this? Yes. Right? But you have to have the weekly meeting and then you build rapport. Rapport is just you’re making sure you’re establishing those bonds, those connections. You might view it as kind of a meet and greet for your staff, a chance for the people in accounting to meet the people in sales and the people in marketing to meet the folks in accounting. And it’s just all the ideas that do that connection. The graphic design people can meet the people that cut the hair. The people that build the homes can meet the people that sell the homes. It’s just a meet and greet. Yeah. The next is you go over scheduling. It’s like you’re working this Tuesday night, you’re off this Tuesday, we’re off for Thanksgiving, you’re on for Thanksgiving, we’re off for – you go over all that kind of stuff. Then to motivate and train, right, motivate and train. And then to go over payroll concerns. So this week, I’m in my staff meeting, okay? And again, in the last month, it’s happened twice. I look at a guy, he’s asleep. I mean, he is asleep. He is out at the staff meeting. So what does that say to you if you’re the employer and you have an employee that’s asleep? Now, this is a new hire. What does that say to you if in the staff meeting, a new hire who just got hired is literally asleep in the meeting? Not figuratively, not like, oh, this guy’s not paying attention. He’s actually not awake during the meeting. What does that say? Well, it’s, I mean, it should be concerning because you’re like, well, this guy doesn’t care. It’s his first staff meeting probably. So in order to be asleep, that means you had to be up late the night before. Doing who knows what. So last night, I knew that I had to be at work today early, so 9 o’clock I go to sleep. Because I know I have to wake up early, and therefore I’m rested. But if somebody stays up late to the point that they’re sleeping during a fairly high octane staff meeting. We keep our staff meetings to like 30 minutes or less. And it’s like two hours into work already. Right. And this guy’s asleep. Yeah. So, we go back to where we started. 96% of businesses fail, according to Inc. Magazine. Someone says, I would like to see that stat. Where could you show it to me? 96% of businesses fail, according to Inc. Magazine. And I’ll tell you why. A big reason is nothing will work if your employees won’t work which goes back to 75% of Employees admit to stealing from the workplace and I’ll put all this on the show notes So if you have a staff where 75% of your employees are stealing from the workplace How is it going to be possible for your business to be successful? How does that work? I’d love to get your thoughts on that. It can’t unless you have to make a change. That’s why we do the weekly interview. So you’re trying to tell me that your business can’t be successful if the people at work won’t work. That’s exactly what I’m saying. So what I would like to know is why do people then hang on to people? Why is it that… I’m sure none of our listeners do this, but I will have a person I will speak to today, a great person, we’ve helped him grow his business dramatically, and he’s gotten to a place now where if people don’t do the job, he just lets them go. And that’s what he does. We’re going to have a great testimony on part two of today’s show, so you can hear of an actual client. We’re working with Brian Wiggs of HomeBuilder, who’s done a phenomenal job implementing the systems that we teach. But why is it that certain people hold on to people that can’t possibly work out. What is that? Just emotional. They just can’t make that tough decision. So let’s talk about it. Let’s de-business. Let’s take it out of the business realm for a second. Let’s say you ran a modeling agency. Okay. That’s what you did. You ran a modeling agency, okay? Okay. And you know what you’re getting asked to provide a model for a photo shoot for some new clothing line. Okay, it’s not personal, it’s just facts. And they say, I’m looking for someone who’s physically fit, who looks great in swimwear, who’s a dude. As we’re doing a swim, it’s like a new kind of shorts, we’re promoting a sport athletic wear, and it’s gonna be like a volleyball thing. So I want an athletic dude to be in this photo shoot. And I need him to be approximately 30 years old. And imagine a 50-year-old guy shows up who clearly has not worked out in two consecutive decades. And he’s like, I’m here to do the shoot. I’m ready to go. I’m ready to do it. Let’s go. And you’re like, what would go wrong if you let that person be the person in the shoot? I would be fired because I didn’t do my job. Let’s do another example. So, let’s say that you had a football team. You’re the coach of the football team and you need someone on the team to be the quarterback who can throw the ball. And you go, and so you’re doing tryouts and typically you’re drafting players and you’re working the free agent. You’re looking for former college players, maybe guys who played pro before. You’re looking to draft somebody, recruit somebody, and a guy from the stands is like, coach, I got it, baby. I’m your man. And you’re like, this guy’s intoxicated. He’s clearly in his early 50s and he’s never worked out. And so he can’t throw a ball. He can barely move. What would happen if you rolled out that guy to be the starting player? Oh, he would lose. Right. So why is it that business people will take somebody who’s sleeping in the meeting and then want to try to, so I pull the person aside, I say to this person, Hey, are you aware that you’re asleep? And the person, what, what, what I go, I was like deep into REM sleep, rapid eye movement is occurring. And he’s, I’ve never been more disrespected, man. I’m like, come on. So then the next day, same situation happens. So why do I have to fire somebody who’s unwilling to do what is required? Why do I have to do that? Yeah, well, because it’s required and it we have a culture here and it’s just sleeping at the job and the meeting is not a part of the culture. So what would it why do business owners feel the need to try to inspire people that will not do what is required? They just can’t make that decision. They just can’t make that tough decision. So yesterday for one of our conferences, and we do business conferences every two months, but for yesterday I think we sold, is it 53 tickets? Is that accurate? Yeah, 53. Okay, and you get paid per ticket you sell. Correct. And I do that because that way you can make more if you do more, whatever. It’s a team effort, but I feel like every day, correct me if I’m wrong, I feel like every day James does about 20 tickets. Is that an accurate statement? Yeah, that is. Okay. And before James did the tickets, we had a guy named JT who did ticket sales about that same level. And so they’re making their commission, they get a 4% commission. So anyway, it’s possible for them to make $200 on an average day and in busy days, they can make more than that. Have you seen someone sell one ticket all day? Yes. What’s the lowest number of tickets you’ve ever seen sold in a day? Probably zero. You remember the lady who pretended to make phone calls, but her phone wasn’t on or working? Yes. You remember this? Yeah, I do. And she was like, I can’t get you on the phone. I can’t get you on the phone. Remember this? Yeah. And I was like, well, let me see what you’re texting people. That way I can help you. No, no, no. I don’t want to. Her phone wasn’t even being used. Yep. But she wanted to get that $12 an hour to do nothing. Yep. That happens all the time. It happens all the time. Do you not see it? Yes, I do. And I fire people. Yep. And then what makes it weird for me is I go to church on Sundays and a lot of times I see these people there. And then it’s like the way most people want to process these things is they want to, most people want to feel bad that they had to fire the employee who was doing a bad job. A lot of business owners want to feel bad, like they are somehow a poor leader if they have quote unquote high turnover. Well, if you have a call center and you have expectations and people won’t do the work needed, how are you going to have success? I don’t care how many scripts and systems and processes you’ve in place. If the people you have won’t work, nothing will work. Why won’t anything work if the people you have won’t work? Because no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try to motivate them, they’re still not going to work. They want that base. They want that guaranteed 12-hour. There’s nothing you can do. Okay. So is it safe to say that your business systems will not work if your people won’t do the work, right? Yeah. So you have to have a weekly staff meeting and you have to do weekly HR, human, pruning. You have to do pruning. You do. Why? Why can’t you just, because again, I come to that weekly meeting and I see, I look around and you see it too. You know you do. You probably laugh internal. You’re not? Yeah. You seem like this person’s definitely gonna get, they’re gonna get fired. You ever had that thought? Yes. Right? So now today, in one of our businesses, we had somebody call in, okay? And they’re saying, you know, I can’t make it because I’m having a baby. Well, what is that? When the woman who answered the phone from this person gets a phone call, so her boss, I just met with her boss and her boss tells me, the boss says, hey, I just got a call from someone who said they can’t come to work because they’re having a baby. Well, they’re already late for work when they called. And then they say they’re having a baby. And this is the fourth time that this person has played this game in 30 days. What happens? Do the phones not need to be answered now that the person is having a baby? I mean, can we go ahead and just not let the phones be answered today because someone’s having a baby? No. Right. You can’t. So what we have to do is I have to do weekly staff optimization. I have to ask myself, so I was just doing it, that’s why I thought I should do this show because I was literally just talking to the person. I’m going, hey, we need to train up a few more people so that way next time that said person calls in and says they’re having a baby or they’re kind of tired or they overslept. These are four things this person has said in the first 30 days. We just replace them. Yeah. What would happen though if we kept on to these, we held on to these people? Because we’d be in a pickle every day. We wouldn’t have enough people to work. And that is something I want to export is non-dysfunction. I want to export success. I want everyone listening out there, I want you to have success. And if you have a business today, I’m giving you calls, I’m giving you a call to action. I want you to make a list of the people on your team. I want to make a list of all the people on your team. Make a list, a big list. Think about, make a list of probably 40 employees, 20 employees, a thousand employees. I don’t know, make a list of your employees. And I want you to put a letter A, B, or C next to their name. Now, A players get there early and they get their job done. B players, oh, they’re always late and the work isn’t that great. They’re always late and the work’s not that great. And then the C players, they’re always late and the work is terrible. Let’s repeat. A players, get there early, the work’s always done great. B players, always late, work’s not that great. C players, always late, never do a good job, everything’s terrible. And then you want to start to find a way to recruit A players to replace the B players, and B players to recruit to replace the C players. And on part two of today’s show, we’re gonna walk you through how we do that and the specific mechanics of how to host a weekly interview process and how to find good people. And then I’m gonna share with you a testimonial of a client that’s doing that, of someone who’s having massive success because they’re implementing the system. Devin, anything else you wanna add here before we go to part two of today’s show? I just want people to, I don’t want anybody, because again, in my world, whenever I have somebody that’s not performing, I just remove them. I’m not curious as to what it is. I’m going to give them a courteous, courtesy, hey, warning, hey, you’re asleep. And they always go, oh, really? I’m very disrespected right now. What? They’re always going to give you pushback. And then you go ahead and give them another warning. You got to, depending upon what state you’re in, you got to write them up and all that kind of stuff. But then when you let the person go, you have to do that or you get stuck. Exactly. Anything else you want to share? There’s got to be a business owner out there that needs to hear this. That for whatever reason is holding on to an employee that just is not willing to put in the work. Yeah, I would just say don’t be afraid to make that tough decision because it will make your life easier. And then my little trade off of that is when you go to church, you should be prepared for awkward conversations because I’m not kidding, I run into people, I was going to the bathroom at a big mega church and this guy pulls me aside and says, “‘Scuse me, I’m in the bathroom.” And I’m like, what? “‘Scuse me, and it’s a big bathroom, I’m washing my hands, “‘Scuse me.” I’m like, wow, this guy’s pretty passionate. “‘You fired my daughter!’ And I’m like, well, don’t tell me her name, but I’m sure she did a terrible job at her job. That’s why she got fired. There you go. And I had to, it’s real. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But if you don’t fire them, your business will be terrible and guess who will fire you? The customer. Yep. If you don’t fire people, the customer will fire you. And so that’s how that works. And so now without any further ado, we’re moving on to part two of today’s show as we teach you how to hire, train, retain great people. You got to learn how to hire, inspire, train and retain great people. But you also need to learn how to remove the bottom feeders. No carp in your organization, folks. Thanks again, Devon. I appreciate you. Steve? Yes? Well, thanks for coming in today. Thank you for having me. I appreciate you applying for the job. Always. When’s the earliest you could start, Tyler? Kyler. Mrs. Anderson? You can call me Marlene. Okay, Marlene, we appreciate you applying for the job. I appreciate being here. Let’s just dive right in. Boom! Go. What’s your availability like? I’m boycotting daylight savings time. So I’ll either be an hour early or an hour late, depending on the seasons. Tell me a little about yourself. My mom said I have to get a job, so that’s why I’m here. Because she wants me to get a job. Why did you leave your last job? Of course, Harry, he was, he was, I just felt like he was looking at me in a particular way. Of course, he was blind, so I don’t know why I felt that. Why did you leave your last job, Steve? Fired, next question. So what do you think you bring to the table? I can read people’s energies. Let me read your energy real quick. You’re a coyote. Congratulations. I don’t run errands, and I don’t answer the phone. You know what I do? I look hot. 24… hot. Whatever you need, I can do it. Janitor, CEO, cook, I can do it all. And I have done it all. And I will do it all. Okay, so you do have experience in all those areas. No, but I just believe I can do it. So, availability, you know, that’s kind of a week-to-week thing for me. You know, I really just kind of like, we’ll see. So, what do you consider your weaknesses? Chocolate, candy, Snickers, Reese’s Pieces. Becky, I think we’re done here. Do I get the job? Grab the duct tape and mentally prepare yourself for yet another mind-expanding knowledge bomb from America’s number one business coach, Clay Clark. Arms away. Recently, I’ve had more and more members of the Thrive Nation asking me, Clay, what do you actually say at the group interview? How does the group interview look? Do you really interview all the candidates at the same time? Seriously? Every Wednesday at 6pm you interview everybody at the same time. How do you do it? When do you do it? Where do you do it? Why do you do it? How do you do it? What does it sound like? Well, I do it Wednesday nights at 6. Why do I do it? Because it’s efficient. Interviewing everybody at the same time is efficient. Where do I do it? At our office at 1100 Riverwalk Terrace in Jeeks, Oklahoma. Who attends? A lot of people. We have like 50 people confirmed say they’re gonna be at the interview and usually 10 to 15 show up and last night we had a great group of people who attended the workshop and we found some really, really great people. So now let me further ado this is what our group interview sounds like. Okay, so I’m Clay Clark and this is my office and we’re hiring for a myriad of different positions. And I’ll open it up for you guys to ask questions. So Justice, is that right? I’ll start with you, so because you’re in the back. So Justice, what questions do you have? Sure, what position do you, did you remember reading about online? Okay, cool. Let’s talk about that one. So, marketing assistant. Everybody, if you’re looking for a product or service, you typically search on…branding. Probably. What would you, how would you find, if you wanted to go, like, you’re in Florida tonight, you’re gonna go to a movie, or you’re gonna go…I don’t know. What do you typically do? find what do you do that’s right 94% of people bring a forward type I use Google for everything but I mean a room like 1% of 1% know how Google works so I grew up crazy for DJ still exist but I grew up really poor. I was 16, my dad was delivering pizzas. I’m 38, and my dad was 38, delivering pizzas. He had a degree from ORU, top of the class, Tom Clark. And my dad just didn’t know how… You know, you have a good business degree, but they don’t teach business. And so my dad, he was just crippledly poor. And so my whole thing was, I had to find a way to not be poor. So I started a DJ company out of my dorm room. Do you know why I started the DJ company in my dorm room? Because it was fun and you enjoyed it. And? And you were really good at it. It was something that was needed by the band. What do you think, Justice? I think it’s something that you love. Even if the agency is really someone that exploits it, they’re good at it. And I’ll say, I wish that it was that deep. It was like, I’m crazy poor and the barrier of entry is pretty low, and most DJs are terrible. So I’m like, even if I’m bad, I’m better than them. So I had a service, so DJ Connection, this is my pitch, and your name is Barbara. So I’d say, Barbara, I’m a DJ for your wedding, your birthday, whatever, and it’s a dollar if you hire me, it’s a quick cost, and then if you’re happy, you can pay me based on your happiness. So if a 10, perfect 10, I’d love to get paid $600 because everybody else charges that. But if I’m terrible, it’s a dollar. And everyone charges four hours. I do unlimited time. And everyone’s like, are you kidding me? I go, nope. And I help you plan your wedding first. So pretty much every bride at every wedding show said yes every single time. And I just grew it. And so I sold it. We were doing 4000 weddings a year. So it was like big, you know, 80 weddings a weekend. And then my wife pointed out to me in 2006 or 5, I was Entrepreneur of the Year for the state of Oklahoma from the Small Business Administration. She’s like, you know, what you do works for other things, you shouldn’t be a DJ. I’m like, why? She goes, you’re a grown man. I’m like, okay, fine. So we have five kids and I built that business and then I started teaching people how to grow their businesses, but not in like a, and if you’re in a multi-level, I’m not attacking you, I’m just saying, not in a multi-level kind of way, not in a 100% commission kind of way, not in like a get rich real estate kind of way, but like, hey, you’re a chiropractor, and let’s sell some stuff, or hey, you’re a home builder. So now my client, we worked with Maurice Kanbar, who is the founder of Sky Vodka, you know? So when he bought a third of downtown Tulsa, if you look at my name, Clay Clark, Tulsa World, you’ll see the articles. We helped lease, you know, downtown used to be dead. We helped lease the route, we helped basically bring tenants downtown. There you go. The deals we did was a lotte, was the first downtown restaurant, Mayo Hotel, we worked with them with the bar and all that. Anyway, that’s what we did. And so then people kept reaching out, reaching out, reaching out, reaching out, reaching out. And so now we work with 160 clients. Most of them are not in Tulsa. And Shaw Homes is the largest home builder in Oklahoma. That’s one of our clients. Total Lending Concepts, that’s one of our clients. Barbie Cookies was one of our clients. Papagallo’s Pizzeria is a client. OxiFresh is a client. UPS has been a client. Maytag has been a client. So Ben, come on up here, Ben. This is Ben. Yeah, let’s hear it for Ben. Yeah, Ben, yeah. All right. Now, Ben, where were you working at? So how long have you been here? I’ve been here eight months. Before that, I was at Lowe’s for eight months. And before that, I was working as a handyman for about 10 months. Oh, you shouldn’t have told me that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s great. That’s great. Oh, yeah. Can you do a lot? Is he handy? I’ve done ceiling fans. I can do drywalls and stuff. I hate tiling, I hate tiling. No, no tiling, no tiling. No, no, I just think we’ve got, my wife’s been like praying for handyman, it’s like here Jesus, pray I’m a handyman. Anyway, so, and then Ben, where did you start, like what was your role first? I was on the search engine optimization team, so I write the search engine content, so the content that is going to be going on to the webpage for all the clients. Had you ever done this before? I thought I was illiterate. I think I got C’s in English, like high school and college. So I never thought I would ever be writing for my professional career. And what do you do now? I am the SEO. I think I promoted to Czar, actually. Czar, that’s a title. I’m the SEO Czar. So I manage a team of eight now, and they’re writing content all day long. This is my job to make sure that the quality of the content’s gonna be good, make sure that there’s not gonna be any duplicates because Google loathes duplicate content with a passion, so I loathe it with a passion. How much can you get paid per hour right now at your current rate? Per hour, current rate, I can do about 25 to 27 an hour. Questions? Yeah. Yes. So I’m not programming, I don’t know that yet. So it’s called a Dragon Diction, so we just like speak it and instead of typing it, that would take forever, plus I can’t spell. But then I just talk, I just write that content as in like two 500 word articles. And let me tell you how this system was created. So you sit, I was building DJ connection. I hired Bruce Clay, which by the way, eight grand a month is a lot of money. Contract 12 months. I’m not bitter about it, but it’s expensive. I still pay him now, but it’s like a lot of money. So you’re like, I’m a DJ. Let me tell you about being a DJ. You make $167 of profit a show. If you charge 600. So you’re not making like, you know what I mean? You’re getting like a, after I pay the DJs and the equipment breaks and hiring and sales and marketing, it’s about 150 bucks. Well, it’s cool we’re doing 80 a weekend, but it’s still a lot of money, you know what I mean? So I’m going, there’s gotta be a better way. There’s just gotta, there’s just, oh, just, oh, you know? So I try to make it really affordable. And so I used to type the articles and I wrote the best crap ever, man. It was like, oh, and just, you’re gonna love working with our DJs because we have just, I’m using big words like plethora, cornucopia, just always just fabulous. I was right, I was like working it. I thought that’s what mattered, was that I thought having really good words was what it was at. I thought like this and my wife was like, have you ever asked women if they’ve ever read these things? I’m like, because most people go to the website and call, they don’t like read your 40-page manifesto about DJing and so then I’m like wait a minute so that’s when I came with the dragon addiction thing and then that’s kind of anyway so that’s how that worked but that any other questions for Ben yes my quick interruption is two weeks hands-on you didn’t pay the whole time, but two weeks is about how long it took you to, is that my right? Two weeks, yeah. And then you start off, after two weeks you’ll be joined under your team. You’re still getting paid, and you’re on the team right away. Yeah, so we saw, I think there’s someone, the third day on, and so they’re slowly picking up, little by little, and- We had a young lady today, who is great, and I think her head was gonna explode, because it’s like her second day or third day, nice lady. But it’s like, you know, you’ve never done it before, and it’s like riding a bike, and unless you’re a weird person, you don’t mock babies that are learning to walk. And oh, look at the baby! Look at the stupid baby! You know, lazy baby. You just, you kind of coach up and mentor up. You know, you teach. And you’re being positive. Right, yeah. Positive. So that’s the vibe there, so you learn that. And then, one day, Ben was like, hey, check it out, my wife is smart. And I go, your wife is smart? What is this? Smarter than me. And then, you know, I’m like, well, let’s meet said person. So I’m gonna bring up your wife. Is that cool? So yeah, go in now. All right. This is Amelia and she happens to be married to that guy. And can you explain your path? How long you been here? What you do now? I’ve been here for about six and a half months. I started in Ellison in the Room call center. Then I moved from there to sales. And then from sales, I’m now in coaching. So I’ve got my first three clients this past week. So I’m doing coaching now. Any questions for Amelia? She’s been here a while, but not super long. No? Six and a half-ish. Six and a half months. Oh, good for you. That’s a lot. She’s already less than six and a half months. Yeah, no, she’s going through very fast. She’s plowing through it probably the fastest rate of anybody we’ve had so far. So, but that’s only because of Ben’s her life coach and just like telling her what to do You sir, what questions do you have what is your name? Jacques Hey, Philip Z H a J. Ja H-A-J, J-A. Is that like a family name? Is this common? What does it mean? Can you give them a copy of Dragon Energy? My new book is called Dragon Energy. Oh yeah. Any questions for Amelia about that? Because she’s here. That’s why I have her here. Because she could tell you. Yeah. Can you explain who you were calling for though? We don’t cold call on behalf of my business. We call on behalf of our clients. Because a lot of our clients are afraid of the phone at first. We actually explained to them, nobody woke up today with a desire to pay you. And they’re like, huh? Like nobody cares about your product. You got to go call. And if it’s a retail store, you got to get in front of them. You know, every business has its own path. But for Digi, they did the security systems for the gathering place, OSU, OU, BOK, and they get all their accounts by cold call. So she’s calling on their behalf, if that makes sense. which location you’re going to, the calls all come in to us. And if you move to Denver, the company I’ve worked with for a long time up there, Denver, my partner that I, he and I have an elephant in the room together. The other business though is called Oxifresh and there’s 406 locations, carpet cleaning, and there’s a major call center that books like 8,000 carpets a day. A lot of carpets. So that’s, that’s, yeah. But inbound calls for elephant in the room, basically. Any other questions? You feeling good? Okay, and it’s Ja Am I saying it right? Okay, sure. What is your culture by the way? You said your culture. What’s your culture? monk monk monk and Where are you? How were you born here in this country? Yeah, okay Are your parents first-generation immigrants? Okay, cool, awesome, excited. John, okay, so, I don’t live in Oklahoma. And what’s your name? Roy. Roy? And you drove here from where, Roy? Just south of Houston. Really? For this interview? Mm-hmm. He did. Oh! How’d you hear about us? Online. I saw something you said. It was about graphic design, and I looked into what the company was, and the research looked really great. We have about half a million people listen to our podcast, so I don’t think the workshops you were at, but Sean, were you at the one we had people from Guam here? Yeah, two of them. So we have people from Guam and Canada and Australia. I’m not sure, not sure. But no, I’m always amazed though, because you never know with the podcast where it’s going to reach, you know. We’ve hit number one on iTunes six times. So we get different like people that find it, but that’s, so you, how far did you drive? Nine hours. That’s impressive. That’s impressive. What are you doing now? Right now, it’s just a little part-time job. What I’ve been using to pay for college. Where do you go to college? I’m super impressed. And you’re a graphic design guy? I’m a lot of stuff. The program at the school is a video game and computer simulation program. So I program, I can write, I can design. To answer your question, what we do is we have a thing called a shadow process. And is it Carol? Is that right? Barbara, why would I say Carol? I don’t know. Boo! Okay, so Barbara. So what we do is we have you guys shadow. So if it was like, we go through all the resumes and I want to meet you because I go through them and I kind of want to like put a face with the resume and figure all that. And then we’ll call you guys tomorrow by 9 if it’s something I want to move forward. I just like to get your aura. And we have a lot of people, and I’m the one who always meets everybody. But then we’d have a shadow, where you guys, we’re gonna shadow for an hour or two. I always tell people, just plan on from nine to 12, but you don’t have to be the whole time necessarily. And I just want you to meet everybody who would work here to see if you’d get along. That kind of thing. And then Barbara, what questions do you have? How’d you hear about this place? Oh, my mother-in-law. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. What are you? What questions do you have? Yeah. Well, I have a I have I will basically the search engine optimization role of the marketing assistant that role is open today, tonight. It’s very dynamic though because there’s always growing, so there’s a lot of people coming in. It’s like Google, they’re always hiring. But then you have the sales thing. I don’t think we have a position open for that tonight, right? Yeah, but we do sometimes. Okay, but we do have, I think, three spots we’re looking for currently tonight. So, and I’ll, but any other questions you have about what we do up here? So, Mike, do you have a way to describe that maybe something like a rocker? Yes, I do. My attorney represents TD Jakes and Joe Osteen and Craig Rochelle and somehow he got stuck with me. And we handle all the marketing for them too. They are looking for somebody who’s really, really sharp to fill a long-term position. It’s benefits. They want people who’ve been on the planet a longer period of time. If you were born yesterday, one might think that, oh, this person has the best of intentions. If you’re working for a law firm, there’s always kind of squirreliness. They want people that are mature and kind of dress sharp. That’s what they’re looking for. People are detailed. And yes, and so that position just came open yesterday, so I know about that. I can be happy to talk to you more about that. Any questions you have? Skills? Just be crazy coachable, like off the charts coachable, and then try to go like years without yawning. Because it’s like a, it goes fast in here. And so we’re meeting here after everyone’s gone home, but Monday through Thursday, it’s from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., it’s like a sprint. And it’s just, if you like energy, you have to go, you’d like it, but if you’re like, I don’t like this. You know? You’re in a race to save time. Now what is your name? My name is Terry. Terry, and what questions do you have, Ms. Terry? Well, I want, first of all, I came here to make sure it wasn’t just a self position, because I have two degrees in AAS and graphic communications and MBA in graphic design. And the reason why I feel like it’s sufficient to bring it up is because I’ve been looking for something in the advertising world. Now I live in Fort Gibson because me and my husband own a ranch. And so I do all the ranching and stuff like that with him, and plus I do industrial design and stuff like that. But I’ve had a lot of ad agencies looking at me, but I didn’t want to relocate. You see what I’m saying? You don’t want to move? No. You want to stay where they’re gonna farm the ranch, the husband, the whole thing? Yes. Okay. Right. Cool. And like, this is probably an opportunity for me, but I wasn’t sure. Because all the positions that I’ve applied for for a graphic design position, I want to grow, first of all. Well, there’s different kinds of, and I’ll just say this, and I’m not trying to be negative, just to make sure. My buddy owns a firm called Hampton that might suit what you want to do because it’s very artistic, like very creative, and they do really cool stuff. And I don’t view them as a competitor, but they are like, like he wears like a flower in his shirt, you know, and he’s very like, I don’t know, it’s fabulous. And but they have huge accounts and they’re, and that’s what he does. And I’m all about like helping people get un-poor real fast. Like I’m all about like, that’s cool, we could spend seven weeks talking about the logo, but instead I’m gonna just get you to the top of Google and make a bunch of money right now. And by the way, when you shoot your YouTube video today and make a performa and fire that guy and do this, and then they’re like, I’m more of like, you were saying show the profit. Yes. I’m like, kinda like that. It’s like, you know, no soup for you. It’s like a high energy, fast paced, it’s like, people are like, are you like a… what is your deal? I’m like a bowling ball. Like just go, you know, just go. But the graphic design, typically more like the high design, I would say Hampton and Cubic are probably the best in town for that. I’m probably more like low design but fast design and then make money for clients. Does that make sense? I mean I count winning as like the client making more money than they’re paying me as soon as possible. That’s how I do. Skills, but just super coachable. Being able to, Ben can talk to you more about that, but Ben, you were at Lowe’s. I mean, were you typing like a boss at Lowe’s? I was not, I was moving lumber, actually. And I have no discernible skills. I mean, I took algebra three times, ACT three times. My wife rejected me multiple times when I proposed. Crazy, crazy, as she said, yes. Blindness, she’s got blindness. You can’t see. But all I’m saying is like that’s a, you don’t need a whole lot of skills. You can have that grind, if that makes sense. And your name is? Alex. Alex. Alex, where are you from, dude? Tulsa. Tulsa. OK, cool. Where do you, what have you been doing previous to now? I was going to TCC, but I felt like that really wasn’t for me, so I stopped going. Okay, yeah. So you trotted out, and you’re kind of like, hmm. So I’m just going to start out. Okay, okay. Any questions you have, sir? And what’s your name again? John. John, okay. John, any other questions you have, John? So there’s a graphic design position over there. Yep, true. Marketing. Yep. Graphic design, and the marketing assistant will be SEO, search engine, and those will be the two spots tonight. You have two that are open for search engine tonight. Shaw Holmes is looking to hire somebody. Steve Curren is looking to hire somebody. I believe Nathan’s hiring somebody for the carpet side. Do you need one technician tonight? One or two? Yeah. And what does that pay approximately? Yeah, so I’m kind of a matchmaker. I try to find the right fit for the right people. So there’s a couple different spots there. And ma’am, your name? Lily. Okay, Lily. And Lily, what questions do you have? You’re good? Okay, I respect that. And your name again, sir? Austin. What questions do you have? I just wanted to know more about the graphic design position. Okay, well what I’m going to do, I’m going to bring up Daisy here real quick. Amelia, I’m going to let you get back to being awesome over there. Hey, let’s hear it for Daisy. Yeah, Daisy! Woo! How long have you been here? Two years. Okay, what were you doing before you were here? So, before I was here, I did a, I was in education, which is surprisingly soul sucking. I love the kids, the politics and the bureaucracy of it all. I just got… yeah, I became kind of cynical with it. Before that, I managed a donut shop, two locations. I’ve done banking, I’ve done a myriad of different things, but none of them as great as yours. And you are not white? Last time I checked. And you’re Buddhist? Yes. How does that impact our daily interaction? It doesn’t. Like, I mean, it… You know that I’m a Christian. I’m always trying to convert you. Yeah, yeah. And you know that Ben’s a Mormon, and he’s always trying to convert me. He never mentions it, but I know what he’s doing. I know what he’s doing. No, he is. This is the thing about Ben. Let me tell you about Ben. He’s sneaky, sneak. He’s like, I’m not going to talk about it. I’m just going to live it, and then if you want it, ask me about it. See, that’s what he does. He just like sets this, he doesn’t talk about it. He’s had the time. I mean it, very sneaky. His wife’s the same sneaky. They’re both like, this guy the other day, we had barbecue, we’re serving barbecue for a person. It was like a celebrating somebody. And we’re like, Ben, do you want barbecue? Tempting him. Right. He’s like, no, I’ll wait for Amelia. Doesn’t know where she is. Says it’s sneaky though. And multiple people were like, this dude’s not going to have barbecue. Why is he waiting for you? He has no idea where she is in the building. He’s a good guy. So all I’m saying is, but we have different faiths in here, it doesn’t have to be like you’re pro, but we, capitalism is probably the religion that we all have, you know. So what question do you have for Daisy? Because she started off on the phones and now she manages the call center and she’s a Sorry. You’re old. Yes. So the paid training is just two weeks for whatever you’re starting? You’re going to get paid to do. You’re going to be doing it day one. That’s awesome. As to the first initial two weeks training, is there the ability to then get further training as you go? Yeah. What you do is you’re going to work in a 90-day tour of duties, I would call it. I’m just asking you mentally to commit to work here for 90 days. Because I shouldn’t do it, my wife’s kind of helping me through this, but like, I don’t know, you know my mother-in-law, but she really cares about facials. And I’m like, can we let it go? No, no, no. Because she like wants to deliver a great experience. She’s into that, you know? And like, I can’t explain to you why, but she is, that’s just her love language. She’s into it. I think clients have experienced that, you know. And for me, I kind of view every employee as kind of like the personification of my dad, where I’m like, I don’t know why my dad was so poor at the age of 30. I don’t understand that, but I think it’s because he wasn’t taught certain skills. Because he had a degree, he was at the top of his class, literally he was at the very top of his class at ORU. I have to believe that if somebody would have pointed out to him, Tom, don’t do this and do this. I believe he would have done it because he always worked hard. But because he worked at Quick Shift and the Night Shift, and he worked at Domino’s, I stuttered as a kid. I got made fun of. I couldn’t talk until I was 13 years old. I got made fun of all the freaking time. And my parents couldn’t afford a speech pathologist. And I have to believe they would have hired one if they could have. And so I just kind of like, I want to teach you the skills needed to pay the bill. I’m just all about like, do this, boom. And then if you want to be here for five years or six years and become a partner in one of the businesses, like a law firm, great. If you want to be on the podcast with me every day and that’s your goal, great. If you want to become a real estate agent, great. If you want to become a super mom, great. I don’t care. Super dad, great. I just want to say, I want to help you get where you want to go. And I view it as like a tour of duty, not like a wage cage. So upward mobility is my game. So every 90 days we kind of reevaluate. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, yeah, so I started off in the call center as a call center rep. And I came in through the group interview. And I was like, I literally don’t care what I have to do. Like I need to be here, so what do you have? And at the time, Vanessa was like, well we need somebody in our call center. And I was like, okay. So I really want to work for Thrive, but if it means being here in this environment, I will do whatever I need to do. And so I started off in the call center, and within the first 90 days, they’re like, we want to promote you to call center manager. I was like, okay, cool. And I’ve been doing that ever since. And she was the worst manager of all time, in my opinion, and the best salesperson at the same time. Because when she’s good, like she’s good at her job, but then managing people, that’s like where you’re going like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, quit vaping. Yeah, and she like absorbed it though, you know what I mean? And so I’d be like, hey, don’t argue with her, just tell her what to do. Because we had one co-worker, he used to like go out there and do the hula hoop, remember? In the middle of the day, she would just go out there and she’d be like, just hula hooping. I’m like, you know what I mean? And then she would like get into a debate with them as opposed… And then now she’s great at it. And then she messed up and said she wanted to be a common speaker lady. And so now she speaks at the conferences. And we have a conference in here every two months for our clients. About 120 people are here every time. But any questions for Daisy about being here? No? When you first got here, when I first came in, I was like, this is so great. You know, because of the way it’s set up. And I was like, that’s for the workstations. This area right here looks like a photo shoot. You know, the backdrop of a photo shoot. And then I was going over there and I was like, okay, this is where some of the graphic design comes in. Every picture on every wall has been put there specifically, and then all the writing is my handwriting. So I’m always, my dad died, there he is, ripped Tom Clark, Tom Bomb, it’s Tom Bomb. So I put that there, because I felt like I needed to have it. I see it all the time when I’m speaking, so I’m at conferences, I’m always thinking like that. So and then like victory, I think that’s a big word, it’s important. But anyway, so we, it’s just a different place, it’s a fun place. But I would like for you to meet the teammates before you kind of decide A or B. What I want to do is I had questions for Justice and Jaw, and for Barbara, I had some questions for you guys based upon your resume. And I would like for Amelia to give a tour of you so you can see everything. Okay, so if you guys here, you three, can go with Amelia, that’d be great. And then if you three can go with Daisy and Ben on a little tour, let’s give them a tour. Cool. And then I have some questions for you guys. And then do you have your printed resumes tonight? Okay, I have a few questions. And then those of you who are interested in graphic design, have you all emailed in your portfolios? Okay, those are all been emailed? Okay, so before you go today, I would like… yeah, so before… anyway, graphic design comes down to me. I have to like obsess and look at your portfolios, because we’ve got so many talented people applying, and I like to personally look at that. So before you leave, if you have access to a mobile device or something, if you could please, I want you to verify they do it, send it to founder at thrive15.com. And that is how we do it. And now, without any further ado, 3, 2, 1, boom! Well, Thrive Nation, one thing that Clay Stairs and I get to do is to help wonderful people work on their business and to transform their business from maybe a job that seems overwhelming at times as a self-employed person into a business that they love. And we’re passionate about helping you to grow your company because we’re passionate about the clients that we serve. And this next guest, this next person I’m gonna introduce you to, this next testimonial is a guy that I actually hired him to build my home. Yeah. And I was very, very happy with the home building process. My wife was super happy with the complete project because she worked with them to design it. So I want to make sure my wife is happy with the house that she co-designed. And I kept hearing great things about today’s guest, Brian Wiggs, from other people that have used Brian Wiggs. And then when we started on the initial Pathplay Stairs, one of the things we do with our clients is to help them improve their branding, which involves them calling up their current and former customers and to gather video reviews. And every person that we contacted, they wanted to do a testimonial for Brian Wiggs. Loving Brian. In the product that he built for them. It’s enough any further ado, Brian Wiggs, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? Hey, I am doing great. Thanks for having me on. I’m glad to talk to you guys. Well, Brian, I’m going to hit you up with five quick questions, and I’m going to go to Clay Stairs to interrogate you here. Here we go. How did you first hear about our team, Clay Stairs? How did that happen? Originally, Clay and I met at a Chamber of Commerce meeting here in Jeans, Oklahoma, in my hometown here. And he had some good things to say, so I went in and talked to him afterwards, and he started telling me about the way you guys work, and it sounded very intriguing. So that first connected us a couple of years ago. And you guys meet every week. Every week you meet and you leave the meeting with homework. And just like with all of our clients, you leave with homework and we leave with homework. What kind of improvements have you seen Clay Stairs and the team make to your business over these last couple of years? I think the main thing that has changed in me, and it’s what Clay told me when the very first times we met, he said the biggest hurdle was gonna be me, that I was gonna have to do some mindset changes. That seemed okay. I thought I could be ready for that. But when you really get into it, you realize I have a lot of mindset changes to make. You have to make them one at a time. You have to dig them out. So, please help me with that week by week, reminding me of the things I need to be doing and helping me understand better how to grow my business. Now question number three of five here, I’m going to pull up your website and a lot of people tell me that, you know, they have someone that helps them with their mindset and they have someone else who helps them with their website and someone else that helps them with their online reputation and someone else who helps them with their online ads. How has working with Clay Stairs and the team helped you having one person or one team that does all of that? Well, it’s great to have it because we don’t have to mess with the technical piece of it as much. We’re really good at building houses. We’re not great at building websites or trying to do all the other things that are back room pieces that you need to have. And they’re just great to be able to hand this to them and go, this is the way I want my story to be told and they tell it. Now question number four, for anybody out there that would be considering working with clay stairs in the future. Now, are you numbering for those at home that are keeping track? I’m doing this, well, what is it? I like that. I like, for those doing the home version. I want people to know, I mean, there are certain things I get asked all the time by potential clients and I want to hit on those. I love it. So, number four, what would you say to anybody who’s thinking about working with Claystairs and the team? What would you say, what would be your thoughts? He’s available, he’s wise, and he’s infuriating, which is what you guys are describing. And then finally, my question number five is the weekly meetings. What I find is that consistent people who grow businesses, they embrace this idea. Some call it Kaizen. I’m not going to argue about the philosophy you have to endorse here, but the idea of continual improvement, the idea of every week you’re whittling away a different iteration, you’re making it a little bit better, 1% better a week for 50 weeks, 2% better a week for 50 weeks, as opposed to an event. How has the weekly, that methodology of having a weekly meeting where our team leaves with homework and you leave with homework, how has that methodology impacted your business? Well, of course it helps us as we’re trying to grow, but it also has helped us design meetings that we have with our clients and our trade partners. We start hailing them the same way when we come in with a regular agenda. We talk about the same things. We know what we’re going to do in advance. We know how to measure it. And so it helps us on a daily basis in our work. And then it helps us grow when we come meet with Clay, because we know we have to do our homework and show up and be able to answer the questions and study and analyze the answers. Now, Stairs, I’m going to turn it over to you because you guys work together weekly. I just wanted to kind of hit those questions that I get asked a lot from potential clients. Sure. Yeah. Well, Brian, hey, I first of all want to congratulate you guys on your big win just this last week winning the Tulsa Parade of Homes. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. We were very proud of that. It’s always fun to win. Yeah. You guys actually won another award there too, right? Wasn’t it the- Yes, we also won the best interior design. So when the judges come through, they’re judging the overall house and that impact, but they also look at the interior design, and we won on that award as well. Fantastic. Judging you. It doesn’t sound like a safe environment when those judges come in. No, it’s not a safe environment, but you have to put yourself out there sometimes so you can win. Yeah, yeah. And that’s not, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong here, but that’s not the only Parade of Homes award you’ve received over the years. How many are you up to now from the parade? Oh gosh, I’m not sure. We’ve been in the Parade of Homes for over 30 years and we’ve been able to do that consistently. So several years and multiple years, we’ve won in different categories and in different places. But we’ve done it, in the last 10 years, we’ve probably won eight or 10 times. Fantastic. That’s not a toss. Yeah, and Brian, I’d like for you to talk a little bit as well. You’re a family business, literally family business. You have your son and your son-in-law and your daughter-in-law working with your family? I think it’s the having systems. You know, when you’re working with family and you have close relationships, trying to call out people to accountability is a little kind of a sticky wicket. But if you have a system, you can just ask a question. Do we have a system for that? Did you follow the system for that? And then that can lead you into the right conversations and you don’t have to be challenging each other personally. You’re challenging the system. Are we working the system? Is it working for us? And that makes it a lot easier on a daily basis. And we have that conversation all the time about do we have a system for that? Let’s write a system for that. Let’s follow the system for that. Yep, that’s fantastic. That’s been, that’s one of the things that at the Leadership Initiative, Clay, I know you begin to see this as well. When our clients begin to talk through the lens of systems and begin to ask that question, do we have a system for that? That’s when you know that you’re actually beginning to think like a manager. Your love language. Yeah, exactly. You’re getting away from just the emotional, oh no, what are we going to do? Yeah. And beginning to think systematically. So that has been one thing that I’ve really enjoyed about working with you and your team and how you guys are consistently each week putting more and more systems together. Now, Brad, I want to interject this and then we’ll go to Sean here. What I find is that successful business owners, they like to bore down on the details. And people that are not successful tend to struggle with boredom and they want to move on to a new thing. And so the natural current, again, according to Inc Magazine, 96% of businesses fail. So as a coach, our job is to coach you down a proven path. And so there’s a lot of repetitive things we have to go over every week. You know, we need to gather Google reviews from your happy customers. We need to gather video reviews from your happy customers. We need to gather video reviews from your happy customers. Those Google reviews and video reviews are what we would call online reputation. When a potential buyer then thinks about working with you, they can find your reputation easily. Whereas before, you may have had to tell the customer, hey, I’ve built this many houses and here are some phone numbers, but now those testimonials are unearthed and the real people are here on display, on camera, on video, and you’re building multi-million dollar homes. Can you talk about how the video reviews and the Google reviews that we go over every week have impacted your sales process? Oh, tremendously. When we have people come in, we used to have people come into our office to hear about our process and how we build homes, they didn’t know us. They didn’t know what we were going to do. They didn’t know what to expect. Now, when they come in, they’ve already seen it. They’ve already heard a video from me. They’ve already seen our clients telling them about us. So, it’s a lot easier to be able to then get back down to the really the brass tacks of what it’s going to be like to build their house. They’re already believing in us. And that value of them believing in us in advance is just immeasurable. So you are, and again, this is just something I want to get your thoughts because I work with so many home builders all over the country. And Aaron Antus once said this, and he runs a company called Shaw Homes, which by the way, we don’t work with two people that do the same thing in each city. Right. And I reached out to Aaron when we first, you guys were talking about working with each other and I asked Aaron, is it okay if we work with another home builder in Tulsa? And Aaron goes, oh, absolutely. Brian has a stellar reputation and he doesn’t do what we do. He builds custom houses and that’s who you got. We do. Shaw is more of a buy in a neighborhood where you guys customize. Well, anyway, Aaron told me, he said, Clay, when we used to have people that reach out to us, they used to have a lot of questions and were very unsure of working with us. And he said, now that we have all these video reviews and Google reviews you’ve helped us gather over the past six or seven years, people are pretty much going in from like, I don’t know, we’re comparing you to five or six other builders to, we’ve pretty much already made the decision before we’ve even reached out. Are you hearing that at all, or is that just unique to maybe Shaw? We broke ground this morning on a new project, about a $4 million house, and when the people walked in, they said, we saw you online and we knew you were the guy. We just felt that that was what we needed to do. So when we came here, we wanted to work with you. And they found us by reaching out and seeing us online. We had never met them before. And when they walked in the door, they said, let’s go. And that’s amazing to me. I didn’t believe you guys when you told me that would happen. I thought that that could be- Nobody does. Nobody does. Now, and then, final question, I don’t want to go to Sean here. I have a lot of builders, and I’m going to send this to them today. Yes. I’ve got builders and just other clients that are… They bought Clay on this one area of getting Google reviews and getting video testimonials. Oh, I just don’t have time. Clay, I don’t know. That’s weird. And every one of my clients that gets Google reviews, I mean, they win. The pizza business I work with in Florida, Papagallo’s. Papagallo’s. And so many people are driving 30 miles to get pizza because it’s the highest rated pizza place in Florida. It works. So what would you say to somebody out there who’s a little bit resistant? Maybe they’re kind of reminding you, maybe your first meeting with Clay Stairs and you’re trying to figure it out. What would you say to anybody that’s a little resistant to getting objective video reviews and Google reviews from actual clients? I think it’s invaluable. We’re spending quite a bit of time doing that. And it’s amazing to me that when you ask people, they will actually do it. I was very resistant to that. But when you start asking them and you start asking them, what do you think about our product? How do you like our home? What do you like about Brian Newwick’s homes? They will tell you. And it’s like, that’s amazing that they’ll tell other people and you’re just standing there and listening to it. Sometimes it’s embarrassing that they say such good things. But it’s like, wow, let’s get that out there. Now, Sean, you work with a lot of wonderful clients. You also assist working with Brian Wiggs. What question would you have for Brian? Well, Brian, do you recall the first group interview at Brian D. Wiggs Homes that we did? I do. It was an amazing and crazy interviews. So the group interview is something that I’m always astounded that people haven’t heard of it. I’ve got the curse of knowledge now. It’s just such a useful tool. But I think there were about 30 people there. We couldn’t even fit them inside your little office. We had to do it on the front porch on your Main Street office at Jigs. Out of that effort of having to grow your team, maybe a little bit beyond your family there and having to start look outside of that. How has that process worked out and how did the group interview kind of come into play for that? The group interview was great. It was awkward. I had to change my mindset, like I mentioned earlier, because you’re working through a great number of people. I didn’t think as many people would show up as they did, but we dared to wait. We told them to do it. And so then we really did have 30 people. We couldn’t get them in our building, and we went outside, and I stood out basically in the street on Main Street and yelled at 30 people and asked them questions. But ultimately, we hired a new woman that has just been fantastic. She fits us perfectly. She’s almost like family. So how’d that happen? I don’t know, but a group interview certainly led us to it. That’s where she came from. I love it. Now, you, one thing that you and Clay Stairs have, and I’m not just saying this because you’re both here, I’m just, this is a real thing. You say that to all the people. No, there are times, you see me sometimes get into altercations with people, you’ve seen it. Clay, I have seen it. I don’t avoid combat, okay, or conflict, so. No, seriously. Conflict, not combat. Well, I do sometimes both. It’s kind of… But you speak highly of Brian Wiggs when he’s not here. Yeah. And you always praise the quality of his work. Yeah. And without reservation, you praise him. But if people can’t find him, what we feel about him doesn’t matter. Exactly. That’s really good, Clay. So I’m having a lot of people that I’m running into now that are reaching out to me and they go, hey, I saw your wife has a testimonial, and this has happened multiple times. Hey, I’ve seen your wife’s testimonial on Brian D. Wiggs’ website. Do you really like him? I go, oh yeah. He’s like, well, okay. And I’m getting a lot of that. How rewarding is that for you, Brian, now that you’re finally, after years of building homes, you’re finally starting to have new people that you did not know previously finding you online. What’s that been like for you, sir? Yeah. Well, it’s been really good because we’ve been, we’ve taken a lot of pride in the product that we produce. We think we built the great houses. I’ve been doing this for 35 years. I’m very proud of it. But when people can’t find me, that they don’t even know me, then they go build with somebody else. And I see the house going up, I’m thinking, why, why, why didn’t you come to me? I’m the one that builds the great houses, but they didn’t know me. So being able to get online and find me has just been amazing for us. It’s like they can finally get out and we can put our product out to a lot more people. Yeah. Yeah, Brian, you and I, going back to the mindset, you and I have spent quite a bit of time, even outside of our weekly meeting, talking about this journey that you’ve been on in just changing your mindset. Huge visionary, big visionary, loving the big vision, and struggling with, a lot of times, struggling with the minutia and the details and everything. But if somebody else were in this same spot, if we had other clients that were really getting stuck in that emotional phase and getting stuck with that mindset, what would be some of the things that you did to help press through and change the way you think to allow you to be able to take these steps that you’ve taken at Brian D. Wiggs at Holmes? Well, we do deal with the emotional dragon a lot here, and we’ve, each of us have had to deal with that. And we’ve been sort of sharing that with our clients. Go ahead, okay, emotional dragon’s gonna pop up here. Be ready for it. It’s gonna hit you, it’s going to hit us. And so we know how to work through it. But the way we work through it is when we create these processes. We write them down. Okay, what is it that I do on a daily basis? We’re going to run into that emotional dragon and then work out ways that I can be prepared and go, okay, what’s my system? And we’ll work through that. So it’s back to the process, back to the system is what helps us overcome that emotional drag. Yeah, I’ve been very proud of you and your sons, as you guys have been able to work more and more and follow, not just put them together, but follow your systems in your company. Now I want to go to Sean next, Jerry. I’ve got one more question for you. Being present is a present, and a lot of people are not present, but they are physically present. Let me try again. So there’s a lot of people who, and thankfully I’ve got a wonderful roster of clients that mentally participate in what we’re doing, so I don’t have these problems. But there are people that, you know, they wanna do their weekly coaching call while eating a salad, while on the road. And what I do, that’s why I only take on 160 clients. That’s why we have a limited number of clients that Clay Stairs takes on, because if someone’s coachable, it’s very easy to work with them. But when you have somebody who’s clearly eating a salad, clearly at lunch, clearly mentally at lunch and physically at lunch while trying to do your weekly call, because most of our clients are not in Tulsa, it makes it almost impossible. And I love the idea that you mentally participate. Can you maybe talk as a coaching client, what kind of is on the receiving end of the coaching, how much time do you have to block out for that weekly meeting? And what does that look like? Well, we meet with Clay for an hour once a week. Sometimes we’ll meet with him in his office. Sometimes we’ll catch each other on the road. But when we do, we stop and we’re 100% present for that period of time. And just being, I don’t know I could do it unless I was 100% present. Many times Clay’s sharing ideas with me, and I’m like, okay, wait a second. So what you’re saying is, and I can repeat it back, and then finally work through it. But it takes that, I gotta be paying attention to it. I’m a slow learner, so I gotta work through it piece at a time. John, any final question you would have for Brian D. Wiggs? Again, that website, folks, I’ll make sure I put it on the show notes, that’s briandwiggs.com. He could be a male model, but he’s not. It’s bryanddwigs.com. He’s a good-looking man. He’s a real person, real business. bryanddwigs.com. He’s not a hired actor. Sean, what are your thoughts? Well, I mean, more than a question, I just wanted to bring up at the beginning how you and Clay Stairs met. You guys met at the Chamber. Right, and I remember our first meeting down at Utica Square. Yeah. Sitting in a lounge together. I remember that forever ago. That’s right. It’s been a while. Now, the way it works with Clay Stairs and I, it all starts with that initial phone call. It starts with scheduling a consultation and just scheduling a free assessment to see if someone’s a good fit. What would you say to anybody out there considering working with Clay Stairs and Sean and the coaches and working with them? What would you say? I’d say give it some time to come in and hear what they have to say and really listen. Like you just said, be 100% present even in those first moments. I remember asking Clay, I said, okay, if what you say is true, I’ll do this. And he goes, trust me, if you’ll do what I say, it will work. And that was the truth. Now, you have three monitors and a circular table. I’m not sure what percentage of your success is attributed to that. He’s got his name on his table. Do the listeners have to have a custom table to be successful, Brian? You don’t have to do that, but it helps. Brian did. You can get there faster. You can get there faster if you do that. And folks, we live in the house that Brian built. And the way I did that, and Brian can attest to this, I’m sure, I told my wife, you design it how you want, so that you’re happy with the house that you built. I get the pool, though. There you go. Can we talk about the pool? The pool is an incredible thing. We got to go to the pool. And my wife, though, she really, really loves it, and there’s not a day that goes by that she doesn’t compliment it or give someone a tour. She’s always proud. And we’ve built multiple houses, but this is the favorite home that we’ve lived in. So thank you on behalf of my wife and our family. I appreciate you very much, Brian. And again, folks, if you’re looking to build a home and you happen to be in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area, that’s briandwigs.com. Thank you, Brian, for joining us. We really do appreciate you. Thanks a lot, Brian. Thanks, guys. Enjoy. Take care, brother. See you. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So, what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has. By being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews, and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pessimon company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay. So 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy. But also, we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah. So here’s a big one for you So last week alone our booking percentage was 91% We actually booked more deals and more new customers last year than we did the first five months Or I’m sorry the first we booked more deals last week Then we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with thrive So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. And it’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews, that way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists that when everything gets done and it gets done right, it creates accountability, we’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast, like Jared had mentioned, that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like the diligence and consistency in doing those, and that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut, and if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline but that’s what it’s going to take in order to really succeed. So we just want to give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatrician. Through our new digital marketing plan we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42 percent increase, month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. a proof and turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you are looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colal with Colalaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. And Clay’s done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with like Lee Crockrell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. Think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. In the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from start-ups go from start-up to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through this system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. Anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top Canine, and we just wanna give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey, guys. I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right. This is where we used to live years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing, and this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing, and this is our new team. We went from four to 14. And I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So, we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us Just thank you. Thank you. Thank you times a thousand The Thrivetime show two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet You can learn the proven 13-point business system that dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems So now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve You’re gonna leave energized motivated, but you’re also gonna leave empowered The reason why I’ve built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this and because there wasn’t anything like this I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s gonna be the best business workshop ever and we’re gonna give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you. Hey I’m Ryan Wimpey with Tip Top K9 and I’m the founder. I’m Rachel Wimpey and I am a co-founder. So we’ve been running Tip Top for about the last 14 years franchising for the last three four years. So someone that’d be a good fit for Tip Top loves dogs, they’re high-energy, they want to be able to own their own job but they don’t want to worry about you know the high failure rate. They want to do that like bowling with bumper lanes. So you give us a call, reach out to us and we’ll call you and then we’ll send you an FTD, look over that, read it, fall asleep to it, it’s very boring. And then we’ll book a discovery day and you come and you can spend a day or two with us to make sure that you actually like it, make sure your community is out for something that you want to do. So an FTD is a franchise disclosure document. It’s a federally regulated document that goes into all the nitty-gritty details of what the franchise agreement entails. So who would be a good fit to buy a TikTok K9 would be somebody who loves dogs, who wants to work with dogs all day as their profession. You’ll make a lot of money, you’ll have a lot of fun, it’s very rewarding. And who would not be a good fit is a cat person. So the upfront cost for TikTok is $43,000. And a lot of people stay there generating doctor money, but on our disclosure the numbers are anywhere from over a million dollars a year in dog training what our Oklahoma City location did last year to 25-35 grand a month. To train and get trained by us for tip top canines or run your own tip top canine you would be with us for six weeks here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been married for seven years, eight years. So if you’re watching this video, you’re like, hey, maybe I want to be a dog trainer. Hey, that one sounds super amazing. Go to our website, tiptopcanada.com, click on the yellow franchising tab, fill out the form, and Rachel and I will give you a call. Our Oklahoma City location last year, they did over a million dollars. He’s been running that shop for three years before he was a youth pastor with zero sales experience, zero dog training experience before he ever met with us. So just call us, come spend a day with us, spend a couple days with us, make sure you like training dogs and own your own business. Well the biggest reason to buy a Tip Top K9 is so you own your own job and you own your own future and you don’t hate your life. You get an enjoyable job that brings a lot of income but is really rewarding. My name is Seth Flint and I had originally heard about Tip Top K9 through my old pastors who I worked for. They trained their great Pyrenees with Ryan and Tip Top K9. They did a phenomenal job and became really good friends with Ryan and Rachel. I was working at a local church and it was a great experience. I ended up leaving there and working with Ryan and Tip Top K9. The biggest thing that I really really enjoy about being self-employed is that I can create my own schedule. I have the ability to spend more time with my family, my wife and my daughter. So my very favorite thing about training dogs with Tip Top K9 is that I get to work with the people. Obviously I love working with dogs but it’s just so rewarding to be able to train a dog that had serious issues whether it’s behavioral or you know whatever and seeing a transformation taking that dog home and mom and dad are literally in tears because of how happy they are with the training. If somebody is interested, I’d say don’t hesitate. Make sure you like dogs. Make sure that you enjoy working with people because we’re not just dog trainers. We are customer service people that help dogs. And so definitely, definitely don’t hesitate. Just just come in and ask questions. Ask all the questions you have.