Business Podcasts | Why Success Is In the Follow-Up | Why Management & Holding Teammates Accountable to Implementing the Proven Processes Is the PROFOUND BUSINESS GROWING SUPER MOVE That Nobody Wants to Talk About

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Mighty are thee, our friends, and safe our people, Hey, what are you doing? I’m just cleaning the bathroom. Looks good. Let’s go to lunch. Alright. On today’s show, I will teach you how to earn both time and financial freedom. You see, a business exists to serve the owner. And so if you’re an owner of a business right now and you’re being owned by your business, that’s not a good thing. So on today’s show, I will teach you specific moves that you can use to get your time back through building a scalable and systematic business. A business that is filled with repeatable systems and processes that other people who are not you can actually use. If you’ve ever felt trapped within the very business that you yourself built, this show is for you my friends. Learn how to get your time back on today’s edition of the Thrive Time Show. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show dies. Two men, eight kids co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Time Show. Yes, yes, yes, and yes, Thrive Nation, it is a very special occasion because it is always profound. Jason, each and every day that we are above the ground. Oh man, I love it when we’re not dead. Every time we do a show where we’re not dead, it is impressive. Now, on today’s show, we’re going to be talking about two big ideas, and then we’re going to get into a lot of details. So the big idea number one is you have to delegate to elevate. You have to. You’re not ever going to move up to a different standard of life if you can’t delegate. But at the same time, there is a difference between abdication and delegation. So we’re going to get into the details. We’re going to go through a lot of examples on today’s show. Today’s show is going to be hot and it’s going to be exciting, but I want to make sure that everybody is on the same team with me here. I want everyone to take some notes, if at all possible. Maybe some of you are driving right now, so maybe you pull over and then you take notes when you can. Maybe at stoplights you take notes, but we need to take notes because knowledge without application is absolutely meaningless. Knowledge without application is meaningless. So let’s let’s talk about some things that I do not do Which allows me to be on the show with you? Okay, there are things that I do not do which allow me to be on the show with you Jason I’m gonna ask you about some delegation items. I’m gonna ask you dr. Breck and we’re just gonna have a lot of fun working through These details. So here we go. Dr. Breck. Yes. Do you do you cut your own grass? No, I do not. Why? Because a few years ago I decided it was better to pay someone else for their time than spending my time doing it. This just in, the founder of drbreck.com, Tulsa’s number one and highest rated chiropractor does not cut his own grass. Now a lot of people though, I think they run a business and they also cut their grass. Now I have seen a lot of men who are clients of mine who say, well my wife says a real man will cut the grass. And I don’t want to get into that conversation right now because that takes it to a weird place. So I can’t, this show is for you. You can explain this to your significant other if that’s a problem. Yeah, I mean I don’t feel any less of a man, but I know that my time is short spending it with my family. And before I hired somebody else to cut my grass, I would work all week and I don’t see patients on the weekend, but I would spend three or four hours in my yard in solitude essentially cutting my grass, weeding, a lot of weeding in my yard. And that was time I wasn’t spending with my family. So for me, the investment of paying somebody else to come in and they quickly buzz the yard and weedy very briefly, very quickly. They do a decent job, not perfect, but good enough to get it done. And that’s definitely worth the exchange of the money. So your wife doesn’t ask you to mow the yard shirtless all the time? No. So now, processing paychecks. Dr. Breck, I want to ask you this. Yeah. I see a lot of people that insist upon processing their own paychecks. Right. As a business owner. Now let me explain to you what I mean by this. Whenever you have an employee who is on your team, you’re going to have to pay them, obviously, their paycheck. And when you pay them their paycheck, you want to make sure that the numbers are correct. You want to make sure, so as an example, let’s just say that Carl is on salary and he makes $500 a week as a base. And then at Elephant in the Room, Jason, every time you sell a membership, how much money do you get? Depending on the membership, you’ll get $10, $15, or $33. Okay, so let’s just say a very realistic week. You tell me if I’m exaggerating here, okay? But let’s say Carl makes $500 per week salary at Elephant in the Room. And then he sells, how many memberships can you sell in a real week if you’re actually trying? Oh, man, in a real week if you’re trying, you can sell 15 to 20. OK, so let’s just say you sold 15 memberships, right? And what package do you sell the most? That would be the deluxe followed by the standard. So how much is the average? 33 and 37. OK, so let’s say 35, kind of an average there. So we take 15 memberships times 35 and we come up with a total of $525 of commissions that this guy could make this week on paychecks, on bonuses for selling memberships. And then if he gets an objective review from a real customer, how much do we pay? Oh yeah, it’s $3 per review. Okay, so $3 per review. Wow, I want to do this job. I know, right? Three dollars per review. It was a lot of fun. And then how much do you get if you sell products? Oh, so that is, you get 8% of whatever the product value is. So how many reviews could you get in a typical week? Shoot, if you are actually trying, I mean, we see 60 to 80 people on a regular day, counting the weekends. How many would you get a day? Just counting new people, you get like 30 reviews. So in a week? Yeah. Okay. So we’ve got $90 here. So we’ve got $90. Sweet gig. I’ll tell you what, this elephant in the room is hot. You should check it out. I should check it out. It requires manual labor, though. So you’ve got the $90 commissions. And then after that, you’ve got the $525 of commissions. You’ve got the $90 of commissions. You’ve got the $500 a week of salary. Are there other bonuses? You’re saying the product commission. How much would you make a week on that? Like 20 bucks, 10 bucks? Yeah, because I mean, we have our key performance indicators, which means of the entire customer base we see in any given week, we need to sell 30% of the products in order to be profitable to have the products. So if you had, what, 100 people, you’d need to sell 30 people products and if you sold one, that’s 30 times the average ticket price would be like $15.99. So $15.99 times 30 and you want 8% of that. $15 times 30 times 8%? Yep. Okay. You got $36. All right, so $36 of product commissions there. So at the end of the week, you say, all right, man, I got it. Now again, I’m telling you, I do not delegate this portion in terms of like there is somebody on my team that is going to add up these numbers, but I do not abdicate the completion of this task. I want to make sure we’re getting this idea. I delegate, and I want to make sure I’m not misspeaking, I delegate, I say somebody else needs to add up these numbers, but I don’t abdicate. So abdicate is where you say do it and you don’t follow up. Abdicate is, let me read the actual definition of abdication, because I want to make sure we’re getting on the same page here. Abdicate means the act of abdicating or renouncing the throne. Failure to fulfill a responsibility or duty. So it would be like back in the day of kings and queens. If you knew, if you were a king and you knew that your kingdom was going to be overrun soon you would say, Jason, can we talk real quick? Jason, can we talk for a second? You know, I’ve been king for a long time and I’ve been thinking you’d be a good king. So I’m just going to give this crown to you and if you see me running out the back of the castle on horseback just as fast as possible screaming, we’re going to die! That’s just something I do. But don’t worry about me. I’m just going to be in the hill country. And you’re in charge. Sweet. So just put on this little crown. Make sure everybody knows you’re the king. Oh, I will. If they ask where I’m at, I’m not here. I’m excited about your future as the king. You know, it’s going to be a good reign. And you do that because you don’t want to be the king anymore because you think you’re going to lose. I see a lot of business owners who do that. They say, I don’t want to do the math. I don’t want to follow up because I don’t do math. I don’t want to mess with it. The problem is, if you abdicate, then you’re going to have major errors everywhere. So, Jason, explain to me who first turns in all these totals. The $500 a week salary, the 15 memberships, the commissions, the commissions for the products. Who turns in all this stuff? The way that you’ve structured the Elephant in the Room payroll system is awesome because it goes directly into your weekly accountability meeting with all the managers, which we’ll have to do this following Monday, actually, so on the 6th. We will meet with you at 8 a.m. tomorrow and the first thing that we need to do since it’s payroll week is we need to make sure all of the managers have turned in the hours or they vetted the hours for all their employees make sure that they worked there you know 35 to 40 hours. So how does the employee turn in their pay? So the employee has a biometric time clock so when they get to work and when they leave for lunch when they come back from lunch when they leave for the day they just do a simple thumbprint and it clocks their time. But Zanotti, the software, tracks all this stuff, right? OK, so step one, the Zanotti, that’s the software, Z-E-N-O-T-I. Zanotti tracks the commissions, correct? Yep, so Zanotti tracks hours, product commissions, and membership sales. So step two, the manager verifies the numbers. Yep, so they’ll run the reports for all of that. And then step three is that, in this case, it would be our payroll processor manager. In this case, it would be Amelia. So this would be our pay… I’ll call this Paycheck… I don’t even know. It’s like an assistant bookkeeper. I need to give her a title probably. Something better than that. But Amelia verifies the numbers again. Yeah, in depth. Step four, we submit the payment to a payroll processing company. We do. Now the company that I prefer to use is a company called Paychex. With an X. That’s who I like to use. Now, full disclosure, for Make Your Life Epic, I use Paychex. For Elephant in the Room, I do not use Paychex. I use a company called Paycom. I don’t dislike Paycom. I just prefer Paychex. So I don’t dislike paycom, they’re just paychecks has been very responsive for me over the years. They call me back, I like the pricing, I like everything about it. But at the end of the day I submit the we submit the employee pay, the employee payment to paychecks. Now Breck, who do you use to process your employee payroll checks? My accountant does it? And they then take out the payroll tax. Right. They would do all the withholdings. FICA, FICA, yeah. Okay. Now why do you not do it yourself? The same reason. I mean, it’s just not the best use of my time. There are some aspects like you guys are talking about that I verify. So I have massage therapists that work for They are independent contractors and they turn in essentially kind of like a bill to me for what services that they’ve done and we have certain contracted rates and different things that go into that, bonuses and such that can be done. And so first my front desk manager verifies those numbers and makes sure that every massage that they say that they did, did happen. We have, you know, checks and balances on that. And then the bonuses, tips, and different things that need to be attached to it are accurate. And so, then I get those numbers and we turn it in to the accountant to make sure that all the taxes are done properly. So, again, we delegate cutting grass, we say. Listen, someone else can cut the grass. Right. But, how do you know if the grass has been cut properly, Dr. Breck? I see it and I walk on it. You see it? Yeah. My toes are in the grass. This is a big thing though. And they do it Saturday morning and so I’m there. This is a very important step, though. I want to make sure we’re not skipping this. Because you are delegating cutting the grass, but you know that the grass was cut because you see it. Yeah, I didn’t abdicate it. Just delegated it. I’m not totally unaware and out to lunch and don’t have a clue what’s going on. Yeah, you still have to verify. I’m not going to pay the mowers to come and cut the grass if they didn’t cut the grass. OK, so let’s get into this now again. Item number two that I delegate is the processing of paychecks. Now, why am I dwelling on this? Because I see a lot of business owners who get screwed right here. They have someone else on their team that’s in charge of paying people, and they never see the numbers. So again, step one, Zanotti, the software tracks the commissions, but the manager verifies those numbers, the assistant bookkeeper then verifies those numbers, and then it’s submitted to paychecks who handles the state taxes, the federal taxes, the federal insurance contribution, the FICA, all that stuff. It’s all done. So I just want to make sure we’re getting this idea, though. Jason, why do we have a manager and an assistant bookkeeper who verify the numbers? Why? Well, you have to, because again, you’ve delegated it, which means you have assigned it to somebody else, but you have to follow up or it doesn’t get done. And if we didn’t verify, we’ve had plenty of times where somebody will come up, the good employees will come up and say, Clay, you paid me an extra $700 last week. What’s that from? And then we go back and you realize homeboy had stayed clocked in for like 36 hours and nobody caught it. Right. And it happens a lot. So we have to make sure that because it was assigned, it can’t be completed until it’s completed the correct way and nothing gets completed the correct way unless you follow up. How often do you work with business owners, Jason, who struggle right here? They struggle with delegating and this idea of actually following up, this idea of actually checking in, giving somebody homework to do on your team and then following up. How often do you see people get stuck here? Well very often. A lot of the small business owners that I do work with, as they’ve scaled out, we’re trying to make sure that now that they’re hitting their financial goals, we have to get to their time freedom goals. And so as we work through the checklist and we get them through the path of just getting everything in order, when they start giving things to a manager or an office assistant, they’re so used to doing it themselves, they don’t know how to give it to somebody else and follow up with them because they never had that. Or everything was so systemized in their head when they put it on paper, it doesn’t quite translate. So they give it to somebody thinking, oh, this is going to make sense. I don’t have to follow up. Everything’s in this list. And so, yeah, it’s very difficult because a lot of people just don’t inherently see that. So you have to push them and say, OK, if I give this to Breck, I have to make sure if I’m giving him a week to do it, I should probably follow up at least every other day until it’s done. You have to inspect what you expect. Right. Breck, have you ever seen this where you’ve given a task to somebody on your team? Back in the day, I’m sure your current team, nobody on your current team ever drops the ball. No, that’s the old school team. But have you ever had a situation where you have delegated something to somebody, and then when you followed up, it was not done properly? Has this ever happened? It has. And how do you handle it now? You’ve become a much more effective manager over time. Are we saying you’re perfect? No, but we’re saying you’ve gotten so much better as you grow. So how do you… You do what you know until you know better and then you do better. So tell the listeners out there, what do you do now? When you have a checklist that says clean the bathroom… Well, even the example I gave you a moment ago, some of that came about because of past experiences. So we had a massage therapist at one point years ago who was making up massages. There were phantom patients that she was massaging and just, you know, didn’t want to work but wanted to get paid, of course. And so on Saturdays when I wasn’t, we, the management team, weren’t in the clinic, she would have, you know, five, six extra patients that she was massaging each and every Saturday. So it started to add up more and more over time, started very little and then got bigger and bigger. But because there was that situation, then we had to actually verify, you know, come up with a better system of checks and balances to verify that these massages are legit, that they did happen. We have the paperwork to show who is who and what’s what. I just think somebody out there is on the verge of massive success, but what they’re doing is they’re not delegating. What they’re doing is they’re giving a task to somebody and they don’t follow up and then they come back and they say, what Jason, if you want it to be done right, you have to do it yourself. Right. Every single time. Every time. And so that becomes a job and not a business. Right. And the difference between a job and a business is a business is spelled B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S and busyness is spelled B-U-S-Y-N-E-S-S. Busyness means you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing. You’re just spinning around in a circle. You’re never getting ahead. You’re not gaining traction. And a business exists to serve you, which means that you, aka I, have a business that serves you. And somebody has to get this into your head right now. You have to delegate the cutting of the grass. You do not abdicate the cutting of the grass. Now let me tell you a fun story about lawn mowing jackassery. Nathan, have you ever hired someone to mow the lawn who screwed up your lawn? Yes, I did. Have you had it happen? I did. He decided that my fescue needed to be an inch and a half like Bermuda should be, where fescue should be three inches long. So I had a nice brown yard. It was not a happy sight. Hey, I apologize for that. I’ll let you try again. So let me tell you the story. Back in the day, we had a property at 91st and Lynn Lane. Have you seen that property, Jason? I have seen photos. Breck, have you driven by that place? No, I’m not aware, but I know the area. I have been there. You have been there? That’s actually where we had the first interview for the DJ. Really? Yeah. Oh wow, so that used to be our DJ world headquarters. That’s where we reconnected there. 91st and LinLin, you’ve been there. So at this particular house, it’s about five acres, and I really liked the house a lot. My wife and I bought the house because we both liked it. We thought it would be a great place to build the business, and it became a thing where…I’m trying to pull up an aerial view here, Breck, so you can see it, or Jason, hopefully you can see it on the screen there. But is that screen working or is it off? Oh, the screen’s off. Oh, we’ve got to…oh, okay, we’ll turn the screen on. I’m not sure why the screen goes off, but it does sometimes. So the property is five acres, and I think to myself, man, I’ll just mow this myself. So Breck, I’ve got two mowers, two riding mowers, so that way if one would stop working I could use the other one. And I’m on that thing mowing. And I’m thinking this is fun though. For like an hour. I built up in my mind this would be awesome. Then it occurs to me, I have to do this every week. And then I didn’t want to do it anymore. Right. Because. And even at that, I mean, if you could get five acres mowed in an hour, you’re buzzing quickly. Now, I mean, we’re talking like hours. Yeah. And so, it’s hot out there. My dad wouldn’t let, we had like three acres at one point, my dad would not let me drive the mower on full speed, which would help me get it done quicker. But no, he’s like, you cut some corners, you don’t do a great job when you’re going that fast. You’re limited. Push it all? You don’t have to worry about it. Thankfully, that was a riding mower. So you get the mower, you’re riding. And so I thought, I cannot do this anymore. I can’t. So I hired one of our employees to mow the lawn. So I pulled one of the guys aside and I said, hey, you’ll mow the lawn. I’ll pay you what I would pay a landscaping company, and I’ll supply the mowers and the gas, you just can go mow.” So he’s like, well, that’s cool. So he mows. And all of a sudden I hear a… I’m outside, I’m like, what is going on? I go out there, he says, dude, I did not know there were sticks and that there was this and that. He mowed past the lawn and started mowing in the roughage area where we have… Because we had a lawn, but then once we got to the forest portion of the backyard, we just quit mowing there. We just let it look natural. Well, he decides to mow that area. So the mower is just… the blades are broken. Right. Because he’s like… That’s what you need a brush hog for. He mowed… Not a mower. Right. He mowed underneath these forest trees. Just destroyed the thing. So I’m like, well we have the other mower. Right. And he says, well you know what, dude, I’m so sorry. Tomorrow I’ll come finish it. So my wife and I, it’s probably five in the morning on a Sunday. We just finished DJing at like two in the morning. We’ve been up all night, every Saturday, we’re probably up until 3 in the morning, but every Saturday night we’re up until 3 in the morning at least because all the DJs are returning from wedding receptions, so we’re always out late getting the DJs. My wife would stay home and pay everybody, but I’m traveling, I’m DJing, I’ve got a lot going on. So it’s like 5 in the morning, I’ve been asleep for like 2 hours. And then I hear a… Right outside your window. And I’m going… What, Lord? Because I don’t know if this is a dream, and I’m thinking maybe I went to heaven, because in my dream in heaven… I don’t know about you guys, but my dream is I would like to be sleep deprived and to be laying on my back hearing It’s like I look outside This guy has decided to hire some of his buddies and they’re mowing my lawn At 5 in the morning. Yeah After drinking a lot So they’re out there just mowing, and I go and I look at the patio, and the patio, we have a riding lawn mower, and you have a patio that’s about a slab of concrete that is maybe four inches off the ground or five inches off the ground, I don’t know, but it’s a slab of concrete that’s clearly not part of the grass. Why can you not mow over the edge of the patio, Brett? Can you explain the situation? Why would you want to use a weed eater as you get closer to a four inch patio area? The same reason you don’t want to mow into the heavy brush in the back that you were keeping all natural, because you’re going to tear up those blades and you’re going to start shaving the edge of your concrete. Unless you want it to look like a Rammstein show and sparks are flying everywhere. That’s happened to me before. It scared the crap out of me. I’m laying there in bed hoping this isn’t real. I’m envisioning that commercial where they’ve got the riding mower and all of a sudden they cross the gravel and they’re just shooting. It’s like a machine gun. Just machine gun shots through the car, through the walls, just plaster and everything. I go out there and I see these guys mowing by the patio and it’s like, You didn’t tell me you had power cords everywhere in your back. So he ran over, I guess, the outdoor lighting we have. He ran over those things. Mows all your sprinkler heads. Yeah, he destroyed the concrete. And the sprinklers come on at five in the morning. They come out. So there’s soggy and he’s mowing it and I’m like, what an idiot. And so, that was a short-lived attempt to delegate something that wasn’t defined. And I really do, I challenge the listeners to write this down, to think about this. Common sense is not common. No, it’s true. Especially today. Nathan, you’ve hired some people to work for your company, Complete Carpet, and you’ve hired some great people who’ve cleaned carpets for you, and you’ve hired some idiots. What’s the dumbest thing you’ve seen an employee do while trying to clean a carpet where you said this is truly something that cannot ever happen again? What is something that you’ve, and you can speak in generalities if you want, you can get specific if you want. I’m just saying I have discovered through running multiple companies, if you do not lay out every step of the process. I should have said, when you mow my lawn, do not mow anywhere beyond this area. I should have marked it out. I should have said, do not mow over the patio. I should have said, we have sprinkler heads. I should have said, don’t mow at 5 in the morning. I should have defined when to mow. I should have defined if you could be intoxicated while mowing or not. I mean, I should have defined all of these things, but I did not. I didn’t have any processes. I just said the general task of, I need you to mow the lawn, and I shall pay you. I didn’t say when to mow the lawn. I didn’t say where to mow the lawn. I didn’t say who could mow the lawn. I did not have an operations manual about being intoxicated or not while mowing the lawn. I did not. I just said, broad brush, go mow the lawn. Thus, what I got was a cluster of a reverse laser show that ruined two lawn mowers, caused over $10,000 of damage to the mowers, to the lawn, to the sprinkler heads, to the aerobic system that we had on our lawn. I mean, it was bad. So, what is the worst employee lack of common sense thing that you’ve seen? I’ll go back about 20 years so I don’t get anyone currently upset with me but the we had a large large freeze in the Tulsa area enough that like the ponds were like six inches deep which is awesome because that year we actually had a pond and we went ice skating on it which was a lot of fun back at the Williams Center where you rented skates from. We had a lot of freezes at the apartment complexes we were working at. Lots of water flowing everywhere inside the buildings. Normally you want the water on the outside of the buildings, not on the inside. And so we had, I think, five or six full buildings, all the units completely flooded, all the way top and bottom. And so we brought in a bunch of extra guys, and we got five or six different flood sectors, which are small, portable units. We had the big truck units, but we also needed the small ones to get to the upstairs ones. So we set them up. We thought we told them exactly what needed done. We went in, started running around, checking everybody out, and then we went back to the first couple of guys and we said, that’s odd, the living room’s flooded and the bedrooms look okay. So we said, let’s start working on the living room. And we took off, came back in and said, that’s odd, the kitchen’s flooded. It’s like as if parts of this house keep getting flooded, it just keeps moving around. Found out on those little flood suckers, you have to attach the dump hose and you have to take it outside of the house. Evidently, they started in the room, set the machine on, and as they sucked the water out of one room, it dumped it into the next room. And they’re like, boss, this place has got a bad leak. Every time we suck the water out of one room, another room gets flooded. And you’re billing by the hour, right? And we’re billing by the hour. And so we went through, and it was at least half a building before we finally realized what they were doing and walked in and said, have you guys, the hose on the back of the machine? They’re like, oh, I didn’t, I thought that was just extra hose. We’re like, no, no, it’s got to get the water out of the unit, not back in. So it was, uh, it was, we had to go back and redo almost every single unit they did. You guys should have rebranded as a Sisyphus carpet cleaning. We start in one room and then we just create the problem. The next Have you guys ever seen those large storage containers that people now are turning into houses? Have you seen these things? Oh yeah. A big crate, I think you call them? Yeah, we have a shopping center downtown made entirely of those. What is it? Shipping containers? Boston Gar, yeah. Okay, yeah. Actually, this restaurant, The Gulf, that we were at, we were down in Fort Walton Beach last weekend, the whole restaurant is built with shipping containers. Really cool. Okay, so you can picture in your mind what a shipping container is and what a dumpster is. Right. You know the difference. Yeah. Have you ever put a trash dumpster in there? Well, we had one guy on our team who was a good guy, I think. If he’s listening to this show, you know who you are. Now this guy, he did a very good job, a particular job. What happens is, I’m just trying to make sure the listeners get all these ideas, these details, because one, what we have to do is we have to delegate. We have to define what to do. This guy was a phenomenal sales guy for me. Because Jason, if you work for me, if you work with me on one of my sales teams, what are all the tools you have to make your job easy? If you’re a sales guy for me, every tool, you have scripting, you have call recording, you’ve got checklists, you’ve got every single thing that we would ever need to track our performance weekly, if not daily follow-up. So definitely a weekly meeting for training, but then daily follow-up to make sure that we’re getting our items done. I mean, there’s not a single thing other than, I don’t know, a pat on the back. So I mean, again, if you’re on my team and you’re going to work with me on one of my sales teams, it’s almost impossible to fail. Because you have call scripts, you have the leads already procured for you, the call recording is in place. We have weekly training, you have access to the answers whenever you have questions. I mean, it’s really, you can’t fail. So this guy was making about $1,500 a week DJing for me, because he would DJ two nights a week and he would do sales. He made great money. I thought, we need to promote this guy. Now, one of the problems we have out there is that some of us, this is me, I used to do this, we promote somebody to a level of incompetence. We promote them past their lid, past their mental capacity, and things fall apart. I would recommend if you have somebody who does a great job on your team, maybe give them a couple extra tasks before you ask them to become the manager. And maybe you want to do this if you’re married to the person, too. Because a lot of people, they promote their spouse, their son, their daughter, their friend, their employee, somebody past their comfort zone because it’s convenient or whatever. So this guy, he’s a good DJ, he’s a good sales guy, and I said, hey, I’d like you to be a manager. And he says, oh great. And I was probably 23, 24. And he says, well, what does that mean? I said, well, you’re basically gonna run the operations. So here are the checklists, here are the systems. To my credit, I had a lot of checklists and systems. To my lack of credit, I did not explain to him everything about the game of life first. So I get back from DJing in Dallas and I get a voicemail that sounds like this. Back in the day there would be a red light flashing and I hit the button and the voicemail starts to play and it says, I need to speak to the owner right away. Somebody has destroyed thousands of dollars of carpet and I don’t even know how to start with this but it’s one of the DJ Connection employees. Please call me immediately. I’d like to settle this before we get into legal action. I don’t want to get just just call me back. Just my phone number and he could tell he’s mad. Sure. But he’s trying to be all the trash from your business, and I know this because it’s got the name of your company on all the bills. There’s skull containers, beer cans, there is, I mean, everything, pizza boxes, and they were dumped into my shipping container with all the new carpet I’m installing for this big project and I’ve got, I saw him do it and I want you to pay for it.” I’m like, well, how much carpet are we talking about? He’s like, it’s a little over $10,000. And I’m like, oh, carpet? So I go talk to the employee. I remember we used to make, like at this point, we’re making maybe $10,000 a month. I’m like, did you drop the trash for the office in a shipping container. He says, well you said put the trash in the dumpster. I had never done it before so I went over to that area and I put it in the dumpster. I’m going what? I mean how could you possibly do this? There is a dumpster we paid for. There’s a buddy of mine who owned a business and he has a dumpster. We have one at the office now. It’s a big dumpster, and on Mondays we just put the trash in the dumpster. So he goes over to this shopping center where I had a buddy of mine, we were sharing the dumpster, and I guess he couldn’t figure out the difference between a dumpster and a shipping container. So he sees a shipping container that is closed, and he opens it up, sees rolls of carpet in there, and throws our trash in there. This looks like trash. Yeah, why not? And then somebody yelled at you, and he goes, well, some guy said, hey, what are you doing? And I shut it and I ran off. In the van that’s clearly painted that says DJ Connection, yeah, I didn’t know what to do. Lucky we didn’t tell me. I don’t know, I just… I blacked out. But it’s just like, no way. And trying to explain that to my wife, trying to explain it to myself, trying to even right now explain it to you the listener, it doesn’t make any sense. If he would have looked for even five minutes, so I’m like, what happened? He goes, well, I was running late for an appointment. I’m like, so wait a minute, the bride’s going to be at the office at four o’clock or something like that, five o’clock for their appointment. How late were you? Well, I got there about five minutes after the appointment was supposed to start, so I was burning rubber, man. So you sped through a school zone, and then you just threw crap into a shipping container, and then you ruined this guy’s carpet. How late were you for the meeting? Oh, they left. And it’s just like a complete jacket. Worst day ever. Worst day ever, yeah. Yeah, so Warren Buffett writes, I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them, because sooner or later one will. Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most prolific and successful investors. So you’re saying I have a chance? I’m saying that everybody listening right now, we have got to delegate certain items. So let’s talk about the things we should delegate. Jason, do you cut your own hair? I do not. It would be cheaper if I did, but… You’re welcome. The time invested in growing it back after I screwed it up is not worth it. I’m going to give to the listeners right now things I recommend that you delegate if you’re a business owner. Alright? So, one, I’d recommend that you delegate the processing of your paychecks. Have you ever met Breck or have you ever been the guy who tried to do your own paychecks only to discover that maybe your math was a little off and then you ended up owing back taxes? Have you ever had that situation occur? Yeah, actually I personally have. Oh, it sucks. And I mean, I don’t even write out that many checks, but I don’t enjoy the process. Like my hand’s cramping after the third, fourth check. I’m like, this is just frustrating. So I don’t like it. So I’ll tell the listeners if you… I love auto deposit. If you’re listening out there right now and you are looking for somebody to process your paychecks, I, without reservation, recommend Paychex. And my rep, his name is Jason Rush, and you can text him right now, Jason Rush. His phone number is 918-809-2539. 918-809-2539. Again, that’s 918-809-2539. I recommend him. Without reservation, I do. But again, cutting the grass. You’ve got, Breck, do you have a company that you use that you like? Octavio. Octavio? Yeah. He’s a guy? He’s a guy. Is he looking for more business? He probably is, but I don’t have his phone number on the top of my head. Okay, but he does a good job. He does a great job. So delegate cutting the grass. And again, I’m trying to save people time because the whole point of a business is to create both financial and time freedom. This could be two hours a week of saving money or saving time on the cutting of the grass. I mean, think about this. This is two hours of your life back. You could save that time. Cutting your hair. Breck, do you cut your own hair? I do not. No, I’m a happy, very pleased customer of Elephant in the Room. I know a very successful man right now, who’s very successful in one area of his life. Very successful man. Yeah. In one area of his life. He’s always telling me he doesn’t have time to get stuff done. And I know for a fact he cuts his own hair and he mows his own lawn. I’m serious. And I know he does. And he always says, I don’t have any time. I’m going, this is not your highest and best use. We need to be delegating these things. I recommend delegating your paychecks processing. Again, I use a company called Paychex. I recommend those guys. For sales systems, I recommend all the listeners would take the time today to write out a call script, to get the call recording installed. Jason, we use ClarityVoice.com. Yes, we do. What would happen to the call center if we did not use ClarityVoice.com? It would bomb. We would have absolutely no idea what anybody’s saying. We’d have no clue what’s going on on the customer service level. We’d have no way to train. We have a guy this week who called Elephant in the Room, who demands to speak to me. I was there. Were you? Yeah. In the store? I was at the call center Friday when this happened. Tell the listeners what happened. Well, his stylist was out sick and he was a diligent man. He got there early, so he was not aware that his stylist was not there. We were trying to play some schedule Tetris, get everybody nice and accommodated. Real quick time out. This is an example of what I’m talking about with delegation. Yep. So I’ve had a conversation with the team about this, but pro tip for all your listeners out there, for all the listeners, never tell anybody that your employees are out sick. Yes. If your employees are sick, or if they’re late, or they’re getting a divorce, or they’re on vacation, don’t tell the employees. Right. Don’t tell the customers. Don’t tell anybody why the person’s not there. Let me give you an example. We had a young lady on our team years and years ago. She was getting a divorce. So the customer says, where is the employee? And the person filling in says, oh, she’s having a divorce. And the employee says, well, why are they having a divorce? I thought they were good. Next thing you know, the customer now is involved in the human drama. Another example. Every week, elephant in the room. Customers, employees, they interact all the time, and about once every couple months we have an employee that will lie to me and will say they’re out sick. But they’re not out sick because they’re out partying, they’re on vacation, they’re lying. Listen, folks, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and CBS News, World Reports, 75% of employees steal from the workplace. 75% of employees steal from the workplace. 85% of employees, according to Inc. magazine, lie on their resumes. Is it shocking that people would lie about being sick? No. So why would you not want to tell somebody, why would we not want to tell the customer that somebody’s out sick? Because then the customer wants to know, well, why are they sick? What kind of sickness do they have? And continue. Okay, so what happened? So long story short, we, whoever’s managing at the time, made the mistake of saying, oh, your stylist is out sick. Well, homeboy already came in in a mask, so you know what team he’s on. He’s like, he’s sick? He’s never sick. How sick is he? What’s he sick with? And they’re like, we don’t really know. He’s down with a sickness. He’s down with a sickness. Shouts out to Disturbed. That’s a deep cut right there. But no, so he starts asking more and more questions, because again, he’s involved in the emotional side of it now. The manager’s trying to calm him down and then of course the guy gets into, well he must have COVID, there’s all these new spikes, how often do you get your people tested, this is ridiculous, maybe you should be open, I want to talk to Clay! And then immediately it went to the call center, I listened to Daisy talk to him, she did a very good job, but he’s still, he’s still wanting to talk to me. He’s still hot. Oh yeah. And I don’t care! Exactly. But all I’m saying is the call recording allows me to know what happened, and I heard about it, and I’m not going to talk to him. The thing is, people need to understand this idea. If you own a business and someone demands to speak to you, you don’t have to take the call. This is true. Just like if I called the president and demanded to speak to him, it doesn’t matter. I had a White House press pass so I got within 10 feet of our president, which was an honor to do that, but I didn’t talk to him. I got a chance to see him engage with the audience. It was neat to see President Trump do that, but I did not get a chance to shake his hand. And if I called the White House, should I find a phone number for the White House? And I do have a phone number for the White House, by the way, but if I do call the White House and I speak to somebody like Lauren at the White House or Hogan Gidley at the White House, I can’t just demand to speak to the President. True. There’s an organizational chart. There’s a structure to things. So again, but listening to the call, I recognized this person is not going to be somebody I’m going to talk to because it’s an impossible to solve issue. He is afraid of COVID-19 and I am not. I have looked at the data and I know that if you have any myriad of symptoms, I mean if you have a cough, break, you’ve seen this, you have a fever, anything that’s considered COVID-like. Oh, they’re adding new symptoms. I mean, if you have GI, it’s now COVID. What’s GI? GI, like your gastrointestinal issues. They’re putting that as COVID. That’s now COVID. They’re putting it as COVID. I mean, everything’s COVID. So, yeah, if you’ve got a tummy ache, it’s now COVID. Right, and so I’m not going to sit there and just, I’m not going to debate with somebody about a core philosophical issue. But again, if you want to delegate to Elevator, I’m telling you right now, you’ve got to have call scripts. You got to have it. And you got to have call recording installed. You have to do it. Now, five, if you’re going to have your team execute any work at all, you have to create checklists. Jason, why do you have to create checklists for everything? Well, you know, taking it back to the Buffett quote, you have to make it so easy an idiot can do it. One of the reasons why Elephant in the Room works so well, like when we hire a new manager, it used to be this whole process where it took me, before you had finalized the systems, it took me about two weeks to get started. And then I worked in the call center and learned a completely different type of workflow. But now it’s to the point where if we, like let’s say Nathan wants to shadow for a management position. He has great character. We don’t care about his skill. He is a great man. We have the systems in place. I can get him trained up and working by himself in two days because all he has to do is learn the system with me, learn the membership pitch, and then everything else he just has to walk in that day, pick up the piece of paper, start checking from bottom to top as he fills out those boxes. So again, these are ways to get your time back here, folks. If you implement a sales system, just get the call scripting and the call recording in place. This is all you have to do. Call scripting, call recording in place, and then schedule a time in your calendar for weekly training where you listen to the calls. And boom! You get your time back. That for me, I’m saving like, I don’t know, 120 hours per week of my time. If I wanted to answer the phones myself, that would be 120 hours per week of my time, which is not possible. I’m just trying to help somebody go from being a busy person to owning a business. And there’s things we have to delegate. Now executing any work at all, you have to create checklists for everything. And then you have to create, step number six, you’ve got to create a follow-up loop for everything. Jason, why do you have to have a follow-up, quality control circle, somebody following up on everything? Because people are going to drift. Even your highest character person, if they start to feel overwhelmed, they’re going to have tunnel vision and they’re going to focus on one thing that seems the most frantic and they’re going to forget about all the little things. You’re a great example of following up because there will be times where you’re like, hey, I need you to do this real quick and then 30 seconds later, like, hey, did you finish that yet? Or if it’s something like on our manager’s agenda where we have a week to do it, you and John will still follow up with me as the week goes on just to make sure that I don’t drift or if we need a product ordered, you know, we’ll follow up with man and make sure, hey, do we get that out in time so we can have it by the next week? But if we’re not intentional about following up, we’re not delegating, we’re abdicating. We’re just giving people the act, or even action items, or giving people an idea saying I would like for this to be done, but I’m not going to tell you how and I’m not going to tell you when it’s due, and I’m also not going to make sure you’re doing it. I see a lot of bosses, and Breck, maybe you’ve seen this before, and I want to get Nathan’s take on this as well. I see a lot of bosses that are lazy mentally, but they try to act like they’re somehow mentoring employees. So let me give you an example. The life coach. I’ll say, hey, to a client, they’ll ask me, hey man, my team just doesn’t seem to be able to follow the call script like your team does. Why? And I said, well, we have a sales training meeting every Tuesday where we listen to the calls. And we use clarityvoice.com to record all the calls. And we have scripts for everything. Do you have scripts for everything? And they go, no, I kind of want my employees not to be a bunch of robots. I want my employees to sound more natural. I don’t want a bunch of robots. I don’t want them sounding robotic. I know that whenever I hear a call rep who sounds like they’re reading a script, it annoys me. And so therefore, I want my employees to be more natural. I don’t want my employees to sound… Jason, have you heard this before? Oh, absolutely. I don’t want them to sound like they’re reading a script. I don’t want a canned response. I don’t want a canned response. And so I do not have that and I am the kind of employee who isn’t willing to doesn’t have the ability to just learn everything that I know about chiropractic care or carpet cleaning or haircuts anybody who doesn’t want to know these kinds of things I don’t want them on my team and I do not have the address for our three haircut locations written down on paper. I do not have our five addresses for our five locations written down on paper. I do not have the actual phone number or the FAQs written out on a script because I don’t want to hire a bunch of robots. I don’t want to have people working for me who do not know these things. I would rather have people that are resourceful. I don’t want a bunch of robots. I want my people to be the kind of people who can think on their own. I want them to be the kind of people like me. And you go, so you want to hire another business owner to work in your call center for $12 an hour. Yeah. OK. It’s not going to work. Good luck. You see this though. Oh, for sure. Do we not see this? Yeah. And we’ve all been there. I know when I was a young guy, I was thinking the same thing. I’m thinking, I don’t want to call a script for my guys. They don’t want to follow it. They’re like, what about my personality? How old are you, Jason? I am 27 as of this year. If you were 7 years old and I would have hired you, you would have had fun laughing at me. Because I was a 20 year old boss, and I am not kidding you, when you started working for me, I would hand you a copy of Think and Grow Rich. I would hand you a copy of that book. I’d hand it to me right there. Boom. I’d say, I want you to read this book and this is going to be your sales manual. I want you to read this. And you’re going, okay. I’m handing you this book and you got the book and I also gave you Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I gave you The Richest Man in Babylon. I gave you anything Augmandino. I had the greatest salesman in the world by Augmandino. I gave you these four books. I’m like, I want you to read these books and then you’re going to get started. Week one though, I want you to read these books. That’s a lot of reading. So you come back. Especially at seven. You come back at five o’clock on Friday after you’ve been reading all week. And I said, okay, Monday, dude, you’re hitting the phones. Are you ready? And you’re like, what do I say? I’m like, listen, people’s favorite topic is themselves. And you need to go back to what you’ve learned. And how to win friends and influence people. Remember, people’s favorite topic is themselves. So when they call, keep that in mind. And these people were highly motivated with no idea what to do. So the phone would ring, and the system I created, and I was very proud of my system. I told my wife it’s an amazing system. The phone rings, we had a phone called the Moneyline, or the Green Hornet, we would call it. But it’s a phone that I painted physically green, with a one-shot paint enamel. The phone’s green, it had a huge long cord, and when the phone would ring, I would say, it didn’t matter what was going on, PHONE! And then whoever was nearest would answer it DJ connection. I can help you and they would say yeah I want to get pricing for a DJ. They go. Okay. What day are you looking at? They say June 5th? Okay, let me check and they said they put you hold for a second And then I would go okay, I’d run down the hall and I would close the deal and I’d give the guy who answered the phone a 5% commission. Yeah, because he handed you the phone. Yeah, he just made 30 bucks. So the guy’s like, this is cool. This is a cool game. I like this game. I can do this. So then we really grow. So I got two phones. I got the Moneyline, the green one, the Green Hornet, and I got the white phone. The white phone was, the court wasn’t as long. So we set up a desk closer to where the phone can reach. And so now the phone rings. Phone! And these two guys are scrambling for it. They grab it. And I made this awesome script. The script went like this. Thank you for calling the Amazing DJ Connection. This is the Ultra Humble. Clay Clark, how can I help you? And this is the Ultra Humble part. Everyone, they laugh. The customer laughs. They go, what day are you looking at? June 6th. OK, let me put you on hold. Clay, phone! So I get the phone. Now I’m on the phone. And then the phone rang again. Phone! And now there’s two people on the phone simultaneously. So I’d say, guys, get their phone numbers, and I’ll call them back. OK. And so we got to where we were doing $20,000 a week of sales. Like that. I heard you also had a canned response sometimes. A canned response? Yeah, it’s a response you have while you’re on the can. This actually, one time I was in the restroom doing what I had to do, and a guy’s like, we’ve got a hot lead here! We’ve got a hot lead! I mean, that kind of craziness would happen. I’m like, dude, just stop, stop. Let me go to the bathroom. I’ve got a hot lead! The point is, nobody knew how to sell anything. No one could sell anything. But now we’re doing a million dollars of revenue. You’re extra busy. Right. Because now you’re answering three times as many phone calls. And I thought that was a system. But you’ve got to have a script. You’ve got to have call recording. You’ve got to have weekly training. You’ve got to have these things. You’ve got to have these things. Now anytime you want people to execute work, you’ve got to create a checklist for everything. Brick, do you want a checklist up there at drbrick.com? Absolutely. What kind of checklist do you have? Well, so we have a checklist for our KPIs, our key performance indicators, but then we also, like you were asking Jason a minute ago, what happens if you’re not following up on that? Then it’s like they get tunnel vision on the KPIs, and then the devils in the details. Those are the things that get cut short or get kind of worked around and so you know if the details matter to you like your presentation the representation of the business may not necessarily be a particular KPI but it’s still very important to the overall performance those are still things that need to be on a checklist so you know the cleaning process you know it’s not a sales number it’s not a production number it’s not a financial number as far as money coming back in, but it’s still very important so it still has to get checked off and be done. And so there’s checklists for everything. You’ve got to have a checklist for everything. Everything. Nathan, do you have checklists over there, a complete carpet? Absolutely. And what kind of checklists do you have in place? We’ve got ones for answering the phone. We’ve obviously got ones for the care and take care of the van, because the van’s not ready to clean the carpets. And you get there, and you’re like, oh, there’s, I don’t have any chemical, I don’t have a wand, I don’t, you gotta make sure you have all of your gear before you get to the customer’s home. And then we have everything broken down on how to approach the customer’s home and then verify you got it done properly, like a post-walkthrough with the customer. So you have a checklist for everything. Absolutely. Breck, you’re the hot table. Well, I even implemented a checklist type system for my daughter when she was like in the fifth grade because one day she was at school and didn’t have what she needed. So we actually had this conversation about being prepared for her day to set herself up for success each and every day. So she had forgotten one or two things and it was like, hey you can avoid this. It’s a matter of responsibility and helping teach that to my daughter. But at the same time there was a simple checklist to make sure she had the work that she had done for homework, it was ready to be turned in, it was in her backpack, that everything was in order and ready for her to be successful. And I think it starts very young and works for all of us. And it doesn’t change. The checklist and the systems about it might, but the process and the need is consistent throughout life. this show to save the listeners up to 150 hours per week of time. You say, Clayton, there’s not even that many hours in the week that we could be working. Well, here’s the thing. That’s how I get ahead. That’s how I spent my entire day yesterday, literally the entire day before we had Chuck and John come over for the Fourth of July. I spent my entire day, because my kids are coming back from camp, sitting by the pool, reading and editing a book. How do I have time to edit a book all day? It’s because I’m doing these systems. So one, delegate cutting the grass. That’s going to save you two hours a week. Two, delegate cutting your hair. That’s going to save you an hour or more. Three, delegate the paycheck processing. Now for me, that could be four hours a week, eight hours a week. It’s a lot of time. Yeah, you’ve got a lot of employees. I mean, yeah, exponentially grows the more employees you have. For Elephant alone, that’s a full day’s work. A full day? Okay, there it is. That’s eight hours right there. Now, also, we talk about implementing a sales system. Stop answering your phone for your business. If you can. Well, I would like to. How do I do it? Go to ClarityVoice.com. You sign up for the call recording. Get the call scripting in place, and then do it. And just listen to their calls every day. All right, now, Step. I’m happy to say I’m the worst person to answer the phones at my business. Are you? I am. Yeah. But you have people in place. I’m the weak link. Yes. Thankfully, yeah, everybody else does a better job than I do. Now, when you delegate correctly, when you delegate the executing of the work, that could save you time, I mean, endless amounts of time. I mean, Jason, we’re doing search engine optimization for 160 clients. That’s true. I mean, the team is doing an insane amount of work there. I don’t even know how many hours a week. I guess there’s, you know, say 47 people who are all working 40 hours a week. So 47 times 40, that’s 1,800 hours a week I’m saving right there. You know, I mean, I know how to do the search engine. You can do a good job. I can do a good job, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to delegate. Now you’ve got to create a follow-up loop for everything, because if something’s done wrong, then you’ve got to go back and redo everything twice. True. All right? So you’ve got to have that follow-up loop. Now, step seven, and I want to kind of end today’s show right here, step seven. You have to install a merit-based pay program for everything. A merit-based pay program for everything. You might say, well, what is that? Even though I don’t agree with a lot of what’s going on in the National Football League right now, I do like the New England Patriots, and I do like the fact that the best players make significantly more than the not-so-good players, at least right now. So currently in the NFL, if you’re a very good player, you make more money than a very bad player. If you’re a very, very great player, you make more money than a very good player. If you’re an average player, you make less than a superstar. If you’re a certain hall of fame player in the future, you’re dominating, you make more than the guy who is coming right out of college who could be a hall of fame player, because you get paid based on what you do, the value that you deliver. But for some reason, small business owners are fascinated with paying their people a flat amount per hour because it’s easier for the bookkeeping. I hear this all the time. Here’s the thing. It’s really not even easier for the bookkeeper. What it is, is it’s every socialist’s nightmare. And so anybody who has a wide variety of employees. A lot of them now, especially younger employees, people my age and younger, are very socialist thinking and so you’re not going to attract people who are, wait, I get paid for what I do? I don’t want to do that. So, they’re like, okay, well, flat rate because I need people. Flat rate is rough. It’s very rough. Because what happens is the good people are now demotivated because they now know they make the exact same amount of money as somebody who is doing a bad job. The people that are doing a bad job recognize they make the same as the people doing a good job so they’re not motivated to get better. So I want to give the listeners some examples on merit-based pay today. So, in the call center, Jason, elephant in the room, can you make more if you do a good job and less if you do a bad job? Absolutely. But the base pay is how much per hour right now? 10 to 12? I think it’s 10, it might be 12, I don’t know. So you’re in there, but you make money every time you get an objective Google review, every time you… what else can you do? When you go above and beyond and you call any of the customers that we haven’t seen in 90 days prior. And you get them in? Mm-hmm. Okay, so you get… Reactivation. There’s all different ways to make money there. Yeah. If you’re a manager at Elephant in the Room, or you’re a front desk guy, you mentioned earlier, you get paid a commission every time you sell a membership of $35. You get $3 per objective Google review. You get product commissions. These are all things. Yeah, a lot of things. So these are all things that we, these are ways that the people can make more money. And have we ever had somebody who takes the $500 per week salary and just sits there and is totally content with not making any decent money at all? Yep, used to be me. I used to think, I mean, I get paid this, that’s cool. And how long will somebody be allowed to stay in that position, an elephant in the room, do you think? Not long, because you’re not looking for the people who are going to be complacent. You’re looking for the people who are going to want to grow. Because you know, you said it best in the organizational chart, you know there’s a flow. If I call in angry, I can’t get to you because you’re at the top, but there are people in the middle. It doesn’t matter who’s in the middle, you don’t want them to stay there. If I start off as a hair stylist, you eventually want me to become an assistant to a manager to essentially my own franchise owner if I want to. But you’re looking for people who are driven. You don’t want that guy who just wants to make $500 a week and calls it good. It is so important, folks, that you never stop recruiting people because you’re going to get held hostage. Exactly. Okay, so everything we went over today, I’m just going to recap the systems, recap the moves. One, delegate cutting your grass. Help support grass cutters all over the country. Help support landscaping companies. Literally, stop wasting your day cutting your grass, unless you want to cut the grass. If you want to cut the grass, cut the grass. You don’t have to delegate. If you like to cut it, cut the grass. But if you don’t, pay someone. Cutting your hair, pay somebody else to do that, unless you like to do it. Processing paychecks, have somebody else do that. Implementing a sales system, you’ve got to implement a sales system. You just have to have the call scripting, the recording, the call recording, the weekly training that has to happen. Move number five, make a checklist for everything. Move number six, create a follow-up loop for everything. Have a systematic way where your managers follow up with your people every day to make sure stuff gets done right. Step 7 install a merit-based pay program for every position and never stop recruiting. This is how you delegate to elevate. This is how you do this. How you create both time freedom and financial freedom. You refusing to do these things is going to cause you problems and you And you might say, well, I just want to deliver a quality service. Okay, then you’re going to have a B- life. So decide what is more important to you, that you deliver every service or that you have time freedom. People know this. They know we have some great hair stylists. We do. And if you want to use the same one every time, that’s great. But that person is not your hair slave, which means that they are free to go and free to come and go as they please. And they have a schedule. One of our top employees, this lady is always booked out eight weeks, seven weeks, because she’s great. And when we asked her schedule filled up, she came to me and she said, Clay, a lot of my top customers are frustrated I can’t get them in. I said, you recognize you could work 120 hours a week cutting hair to get them all in and that still wouldn’t be enough time true So you need to be very comfortable stick with your 40-hour schedule Tell people if they want to schedule they need if they want to get with you again They need to look they need to pre-book now before they leave The salon they need to pre-book or they’re not gonna get in just tell them that right and don’t feel bad When they can’t get you just suggest, but some of the other people on the team Don’t cut hair as well. And I said, this is true, because you’re an A plus all-star, and we have some good B plusers and some good A minusers and some good As, but no one’s probably ever going to be as good as you, or at least very few people will be as good as you. But if somebody can’t get you, you shouldn’t feel bad. And she said this to me, she said, well, can’t we just retrain everybody to get them to my level. We do trainings every week, but I’m not going to spend every second of my day trying to train every single person to be at your level, because then I would have a horrible life. I would never leave. So yes, we do a good job. Yes, we do training. Yes, we’re the highest rated in Tulsa. Yes, we have the most reviews in Tulsa. Yes, we’re the busiest. But at the end of the day, I want to have an A-plus life. I don’t want to have a B-minus life in exchange for A-plus quality. So you’ve just got to think about that. Where do you want to spend more time? What would you do with the downtime? If you had extra downtime, where would you be spending it? Would you be spending it… Think about your F6 goals. Your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship and your fun. What would you be doing with all this extra time? What would you be doing with all this extra time? And as you think about it, oh man, I’d be golfing, I’d be working out, I’d go to a movie with my wife, I would go for a walk in the park, I would go on vacation. As you think about all the things that you’d be doing with your time, if you had it back, that should motivate you to build all these systems. Because once you have these systems in place, you can create both time, freedom, and financial freedom. Breck, do you have a final take out there you want to share? Because there’s something I wish I knew the name of the author, but there’s a book that my sister recommended to my wife a couple years ago called Your Best Yes. And the whole concept is that if you say yes to everything, as many people pleasers do, then you don’t have enough freedom to do the things that really matter the most. And so by saying no to the right things, it allows you the opportunity, the margin in life to say yes to the A plus aspects and so you create the A plus life that you’re talking about having because you’ve now either delegated or said no that doesn’t need to happen or you evaluate it. If it doesn’t need to happen eliminate it but if it needs to happen then delegate it and make sure that you follow up make sure it’s being done properly but then you can move on and focus your attention on the A plus things. So you’ve got to say no to the wrong thing so you can say right. Yes. To the right things. I love it. I love it. Now, Nathan, any pro tips you’d have for the listeners out there, for the entrepreneurs listening out there from coast to coast who have really built the business where they’re trapped to the business owners who are stuck doing all the work all the time, never having time freedom, never having financial freedom. Uh, what tips would you have for them about dealing? By using this system, everything we’ve talked about today, in one year I was able to double the size of my business. Without doing any more work, I just was able to actually do the work. And this is what every small business guy I’ve ever talked to has a problem with, is that he’s wearing all of the hats all at once, which means that some of the hats don’t get worn at all. And by using this system, I was able to get all of the phone calls, all of the scheduling, everything off of my plate, so that in a day, I actually cleaned all the carpets. And I had someone else schedule me jobs that I could do and get accomplished. So in one year, I was able to do twice as much work without doing any more hours because I no longer was spending half the day answering calls trying to set up appointments. I actually got to just do the appointments all day long. So find the things that sometimes it’ll be so you have freedom to go golf, other times it’s that you’ll have freedom to actually do the work you’ve got on your plate. And so this will help tremendously. Highest and best use. I mean there’s sometimes you’re spending your time on the task that doesn’t bring in any money and you’re missing the task that pays all the bills. And so yeah I mean for me one of the things I used to do was a lot of nutritional counseling, a lot of extra stretching, and those are great things but they’re not the highest and best use. For me as a chiropractor, my skillset, the best thing I can do is get you adjusted. And then we brought in massage therapists to help on the soft tissue. They can do more stretch and massage. And it’s the highest and best use of their time, but not mine. And I want to give one cool little bonus thing. Look at your business and anything you dread doing, make that the first thing that you hire somebody into because you’ll have a happier day. The more excited you are about everything you do in your work and you start to remove the items you dread doing, all of a sudden you’ll be more enthused about your business. You’ll get that youthful vigor back in it again. Youthful vigor! Let’s end this show with a boom right there. Anytime someone says youthful vigor, we know it’s time to end the show with a boom. So here we go. Three, two, one, boom! Dad, can I come in? Sure, come on in. How’s it going? Well, what are you working on? I’m hand-writing the checks to the employees. I like to do this myself. It’s something I take pride in. Aren’t there companies that pay checks that’ll do that for you? Yes, but I like to write the checks myself. I like to… Shh! Dad. What? Silence your mind and listen to the voice of a weird man, and that weird man is you. Billy, someday, when you get to be my age, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. No, I will not. Billy, when you get to be my age, payroll processing will be the highlight of your life. You’re sick. Oh, direct deposits, state taxes and federal taxes, and Medicare. All the deductions are so exciting, Billy. I might do it wrong. I might miss some critical deductions, and I need that kind of adrenaline rush in my life. Billy, I just need a purpose. Uh, Dad, I know you love doing paycheck payroll processing, but I know a dude who works up at QuickBooks that Clay uses, who will just do it all for you. Give me his number now! Give me the digits, Billy! Dad, calm down. I thought you liked doing the paychecks. No, no, no, don’t put words in my mouth, Billy! You said it! I just want the number. Just give me the phone number and I will call the phone number. You’re so desperate. I don’t really want to call the number but just give me the phone number. You’re begging. Pretty close to now. Dad bruh, I will get you the number sometime this week. Calm down. Billy. What? You listen here. If you don’t give me the phone number right now, you’re grounded forever. I’m 27 dad bruh. That’s true. You can’t cut off my allowance and grab me in the same week. I can’t calm down Give me the number dad. All right, really you said you didn’t want it really give me the number You said you didn’t want it. Give me the number just admit it just say you want it No, you do not want to do the payroll just admit it. No I would never admit it. Okay fine I don’t do the payroll though. Give me the number. Give it to me now. I’m looking I want my time freedom back I want someone else to process the payroll for me. Please! Give me the number! I will give you the phone number, but you will restore my allowance. And henceforth, you will refer to me as the Golden Baby. Fine! Golden Baby, what’s the number for paychecks? Go on. I can pay someone to handle the paycheck processing. I’m finding it now. Deposit payments and payroll taxes, quarterly taxes. Okay. Annual taxes and W-2s. What’s the number? Who should I call? Well, the number you’re going to call is called Jason Rush with paychecks and his phone number is 918-809-2539. Really? That number is an Oklahoma area code. I’m not located in Oklahoma. What’s the number for me? Calm down. He works in every state. Just give him a call or send him a text. His number’s 918- 918- 809- Okay. 25- 25- 39. 39. Again, it’s 918-809-2539. Billy, I appreciate you for- Okay. Giving me the number. I want you to know I’ve been a poor father. I’ve spent probably eight hours a week for the last 52 weeks per year. That’s just math. 400 hours a week plus neglecting you to do these paychecks. Now… That’s true, but don’t feel bad about it. I want to tell you I’m sorry I’ve wasted my time processing payroll when I could have been hanging out with you. No problem, Dad. Just, you know, a higher paycheck. Perhaps you can forgive me, Billy. I forgive you, Dad, but, you know, it’s like, maybe you should just call a paychecks and delegate, you know, so someone else can spend time processing paychecks while you and I can do parachuting out of a plane. No, Billy. Together, father and son, take it over the world. Billy, we’re not ever going to skydive together, but I’ll hire a paychecks and get my time back. I appreciate the referral. Oh, Billy. Does nothing seem to ever get done in your business unless you do it yourself? Well, on today’s show, Mighty Mighty Fine Matt Klein, the Oxyfresh franchise brand developer, joins us to discuss delegation 101 and why success is in the follow-up. Boom. Boom. Boom. Oh Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Thrive Nation, it is a very special occasion because it’s always profound when you are above the ground and we are joined with the mighty fine Matt Klein on the line. Matt, how are you sir? I am doing amazing. I hope you all are doing the same. Where are you located? Are you in beautiful Denver, Colorado? I am in beautiful Denver, Colorado. It is nice today. How locked in, like I’m locked into my home, not really. Locked in in terms of my business, completely locked in. Okay, so despite the fact there are lockdowns, you’re still locked in to Oxifres, you’re focused. I am, yeah. We’re having an incredible month so far. Beautiful. Thanks to our team and keeping up with some virtual trainings and having some people do some live trainings, we’ve got four new franchisees coming to the system this month. Wow. Which is incredible. Well, Matt, you know, anytime you have an epic win, I want to make sure I give you the applause you need here. So there it is. There it is right there. Yes. Yes. People are excited. Now, Matt, I want to ask you this. We’re talking today about follow-up. Follow-up, follow-up 101, delegation 101. Really, the success is in the follow-up. Can you explain to the listeners out there why, if you’re a small business owner, and you tell an employee or a team member to do a task, why you really can’t cross it off your to-do list until it’s actually done? Well yeah I mean and it can be for a lot of things but for a small business we have a lot of tasks that we need to do that have an impact on the the customer. We have a lot of tasks that that we have to do that literally make the customers experience better. So for us if you if you’re trying to get things done and you never check with those items off then essentially that’s going to be reflected in your end user, which is your customer, right? And so all those checklist items have an impact on your business. Now whether you do them or not will have a positive or negative impact. I would assume you’d want to have a positive impact by making those checklist items get completed, sticking to what you’re trying to get accomplished and actually doing them, right? There’s no reason to even go down that road if you’re not going to check and make sure they got done. Now, Andrew, you see this a lot because you work with a lot of business owners who have ambition, excitement, they are motivated, they own a company, and then they try to delegate to a member of their team. And when they delegate to the member of the team, more often than not, it doesn’t get done. How often is this a problem for small business owners before they learn the art of successful delegation? Yeah, a lot of people just automatically have faith and just trust that if I tell somebody to do the thing, then they’re going to do it. They’re going to knock it out and it’s going to be great. But a lot of people don’t start following up with their staff and really anything, anything in life, if you don’t follow up with it, it’s not going to happen. Whether, you know, whatever you’re doing. And so as soon as you do start following up and you do follow up on that employee and you’re like, oh wow, something actually got done. It’s kind of addicting. You just keep doing it and keep doing it. But that’s how you get stuff done. If you don’t want to let things drift around, then you have to follow up. Now in our office, Jonathan Kelly, for all intents and purposes, he is your boss. How often does he follow up? Very often. All the time. About what? Everything. What do you mean? So, whether it’s an action item, something that he needs for me to do, or you need for me to do, he’s always on it. He’s kind of funny about it, too. He’ll assign something, and five minutes later, he’ll follow up and say, hey, is that book read? You know, so it’s just about following up, following up, following up, following up. And if he didn’t do that, nothing would get done. So, without his relentless follow-up, nothing would get done. Okay, so Matt, I’m going to walk the listeners through the three steps to effective delegation. And some might argue there’s more steps or less steps, but then I’d like for you to help us break it down. So, step one, you want to establish clear expectations. Again, you want to establish clear expectations. The next thing you want to do is you want to establish clear deadlines. Establish clear deadlines. You know, when it needs to be done. And then the final thing you want to do is you want to establish a carrot and or a stick. Now so let’s talk about this for a second, Matt. Why do you have to make sure that the person that you’re delegating to actually understands the task before you give it to them? Well, I do think it’s a big problem. Realistic expectations that are clear and concise, I think, is one of the major, major problems in small business, right? And just like you said, you know, assuming things are going to get done or assuming somebody knows what you’re actually saying without clear direction or the follow-up, it’s so, so important. So, yes, setting expectations, making sure there’s a clear discussion between the two people with checkpoint items, so they understand what you’re actually asking them to do, right? And that can only be done by literally asking, what did I just say, and what are you going to do? And by next Tuesday, we need to get that done. I know when I first started my businesses, djconnection.com was the first one, and I felt like that common sense was common. But again, over time I’ve learned not only is common sense not common, but what I deemed to be common wasn’t common to other people. What they deemed to be common to me wasn’t common to me. And so I have found that pronouns, adjectives, abbreviations that don’t make sense to anybody but you, nicknames, jargon, all that stuff can get crazy if you start to Matt, I need you to knock that out over there today. Because a lot of times people will go, okay, yeah, sure, I’ll get that done over there before today, or I’ll call them, or I’ll get the SO2 done. But a lot of times people don’t know what SO2 means, they don’t know who you’re talking about, the clarity, the specifics, it’s so important to get the specifics right. So let’s go into the world of Oxifresh. When a customer orders a certain carpet cleaning service, is there a coded system so that way your technicians know what they’re supposed to do? Yeah, and it starts actually with the initial phone call. An actual script that that scheduling sensor representative has to follow. Because if you go off of that script first and you leave off certain information like a zip code or an address or a phone number, right, or you don’t actually put the job that needs to be done, it can mess up everything. If you only put two rooms in that need to be cleaned instead of the five that they actually need, then it’s only going to allot the time to clean two rooms, not five. So then your schedule is all messed up. If you don’t have the information from the customer from that initial call because you’re not following the script, then you’re not going to be able to give that technician the information to go complete the job. But if they, let’s just say they do all that right, they get there, it’s on the schedule. But let’s just say the technician doesn’t follow his checklist items, making sure all of his equipment is in the vehicle, making sure literally his tires are filled up to get there, make sure he’s got gasoline in the vehicle, making sure that he’s got his T-shirt on that says OxiFresh on it, that’s clean, right? All those little things that you, like you said, you assumed that would need to be done, I guarantee you throughout a year, those items are going to be missed if you don’t have a checklist, okay? So now, even so, you have the script, they book the job, it’s right, now your technician does a good job and he’s there, okay? He does the entire job and goes through it, but he forgets his credit card processor at home. The customer doesn’t have a check. Now they can’t pay you, right? Or he left something. So all these things, expectations are easily followed when you have a checklist of those expectations and you have an actual timeframe of when they need to do that in comparison to what they’re trying to complete, right? You don’t want to do the vehicle checklist after you do the jobs, right? So it’s just like you’re saying, have the actual script of what you’re trying to be, what you’re trying to accomplish ready. So when you say you need to do a checklist of your vehicle, if you just say that and you don’t have a checklist, all that person, you know, in their mind, they might just need to look at the vehicle and make sure it’s not on fire. And then they’re ready to go. It’s so important that all of us take the extra moment or two or minute or three and make sure that the other person understands the expectations. Just like Matt said, Matt said you literally need to ask them, what did I just say? Or does it make sense? Do you have any questions about that? You have to clarify that. Now step two, you have to establish a deadline. Matt, if you do not establish a clear deadline, what will happen to any task that you ask most people to do? Yeah, it’ll just go to the back burner and then you’ll have to follow up on it. So it’s literally like you’re just saying, hey, down the road at some moment, if you could potentially get this done for me, that would be great. That’s not an actual task. That’s just saying you would like one thing to happen, but you’re not actually putting anybody in charge of it. You’re just saying, hey, can you do that? Well, they’re actually following your rule if they do it a year from now, because you didn’t set any expectations on time. So for them, in their brain, your timeframe is very different for theirs. Most people’s are. It’s probably a little bit more important to you as the owner Then it might be to the employee. So if you don’t actually tell them Exactly what they’re doing and when it needs to be done Then you might as well just skip the whole thing again because you’re just gonna get mad that they didn’t do it in a time frame that they didn’t know what they had a time frame for and then they’re gonna be upset that they think You didn’t give them clear instructions You’re gonna be upset that they didn’t do it on your time frame and the lack of communication creates an environment that’s very uncomfortable I Find that what happens is is an entrepreneur a lot of times we avoid Setting a clear deadline for our people By default because we don’t want to create conflict so a lot of times baby entrepreneurs We’ll ask their teammates, they’ll say, you know, when do you think you can do it? And then the employee will tell you a crazy deadline that’s years from now, weeks from now, decades from now. You’ll say, hey, Carl, when do you think you can clean the garage by? And he’ll go, well, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. I can probably get it done by August. And it’s May. Or you’ll say, Sarah, when do you think you can finish reading that book by? So there becomes a balance where you as an entrepreneur, you have to establish clear expectations, but step two, you’ve got to establish a clear deadline. I realize that this flies in the face of a lot of leadership books out there, management books out there. I’m just telling you the real old school, business school without the BS. I’m telling you, if you ask people, Andrew, you see it all the time, if you ask people, when do you want to get it done by? What kind of answers do you hear? I mean, two or three weeks. It’s definitely going to be much later than your deadline, for sure. Another bonus tip is the fact that you have to give a specific person the deadline. It can’t be like the sales team or the marketing team or the technicians or whatever. You have to give the exact person the action item, otherwise the same exact thing will happen. They’re not going to do it. They’re going to say, oh, I thought the deadline was this, oh, I thought Carl was doing that, or I thought someone else was doing that. So it has to be very specific. So, again, step one, establish clear expectations, and that includes assigning the task to a specific person. Do not delegate to a team of people. Step two, establish a clear deadline. And step three, Matt Klein on the line here, step three, you have to establish a carrot or a stick. I’m not saying that every task has to be a either you make 107 phone calls or you’re fired immediately. I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that you have to say, you have to show through your actions that if people don’t get stuff done, if you assign a task and they don’t get it done, something not positive is gonna happen. Matt, why do you have to establish a carrot or a stick, whether that be through an actual written policy or just the intensity that the people need to know within your organization that if they don’t get something done they don’t just get off the hook? Well I mean that one’s pretty, to me, you have to have some recourse for things that cannot be done because that’s how you’re going to judge your employee. If you’ve asked the last ten things you’ve asked your employee and you were concise and you did set the expectation and they just can’t meet the deadline, either your deadlines are out of whack and they’re not realistic or you need to find somebody else to do the job. Because if they can’t get ten tasks in a row done the time that you need them to, they’re clearly either not seeing the importance of your tasks, don’t think that your words are effective, or they just never had any recourse because not doing it on a time frame and being okay and no recourse, they get paid the same, their day is the same tomorrow as it would be today. Right? I mean, human nature is going to say, well, I don’t really have to do it because there’s no real, I don’t get punished for it. Right? Kids, even small kids, they know that. They put their hand in the cookie jar and they do the same thing tomorrow and the same thing the day after that, you’re going to have no more cookies because you’re eating them all. There’s no problems with them doing it. There’s just your words. No action. Well, Colin Powell, who couldn’t be here today, but he says this. Colin Powell. Now, Colin Powell was the four-star general in the United States Army, and during his career, I mean, this guy is legendary. He’s iconic. He was the former national security advisor. He was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sort of a big deal. He says this. Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. I repeat, being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. And Matt, I think a lot of times people think running a business is like a pageant. You know, we’re running around making promises to people. If you’re running for like high school prom king or prom queen, you know, or you promise things. You say, if I’m prom king, you know, I’m going to be a good one. If I get elected as student president, I promise you this, we’re going to get to chew gum. Uh-huh. Yes, we’re going to get to chew gum. If I get elected to be… People think that that’s what it’s like to run a business, but when you run a business, you’ve got to hold people accountable, and nothing can possibly get done if you don’t occasionally piss people off. That’s why Colin Powell says being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. Matt, have you ever struggled with pissing people off? Has it ever been a hard struggle for you to not want to piss people off? Were you ever worried about pissing people off? I know you’re a nice guy, but has that ever been a struggle for you? I think at times I’m probably a little lighter on my employees than I maybe should be, but at the end of the day, if you are not able to stick behind your word and do the things you say you’re gonna be doing and establish rules and guidelines that you can also follow through in, you’re either gonna create a headache for your employee or you’re gonna create a headache for you, right? And it’s just what your threshold is because if you’re always going to be a pushover, you’re never gonna do anything about it and you’re just gonna let your employees walk all over you, then you are gonna create as many headaches as you possibly can endure. And then eventually you’re going to change. You have to stand up and put your goals ahead of your employees, put your goals ahead of your business, put your goals ahead of yourself. Whatever you got to do to get to those goals, pissing people off is fine. Sometimes it’s a means to an end, right? Because there’s a lot of people out there that will follow the rules and will be good employees, right? Hanging on to bad ones will just take you longer and longer and longer and get to those employees that can follow your structure, can meet deadlines, can help you, can reduce headaches. All right, I’d much rather give other people headaches than myself. Matt, there’s somebody out there listening right now that’s probably interested in buying an Oxifresh franchise. You know, franchising is so great for many reasons, but one is when you buy a Jimmy John’s franchise or an Oxifresh or maybe a Little Caesars or some other franchise, you’re buying a business that already has all the systems. So you don’t have to sit down and redesign every system. You don’t have to trademark the logo. You don’t have to redo all the legal documents. You’re really buying your time back. You’re buying those systems. And there’s somebody out there that wants to know a little bit more about Oxifresh. And so when they go to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash oxyfresh, again, Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash oxyfresh, what happens next, Matt? Just fill out the form. Be as detailed with the form as you can. Once you submit that, myself and my team is going to get that information. It’s going to show us where you live, who you are, what your investment potential is, and then we’re going to reach out to you in a variety of ways. We’re gonna call you, we’re gonna email you, we’re gonna text you, and just try to set up a time for a call where we can start to develop a relationship. Right, I wanna know as much about you and your current situation, what your goals are, how you can run this business, because that might be different than the next person. And then we’re gonna talk about Oxyfresh, how that may fit into your life, how that may fit into your investment strategy down the road, right? It might even fit into a portfolio of businesses that you already have, right? And then we’re gonna talk through that and see if there is a common goal that we’re gonna get to where you can leverage OxyFresh to get to your next set of goals and dreams or whatever, however you categorize that. And then eventually we’ll go through and get really close to discovery days and franchise disclosure reviews. So I always tell people, the time frame in which you become a franchise is up to you. We will get you to where you need to be mentally, you’ll get yourself to where you need to be financially, and at the end of that road, if it makes sense, then we’ll become partners. And you can start running your own business in a matter of months. Now, Matt, we know there’s four new Oxifresh franchises that have come online here, but I have one final question for you here today. If the listeners fill out the form, do you promise that you will be the one who returns their call? Love Line with Matt Klein. Will you be the one who returns the call, or who’s going to respond to those leads? Who’s going to return that call? myself, myself, Mike Burton, or Andy Matherin. It’s gonna be one of three individuals. Mike or Andy, they’ll be on my team. I’ll eventually talk to either way or they’ll just work with me personally. Let me explain what happens, folks, at Oxifresh. A lot of people don’t know what happens behind the scenes at Oxifresh. Let me explain what happens. This is how, I’ll role play Matt. This is what happens. This is how it goes. Somebody reaches out to Oxifresh to buy a franchise. They pick up the phone and they call. And when they call, it goes like this. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. They pick up and go, Oxifresh, how can I help you? Yeah, I’d like to talk to Matt Klein. Sir, we can’t let you talk to him right now. He’s on the phone with another franchise, E, potentially. And there’s 12 people on hold waiting for Matt Klein. I’ll go ahead and transfer you to Andy Matherin. So they transfer. Boop! And he says, hello, this is Andy Matherin here with OxiFresh. How can I help you? I don’t want to talk to you, Andy. I want to talk to Matt Klein. We’ve talked about this. OK, I’ll transfer you back. And there’s like a line. It’s a line. It’s almost like a quarantined grocery store. It’s a line of people. It’s the on hold music right there. It’s the on hold music. There are hundreds of people gathering on the other side of the phone line waiting for Matt Klein. They just want to talk to the beauty and the majesty. It’s like when Ken Griffey Jr. was a rookie, people were waiting for his autograph. It’s like waiting for Michael Jordan after the game. Matt, what’s it like to know there’s just hundreds of people on hold right now, refusing to talk to Mike or Andy or other qualified people because they just want to talk to you? Well, I don’t think that’s the case. Because those two gentlemen are very good at their job. I don’t know. If there’s just one person waiting, I still feel flattered. It’s not about being good at the job. Let’s be honest, folks. Listen, folks, listen. Matt might not be the most talented. He might not be the most skilled, but he’s a thing of beauty. And that’s why people wait on hold. I’m 12 in line right now. You’re number 12? I’m in queue right now. Call number 12. You win a free dream date with Matt and his fiance. I’m ready. All right, Matt. I appreciate you so much and may the force be with you. All right guys, check me off for the rest of your day. See you brother. I’m going to get back to my line of people. And now, without any further ado, three, two, one, boom! 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. Okay. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both $1.3 billion companies. They both have 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually nonexistent 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 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, you know, asking our customers for reviews and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest and Lawn 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 percent over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. 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, we booked more deals last week than 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. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is 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. Also doing the podcast, like Jared had mentioned, that has really, really contributed to our success. That, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those, and that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. Also, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck Really no new growth with our with our business, and we were in a rut And we didn’t know. 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 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 gonna take in order to really succeed. So, I just wanna 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 pediatric dentist. 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% 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. By choosing the use of services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key 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 Colaw with Colaw 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. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like running the business, building the systems, the checklist, 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 Lee Crockwell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with 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, graphic designers and web developers. 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 6-8 weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every 6-8 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. 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 the 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. And 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. And Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My 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 And he told me he’s like I’m not gonna touch it I’m gonna turn it down because he knew it was gonna harm the common good of people in the long run and the guys integrity Just really wowed me brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy his he doesn’t his highest desire was to do what’s right and Anyways, just just just an amazing man. So anyways impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time 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 K9 and we just want to 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. 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 4 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 going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I 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. owner 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 going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. 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 3-4 years. So someone that would 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, that high failure rate. They want to do that like bowling with bumper lanes. So you give us a call, reach out to us, we’ll call you, and then we’ll send you an FTD, look over that, read it, falsely prove it’s very boring, and then we’ll book a discovery day, and you come and you’ll spend a day or two with us, make sure that you actually like it, make sure that you’re coming up with 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 canine 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 say they’re 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 Canine, to run your own Tip Top Canine, you would be with us for six weeks here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So we’ve been married for seven years. Eight 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, tiptopcannon.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 canine 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 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 come in and ask questions ask all the questions you have