Business | Effective Management 101: “Trust, But Verify.” – President Ronald Reagan + Why You Can Only Expect What You Inspect

Thrive 15 presents, Awkward Business Moment number 34, quality control.

Don’t let this happen to you.

Aaron Antis, you run ShawHomes.com, is that correct?

Yes.

What was the total sales that Shaw Homes did last year?

About 142 million.

And, when did you and I first meet?

2016.

And, at the time we met, Shaw had been around, correct me if I’m wrong, I believe for about 30 years?

Since 1985.

So, you and I teamed up and hadn’t you already sold in your career, like a half a billion dollars of homes at that point?

Yeah, like 750.

So, three quarters of million.

750 million, yeah.

You’d already sold three quarters of a billion dollars of homes before we met?

Yes.

And, we met and then from the time that you and I met and began working together, how much has Shaw Homes grown?

Well, the first year, let’s see, 2016, the year before that we did, I think we did 19 million.

Got it.

That year. And then, so 19 million to 142 million. So, that’s a pretty big number.

Well, on today’s show, what we’re going to talk about is we’re going to talk about this thing called the messy middle.

Yeah.

And, I was getting into it today with a longtime client today who was super-duper, duper worked up about this. I’ll tell you what happened.

Okay.

The customer, longtime client, been a client for of ours for years, and they have never really gone through the full implementation of the whole system. So, a lot of people in January, they say, “It’s a new year, baby.”

Oh, let’s do something.

“Let’s go.” And they said, “We’re going to start recording the calls this year, baby. And we’re going to start installing the video cameras like you said to do in our business.”

Took me a minute to do that too.

And, their particular business, I’ll be kind of vague, so I’ll get myself in trouble. Their physical business involves physical interaction with people and they happen to operate in the space where they see customers in a retail environment daily. More than 40 a day.

Okay, yeah.

And, so the customer’s like the client of ours, who’s, by the way, with this particular client, we’ve helped them to triple the size of their company. And, they’re going, “Clay. I have got to put… This is my year, baby. I’m putting recorded calls and I’m going to put video in. I’m going to do… I know I’ve been fighting you for years, but I’m going to do it.”

And, the reason why they didn’t want to do it, every year I mean, these guys put the scripts in place. We optimized their website. We fixed all their branding. We helped them raise their prices. We built great checklists and processes. But, the final thing I said, “Guys, if you want to double your business, you got to go down the… You got to implement the messy middle.” You’ve got to know, not what people say they’re doing, but you have to know what they’re doing.

Yes.

Because, what somebody says they’re doing and what they’re doing are very different.

Usually.

You need to install video cameras in your location and recorded calls.

I’m glad it only took me a couple weeks and not a couple years. I procrastinated for weeks.

This is a spoof video that I put together with our team and someone says, “Why do you do this kind of stuff?” I put this stuff together because it’s kind of my best way to therapeutically explain that which is my normal.

Oh yeah.

So, that way business owners can benefit from it, okay? So, I’m going to share this footage with you. And this is just totally fictitious footage, but it’s indicative of a situation that I’d love for you to talk about in just a minute. Here’s the footage. Here we go, folks.

Thrive 15 presents Awkward Business Moment number 34, quality control.

[inaudible 00:03:51].

Don’t let this happen to you. Log on to thrivefifteen.com.

Okay.

You learn familiar [inaudible 00:04:22].

Okay. So, this kind of thing happens a lot. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to go back and forth, okay? I’m going to share with you a crazy thing that I saw on camera. And, the way it’s going to go is I’m going to share a crazy thing, and then you get to one up me.

Oh, I got one ready for you.

This is things I’ve seen in my business, okay?

Okay. All right.

We’re going to go back and forth until you pass out.

Okay.

The rules are this, though. I get to share my horrible thing that I caught someone doing on camera.

Okay.

And, then you get to one up me, okay?

Oh yeah.

But, you get no more than 30 seconds to share the story.

Oh, I’m ready.

Oh, here we go. So, one of my companies back in the day, we put recorded camera, a recorded camera in, and it was a studio where we did video photography production. And, one of the employees takes headphones like this on the work on during camera and he goes and walks out the door after unplugging the headphones from the deck.

Oh, yeah.

So, he walked out, it’s very expensive headphones. And we see him on camera walking out to his car wearing headphones like this. And-

Oh yeah.

[inaudible 00:05:21] thievery. Called the guy out and I’m, “Hey, are you aware that you took our headphones home?” And he goes, “Oh, I-”

“Totally forgot.”

“My bad.”

Realize.

“My bad.” Okay, that was, yeah, feel free to one up me. I’m happy to give myself one mega point there that was impressive.

This was within a very short period of time of us getting video cameras in our model homes.

Oh yeah, I bet.

We had a young lady who will remain nameless, who customer came in. It was a hot summer day summer, and she was wearing flip flops.

Flippy floppies.

Well, the customer comes in and starts talking to her. She’s standing at a desk, he’s sitting on the other side of the desk and she’s standing up and she pulls her foot up on the desk and takes the flip flop off and starts picking the toe jam out from between her toes while talking to the customer about purchasing said, $500,000 house from us.

You’re sick.

And, I’m pretty sure he might’ve gotten a shot visually since she was wearing shorts of something other than just the toe jam.

Now, I’ll say this.

If that makes sense.

I’ll say this because-

True story.

This is how a lot of people react to these kinds of stories. They go, “What kind of people do you hire?”

Oh yeah.

“Oh my gosh. You must have bad people.” So, another business I had.

Yeah.

We were doing a downtown renovation at 16th and Boston, 1609 South Boston Avenue. And, I hired a contractor to do some renovation for me. And, the contractor says, “In order to move the sink for the elephant in the room, the haircut chain, to move the sink and to move the shampoo bowls, we’re going to need to dig through the concrete, cut through the concrete with a saw, because we got to cut through it.”

Oh, yeah.

“You can’t just move the shampoo bowl. You got to cut through the concrete.”

Yeah.

And then I said, “Okay, that’s great. So, you guys fully insured?” “Absolutely.” Turned out later, they gave me fraudulent paperwork. “So, you guys ready to go?” They said, “Absolutely.” I said, “You know what you’re doing here?” And they, “Sure.” So I’m upstairs, and all of a sudden I hear a, “Ahhh.” And I’m like, what are we shooting like a scene from Star Wars? What’s going on?

Maybe it’s a scene from the Saw.

So, one of our employees is down there and he goes, “Dude. Dude, I heard that stuff on the camera. It’s crazy.” Now, we didn’t have camera in actual the construction zone. We had camera in the hallway.

Oh boy.

Apparently the construction, the plumber guy, I guess it’s new to cutting through concrete and Duke cut his foot in the shape of a triangle.

Oh, that’s not good.

And, the only reason that I was able to survive that situation legally, the whole thing was I had a lot of footage, a lot of supporting evidence that A, it happened. And B, a lot of events that happened after that, I was able to supply supporting data footage, time, dates, et cetera. Otherwise, it could have looked like that I just gave, as the story was told later, was that I just gave a saw randomly to some random person 10 plus years ago, and then they hurt themselves. Which wasn’t the story.

Wow, wow.

Aaron, one up me. I gave myself one mega point, by the way, you have so far three mega points. I have two so far just-

Okay, all right.

I know, I’ve given, I’m the one, the referee and a contestant, but right now you’re ahead.

All right. So when we installed our video cameras in our model homes, one of my staff, one of my salespeople who sits in the model home, he says to me, “Hey, before you go view any of the footage, I just wanted to make sure it’s okay, I know we’re only open from noon to six, but even though my wife is a stay-at-home mom, she can’t pick the kids up all the time.”

Oh, not all the time.

So, five days a week.

Five days.

I leave at 1:30 and you’re open from noon to six, but I leave at 1:30 to go pick the kids up from school, and it takes me until about 3:30 or four.

To get back.

But it’s only five days a week.

It’s not-

And, I just wanted to make sure that I have your approval on that before you start watching any of the videos.

Just to be honest with you.

“I just wanted to be really up upfront with you about this.”

How about this phrase? I love the phrase, “Hey, just so you’re not blindsided by this.”

Which means I’ve been doing this for a long time.

Yeah. Now, this is my next strap, don’t forget about this story, by the way. That’s a good mega point.

You like that one?

Now this right here, we had an employee one day. We have call recording. The company we use is called ClarityVoice.com and it’s program that allows you to record the calls. So, that way for quality assurance, the phone rings and goes, “Thank you for calling Elephant in the Room. This call may be recorded for quality assurance.” And then it goes into the answer. So, this employee is kind of jamming out, and I knew this employee a little bit, and they were kind of into this kind of instrumental kind of a groove music. And, so let me just kind of walk you through the scenario. So, I’m listening to the recorded calls and I know that my employees are answering the phones. So, they’re going, “Thank you for calling Elephant in the Room. How may I help you?”

And I’m kind of hearing the customer go, “All right, how are you?” And the employee’s, “Great. So, are you looking for a haircut or what?” And, the customer’s, “Are you listening to something?” And, the employee goes, “Oh my bad. I got my earbuds on.” This person was looking a headset to answer the phone.

Oh my God.

And, underneath the headset all day.

Another headset.

They had another headset on. So, the customer was seeing and listening to Moby.

Oh.

While trying to call a call center. That is a real thing.

That’s not good.

And, these are things that I have caught. I mean, I could go on and on, we could go on and on.

Oh yeah, I’ve got some. I can one up that.

I’m going to give you one more. You can take the final. This is important though to understand that the teaching moment here, okay?

Okay.

If you own a company and you make a workflow, what the employees need to know is that the workflow will be implemented as outlined.

Yeah.

So the workflow, one of our clients, Candra with a great company, one of the best clients I’ve ever worked with here, she has a company called Flutter. Now, what is Flutter? Flutter is a business that is, they do… It’s eyelash extensions. And, so that business, we’ve helped that woman to triple-

Yeah, I met her.

Yeah, she’s-

She’s great person.

She’s tripled the size of her staff. She’s been able to double the profit. Someone says, “Well, why the profits tripled if the staff tripled?” Well, because she used to do all the work herself, now she’s building the team. And, we’re in the process of helping her to license the business. Now, what does it mean to license? A licensed business is a business where now you’re letting someone else rent your system from you. Your system is so tight, so good. You’re saying, “If you want to follow my system, you can, in exchange for a percentage of the revenue.”

Sounds fair.

And, it might be 6%, that kind of thing. But, there’s a workflow and that workflow needs to be adhered to. So I’m going to pull this up and we have her permission to share this. This is a powerful tool here. So, I helped her create this, so let me just walk you through it. If anybody out there licenses, and this is not a franchise, it’s a license. This is a working document here. But, if you license a Flutter, it’s going to cost you about 50 to a hundred thousand dollars to open up a Flutter eyelash extension location.

Oh yeah.

And, that’s because you know, got to lease a space. Let me pull it up here, and you got to lease a space and you got to decorate the space, and you got to have the right decor. And, there’s just a lot that goes into it beyond just, “Hey, I want to do it.” I mean, you have to go rent a space, lease the space, go in and do the buildout at the space, decorate the space, hire the people who work inside the space. And, these are all things that you have to do in order to make the business work.

Now, once you have the space rented and you have the systems in place, this is the look inside one of her locations. One would think, “Okay, well it’s going to work great.” Now, the problem is the messy middle, okay?

Oh yeah. That’s where it gets you.

Her local employees, the local licensee, if anybody out there owns a business, if you become a local licensee or if you’re an employee who works for you, you have to get Google reviews.

Yeah.

And she had tons of happy customers.

That’s right.

But, one quarter of the algorithm of Google is driven is based upon reviews. So, if my client, Colaw Fitness, if he came into my conferences and my workshops and asked me what to do to grow his company and he did not get Google reviews, then he would not have success. If he knew what to do but didn’t do it wouldn’t help. But see, this is where education gets in the way of compensation. A lot of people think, “Oh, just knowing what to do that’ll help me.” No, it’s the execution.

Now, the next box is the search engine optimization. Now, if you buy a Flutter, we’re going to write the content for you, so you don’t have to write your own content. But, if you’re a local owner, somebody has to write the content, which is why if you do a Google search for Joplin Gyms, Colaw Fitness comes up number one. Then number two, they come up three. So, there are three of the first five listings is my client.

Yeah.

It’s not because we like him more because God shines upon his name of his business more fondly. It’s because he’s implementing. So again, the Google reviews, they have to get done. The search engine content has to be written. The Facebook ads have to be on. The retargeting ads have to be on. The sales calls have to be made. Now this just in, if you fill out the form at Flutter, if you go to the website and you fill out the form because you want to buy a Flutter. License a Flutter. If you fill out the form, but she doesn’t call you, you’re not going to hear from her. Let me pull up her new website here. But if again, she’s only going to come up here, she’s only going to call you, only get ahold of you if she actually picks up the phone. Wanted to get a ahold of you, doesn’t matter. She has to actually call you, which she does a great job doing.

Then we have to get video testimonials from happy customers. So, what does the local person have to do if they buy a location? They have to do the screen stuff. They have to get Google reviews and call former customers to get them in and gather video reviews. Now, all that drives traffic towards the website, the landing page where there’s the offer, the social proof, the reviews. Then her staff sends the potential inquiry, the potential customer, a pre-written email, a pre-written text. They then follow an inbound script and they record the calls for quality assurance. Now, Aaron, if they didn’t record the calls for quality assurance, what would happen?

People will say crazy stuff on your business line. They will start talking about politics and religion and how their dog peed on their carpet this morning. Just crazy stuff.

And, if you don’t have dual access to the bank account of a partner, they’ll do weird stuff with the money too.

It is true.

You’ll see it all the time. I’ve been in business for so long, I’ve been doing this since I was 15 years old. There’s probably been 20 times in my life so far where I’ve been partnered with somebody and they’ve taken money out of the account for reasons I didn’t approve of, and they always have an emotional reason for it. It’s always, “Oh, we needed it.”

It’s the same concept of back in the day in the 1800s, it was the Wild, Wild West because there was no law enforcement.

And, there it is.

If you have rules of what you do in your company and nobody’s there checking to enforce it, people will drive 110 miles an hour on the highway when there’s no posted speed and no one there to back that up.

A hundred percent correct. So again, what are we talking about on today’s show? We’re talking about the messy middle. I’m talking about going from ideas to the implementation of ideas. You see, Napoleon Hill once wrote, he said, “Action is the real measure of intelligence. Action is the real measure of intelligence.” Thomas Edison once said, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” Thomas Edison, the inventor of modern light bulb, the modern recorded audio, he said that vision without execution is hallucination. I would say if you don’t work, you don’t eat. That’s biblical.

That’s true.

Roberts at [inaudible 00:16:56] says, “God blesses the hand of the diligent and punishes the slacker.” However, in the current American small business culture, in business culture, the way it works now is the person who has better branding typically avoids reprimanding.

What?

The person who has better branding usually avoids any reprimanding.

What?

I’m saying, the person who is likable and you kind of like them and he’s kind of fashionable, kind of funny. Maybe she’s kind of funny and fashionable. Maybe she’s not funny, but she’s fashionable. Maybe she’s fashionable and funny and you know her. And, maybe she knows the owner of the company or she knows somebody that you know or maybe she’s unfireable or maybe he’s unfireable. Or maybe there’s some sort of scenario where they feel like they’re untouchable.

Oh yeah.

Then what happens is the person who’s supposed to implement the system, doesn’t do it.

True.

And, then they go ahead and continue to not do it because no one ever knows they don’t do it. So, again with her business model, and we’re going to go to your story in just a second here, then the local person has to provide the services.

Yeah.

Now, that’s usually harder to avoid because very few customers will come into an eyelash extension place and leave and go, “Yeah, I think I got them done. I think they did it.” Because, they would know whether they had eyelash extensions or not.

You would know I would think.

And, then that’s the same automotive repair shop. Very few people would leave saying, “Well, I’m pretty sure they took my car back there and adjusted the brakes. I don’t know. I mean, it still squeaks like hell, but sorry, I don’t know.” I mean, very, people would go to a grocery store and you would say, “Sir, did you get your groceries?” Very few people would say vagaries like, “I think I got my groceries. I don’t know. I don’t know if I did. Well, I don’t know.”So, it’s like whenever it’s vague, that’s what the problem is. It’s the messy middle. Now, you would clearly not pay for groceries unless you receive them.

One would hope.

You would clearly not pay for the eyelash extensions unless you got service.

I mean, I didn’t pay for them and I don’t have any.

You get what I’m saying though? It’s that value add service stuff where employees play games and act like they did stuff they didn’t do. Other stuff. Now, the local person has to sign people up for a membership. They have to use the one sheet, which explains the menu options. They have to do the group interview every week. We have entire shows on that. And, on part two of today’s show, I’m going to play for you audio of how I conduct my weekly group interviews. I do them every single Wednesday at 5:30. And, every week, I’m looking at probably 40 people every week apply for a job.

I watched you do it this last week.

Probably seven to eight people show up.

Oh yeah.

Even though 45 people said… 45 people will RSVP and say, “I’m coming to the interview,” but seven or eight show up.

True.

And, I know this because I’m physically present. However, back in the day, I had a camera and system installed and I had one of my employees who said, “Clay, no one showed up for the interview.” And, I’m going, “I don’t think you showed up for the interview because you’re the person conducting the interview.” Turns out, that’s right. So again, the cameras, it’s not what people say, it’s what they do. We have to watch what people do, not what they say. We have to actually trust, but verify. You can only expect what you inspect, right? This is so big. You can only expect what you inspect. Then you have to have ongoing training.

Every week at ShawHomes.com. You and I meet every week, but every week you diligently leave that meeting and every week you go out there and you train your team. Why do you have to train your team every single week? Why can’t you skip a month?

Oh yeah, because repetition of getting information, people don’t learn everything the first time. They need to be reminded. In First Peter it says, “Though these things you have need of someone putting you in remembrance of them.” My team will drift over time. It’s like you teach them on how to correctly do a model home tour. And then it’s like if you don’t keep doing that, I can go back three months from now and they’ll be doing something completely different that I’ve never even heard before and it has nothing to do with how we trained them to do it. So, you got to just continue to do that because repetition is one of the ways that people learn how to do something, especially in home building.

We do have somewhat of a complex product that we offer. There’s a lot of stuff to know. And, so we have to train them repetitively on how to do each step of the way. We’ve tried to overly simplify it, just like what you’re showing here with steps one through eight. Ours is a five step process, but I’ve got to continuously walk them through how to do that five step process or next thing I know they have a 14 step process I’ve never even heard of.

So, I want to ask you this again. You mentioned this, you attributed the quote to Ronald Reagan. That is correct, president Ronald Reagan once said, “Trust but verify.”

Yep.

I just know in my life, in business, and this is current, this is past, this is in the future. It’s always that way. With 160 clients, the clients that I work with grow because I’m in the know about what they’re actually doing.

Yeah.

And, the clients who are successful want to be successful. They want feedback. They lean into feedback. They say, “Hey.”

It’s true.

“Could you listen to my sales call and help me analyze it to get better?”

My top salesperson, she’s constantly like, “Hey, did I do that okay? Is there anything I should be doing different on that? Can you listen to my phone call and get coach me on it? Tell me if I did it good.” Or she’ll be, “Hey, I blew this one. Can you go back and watch the video on why I couldn’t get the customer to move forward with the process with us? What did I do wrong?” She wants feedback.

Yep.

Because, she cares a lot about doing it the right way.

Now, another example is today we’re going to be putting out a show, Peter Navarro, who is Trump’s right hand man, [inaudible 00:22:26] that doesn’t know who Peter Navarro is. Peter Navarro is Trump’s right hand man, serving with President Trump inside the White House. Was a trusted advisor, did tough negotiations with China. He’s a great American. His name’s Peter Navarro. He has a podcast called Taking Back Trump’s America. And, we help him to optimize his podcast. And, we want to look at the numbers, how many people watched it. How many people downloaded it. We want to track these in these things because again, having a workflow doesn’t matter unless you’re in the know about what’s actually happening. Having a workflow and so many people that’s… In college, people are so educated, but they’re not thinking about how can they be compensated by actually adding value to every hour.

So many people show up and they go, “Oh, I learned this, I learned that.” But, what are you doing?

Right.

So again, I go back to it. Effective management 101. There’s kind of two prongs to it here. Prong number one, trust but verify. What? Assume that every single person you’re talking to has an agenda and it’s not yours. So, trust but verify. “You’re being negative. You should trust your fellow man.” Oh, listen, listen. Eve was deceived and the problem was that she believed and let Satan lead. I repeat, Eve was deceived and the problem was that she believed and she actually let Satan lead.

So true.

She actually believed Satan.

Genesis Chapter Three.

Eve believed.

Go read it.

Right?

Yeah.

Am I correct? Eve was deceived.

No, exactly right.

And, she actually believed and then let the serpent lead.

Yup.

So, whether it be in my life right now in business or my life in the future, or my life in the past, there’s always a time where I have an employee, I’ll give another example. Yesterday, a great employee by the name of James. He came to me and said, “Hey Clay, can I come into the office and make calls when you’re in the studio recording? I just want to get real time feedback so I can get better.” Guess what? I mean, that guy’s doing great.

Yeah.

Other people though-

[inaudible 00:24:19].

People run from feedback if they’re hiding something, if they’re nefarious.

Well, and everybody will tell you they want feedback, but don’t actually.

Right?

And, the people who lean into it though, like you’re talking about with James. My top salesperson, actually a couple of them are that way with my team, but-

You got a great team now.

But they lean on it. Oh, I had a terrible team when I met you. It’s so a great team now.

Well, and I’ll say this now, step number eight on this workflow for this specific business, Kendra’s business is she does a quality controlled, merit-based pay system. Carrots and sticks. So, she pays people based upon what they do, not based on what they say they’re going to do. So, let me just give you an example right now. If you go to rumble.com and you search for the phrase business. Yesterday, I had a lot of people at the conference recently have said to me, “What do you do? I heard that you’re a business guy. Is that what you do?” And, it occurred to me about two events ago in Branson, that most people don’t know that you run Shaw Homes and that I own businesses and grow them. And, that we didn’t sit around looking for an opportunist opportunity to do an event. Furthermore, most people don’t know that we lose money on the Re-awaken America tour. Now, why is that important for you to know?

Right.

It’s because you who are out there listening today, I know that God wants to use you in some capacity to help save, to volunteer with your church, maybe to volunteer with your family, to get involved with your kids at their school events too. God wants you to… He wants to use your time and treasure and talents to be the best parent you could be. To be the best dad you can be. The best human you can be. And, I think a lot of us think, “Well, the reason why Aaron and Clay are helping on the tour is because they got nothing going on.” In fact, though, I would argue that.

Because they got nothing going on. In fact, though, I would argue that we are some of the busiest people I’ve ever met. So anyway, an attendee said, “Well, I didn’t even know that you had business podcasts.” So I told my team, “Okay, here’s the deal. I have 2,443 shows that I’ve never fully released.” So imagine you’re like an artist or a rapper or a musician and you had songs that you cut but you never put out for the public.

And someone says, “Well, why would you do that?” Because at the time in my life, we were doing one show a day and then iTunes would reward us. We were number one on iTunes six times. But I was recording like five shows a day because I enjoyed doing it, and so does Dr. Zelner. So I’ve got 2,443 shows that I’ve never fully released. And so I told the team, “Guys, listen, starting here in March, we’re going to have a March to victory. We’re going to have a March to success, and we’re going to put out every business show I’ve ever done on all platforms and we’re going to reach people.” So we put out the shows. On Saturday, we dropped 33 shows on Saturday.

That’s awesome.

And again, how do I pay my people? They get paid based off of the uploads. Although the show might be free to listen to, the person that uploads it is going to make a certain amount per upload they do. At Shaw Homes, they make a commission for every home they sell. For the framers that subcontract with you, and the plumbers and all the wonderful contractors that you’ve developed relationships with, they all get paid based upon the framing and the plumbing and the carpeting and the tile and all the work they actually do, the roofing, not just what they intend on doing. But I find this is so interesting though. This is interesting. And most businesses today, they pay people based on what they say they’re going to do.

So true.

So that’s why there’s all these people that have a social media marketing manager.

I don’t have one of those.

I talked to a guy the other day, I had to talk him off a ledge. It was kind of crazy. Very successful business owner, I’ve worked with him for years. And he is like, “I feel like we need to beef up our corporate support staff.” And I’m going, “Why? You’re already very, very successful. You’re making a lot of money.” “Well, I’ve been talking to a social media manager on my staff who wants to be more involved.” And I’m telling you, once you get a researcher or a social media manager on your payroll and you’re not quite sure what they do because it’s kind of vague, now you’re in a weird spot. Just like if you were a farmer and you go, “Carl, what are you doing?” “I’m sowing seeds.” “Eddie, what are you doing?” “Tilling the soil.” “Susan, what are you doing?” “I don’t know. I’m just here.” I mean, you wouldn’t pay them.

No. You wouldn’t.

Just Rando showing up on the job site. You wouldn’t pay them just to show up.

No, we wouldn’t.

So talk about this crazy story that you’ve discovered because now that you have video cameras, recorded audio, all that installed, you’re catching the jackassery and you’re dramatically improving the efficiency at shawhomes.com. What’s the final story? And I’m going to give you all the mega points if this is a good one.

Oh, it’s a good one.

There we go.

So my top salesperson at the time, when we transitioned over to having recorded calls and video cameras, she tells me, “Erin, that is so unethical. I thought you were a Christian. And that is so unethical that you would do that. You don’t trust us. You know I’m an honest person. You know this.” And I went, “Okay, that sounds great, but we’re going to install them anyways.” And so she quit because we were unethical and immoral for doing this.

I had somebody today in one of my companies that we have, I work with restaurants. And the restaurants I work with, I recommend that they do something called tip matching. So this is big. So whatever employee gets tipped the most that week, I recommend that the owner of the restaurant matches the tip once a week, whoever has the biggest tip. But in order to qualify, they have to average a certain amount of tips. So it’s kind of like a system. And there’s an employee on their team that said, “Hey, I got tipped $1,200.” And then the week before they’re like, “I got tipped $400.” And it’s like, “Well, who tipped you?” “Well, it was cash.” “So somebody came in and tipped you randomly $1,200 of cash?” “Yep, they did. And I’m telling you, I’m just blessed.” Like, “Well, we need to check the cameras to find out who they are so we can catch the situation, if we want to verify.” “Oh no, no, they’re probably not on the camera.”

Well, the end of the story of this lady for me, this is what was so crazy. So she quits. And about two days later, a customer walks in. And I have a new salesperson in the model. Customer walks in and goes, “Hey, where’s the lady that used to be here? I was working with her on this house.” And we don’t do custom design floor plans. We have 49 floor plans that we build that we’ve already pre-designed.

So you’re saying that she might have been working-

This customer walks in and goes, “I was working with your lady and she had custom designed this plan for us. And we’re building, we already bought the land around the corner. We gave her $20,000 and we’re here to just finalize the contract and give her the rest of the deposit.” And I was like, “We don’t do that.” Well, I find out she’s literally selling our customer in our model home. She’s selling them a home to be built by a different builder out of my model home.

Lead stealing, using your model home as a way to generate leads for her business on the side?

Yes, exactly.

And by the way, in the haircut business, that happens all the time.

Got it all on video, though. It was crazy.

In the hair business, happens all the time. I have a haircut business, happens all the time. In the DJ business, happened all the time. In the real estate business, happens all the time.

All the time.

And again, these are just other things. I want to sneak in one up here for a second.

Okay, do it.

We installed call recording in a company called Fears and Clark that I had back in the day, commercial real estate.

With Braxton.

Braxton did a great job, and we installed call recording. And this guy on my team named Rick, we’ll call him Rick because that was his name, Rick. And Rick goes, “Hey boss, can you take this call?” And I go, “Sure.” And this person says, “I’m looking to lease a space from your business, need parking in back, no window.” And I’m going, “You want a space to lease in one of our buildings?” Because our job was to team up with commercial building owners, help them lease out their unleased space.

You’re telling me they were looking free strip mall?

And she says, “We want to park in back, no parking, no window.” And I’m going, “What’s the name of your business?” And she says, I’m not kidding, she says, “Happy Massage.” And I’m like, “Okay, Happy Massage. And so what services do you provide?” “We provide private and confidential massages.” And I’m going, “I think that you are something that you’re doing.” “No, we’re above board, parking in back, pay cash only.” I’m like, “Wait, so you want to pay your lease only cash?” So at this point I put the lady on speakerphone and I’m like, “So you’re saying you want to pay your lease only cash?” “Yes. It should take a couple of hours to set up.” So it takes a couple of hours to set up your whole business?” “Yeah. We’re cash only.” And I’m like, “Come on.” I’m like, “What’s the name of the person that would sign the lease?” “We’re confidential for our clients’ safety.” I’m like, “So for your client safety, you don’t want to discuss?” “No.” And I’m going, “So, are you doing something kind of little shady?” “No, we’re above reproach. We pay cash.”

And that sort of thing you wouldn’t know about. And what was interesting is that Rick was like, “Dude, my appointment percentage setting is low on this property.” And I’m going, “Why?” He goes, “I’m just telling you, all the leads we’re getting are crazy.” And I said, “Rick, let’s play the calls.” He goes, “Sure, man.” And we pulled the calls. And sure enough, this was a property that we were helping to market that was what you call a B-class building. There’s an A-class commercial building, which is a nice building. That’s what they call A-class. And then there’s like a C-class, which is like a slum lord. And this was like a B-class building where there was some sketchy pieces of real estate around it, yet the building itself was nice. And it turns out that it was kind of not maybe the easiest property to rent out. And turns out our commercial real estate agent at the time was doing his job and was doing a great job. And it turned out that most of the leads that he got were nefarious, and therefore he was doing the right thing. But we wouldn’t have known-

Unless you had it recorded.

That’s how it works. So again, if you’re wanting to be an effective manager, two things to know today. One, trust but verify. And two, you can only expect what you’re willing to expect. And if you want to come join us at an in-person ThriveTime Show Workshop so you can inspect what we’re doing, you can go to ThriveTimesShow.com, ThriveTimeShow.com. You can trust but verify. You can go to ThriveTimeShow.com, and you can click on the testimonials. And when you go to the testimonial section to trust but verify, you can inspect what you expect, and you’ll see over 2,000, 2,000 clients that we’ve helped to grow since 2005. Somebody’s watching, going, “I haven’t even been alive that long. I’m 16. You’re old. This is an old show.”

So if you’re out there today, I’m serious. There’s people who are listening right now who haven’t been alive as long as I’ve been consulting. I started in 2005, 18 years in right now. So I’m telling you, we have a system, we have a process and I encourage you to not take my word for it. Why? Because I lean into that. And I encourage you to go to ThriveTimeShow.com, look at the testimonials, and if you want to schedule a one-on-one consultation with me, you can, and I’d love to get to know you.

Or you can book a ticket to our in-person workshops, and those tickets are $250, or whatever price you want to pay. So if you’re in a tight spot, we’d still want you to be able to go, because I know what it’s like to not have money, Aaron knows what it’s like to not have money. And we want to be able to meet you, greet you, and help coach you up so that you could be so successful that you want to throw up. Is that what success looks like? No, it just rhymed. Okay, we’re going to hit you with the boom. Here we go. 3, 2, 1.

Get ready to enter the ThriveTime Show on Talk Radio 1170, broadcasting live from the center of the universe. It’s Business School Without the BS, featuring optometrist turned entrepreneur, Dr. Robert Zelner, with USSBA Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark.

All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the ThriveTime Show on your radio or podcast player. And what we’re doing right now is we’re going to answer the question of how do you run a group interview? Eric Chup, you’re a business coach, can you explain to the listeners what even is a group interview? We have a listener who’s obviously listened for quite a while and they want to know how to run a group interview. But I want to break it down, just a very fundamental question, what is a group interview?

So it’s not what I find most people think it is. Typically, when you say the word group interview, people think that you’re going to be sitting in front of a group of people who are interviewing you. And it’s actually the exact opposite of that. So you’re going to be in a group of people that are being interviewed by one person. So as a business owner or manager, you’re going to get all of the job candidates, all the applicants are going to come into one single interview in a group, and you’re going to do it all at one time.

Now, the reason why you do that is, according to the US Chamber, you can look up that stat, but according to the US Chamber and CBS News, I want to make sure we have fact checked on the show notes so all of the Thrive Nation can actually prove, or you could prove to yourself that what I’m saying is true. Because the statistics are going to seem alarming when you read them for the first time. But according to the US Chamber of Commerce and CBSs News, 75% of employees are stealing from the workplace and most are doing so repeatedly.

I mean, think about that for a second. Chup, does it ever shock you how many people that will come to the group interview? The group interview is scheduled for, let’s say 05:00 PM on Tuesday night, let’s say. Out of 30 people that said they’re going to be to the interview. By the way, the candidates don’t know it’s a group interview. They just think it’s a job interview. Of the people that are supposed to be there on time. What percentage of them do you feel like, from your perspective, actually show up even on time?

It’s less than 50% almost every time.

It’s brutal.

It’s unbelievable.

So according to the US Chamber, again, 75. Chup, what were the stats showing there?

So we’ve got, let me get it here, let me get it here. Like you said, 75% of employees steal from the workplace, and most do it repeatedly, according to CBSs News on Money Watch.

Not good. And we’ll put that link on the show notes, but that’s not a good thing. It’s not a good thing. Also, there’s all sorts of statistics you can find out there. Forbes did a study and asked employees, “What percentage of you are wasting time?” They just asked, “Hey, let’s be honest. We’ll do a survey. We won’t tell your boss, but what percentage of you are wasting your time?” And they found that 31% of employees are wasting their time.

On this same article right here, it says, a typical organization loses 5% of its annual revenue to employee fraud. Same study, same article.

It’s not good. It’s not a good thing. And so here’s what I want to put into your brain there, Thrive Nation, here’s a notable quotable. This is from Andrew Carnegie. This is the guy who built the Carnegie Steel. He’s a guy who started working at the age of 13 to support his family because financially they were not in a good spot. He says, “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” That’s Andrew Carnegie. So here’s the idea I want to put into your head. You’re going to have to interview at least four people to find one person who is honest.

At least.

At least. So 75% of employees are stealing from the workplace according to the US Chamber of Commerce, right? So 75% of them are stealing. And according to my personal research, I’m just telling you, if we interview 20 candidates this week, maybe two of them who have the skill, have the character needed to work for us. They have the skill, but they don’t have the character. From my experience, 2 out of 20.

So the question is, how do you find good in people and how do you run a group interview? This is how you run a group interview. One is, you schedule a specific time. You schedule specific time each week to do your job posts. So you have to do those weekly job posts. If you don’t do weekly job posts, you’re going to lose. If you don’t do the weekly job posts, you’re just going to lose. You have to post every single week on Craigslist, on Indeed, you have to do it. The second is you have to have a weekly time scheduled to interview. You have to have a weekly scheduled specific time. Why do you have to do that? Because anybody who applies for a job, you want to send them a pre-written email, and the pre-written email will let them know, “Hey, you might be a good fit. We’ll go ahead and interview you this Tuesday night at 05:00.” And you just send the same email to every single person.

Every single person.

And that way when they show up all at one time or don’t, you don’t waste hours of your time, you just waste one hour of your time. And then when you actually interview the people, you want to have a game plan. You actually want to have a game plan or a script for the interview. And this is what you want to go over in your interview. One, you want to go over the compensation for the job. You want to have your compensation. First thing, you want to go over those expectations. You want to go over the expectations. What are you expecting from the applicants? The expectations. The second is you go over the communication, how will you communicate with me if we work here? The third is you want to go over the compensation. And the fourth is you want to go over any questions they have.

Now, when you talk about expectations, you want to get into the values, you want to get into specifically what makes your company a great place to work for. You want to get into all that. You want to create a polarizing environment where people know quickly whether they want to work with you or not. You’ve got to go over one, the expectations. Two, the communication, hey, if you work here, you’re going to be expected to work here 09:00 to 05:00, and your boss is Carl. And if you’re ever running late or whatever, you call him. But this is how we communicate. You don’t text or you don’t email or whatever your policies are. Third, this is the compensation. This is what you get paid if you work here. Then fourth, you go over, do you have any questions? Chup, you’ve seen the group interview done week after week for years. Why is it such a powerful super move for companies that are struggling to find really good people?

Well, here’s one of the hangups I see with a lot of clients that we implement this with, you have to do it every single week, like you were saying just a minute ago. If you’re waiting until you need somebody to start looking for them, you’re never going to find that A-player. It’s going to be super rare that those stars align, that A-player, that A-team member that can perform, that has the character and the skills that you need to do it are going to be looking for a job that exact moment you’re looking to hire. So you have to do it every single week to keep that pipeline of applicants full.

So let me give you an example. Back in the day, here’s kind of a fun story for you. When I was running DJ Connection before I sold it, we were doing about 4,000 events per year at djconnection.com.

That’s a few.

And what happens is, every weekend you have to do about 80 weddings, which means you have to send out 80 separate men to go and provide entertainment for 80 separate weddings. Now, to be fair, sometimes a DJ would DJ Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So you’d have one guy to do three shows. So usually, you’d run a squad of 45 active DJs, 80 on your roster though. And no other DJ company in the country could relate to me. They’d asked me to come speak at these wedding seminars and wedding events saying, “Hey, you’re the entrepreneur of the year. Could you come in and teach us how to run a wedding business?” And I told them, “Well, what you want to do is you want to never be short on employees. You never want to be short. You never want to have to put up with somebody past their expiration date.”

Because if you have 80 DJs, and it sounds crazy, but I would call a guy and say, “Hey, I’ve got a show for you this Saturday.” About half of them of them would refuse to do the show. They’d say, “Where’s the show?” This was back in the day, by the way, before the Mayo Hotel was totally renovated. This is when it was first opening. I’d say, “It’s at the Mayo Hotel.” And they’re like, Downtown? I don’t want to go downtown. No one’s downtown.” And then you’d say, “Well, okay, I have an event for you at Forest Ridge.” And they’d say, “Sure, I’ll do that one.” And then you call the next guy, “Hey, I’ve got a show for you at the Mayo Hotel.” And they’d say, “Mayo Hotel, downtown?” Now everybody wants to DJ there, but back in the day, no one wanted to.

Did you guys ever do anything at the Castle of Muskogee? You know that place?

Yes, we did.

I love that place.

I used to have to really, really have to motivate people to get them to want to do that event. It was kind of a hell gig. Well, now we had our holiday party this year at the Mayo Hotel. It’s beautiful. But I had these DJs, I had to get these 80 people to commit to doing these 40 shows this Saturday and this Friday. Now here’s what’s crazy, out of 40 guys that were scheduled. Chup, do you want to guess how many of them wouldn’t show up for their load up time? Now the way it worked, your show’s supposed to be at eight o’clock start. Usually it’s like a seven o’clock start. So if you were DJing tonight at the Summit Club, you’d have to get there at five o’clock to set up. But I had your load up time would always be five hours before the show.

Make sure no snags, everything’s going to go-

What percentage of the DJs do you think wouldn’t show up for their load up time?

Half? Quarter?

At least one out of 10. One out of 10. So with 40 guys going out, I had to pay five guys just to hang out. And that’s probably where the name five guys comes from.

Five guys just hanging out.

I’d have five guys that I would pay just to hang out at the office just in case they were needed. They were called runners. And so this is something that’s massive. I never had a problem where I didn’t have enough DJs to cover my shows because I never stopped doing the group interviews. So again, I’m repeating the action steps here. You have to have a weekly job post every single week. I would recommend that you post on Indeed and Craigslist and you never stop. Someone might be saying, “Well, how much do I spend on that?” Depending upon the business, I would recommend you spend at least $200 a week on Indeed and Craigslist every single week. Craigslist is $25 per post per the time of this recording. It changes all the time. Second is you’ve got to have a weekly specific scheduled time. Chup, why do you have to have a weekly specific time? And why can’t you change it from week to week every week?

Because you’ll end up missing it yourself if it’s not a rock in your schedule. And it’s something that you can’t change, you need to put that thing, like we talk about all the time, as a rock in your schedule, fill up the sand of life around that rock because this has to happen. It absolutely has to happen, if you’re sick, if whatever, you have to make this interview at the same time, because that’s already going to be out on your ads. People are already going to be expecting to be there. So you have to have it at the same time every week.

Now the pre-written email, why do you have to have a pre-written email that explains the specific time of the interview, the location of the interview, and all of the details of the job? Why do you have to have the email pre-written?

The whole point of this system is to save you time, is to save you time from one-on-one interviews, from responding to every single person with a typed up custom email. So you have a canned response that you send out, telling them all the details so that you can immediately do it. You can send it out as soon as that comes in. You can do it in your meta time, but you have to have it canned so you can just send it immediately.

And then why do you have to have a game plan for when the candidates actually show up for the job interview? Why can’t you just wing it? Because a lot of people say, “Well, I just wing it. I don’t even know how I do it. I just do it.”

Because everybody can tell when you’re winging it. And then top talented people, people with high character are not going to want to come work for you. It’s not inspiring to show up to a job interview where it seems like the person who either owns the company or is running the job interview looks like they don’t know what they’re doing.

And if you don’t know how to do a group interview and you’re asking yourself, well, why do I need to do one? Again, it’s because 75% of people, according to CBS News in the US Chamber are stealing from the workplace. According to Forbes, 31% of people don’t even try at the job. So Andrew Carnegie, if he were here, the late great Andrew Carnegie said, “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” And unfortunately, three out of four people don’t have what it takes to hold a job in America today. They just can’t be consistent enough to get it done. And so if you’re struggling with hiring sales, marketing, all these things. Hiring might be just the tip of the iceberg for you. Maybe you need help with your accounting, maybe you need help with optimizing your website. I would invite you to take advantage of our offer we have going right now, which is unbelievable. All you got to do is go to ThriveTimeShow.com in iTunes. So just type in ThriveTime Show.

ThriveTime, one word.

And then the word iTunes. ThriveTime Show, and the word iTunes. You go up to iTunes and if you subscribe to the podcast.

Yep, subscribe first.

And you simply write a review. Again, just subscribe and write a review of the ThriveTime Show in iTunes. Then you get a free conference ticket to attend our next in person workshop, which is in February, right, Chup?

February 16th and 17th. It’s a Friday, and those tickets are normally $99.

So you’re going to get $198 of free stuff-

Two tickets.

Two tickets as a result of simply subscribing on iTunes and writing us a review. When we come back, we’re going to be talking about what if your spouse or family member is not driven or passionate about anything as it relates to the business. Wow, what an awkward question. Why would you email that to us to infothrive15.com? It’s the ThriveTime Show on your radio.

Make sure you never miss a broadcast by signing up for the ThriveTime Show podcast. Grab the duct tape and mentally prepare yourself for yet another mind-expanding knowledge bomb from America’s number one business coach, Clay Clark.

Recently I’ve had more and more members of the Thrive Nation asking me, “Clay, what do you actually say at the group interview? How does the group interview look? Do you really interview all of the candidates at the same time? Seriously, every Wednesday at 06:00 PM you interview everybody at the same time. How do you do it? When do you do it? Where do you do it? Why do you do it? How do you do it? What does it sound like?” Well, I do it Wednesday nights at 06:00. Why do I do it? Because it’s efficient. Interviewing everybody at the same time is efficient. Where do I do it? At our office at 1100 Riverwalk Terrace, Jenks, Oklahoma. Who attends? A lot of people, we have like 50 people confirm to say they’re going to be at the interview, and usually 10 to 15 show up. And last night we had a great group of people who attended the workshop and we found some really, really great people. And so now let me, further ado. This is what our group interview sounds like.

So I’m Clay Clark and this is my office, and we are hiring for a myriad of different positions. And I’ll open it up for you guys to ask questions. So Justice, is that right? I’ll start with you because you’re in the back. So Justice, what questions do you have?

Well, you said a myriad positions available. I’m wondering which specific ones, and if there’s any more [inaudible 00:51:12]?

Sure. What position did you remember reading about online?

Marketing Assistant.

Okay, cool. Let’s talk about that one. So marketing assistant. And feel free to take notes [inaudible 00:51:21]. Everybody, if you’re looking for a product or service, you typically search on?

Branding. I do.

Probably branding. How would you find, like if you’re in Florida tonight and you’re going to go to a movie or you’re going to go, I don’t know, what do you typically do to find?

Some people go to third party vendors.

What do you do?

[inaudible 00:51:45].

That’s right. See, there’s a 94% of people who are in Forbes right now use Google for everything. But I think in any room, 1% of 1% know how Google works. So I grew up crazy poor. My company’s called DJconnection.com, still exists, but I grew up really poor.

It was called DJ Connection.com. It still exists, but I grew up really poor. When I was 16, my dad was delivering pizzas. I’m 38 and my dad was 38. He was delivering pizzas. He had a degree from ORU top of class.

Right.

Tom Clark. And my dad just didn’t know how… He had a good business degree but they don’t teach the business. And so my dad, he just grew up really poor. And so my whole thing was like I had to find a way to not be poor. So I started the DJ company out of my dorm room. Do you know why I started the DJ company out of my dorm room?

Because it was fun and you enjoyed it.

And?

And you were really good at it, it was something that was needed, probably in demand.

What do you think Justice?

It was You something.

And I’ll say I wish that it was that deep. It was like I’m crazy poor and the barrier of interest is pretty low. And most DJs are terrible. So I’m like, even if I’m bad, I’m better than them. So I had a service called DJ Connection. This is my pitch and your name is Barbara. So I’d say, “Barbara, I’m going to DJ for your wedding, your birthday, whatever. And it’s a dollar if you hire me, it’s a quick cost. And then if you’re happy, you can pay me based on your happiness.” So if a 10, perfect 10, I’d love to get paid $600 because everybody else charges that. But if I’m terrible, it’s a dollar and everyone charges four hours, I do unlimited time. And everyone’s like, “Are you kidding me?” And I go, “Nope.” And I help you plan your wedding first.

So pretty much every bride at every wedding show said yes every single time. And I just grew it. And so I sold it. We were doing 4,000 weddings a year, so it was like a big. 80 weddings a weekend. And then my wife pointed out to me in 2006 or five, I was an entrepreneur of the year for the state of Oklahoma from the Small Business Administration. She’s like, “You know, what you do works for other things. You shouldn’t be a DJ.” And I’m like, “Why?” She goes, “You’re a grown man.” Okay, fine. So we had five kids and I built that business and then I started teaching people how to grow their businesses, and if you’re in a multi-level, I’m not attacking you. I’m saying not in a multi-level kind of way, not in a hundred percent commission kind of way.

Not in a get rich real estate kind of way, but like, hey, you’re a chiropractor and let’s sell some stuff. Or hey, you’re a home builder. So now my client, we worked with Maurice Kanbar, who is the founder of SKYY Vodka. So when he bought a third of downtown Tulsa, if you look at my name, Clay Clark, Tulsa World, you’ll see the articles, we helped lease downtown, used to be dead. We helped lease, basically bring tenants downtown.

SKYY Bar.

Here you go. With the deals we did was Elote was the first downtown restaurant, Mayo Hotel, we worked with them, with bar and all that. Anyway, that’s what we did. And so then people kept reaching out, reaching out, reaching out, reaching out, reaching out. And so now we work with 160 clients. What’s the number? One sixty, right? A hundred sixty clients. Most of them are not in Tulsa and Shaw Holmes is the largest home builder in Oklahoma. That’s one of our clients. Total lending ending concepts, that’s one of our clients. Barbie Cookies was one of our clients. Papagallo’s Pizzeria is a client. Oxyfresh is a client. UPS has been a client, Maytag has been a client. So Ben, come on up here. Ben. Woo. This is Ben. Yeah, what’s here for Ben? Yeah, Ben. Now Ben, where were you working at? How long have you been here?

I’ve been here eight months. Before that I was at Lowe’s for eight months. And before that I was working as a handyman for about 10 months.

Oh, you shouldn’t have told me that. Oh, yeah.

That’s great.

That’s great. Oh yeah. Can you do a lot? Is he handy?

Yeah, I’ve done ceiling fans. I can do dry walls and stuff.

I hate tiling.

I hate tiling.

No, no tiling. No, no, I just think my wife’s been praying for handyman. Dear Jesus, can I have a handyman? But anyway, and then Ben, where did you start? What was your role first?

I was on the search engine optimization team. So I write the search engine content. So the content that is going to be going on to the webpage for all of the clients.

Had you ever done this before?

I thought I was illiterate. I think I got C’s in English, like high school and college. So I never thought I would ever be writing for my professional career.

And what do you do now?

I am the SEO. I think I promote Azar actually. Very official, so I manage a team of 8 now. And they’re writing content all day long, my job to make sure that the quality of the content’s going to be good, make sure that there’s not going to be any duplicates because Google loads duplicate contents with the passion. So I load it with a passion.

How much can you get paid per hour right now at current rate?

Per hour, current rate? I can do about 25 to 27 an hour.

Questions?

Yeah.

Yes?

Okay. So you said you’re writing, are you writing just writing like a literary artist or are you talking about programming?

So not programming, I don’t do that yet, but it’s [inaudible 00:57:03]. Yeah, so we, it’s called Dragon diction. So we just speak it and instead of typing it because that would take forever plus I can’t spell. So, but then I just talk, kind of write that content as in two 500 word articles.

And let me tell you how this system was created so you see it. I was building DJ Connection, I hired Bruce Clay, which by the way, eight grand a month is a lot of money, contract 12 months. I’m not bitter about it, but it’s expensive. I still pay him now. But it’s like a lot of money. So you’re like, I’m a DJ. Let me tell you about being a DJ. You make $167 a profit a show because you charge 600. So you’re not making, you know what I mean? You’re getting, after I pay the DJs and the equipment breaks and hiring and sales and marketing, it’s about 150 bucks. Well, it’s cool. We were doing 80 a weekend, but it’s still a lot of money. You know what I mean? So I’m going, there’s got to be a better way. There’s just got to just, oh…

So I try to make it really affordable. And so I used to type the articles and I wrote the best crap ever, man. It was like, aw, and just you’re going to love working with our DJs because we have just, I’m using big words like plethora, cornucopia, just, oh, it’s just a fabulous.

Did you take a creative writing class?

I was right, I was working it. I thought that’s what mattered was, I thought having really good words was where it was at. And then my wife was like, “Have you ever asked women if they’ve ever read these things?” And I’m like… Because most people go to the website and call. They don’t read your 40-page manifesto about DJing. And so then I’m like, wait a minute. So that’s when I came with the Dragon diction thing. And then that’s kind of, anyway, so that’s how that worked. But any of your questions for Ben? Yes,

Just the training process. Get to where you were to start and then where you are now and how do you go about, [inaudible 00:58:49].

My quick interruption is two weeks, hands on. Okay, you’re getting paid the whole time, but two weeks is about how long it took you to… Am I right?

Two weeks, yeah.

And then just start off after two weeks you joined under your team.

You’re still getting paid on, you’re on the team right.

So I think there’s someone the third day on. And so they’re slowly picking up little by little.

And we had a young lady today who is great and I think her head was going to explode because it’s like her second day or third day. Nice lady. But it’s like you’ve never done it before. And it’s like riding a bike. And unless you’re a weird person, you don’t mock babies that are learning to walk. Oh, look at the baby. Look at the stupid baby, lazy baby. You just kind of coach up, mentor up, you know, teach.

Positive approach.

So that’s the vibe there. So you learn that. And then one day Ben was like, “Hey, check it out. My wife is smart.” And I go, your wife is smart? What is this?

Smarter than me.

And then I’m like, well let’s meet said persons. I’m going to bring up your wife. Is that cool?

Cool.

So you got to go in now. All right. Yeah, this is Amelia and she happens to be married to that guy. And can you explain your path, how long you been here, what you do now?

I’ve been here for about six and a half months. I started in Elephant In The Room call center and then I moved from there to sales. And then from sales, I’m now in coaching. So I’ve got my first three clients this past week. So I’m doing coaching now.

Any questions for Amelia? She’s been here a while, but not super long.

No, six and a half months.

Six and a half months.

Oh, good for you. To take over in about six and a half months.

Yeah, no, she’s going through very fast. She’s plowing through it. Probably the fastest rate of anybody we’ve had so far. But that’s only because Ben’s her life coach and just telling her what to do.

Can you teach clients pathways? Teaching them, starting them setting the website. And what do you think to mean by pathways?

Yeah, so playwrights, all the pathways, that’s like their business plan.

Yes sir. What questions do you have and what is your name?

Zhaj.

Zhaj?

Zhaj.

How do you spell it?

Z-H-A-J.

Z-H-A-J?

Yeah.

Zhaj.

Yeah.

Is it that like a family name? Is this common?

It’s very common in my culture.

But what does it mean?

It means Dragon.

That’s cool.

Can you give him a copy of Dragon Energy? My new book is called Dragon Energy.

Oh yeah?

Oh yeah. Any questions for Amelia about that? Because she’s here. That’s why I have her here because she could tell you and you can ask her anything. Yeah.

Do you personally make a lot of cold sales? Like calls?

I did when I was, yeah… So I did, it’s kind of split now, but yeah. So when I was doing sales, that’s what I did. I did cold calls.

Can you explain who you were calling for though?

Yeah. So it’s for a company called Digi Security Systems. They’re a client of ours. So they actually contract out their cold calling to us. So I would call their leads their due 100.

So we don’t cold call on behalf of my business. We call on behalf of our clients, because a lot of our clients are afraid of the phone. At first, we actually explained to them, nobody woke up today with a desire to pay you. And they’re like, huh? Nobody cares about your product. You got to go call. And if it’s a retail store, you got to get in front of them. Every business has its own path. But for Digi, they did the security systems for the…

Gathering Place.

Gathering Place.

OSU.

OSU.

OU.

OU. Be okay, and they get all their accounts by cold calling. So she’s calling on their behalf, if that makes sense.

That’s what the call center is for?

The other call center would be for Elephant In The Room. So that’s Men’s Grooming Lounge. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it.

I have.

Yeah, so they’re, no matter which location you’re going to, the calls all come into us and then we schedule.

And if you move to Denver, the company I worked with for a long time up there, Denver, my partner that he and I have Elephant In The Room together. The other business though is called Oxyfresh. And there’s 406 locations, carpet cleaning. And there’s a major call center that looks at like 8,000 carpets a day. A lot of carpets, yeah. But inbound calls for Elephant In The Room, basically. Any more questions, you feeling good? Okay. And it’s Zhaj, am I saying that right?

Yeah, that’s right.

Okay, sure. And what is your culture, by the way? You said your culture. What’s your culture?

Monk.

Monk?

Monk.

Monk. And were you born Here in this country?

Yeah.

Okay. Are your parents first generation immigrants?

I’m not too sure.

Okay.

I think that my grandparents are.

Okay, cool. Awesome. Excited Zhaj. Okay, so Zhaj, got it, Zhaj.

You got a question?

Yeah, I was just curious if I could get the job. How long would I have to get everything in order to move up here? Because I don’t live in Oklahoma.

And what’s your name?

Roy.

Roy. And you drove here from where, Roy?

Just south of Houston.

Really? For this interview?

Yes.

You did.

Oh.

How’d you hear about us?

Online. I saw something that said it was about graphic design and I looked into what the company was and did research. It looked really great.

We have about half a million people listening to our podcast. So they have had, I don’t think the workshops you were at, but Sean, were you the one who told me we had people from Guam here.

Yeah, two.

So we have people over Guam and Canada and Australia. No, I’m always amazed though because you never know the podcast where it’s going to reach. We’ve hit number one on iTune six times, so we get different people that find it. So how far did you drive?

Nine hours.

That’s impressive. That’s impressive. What are you doing now?

Right now it’s just a little part-time job. What I’ve been using to pay for college.

Where do you go to college?

The local junior college.

I’m super impressed. This is wild. Okay. And you’re a graphic design guy?

I’m a lot of stuff. The program at the school was a video game and computer simulation type program. So I program, write, design stuff.

To answer your question, what we do is we have a thing called a shadow process. And it Is it Carol? Is that right? Barbara? Why would I say Carol? I’m a… Boo, boo. Okay, so Barbara, hang a note. So what we’d do is we’d have you guys shadow. So if it was like, we go through all the resumes and I want to meet you because I go through them and I kind of want to put a face with the resume and figure all that. And then we’ll call you guys tomorrow by nine. If it’s just something I want to move forward, I’d like to get your aura. And then we have a lot of people, and I’m the one who always meets everybody. But then we’d have a shadow where you actually we’re going to shadow for an hour or two. I tell people just plan on from nine to 12, but you don’t have to be the whole time necessarily. And I’m just wanting you to meet everybody who would work here to see if you’d get along and that kind of thing.

Cool.

And then Barbara, what questions do you have?

I’m not sure.

How’d you hear about this place?

I’ve heard about it from Tammy.

Oh, my mother-in-law. Cool, yeah.

I wasn’t sure.

Yeah. Well, what questions do you have?

I just would be interested to hear the jobs and if she told me [inaudible 01:05:59].

Yeah, well basically the search engine optimization role with the marketing assistant. That role is open today, tonight. It’s very dynamic though because there’s always growing. So there’s a lot of people coming in. It’s like Google, they’re always hiring, but then you have the sales thing. I don’t think we have a position open for that tonight. Right?

For sales?

Yeah.

No.

But we do sometimes.

Yes. Yeah, it changes.

Okay. But we do have I think three spots we’re looking forward to currently tonight. But any other questions you have about what we do up here?

So do you describe that something with a law firm?

Yes, I do. My attorney represents T.D. Jakes and Joe Osteen and Craig Groeschel. And somehow he got stuck with me and we handle all the marketing for them too. And they are looking for somebody who’s really, really sharp to fill a long term position. It’s benefits, but they want people who’ve been on the planet a longer period of time. Because if you’re born yesterday, one might think that, oh, this person has the best of intentions and if you’re working for the law firm, there’s always kind of squires. So they want people that are mature and kind of dress sharp. That’s this what they’re looking for, people who are detailed and yes. So that position just came open yesterday, so I know about that and I can be happy to talk to you more about that. Any questions you have?

What skills do you need to be an ideal candidate?

Skills? Just be crazy coachable, off the charts, coachable. And then try to go years without yawning because it goes fast in here. And so we’re meeting here after everyone’s gone home. But Monday through Thursday it’s from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM it’s like a sprint then if you like energy, you have to go, you’d like it. But if you’re like, I don’t like this.

Way too many times.

Yeah, now what is your name?

My name is Terry.

Terry. And what questions do you have, Ms. Terry?

Well, first of all, I came here to make sure it wasn’t just a sales position because I have tutoring needs and graphic communications center, graphic design.

Okay.

And the reason why I feel like it’s sufficient to bring it up is because I’ve been looking for something like in the advertising world. Now I live in Fort Gibson because me and my husband, we own a ranch.

Oh, cool. Okay.

And so I do all the ranching and stuff like that with him. And plus I do industrial design and stuff like that. But I’ve had a lot of ad agencies looking at me, but I didn’t want to relocate.

Got it.

You see what I’m saying?

Because you don’t want to move.

No.

You want to stay where they have a farm, the ranch, the husband, the whole thing.

Yes.

Okay.

Right.

Cool.

And he’s a literary artist. We were all into art. My daughter’s an artist. She’s in the Air Force on top of it. She also did her squadron’s like art and stuff like that. But I saw this on NVI.

Okay.

And I was like, this is probably an opportunity for me, but I wasn’t sure because all the positions that I’ve applied for a graphic design position, I mean I want to grow first of all.

Well, there’s different kinds of, and I’ll just tell you this, and I’m not trying to be negative. I just to make sure that my buddy owns a firm called Hampton that might suit what you want to do because it’s very artistic, very creative. And they do really cool stuff. And I don’t view him as a competitor, but they’re like, he wears a flower in his shirt.

That’s cool.

And he’s very, I don’t know, it’s fabulous. But they have huge accounts and that’s what he does. And I’m all about helping people get un-poor real fast. I’m all about, that’s cool, we could spend seven weeks talking about the logo, but instead I’m going to just get you to the top of Google and make a bunch of money right now. And by the way, we need to shoot your YouTube video today and make a performer and fire that guy and do this, and then they’re like, I’m more of… You ever seen that show the prophet?

Yes.

I’m like kind of like that. It’s no suit for you. It’s a high energy, fast-paced, people are like, what is your deal? I’m like a bowling ball. Just go. Just go. And then, but the graphic design typically more like the high design. I would say Hampton and Cubic are probably the best in town for that. I’m probably more low design, but fast design and then make money for clients, if that makes sense. You know what I mean? I count winning as the client making more money than they’re paying me as soon as possible. That’s how I do it. Skills. But just super coachable being able to, Ben can talk to you more about that, but Ben, you were at Lowe’s.

Oh yeah.

I mean were you typing like a boss at Lowe’s?

I was not, I was moving lumber actually. So technical.

And I have no discernible skills. I mean, I took algebra three times, ACT three times. My wife rejected me multiple times when I proposed, crazy. It’s crazy how she said yes, blindness, she’s got blindness she can’t see. But all I’m saying is like that’s, you don’t need a whole lot of skills. You need to have that grind. Does that make sense? And your name is?

Alex.

Alex. Alex, where are you from dude?

Tulsa.

Tulsa. Okay, cool. And what have you been doing previous to now?

I was going to TCC.

Yep.

But I feel like that really wasn’t for me, so I stopped.

Okay. Yeah. So you’ve tried it out, not your calling.

Yeah, [inaudible 01:11:25].

Okay. Any questions you have, sir? And what’s your name again?

John.

John. Okay. John, any questions you have, John?

So there’s a graphic design.

Yep.

Section open?

True.

Marketing.

Yep. Graphic design and the marketing assistant will be SEO, search engine. And those would be the two spots tonight.

Oh, okay. The three. Okay, so those are two of them?

Yep. Two that are open for search engine tonight. Shaw Holmes is looking to hire somebody. Steve Curing is looking to hire somebody. I believe Nathan’s hiring somebody for the Carpet Side. Do you need one technician tonight?

One or two.

One or two, yeah. And what does that pay approximately?

Depends on the first make 35, 40, 50 dollar.

Yeah. So I’m kind of a matchmaker. I try to find the right fit for the right people. So there’s a couple different spots there. And ma’am, your name?

Lily.

Lily. Okay. Lily. And Lily, what questions do you have?

None thus far.

You’re good. Okay. I respect that. And your name again sir?

Austin.

Austin, what questions do you have?

I was just wanting to know more about the graphic design position.

Okay. Well what I’m going to do, I’m going to bring up Daisy here real quick. And Amelia, I’m going to let you get back to being awesome over there. Hey, I was here for Daisy. Thank you. Yeah, Daisy. Woo. How long have you been here?

Two years.

Okay. What were you doing before you were here?

So before I was here, I was in education, which is surprisingly soul-sucking. Oh no, I love the kids, the politics and the bureaucracy of it all. I just got [inaudible 01:13:00]. Yeah, I became kind of cynical with it. Before that I managed a donut shop, two locations. I’ve done banking, I’ve done a myriad of different things, but none of them as great as yours.

And you are not white?

Last time I checked.

And your Buddhist.

Yes.

How does that impact our daily interaction?

It doesn’t like, I mean-

You know that I’m a Christian, I’m always trying to convert you.

Yeah, yeah.

And you know that Ben’s a Mormon and he’s always trying to convert me. He never mentions it, but I know what he’s doing.

What!

I know what he is doing. No, this is about Ben. Let me tell you about Benny, sneaky sneak. He’s like, I’m not going to talk about it. I’m just going to live it. And then if you want to ask me about it, see that’s what he does. He just sets this, he doesn’t talk about it. I mean it, very sneaky. His wife’s the same. Sneaky. They’re both like this guy, the other day we had barbecue. We’re serving barbecue for a person who’s like a celebrating somebody.

And right Ben, do you want barbecue? Tempting him, right? He’s like, no, I’ll wait for Amelia doesn’t know where she is. Says it’s sneaky though. And most people were like, this dude’s not going to have barbecue while he’s waiting for you. But he has no idea where she is in the building. He’s a good guy. So all I’m saying is, but we have different faiths in here. It doesn’t have to be like your pro, but capitalism is probably the religion that we all have. So what question do you have for Daisy? Because she started off on the phones and now she manages the call center and she’s a great lady and has a great kid named Atticus, who says that I’m old.

Sorry.

You’re old. Yes?

So the big training is just two weeks of whatever that you’re starting?

You’re going to get paid to do it. You’re going to be doing it day one.

Yeah.

That’s awesome.

Past the first initial two weeks training, what do you have? Is there the ability to then get further training on as you go?

Yeah. What you do is you’re going to work in a 90-day tour of duties, I would call it. I’m just asking you mentally to commit to work here for 90 days because I shouldn’t do it. And my wife’s kind of helping me through this, but you know my mother-in-law, but she really cares about facials.

And I’m like, can we let it go? No, no, no. Because she wants to deliver a great experience. She’s into that. And I can’t explain to you why, but she is, that’s just her love language. She’s into it. And I think clients of hers experience that. And for me, I kind of view every employee as kind of the personification of my dad where I’m like, I don’t know why my dad is so poor at the age of 38. I don’t understand that. But I think it’s because he wasn’t taught certain skills because he had a degree, he was the top of his class. He literally was the very top of his class at ORU. And I’m like, I have to believe that if somebody would’ve pointed out to him, Tom, don’t do this and do this, I believe he would’ve done it. He always worked hard.

But because he worked at Quick Shift from the night shift and he worked at Domino’s, I stuttered as a kid and I got made fun of. I couldn’t talk until I was 13 years old. And I got made fun of all the freaking time. And my parents couldn’t afford a speech pathologist. And I have to believe they would’ve hired one if they could’ve. And so I want to teach you the skills needed to pay the bill. I’m just all about do this, boom. And then if you want to be here for five years or six years and become a partner in one of the businesses, like a law firm, great.

If you want to be on the podcast with me every day, and that’s your goal, great. If you want to become a real estate agent, great. If you want to become a Supermom, great. I don’t care. Super Dad, great. I just say I want to help you get where you want to go. And I view it as a tour of duty, not like a wage cage. So upward mobility’s my game. So every 90 days we kind of reevaluate. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah. So I started off in the call center as a call center rep, and I came in through the group interview and I was like, I literally don’t care what I have to do. I need to be here. So what do you have? And at the time, Vanessa was like, well we need somebody in our call center. And I was like, okay, so I really want to work for Thrive, but if it means being here in this environment, I will do whatever I need to do. And so I started off in the call center and within the first 90 days they were like, we want to promote you to call center manager. I was like, okay, cool. And I’ve been doing that ever since.

And she was the worst manager of all time, my opinion. And the best salesperson at the same time, because when she’s good, she’s good at her job. But then managing people, that’s like where you’re going, “Hey, quit vaping.”

So constructive criticism was awesome.

And she absorbed it though, you know what I mean? And so I’d be like, “Hey, don’t argue with her. Just tell her what to do.” Because we’ve had one coworker who used to go out there and do the hula-hoop. Remember her?

Yeah, I do.

In the middle of the day. She would just go out there and she’d be like, just hula-hooping. I’m like, what? You know what I mean? And then she would get into a debate with them as opposed, and then now she’s great at it though. And then she messed up and said she wanted to become a speaker lady. And so now she speaks at the conferences. And we have a conference in here every two months for our clients. About 120 people are here every time. But any questions for Daisy about being here? No.

Oh, when you first got here.

Yeah?

Okay. When I first came in, I was like, this is so great because the way it’s set up.

I was like, this is so great because the way it’s set up and everything. That person’s work stations. This area right here looks like a photo shoot, like a backdrop of a photo shoot and everything. And then I was going over there and I was like, oh, where some [inaudible 01:18:15] comes in.

Every picture on every wall has been put there specifically. And then all the writing is my handwriting. I’m always, my dad died, there he is, R.I.P. Tom Clark Blond, Tom Blond, so I put that there because I felt like I needed to have, to see it all the time when I’m speaking, some conferences, I’m always thinking of my dad. And then victory, I think that’s a big word, it’s important.

Anyway, so it is just a different place. It’s a fun place. But I would like for you to meet the teammates before you to kind of decide A or B. What I want to do is I had questions for Justice and Jah and for Barbara. I had some questions for you guys based upon your resume and I would like for Amelia to give a tour so you can see everything. You guys here, you three can go with Amelia, that’d be great.

Then if you three can go with Daisy and Ben on a tour, let’s give them a tour. That cool? Then I have some questions for you guys. Do you have your printed resumes tonight? Okay. ‘Cause I have a few questions. Then those of you are interested in the graphic design, have you all emailed in your portfolios?

Yes.

Okay. Those are all been emailed?

Yeah, emailed.

Okay. Before you go today, I would like-

We can email everything?

Yeah. Graphic design comes down to me. I have to obsess and look at your portfolios because we’ve got so many talented people applying and I like to personally look at that. Before you leave, if you have access to a mobile device or something, if you could please, I want you to verify they do it, send it to [email protected]

And that is how we do it. And now without any further ado… Three, two, one, boom!

They said it couldn’t be done. They said you couldn’t fill up the Be Okay Center. They said it was possible, but yet if you look, it appears to be full. We’re making America Boom again.

Very full.

Very full. Lots of marketing courtesy of John Kelly and Devin and Darling.

And this mind.

And this mind and this hat. There it is, [inaudible 01:20:25] Oilers, sold out, baby! Oh!

My name is Taylor Hall. I’m the general manager of the Tulsa Oilers Professional Hockey team.

Our goal every night here at the BLK Center is to try to fill the seats with lots of people and create an exciting environment so when somebody comes to a game, they want to come back.

Working with Clay and the staff at Thrive, they’ve really helped us in many, many ways. Website and graphic design and video production and a lot of things that go along. And a lot of businesses, including ours, doesn’t have a staff for a full-time videographer or graphic designer. But the biggest thing that we noticed was the needle mover, more sales, more attendance, more successes in business. We had a record year last season working with Clay for the first time. Our average attendance is higher than it’s ever been, so there was a lot of really cool things that we did and they worked. That’s the nice thing about working with Clay and the team over there. It’s just not one person. You get the entire team. If you need video design and editing and production, they’ve got that. If you need graphic design, if you need some coaching, your sales people and call scripts, P.R., they offer all that.

Clay was instrumental in helping guiding us and getting us on the right track so that we could really raise the bar and become ultra successful. So it is been an amazing experience for us.

Hello, my name is Charles Koa with Koa Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. And Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy’s just an 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 like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country. 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers and graphic designers and web developers and they run 160 companies every single week. Think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. In the weekly he’s running 160 companies every six to eight weeks. He’s doing Reawaken America tours every six to eight weeks. He’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. He’s seen guys from startups, go from startup to being multi-millionaires, take 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 into a franchisable scalable business. One of his businesses has 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with.

Amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of smart guy, he 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. He 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 a amazing business coach.

Through the course of that, we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened, 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, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down. Because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run and the guy’s integrity really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that his highest desire was to do what’s right.

Just an amazing man, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition in an economy that’s… 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 survive through all the Covid shutdowns, lockdowns because our clubs were all closed for three months and you have $350,000 of bills you’ve got to pay and we have no accounts receivable. He helped us navigate that and of course we were conservative enough that we could afford to take that on for a period of time.

Great man. I’m very impressed with him. Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing. And I encourage you, if you haven’t ever worked with Clay, work with Clay, he’s going to help magnify you. And there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps four, maybe six hours a day and literally the rest of the time he’s working and he can outwork everybody in the room every single day and he loves it.

This is Charles Koa with Koa Fitness. Thank you Clay. And anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay, it’s a great, great opportunity to ever work with him. So you guys have a blessed one. This is Charles Koa. We’ll see you guys. Bye-bye.

Hi, I’m Aaron an Antis with Shaw Holmes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them and actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen.

In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate, so honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes and then I met Clay and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15 year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Holmes and we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen.

The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four-month period of time, has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would’ve come up with on my own. I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us and it’s been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay.

The interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I’ve found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do. I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing and Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him.

From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive, needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made.

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

I know for me, the thing I would’ve missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would’ve missed out on literally an 1800% increase in our internet leads, going from 10 a month to 180 a month, that would’ve been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot.

I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it because we sure haven’t.

My name is Danielle Sprik and I am the founder of D. Sprik Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a Stay at home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did.

My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand and we just rolled with it. I love people, I love working with people, I love the building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things. The processes and the advertising and marketing, I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. I reached out to Clay at that time and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market, our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage eight months ago and in that time we’ve gone from myself and one other agent, to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions.

Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today building a business, having 16 agents, but I have to give credit where credits due and Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing.

Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen.

I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer an insurance companies, I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it.

My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I went to medical school, I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web.

With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned, it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business.

I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic.

The Thrive Time 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. Zelner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When 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. Now 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’ve built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this and because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it 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 tax, 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, but I want you to Google the Z-66 auto auction. I want you to Google, elephant in the room. Look At Robert Zelner 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 system 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’ll even give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you.

This is your year to thrive, success you will find. Today is your day and now is your time.

Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. Proverbs 10:4. I’m here to tell you, you can do it if you can just motivate yourself.

12, the masses had to cut off a few, so on the daily you and I could randevu. A misshapen tree that I had to prune, I had to make cuts to be here daily at noon. So like a tidal wave of knowledge, monsoon, I could rain on the parades of doubt and you. And you are you the next Rockefeller or the next guru or the next Doctor King who’s changing the rules. When walls are in your way, would you run right through? Like a running back, forth in one, it’s up to you. I remember my days back in the dorm room, tune to the gloom like the Temple of Doom. Overwhelmed with the doubts that try to consume my hope for the future that I could pursue, but from the mountain top, now I can conclude that you have what it takes if you want the view too.

This is your year to thrive, success you will find. Today is your day and now is your time. It’s your year to thrive, success you find. Today is your day and now is your time.

This moment is profound ’cause you’re above the ground. Your robe might have been ruffled, what you got now is now. We’re here to pick up and even show you how. But you got to be resourceful with the old pow-pow. Started from the bottom but I worked my way up. Because by 4 A.M., I was been prayed up. Now’s your grind, now’s your time, don’t get led up, you got to get it, don’t quit it till you seeds grow up.

This is your year to thrive, success you will find. Today is your day and now is your time. It’s your year to thrive, success you find. Today is your day and now is your time.

It’s your time. We all have a wish, we all want to win. But we cannot begin without self-discipline. You fall on your face, get yourself up again. Attach yourself to goals not fair weather friends. When the storms gettin’ rough and they scatter and leave, only be there with yourself and what you believe. We believe in you, but not as much as God does. If you’re going through hell, he’s got nothing but love. Apply what you learned. Increase what you earn and in due time, you got money to burn.

Apply what you’ve learned. Increase what you earned and in due time you got money burn.

Sing it.

Apply what you’ve learned, increase what you’ve earned. In due time you got money to burn.

Sing it.

Apply what you learned.

Sing it.

Increase what you’ve earned.

Yes.

In due time, you got money to, money to burn.

I look to shut down the doubters. Kill the weeds that be killing your dream flowers. Empower you to d-d-devourer. All the obstacles that make your sweet dream sour. As for me, I used to st-st-stutter, but now I’m on the microphone, smooth like butter. If I can do it, I know you can too, but you must stick to it like postage do. And while Martin’s on the chorus singing what he sings, I encourage you to dream big dreams.

Today is your day.

Today’s your day.

And now is your time.

It’s your time.

This is your year to thrive,

Sing it. Sing it.

Success you’ll find. Today is your day.

It’s your day.

And now is your time.

It’s your time.

Today is your day.

Come on.

And now is your time.

Sing it, Martin.

Today is your day, now is your time.

I realize I can’t sing like that, but I can talk and play the wood block. Okay. If you guys need me, I’ll just be over-