Business | How to Manage the Payroll & Accounting of a Business | Abdicate Vs. Delegate, the Path to Successful Payroll Processing + “Why You Can’t Delegate Financials & Cashflow.” – Sharon Lechter, CPA (Co-author of Rich Dad Poor Dad)

Audio Transcription

Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you, and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zilmer. 8 kids co-created by 2 different women. 13 multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We took life, started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hooks, I break down the books. See, bringing some wisdom and the good news As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the C and Z, I’ll call your radio And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here We started from the bottom, now we’re here We started from the bottom, now we’re here We started from the bottom, now we’re going to talk about how to do payroll. And I don’t know that anybody out there cares about payroll, but if you’re going to understand the proven path to success, you have to understand marketing is offense. Sales is offense. Having a vision, that’s offense. These are all offense. Woo, offense. Defense is accounting, legal, and most people don’t want to know about accounting and legal because why, champs? It’s boring. There it is. But nobody cares if you’re bored, okay? So I work with clients, when I work in my own businesses, I find that people always want to delegate accounting to somebody else. Like it’s somehow beneath them, and the word abdicate and delegate, they don’t have the same meaning. So we’re joined here with a lady by the name of Amelia, okay, and we’re going to be working with her and you. So James, I’m going to pick on you first. If you had to define the word abdicate, what does that mean? You know what? That’s a word I’ve heard only a couple of times before and I just don’t know. Maybe it sounds similar to delegate. So abdicate versus delegate, okay? The path to successful payroll processing, all right? So abdicate, the word abdicate, abdicate means that you basically, as like the king, you renounce your throne. You say, I don’t want to be the king anymore. We’ve got some invaders coming this way, and I don’t want to be killed, so I’ve decided to appoint you to be the new king, and I’m out. All right? So abdicate is where you’re renouncing your throne. You’re saying, I’m not going to follow up. I’m done with it. I’m going to abdicate. Hopefully this makes sense. The word abdicate. All right? Abdicate. Abdicate. That’s the word. You do not want to abdicate your finances. That’s where you let somebody else do it who’s not paying attention 90% of the time. And it’s not their money. Right. And if it’s half-ass, if somebody’s half-ass, their whole life will be terrible. And someone should put that on a shirt, okay? Now, the idea of delegate, delegate is where you actually follow up. So what does it mean to delegate? That’s where you tell someone to do something, but you actually follow up. So again, to make sure I’m an effective teacher here, Amelia, could you maybe explain to me the difference between abdicate and delegate? Yeah, abdicate, I don’t want to do any of this. You do it for me, not following up. Delegate, you can do this for me, but I’m going to follow up every step of the way. Right, so this is assigning an action item, okay? An action item to someone and actually following up, okay? Right. Assigning an action item to someone and follow up, okay? And follow up. So follow up until the result, until the desired result is delivered with excellence. So Amelia, you happen to manage a stores in one of the businesses that I work in, and I’m sure there’s many wonderful employees that work there. But if you didn’t follow up on making sure that the towels were cleaned, you know, that the towels were washed, that the bathrooms were cleaned, what would happen? Absolutely nothing would be done. We have cameras in the stores, James, where I can look inside the stores at eitrlounge.com. I can go there, look inside the haircut chain, and you know what I’m going to find somebody doing if the manager’s not there? They’re going to be doing nothing. That’s right. So the purpose of a manager is to make sure that they’re getting things done with a spirit of excellence. Okay? So we’re going back to accounting. Abdicate versus delegate. All right? So if you’re out there today and you have a business, I’m going to give you all sorts of notes here on how to run the finances of your business. Okay? What you have to do is you have to assume that the person who’s doing the accounting for you is lying, cheating, and stealing. Now you might say, dude, that’s a harsh worldview. Okay, fine. 85% of employees lie on their resumes. This isn’t even after you’ve hired them, according to Inc. Magazine. I’m not making these stats up. Amelia, did you know that 85% of employees lie on resumes? I only know that because you told me. Okay, what percentage James of employees steal from the workplace according to the US Chamber? I think it’s around 75%. Right, 70. Can you imagine what kind of a sick freak fills out a survey and says, yep I do steal from my employer. Right. I mean so it’s got to be higher than that you know. Right. Yeah to be honest I do steal all the time. 75% of employees steal from the workplace and why am I citing my sources, Amelia? Why am I actually googling and pulling up the actual stats that I’m citing as I’m saying that? Why am I doing that? Because you’re following up. Why am I doing it, James? Because you want to show proof. Right. And I bet you a certain percentage, most, most podcasters, broadcasters, teachers, and preachers, they make things up. Right. I actually went to a Christian college where the pastor would say things, he’d say, in the Bible it says, and then I would go, where in the Bible does it say it? And it wasn’t in the Bible. Crazy. In the Bible it says. That is pretty wild. Yeah. So 95, 75% of employees steal from the workplace. That’s according to the US Chamber of Commerce. That’s not my opinion. That’s the US Chamber of Commerce. 85% of employees do what, Amelia? Steal. Right. So if that is the case, what’s going to make you, as a listener out there, assume that the person who works for you isn’t going to steal? Or lie? Now, this is what’s crazy, is most employers that I know, most self-employed people that I know, what they do is they’ll put their brother-in-law in charge of accounting. And you know why they put their brother-in-law or their sister-in-law or their neighbor in charge of accounting, James? Will you know why? Because they think they could trust them. And then guess what that person’s gonna do with that job that they’ve now been given because of abdication? They’re gonna steal. Right! Right! Right! And the reason why I wanted to record this show today is we’re gonna teach Amelia over the coming weeks and months all 14 steps of building a successful company. Boom. But I’m gonna focus on each one of them at days where I’m hot and bothered about that specific topic. Now, I’m still gonna get through the whole flow and for anybody out there that wants to learn, if you wanna learn my entire systems, this is great for you, Amelia. If you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash tower of power this is where all that I know about business, and there’s other things, but this is where the core stuff, my entire systems, starting from the foundation, building up, you can find it at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash tower of power. All of the business wisdom has been distilled right there. So if you want to learn how to grow a super, not barely surviving, a super successful business, listen to this right here. So we’re making sure I’m being a good teacher here. So again, we know the difference between advocate and delegate. Right. So now we’re gonna get into step one. So step one, assume everyone is lying, cheating, stealing, and is perpetually wrong about math. That’s step one. Okay? Got it. If you find me an honest guy, you probably can’t do math. You find me a guy who can do math, he’s probably not honest. I’m being serious, okay? And then what you do is you have to block out, you have to block out one hour per week minimum to analyze the payroll. Okay, so I’m gonna come up with, I’m gonna show you an example of how I would do it, okay? So this would be this week’s payroll, okay? I’m gonna make a payroll document, okay? And this is gonna be, I’m just gonna put on here, let’s say this is James, this is Amelia, this is Clay, this is Carl, this is Eddie, okay? Got it. And this week, it’s February the 23rd, all right? And then this week will be February the 30th, all right? And this week, and let me just, just try to give you a couple examples, so that way if you’re a business owner out there, or a consultant who works for me, you can teach clients how to do this. But you go through and you go, okay, this is the, this is, and again, I’m putting it, now let’s say that James last week, I’m making up a number, but let’s say you made $900 the week before, you made $1,400. Let’s say the next week you made $400, next week you made $800, okay? Got it. And we’ll just kind of continue this just for a minute just to kind of create some sort of a rough thing. And you go, this is, he made $1,000, okay? And then let’s say, Amelia, that your pay is, it’s kind of the same. It’s merit-based pay. You’re getting paid based off of the results you’re doing, but you’re maybe not quite as good at James. You know, it’s like, you’re doing a good job, but you’re maybe just not quite at that level yet. So you’re like this and you’re going here, right here, and then you’re, you know, so you’re, we’re doing the math. We’re kind of looking, and again, this is boring for people. This is boring, this is an accounting show. I don’t want to watch this show. This is how you do it though, okay? And let’s say Clay, he works there and he’s been there the longest. Okay, and this is the particular man. I’ve been there the longest. I have the most recurring accounts. Oh, he’s the best. No, because I’ve been there a long time, though. You know what I mean? I’ve been there five years, six years, whatever. So I happen to have in this scenario, you know, more recurring accounts, more commissions coming in. People call me specifically because they know that I’ve been in business for a long time. You know, that kind of thing. Right. So you get that and you look here and you go, okay. And then you got Carl and Carl every week, you know, he does 400 this week. He does 400 next week. But then you see, Carl’s got like 800 and then you see Carl has like, you know, 1600 and you see Carl has 1600 and you see Eddie and Eddie’s almost identical. He sits next to Amelia. He does about the same job she does, maybe not quite as well, but he’s doing a good job, Carl. He’s a good one, that Carl. And so you look at it and you start to look here and you go, okay, I’m starting to see some things. Now you’re looking for deviations. All right, so step two, you go, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And this requires thinking. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. This guy all of a sudden is making this much money? Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong! You know why something’s wrong? Because he doesn’t make normally that much money. Right! And you know what it is almost 85% of the time, James? Yeah, stealing. Or lying, or cheating, or both. Or it’s a clever math guy, right? That’s what it is. So step three, look for deviations that don’t seem accurate, consistent, or normal. Because it’s not normal for like, so our conferences, we sell about 30 tickets a day. We have some days where we sell 60 tickets, some where we sell seven tickets. But on the average, it’s about 30 tickets a day. Right. So all of a sudden, the guy turns in 180 tickets. That’s why, Amelia, we went to an event in Florida. That’s why the person who’s doing the payroll has to be mentally engaged in the job at all times. We went to Florida, Amelia, and there’s a guy who never takes a shower, never brushes his teeth, and he said he was the top sales guy at the event in Florida. We pay our people $3 per thing they sell. Amelia, why would that not be normal for the guy who doesn’t brush his teeth, who doesn’t wash his hair, to claim that he now is the top sales guy in Florida? If you cannot take care of your daily basic needs, you probably are not the top salesmen. Right! Especially on your team. It’s how it is though, right? Right. So you have to look at it that way. That’s why you can’t delegate this to a third party payroll service that’s going to do it, because they don’t know. They don’t know. They don’t know the jackassery. I know that you just look at them as names. I look at it and I go, Carl? Carl? That’s the guy. That’s the guy who lies about everything. There’s no way that guy is a top sales guy. So it’s really, really important that you do it. So again, step one, you assume everyone is lying, cheating, stealing, and it’s perpetually wrong about basic math. Right. Step two, you lock out one hour per week to analyze the payroll. Right. And step three, you look for deviations that don’t seem accurate, consistent, or normal. Step four, you install merit-based pay for every position in your business. So we’re going to assume that this particular scenario is a merit-based pay culture, meaning that because Eddie’s doing a good job, he made $800. But his base pay is 480 a week. But he makes commissions or bonuses based off of his level of success. If you don’t have merit-based pay in play, where you pay people based upon what they do and not what they say they’re going to do, do you know what’s going to happen to you, James? If you pay people based upon what they say they’re going to do and not based upon what they do, you’re going to be out of business quickly. Right. So right now we have somebody at the mall right now who is doing a booth at the mall. They’re very engaged at the mall. And their job is to go to the mall and to do a product demonstration for one of my clients. And they get paid $5 per review. Amelia, why do I pay the employee $5 per verified review and not per review that they claim they got? Because just like James said, if you paid them for the reviews they claim they got, you would be out of a lot of money probably. Now there’s a guy who we know, I won’t mention his name, he used to work for me. And you remember the situation, Amelia, where he would just lie about the number of reviews he was getting? Every day. Yeah, and he would just lie. He would say to me, oh, I got a hundred reviews. And I’m going, really? Because I think I know Amelia. I think I know Amelia. And I also know Manna. And I know Carter. These are three people that I know. I also know Devin. That’s person four I know. And there’s a young lady who used to work for us years ago. But with those four people I’m thinking of, and then the lady named Katie who used to work for us, Katie was the best elephant in the room employee we’ve ever had, ever. And she used to sell 85% every week, every week on first time memberships. And she would average 10 Google reviews a day from real customers, every day. And she was like asking every single person for an objective review. How is it then a person who is perpetually late and disorganized and inaccurate in every area of their life, they’re somehow the top person in getting reviews. Amelia, how would that be possible? It’s not. Right, which is why I’m in the meeting going, there’s no way this guy has this many reviews. So I, boop, boop, boop, because I’m engaged, I’m mentally participating in the conversation. I’m not passively just submitting payroll, working for a third party company, not involved, no. So I said, man, find out how this guy is doing it. Turns out he was making up what he was doing. He was lying about his numbers. So what you have to do is you have to have merit-based pay, but you have to be engaged. Every single thing I’m talking about doesn’t work unless you’re engaged, right? So the whole homework for every client we have, every single client we ever work with ever when we take on a new client, James, in that first meeting. So Amelia, when you hop on a call with a first client for your first meeting ever, this is after they’ve done the assessment with me, it is incumbent upon you, it is your job to ask them the following questions. So James, go ahead and ask me the questions. Let’s see. How proactive is your accounting on a scale of one through 10? 10 being the highest. Okay. And they’re going to say, probably a seven. And why will everyone always say a seven? Can you please explain that to me? Because they know it’s nowhere near a 10, and they don’t want to tell you the truth, which is a one, because they’re abdicating that role. Everyone always gives themselves a seven. So Amelia, be careful on that. Okay. People always say a seven. So it’ll go, seven. You go, seven? Yeah, well, it’s more like a one. Okay, next. You say, now do you have a documented break-even number? So like how much crap do you need to sell to break even? And Amelia, you’re looking for a number here, okay? So I’m giving you an example of a client. One of my clients, years ago, we were doing this number, he’s like, I don’t know. We found out, the fountain is a true story. We found out that he had to have over $100,000 a month of sales just to break even because he had a fleet of vehicles for his remodeling company. A fleet. Damn. And the vehicles are just sitting in the parking lot. And I said, so you have a fleet? How many? He’s like, I got about 20. 20 trucks? Really? They’re all auto-wrapped? Yeah. What do they do all day? Well, you know, they’re using the parking lot. And if we have a job, we go to it. And I’m going, why not just have like a big box van that delivers the building supplies at the job sites and then get rid of all those vehicles. And he’s going, it’s a good point, but I mean, you have to figure out how much crap do you need to do to break even? You know, he just have to know that number for every business. How much stuff do you have to sell to break even third question, James, do you have a process for proactively setting enough aside for taxes? And they’re always going to say no. Always. And the tax and accounting company that I recommend, I’m not saying that they’re the best or the worst. I’m not saying that. I’m saying I actually use them. And so a lot of people get hung up on recommendations. They say, well, do you recommend this company? And people are very hesitant to say yes or no. I’m saying I actually financially invest in them by paying them. Does that make sense? That makes sense. So it’s not like oh, you should use them, but I don’t know This is who I actually use a cc kit and maybe somebody out there You don’t want to use them because I recommend them. Maybe if you recommend them, I don’t want to use them at all Okay, the next is you have to automate your savings It’s just so important. She asked me yes the client the question. So James, ask the question. Do you automate your savings, Clay? Every time it’s going to be a no. And if I see, Amelia, that you’re working with a client and you have a bunch of question marks that you haven’t asked the client the question, I know that you as a consultant aren’t asking the question. Right. So this is why I build it this way. This little system. I do the initial assessment, but our coaches go down the path. And if a client’s like, well, I don’t really know the answer to these. I know we’re not asking. It’s a yes or no. It’s a binary question. Next question, James. Do you have a documented and updated report of your income and expenses? And nobody ever does. Okay? They don’t. So what you do, back to this document, I’ll show you an example. You’d put all your income over here on this column, all of your expenses over here on this column, and then somebody puts in item number one, right? And the cost. And then item number two and the cost. And item number three and the cost. And this should take a long time, this process. So on the income, this would be like, you know, item number one, we sold a spatula for $7,000. It’s Donald Trump’s spatula. We sold that, okay? We sold another one for $9,000. That’s the – okay. Over here are the expenses, right? So, this is going to be – you have to line item them. So, you have to say, spatula number one. You can’t just say some number. You have spatula number one. And you say, this right here, this was a spatula gold series. Ooh, the spatula gold series. Wow. And then this one over here was the spatula platinum series, the spatula platinum series. Wow. This is an incredible spatula you purchased. Yeah. You have to. Why do you have to go through the time, James, of line item doing a line item for everything? You need to know where your money is coming from and where it’s going to. Right. So on your expenses, you have the same thing. So, you know, what did we buy? Don’t just put stuff, you know, we bought a USB cable. Cool, what else did you buy here? We bought an XLR cord. What are we doing? We’re building a studio by the way. What did we buy here? An SM58 mic. And you have to be detailed and people are not detailed. People are just half ass, which is why their whole life is terrible. They don’t want to take the time needed to put this stuff in. But this is my love language. This is what I want to put in. This is what I get into. I hate vague conversations. Casualness causes casualties. You cannot be casual. It just, you’ve got to be intense. So we move on to the next one. Do you have a set time and place to review your finances every week? And the answer better be yes, but it’s always no. And then Amelia, you would ask the follow-up question, where? You know? Right. And they would go at my office, when? At 5 a.m. on Tuesdays. And if you don’t have a specific time and place, it’s not going to happen because what gets scheduled gets done. What does not get scheduled does not get done. This is big stuff. And this is the stuff you can go to college forever. You go to college forever. I’m telling you, I run into all these business owners who’ve been to college for a long time and all of them go, gosh, I’ve never heard any of this stuff before and it’s changing my life when I do it. I go, I know because I grow businesses. That’s what I do. That’s in the way that a piano teacher plays the piano. I grew up as that’s what I do. I mean, I’m into it. I’m good at it. That’s what I obsess on. Okay. But it’s so, so the action items for the client, they need to create an income and expenses sheet. Okay. They need to determine a set percentage of their income to save. They just schedule a weekly time to look at their numbers. And there’s a specific podcast I want everyone to listen to. And I’ll put a link to it on today’s show notes. People can look at it because you cannot delegate your finances. Now, that being said, any follow-up questions that you have, Amelia, about this process, because this was just one 14th of the coaching system that we went through, but you’re going to have to master it, right? Not at this moment, James. Um, you know what? I am clear. And I picked up what you put down on this thing too. So where could you see someone not doing this, James? If they’re lazy, okay, well just today I just saw it and I’m not attacking, I’m just being real, I’m attacking the problem. In order for Andrew, who works here, to sign off on someone’s paycheck, they have to turn it in on, what James, on? On Monday? On time. On time. Because if they turn it in after he’s already reviewed the numbers, that means he didn’t check it. Does that make sense? That does. So he cannot, we cannot pay somebody unless we’ve signed off on the payroll. Right. So if they turn it in late, we’re not going to pay. You know why? Because I’m not going to abdicate. Does that make sense? That makes sense. So he can’t be like, oh, I forgot to turn it in on time. So could you just pay me? Because you know, as a general rule, not always, but as a general rule, do you know who is turning stuff in late, James? People that steal and lie. Right, right. Do you see how that works? I do. And the person doing accounting has to have an emotionally disconnected relationship from the person they’re paying. Right. Because if they have any kind of emotional investment in the success of that person, they will then always overpay or let things slide. That’s how it works. Can’t do it. You can’t do it. And even if you have somebody on your team that is handling the payroll for you, you as the owner have to follow up. And that’s how the process works. All right, so this is right here, folks, this is how to do this is how to manage the payroll. All right. They’ll say the payroll and accounting of a small business of a business of a business, because even if it’s a huge business, I won’t mention the guy’s name, but I was on the phone today with a guy who actually manages a billion dollar business. OK, so I’m on the phone with a guy today who actually, not theoretically, but he actually does. Okay, I was on the phone on Monday with a guy who manages a $200 million business. And do you know what they do? The same thing. They don’t delegate, they don’t abdicate, they delegate, which means that when they assign stuff to be done, they follow up until their head explodes. Amelia, is that helpful? Do you have any follow up questions? Yes, no. Delegate, don’t abdicate. Okay, no follow up questions though, you feel good? I feel good about this too. Okay, now on part two of today’s show, there’s a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad, and Rich Dad Poor Dad is by far the most successful book of all time for small business owners in terms of like it’s a small business owner book, okay? What do I mean by that? The book has sold at this point over 50 million copies. The book has. All right, so Rich Dad Poor Dad is the book. And this book was written by Robert Kiyosaki with Sharon Lechter. So the lady who was the co-author of the book is on part two of today’s show. Her name is Sharon Lechter. Sharon Lechter. Okay, so if you haven’t looked up Sharon Lechter, this is Sharon Lechter. This is her. And Sharon Lecter, again, let me pull it up real quick so you can see who she is. And so Sharon Lecter is the person who was the co-author of the books. She also worked with the Napoleon Hill Foundation to help put together his books. And so she’s a sharp author. She knows her craft. And on part two of today’s show, she’s going to join us to talk about why you can never delegate your finances. So that being said, without any further ado, and by the way, in the part three of today’s show, we’re gonna have a client success story. So without any further ado, we’re gonna end with a boom, because boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. If you do not have that kind of energy, you just will not be successful. You’ve got to bring big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. So here we go, without any further ado, three, two, one, boom! Two men, 13 multi-million dollar businesses, eight kids, one business coach radio show. It’s the Thrive Time Business Coach Radio Show. Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show. That’s it. Arms away. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to The Conversation. It is the Thrive Time show on your radio and podcast download. Now, Chup, as a business coach, you and I have both worked with a lot of top-level, high-flying entrepreneurs. We’ve also worked with a lot of entrepreneurs that come to us slightly broken. They’re a little bit down, and we’ve helped repair them and helped them get into a level of success. Stitches and band-aids and things, yeah. But one of the things people always want to talk about is marketing and branding and sales. But people never want to talk about accounting and bookkeeping. They want to talk about the holy triumvirate. Marketing, branding, sales. They love that. Feelings and visions. New deals. New deals and growth and build-outs. But no one ever wants to talk about financials. They always want to delegate that, but yet, every single successful entrepreneur I’ve ever met really has a fundamental grasp of the financial aspects of the business. And so on today’s show, we’re interviewing a certified public accountant. Check. We’re interviewing a New York Times best-selling author. Check. Check. We’re interviewing the CEO of the Rich Dad Poor Dad organization. Check. We’re interviewing somebody who worked with Robert Kiyosaki to write the 14 books of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. Check. We’re talking about the lady who took his idea, which was on a piece of paper to make a board game and turned it into a book empire. Check. We’re talking about a lady who was asked by the National CPA, Financial Literacy Commission, to serve as their national spokesperson. Oh, by the way, this is the same council that served both President Bush and President Obama. Check. This is a lady who has a team of over 5,000 people who help her with her various entrepreneurial projects. 5,000, that’s a lot. Check. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a person here who’s written Napoleon Hill’s, or she helped re-craft Napoleon Hill’s book, Outwitting the Devil. You see, Napoleon Hill wrote a book, the manuscript for Outwitting the Devil in the 1930s. But when the best-selling self-help author of all time, went to release it. His wife told him not to because she thought it was too controversial. And so years later Sharon Lecter revived the manuscript and helped her release Outwitting the Devil. Check! She also helped to write Think and Grow Rich for Women. Check! She also helped to release the Napoleon Hill book Three Feet from Gold. Check! Ladies and gentlemen, our next guest is bona fide. She’s an unbelievable author, a dynamic speaker, a top-level entrepreneur, which indicates that she does not know who I am, because if she did, she would not have agreed to be on today’s show. So ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, our exclusive interview with Sharon Lecter, and she’s teaching you why you just cannot delegate your financials, look at the numbers. Sharon, very few entrepreneurs, I mean, we have a ton of people that attend our workshops. When they come to the workshops, and Dr. Z, you’ve seen this, people want to talk about marketing, oh, the vision, sales, and then they want to go back to talking about the vision, marketing, and then sales. Then Sharon, sometimes they’ll go back to the vision, then back to sales, then back to marketing. And yet, but you have to know your numbers. And I’ve heard you talk at length about this, but I’d like for you to share with the listeners about why you can’t abdicate your financials and why you can delegate them to a certain extent, but why you as the owner of the company have to be aware of what is going on financially. Can you coach us? Certainly, and I can’t agree with you more. You do a webinar or a seminar on sales and you sell out. You do a webinar or a seminar on understanding your financials and it’s hard to get people in their seats because it doesn’t sound exciting. But at the end of the day, your numbers tell a story and you’re creating that story. And so if your story isn’t going the way you want it to go, the sooner you know about it, the better. And so it’s very important for entrepreneurs. And sometimes, you know, you can’t be the one doing the numbers because you want to focus on growing your business, but you need to make sure you have the right people on your team. But you always need to know your numbers, and you need to have a dashboard or something so that you’re constantly on it. As I sit at my desk right now speaking to you, I have my accountants outside working on some things for me. They know that I need to, you know, at any given time, I know what kind of accounts I have. I know what kind of money I have just because of my years of experience. But as a CPA, that’s obviously important to me, but it’s more important to me as a CEO. If you own your company, if you don’t know what the numbers are telling you, then you can get a very rude surprise. It’s very important for people to understand the importance of understanding the income statement, which is telling you over a period of time how you’re doing it, and then also to understand your balance sheet, which tells you basically like a snapshot of a day in time showing you what your assets and liabilities are and how those two play together are very important. Sharon, I see, it’s painful for me to see it, and as a coach, and I write for Forbes, and so I have a certain platform, but you have one of the biggest platforms in the world. So I’d like for you to maybe give the tough lesson to the entrepreneurs out there listening who are saying, yeah, I know accounting, I know I need to know my balance sheet, and I know I need to know the income statement. But I don’t because my accountant handles that. Could you give us the tough love for somebody out there who is refusing to know their numbers? I’m sure you’ve met people like this before. Well, they know the stat of the number of businesses fail in the first three years. And the primary reason they fail is the lack of capital, lack of funding, and lack of financial management. And what happens is, you know, those entrepreneurs that fall into that category play are the ones who put their head in the sand, and they think that if they just drive faster and they make more sales, everything’s going to be OK. The issue is, unless you understand the whole picture, and you understand what your margins are, understand what the bottom line is, you can’t really grow your business. And people that are losing a nickel on something say, if I can just sell more of them, I’ll be okay. No, you’re just going to lose that much more money. You have to understand the cash flow of your business. And more importantly, you need to understand the timing of your cash flow. And so it’s not just understanding that you’re selling a lot, but you need to understand when that money’s coming in and when you have to spend money in order to make the product. So let’s say you sell a million dollars worth of product. Well, you have to have that product in your inventory, or you have to have the money to build it so that you can collect a million dollars. And so you probably need a lot of that cash up front. And so what happens is business owners who don’t pay attention to that end up having to go to very expensive money, factoring those receivables to be able to pay for the inventory. And they get themselves further into debt, further into problems. And instead of feeling good about being successful, that success costs them their business because they have not paid attention to the numbers, to the cash flow, and the timing of that cash flow. You know, our show, we’re all about teaching listeners specific action steps they can take. And so I want to take a second to brag on a listener that’s actually doing this properly. But Aaron, who I mentioned earlier with Shaw Homes, one of the things that gives them an unfair advantage over their competition is that they know the costs of the materials. So like when the cost of plywood went up drastically recently, Sharon, they know that. And so they were able to quote the clients accurately. And they don’t get to the end of the… When you finish the home, you close on the home, the new buyer moves into the home, they don’t have to tell the buyer, oops, it’s going to cost more money, and they don’t run out of cash. So I’d like for you to put on a little mini-seminar here about what we need to know about cash flow, because Shaw Homes knows cash flow, they know their expenses, that’s why they can quote people a price and honor it. But their competition, I mean, if you go online and read the Google reviews, there are so many reviews by customers complaining about the bait-and-switch move. I don’t think people are… the other builders are dishonest as much as they just don’t know their numbers. Can you talk to us about cash flow and just kinda cash flow 101. What do we all need to know? Well, Aaron’s business is a perfect example of the timing of cash flow that I just mentioned because it doesn’t… you don’t build a house overnight. So they have to have the financing to get that house done, knowing that the payoff is in the future. And when that payoff comes in, hopefully it’s going to have not only pay off their expenses, but give them the profit on top of it. And those expenses include all those materials you’re talking about, but even more so, the labor of all the people on their team. And so just as in when I talk about cash flow, I want to take a minute about materials. So we talk about just-in-time ordering. So when they’re building that house, they can’t put plumbing in until the time. They have to have the plumbing in before they can pour the concrete over it. Those things have to come in. There’s a stage in which you have things done. You can’t have the roofers waiting to put the roof on when it’s not ready for them. So each stage of process of building a home has to be timed appropriately so that you have the minimum cost of labor for the people and technicians doing their job. And that has to be perfectly timed. And so that takes talent. That takes people who know what they’re doing. But it also, underlying, takes that expert and that individual understanding what every minute of that costs them. So when they have a delay, or they have products not, you know, the lumber isn’t there, they have a weak delay in lumber, they have to recalculate and find out what that’s going to cost them to make sure they’re always working to their budget, to make sure they have the profit that they’re expecting at the end of the day. You know, people, we talk about remodels as the homeowner, all right? You always say it’s always going to take another several months past what they promise. It’s a guarantee. And it’s going to cost you more than what you originally commit to, because you’re going to have surprises. And that’s something that can be very painful, but that’s those unexpected things. Every business has unexpected things. The issue is, the sooner you find out about them, the sooner you can plan and recover. And that’s all about cash flow. And cash flow comes with, from the moment you start your business, one of the things that can kill you is that you think you have sales and the sales are there, but you don’t have the, it’s going to take you 60 to 90 days to collect on those sales. Well, you have to have the cash to be able to build the product, as I said earlier. Well, what happens when all of a sudden you’re hugely successful, and you have a huge order that comes in, and you don’t have the ability to respond to that order? Your business can crumble. And that’s why it’s so important to always have a pulse on your cash flow, not just your income and expenses, but also the cash flow, which is the timing of that. That’s why when Fortune 500 companies, they do an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement so that you can see what’s happening within the business. Because the assets could go up because they’ve got outdated inventory. You know that when you start looking at the cash flow statements. Now one of the things that you have created that was powerful for me as a young whippersnapper, Sharon, the year would be 1999, I believe. So this is maybe, what, because you wrote the book in 95, is that correct? You and Robert came out with the book in 95? Well, we published it in April of 97. 97, okay, so the year’s 1999. Dr. Zellner can vouch for me here. I dressed like Eminem. I had no idea what I was doing. Sharon, I went on to build the largest wedding entertainment company in the country called DJConnection.com, and we did 4,000 events per year at the peak before I sold it. But I’m there working in a call center. And I’m reading this book, the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book, and at some point you’re talking about this cash flow quadrant concept. And I’m not sure how refined it was at that point. It was probably 2001 when I really started paying attention to the book and really understanding it. So it’s 2001, so I might have even read Cash Flow Quadrant. But you talked about there’s this quadrant. And you said to me directly like it was yesterday you said clay you start off as an employee step one I’m going oh that’s good that’s good step two you you become self-employed you own your job and I’m going yeah that’s awesome step three you own a business where other people work at the business it creates jobs for others and time freedom for you and then step four you become an investor and I realized I am an employee and I can’t afford to become self-employed yet. I now must get three jobs So I worked at Target Applebee’s and DirecTV. My wife worked at Office Depot and Oral Roberts University I turned off my air conditioning miss Sharon you caused me to turn off my air conditioning It is your fault and your credit. So it’s very hot in Oklahoma in June in July. We had no air conditioning It was hot and I’m reinvesting in myself, but I didn’t quit my day job until I could afford to become self-employed. Can you walk us through those four steps about being an employee and when it’s time to make the jump to become self-employed and what it looks like to become a business owner? Just walk us through your cash flow quadrant. Well, the cash flow quadrant, if you imagine just across the top left corner is E for employee, the bottom left is S for self-employed. And so that left side of the quadrant, that’s what school teaches us. You know, that’s how we are taught. And that’s exchanging your time for money as an employee or self-employed individual or even a small business owner who really owns a job, not a business. The right side of the quadrant, the top right corner, is B for business. And that’s where you have systems, you have other people working for you. And the real test of whether you’re an S or a B, as a B, you own a business. If you walked away and came back in six months, it would still be operating. It’s not dependent on you being there. So you totally own an asset, and that asset is the business, and the business is being run by systems and people. And then you have investor as a bottom right, and the investor is where your money is working for you, whether you’re invested in real estate or in the stock market or in IRAs, whatever that is, that’s your money working for you. So your personal business is your personal financial statement. When you put money into your asset column, they’re like employees working for you. Those are your investments. And you want, you know, every wealthy person in the world has one thing in common, they own investments, they own assets, and those assets work for them. So on the right side of the quadrant, school doesn’t teach us how to be business owners. School doesn’t teach us how to be investors. We learn that through the real world education or through the world of hard knocks. And so as I sit here today on this phone call, I live in all four quadrants. The vast majority of my income comes as an investor and a business owner, but I’m still an employee of my own corporation. I still am self-employed. When I go out and speak, I get a speaker’s fee. And that’s the left side of the quadrant. But I want more and more of my income to come from the right side because that’s not me working for money. It’s my assets working for money, business owners and investors. And so you don’t have to be an only one. You want to be. Everyone wants to have money as investors that are working for you and have a business owner. If you own real estate, that’s a business. You are in the business of real estate. All of those things work together. Your ability to earn money on the left side as an employee or a self-employed person is finite. You only have so many hours, so many days in a week. However, on the right side, as a business owner and as an investor, your ability to make money is infinite. I think a lot of people get stuck there in that self-employed area where their ability to earn is limited. It is finite, they get stuck there. Why do people get stuck there, Sharon? You’ve helped people get unstuck in that area. What’s that doom loop where people are stuck in that self-employed area? Well, I think a lot of times you start getting so busy working in your business, you forget to work on your business. People feel like they have to do everything on their own. They don’t bring in the talent to help them grow their business. I mean, in order to be able to go from a small business to a big business, you have to have systems. And when you do everything yourself, it’s going to be hard to grow, and nobody’s going to ever be doing it exactly the way you want to. But if you create the systems, you know, obviously we can think of the most perfect example. McDonald’s everywhere. The owner is not there. It’s run by teenagers, and it’s done that because the systems are so ironclad that all that somebody has to do is follow the systems. And that’s the ideal of having going from a small business to a big business. A big business has systems and you manage the systems, not necessarily the people. And you have people working for you, your systems are working for you, other people’s money. And that’s what really gets you out of a small business to a large business. Now maybe as a small business you’re a doctor or you’re a lawyer, so how do you do that? Well, you hire other doctors or other lawyers, and you start building a practice around it so that you have the ability to earn, have systems on how the operations are being handled, and you make a percentage off the other doctors and lawyers. You’re taking the overhead and your ability to grow and leverage. In order to, you know, you might have a very successful small business, but a successful small business can only scale and therefore be sustainable if it has systems. I feel like the systems involve checklists, processes, workflows, and sharing their things. They’re so boring. I mean, they’re not vision, they’re not sales, they’re not marketing. I mean, the systems thing, I’m kind of a sick freak in that I actually enjoy making systems because I like the results and I think I also just like the process of making systems. But I think a lot of people get stuck in that rat race and they’re not even looking for a way out. Why do you feel like a lot of people get stuck and they’re not even, I mean, before, I think people will come up to you at a seminar, they’re 45 years old, and they’ve been stuck in the rat race for 20 years, and then it just occurred to them for the first time at your seminar that it is possible to get out of the rat race. Why do you think people don’t even try to get out of the rat race? Is it just they don’t know, or they’re overwhelmed? You’ve seen it probably more up close than I have. Why do you think a lot of people get stuck in that rat race? Well sometimes we get in a world of comfort, and that comfort turns into complacency. And even though we’re not where we want to be, we’re able to pay our bills and we can put our head on the pillow at night. And we end up just getting too comfortable. And what happens is a lot of times we have a crisis and we get thrown into chaos, and we end up having to become creative again, and that gives us the ability to have a bigger vision. And that whole concept of understanding what’s possible. And I think a huge issue is your environment. Are you hanging out with other people that are in that same category? People who are just getting by, people who are on the rat race. And if that’s the environment you’re putting yourself in, then it seems normal, right? If you want to get out of that environment, then you need to put yourself in an environment of people who are really striving for success, because they can help you. And most of the time, school certainly teaches us to do it on our own. And so, you know, we come out in the business world and we think we have to do everything on our own. And it’s so important that we realize that you have the right people around you, the right team, the right peer network. We have the opportunity to really grow more quickly. The right mentor. Mentors are priceless because they’ve been successful where you want to go. And they can help speed your way to success by opening doors, steering you around the pitfalls. And there’s a difference between a mentor and a coach. A coach may not have that success, but they know what you want to do and they can help you be accountable and make sure you stay on track. Oh, Thrive Nation, we just had Sharon Lecter on the show. How is it possible, Chop? It was a Sharon Lecter lecture. I was nervous, too. So good. I was nervous. Yeah, well you should be. Sharon? She’s an authority. Do you remember when you wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad? That was pretty cool. I mean, I was, I’m just telling you, she is such a great lady, kind lady, and she’s agreed to be with us on six separate shows, which is so exciting. And so on our next interview with Sharon Lecter, we’re gonna ask her about why college is probably not the right move for most people. We’re gonna ask Sharon, why do you feel that college may not be the right option for many people? And so she’s gonna question the great religion of college, which I know is heresy to many people. You can question people’s religion, you can question their politics, you could question a lot of things, but you cannot question. You can’t. Chip, I think questioning, even asking the question whether you should go to college or not, I think asking that question to some people, saying, should I go to college or not, is a lot like getting a kiosk at the mall and setting up a nice beautiful… Chip, can you grab my megaphone over there by the man sink? It’s like setting up a kiosk. Imagine this, Thrive Nation. Imagine you’re at a mall, a local mall area there, where there’s a lot of stores there. There’s Victoria’s Secret, there’s Bath and Body, there’s Champs, there’s a Foot Locker, there’s an Orange Julius, there’s a Chick-fil-a. You know, it’s the standard of a little and imagine that you set up a kiosk Just outside of the food court and you play this game like you weigh 187. No. Okay. Well, we’ll try again. We’ll play again. I’m not getting a lot of interaction here. I’m not hearing. I’m not getting a lot of feedback from you. I’m going to say that you weigh 152. You’re still a little bit high. Okay. All right. Well, not getting a lot of it. Ma’am, where’d you go? Ma’am, where’d you go? Sir. Sir. All right. We’re going to play the IQ guessing game here folks. Sir, you look like your IQ is a 7. You want to guess if you can’t go over, like the price is right. You can’t go over, is it? 50? Okay, we’ll go back to the weight guessing. But ma’am, ma’am, you back there, you look like, well, I tell you what, folks, let me guess your age. Let me guess your age. Ma’am, you look like you’re 47. 22? Don’t say. Well, you drink? All right, ladies and gentlemen. Alright, now go. Step right up here and I’ll guess your weight. I’ll guess your age. I’ll guess your IQ. It all is happening here. All we’ve got to do is just walk by, I’ll guess. If you don’t win, you can just keep on walking. That’s not going to go over the wall, Chuck. No, it’s not going to get you very far. Because I have a megaphone available at all times in the man cave, we were able to imitate that scenario with perfect quality. It’s funny how many times you’ve said that. Hey Chuck, grab my megaphone, would you? Alright, so Thrive Nation, stay tuned as Sharon Lechter on our next episode here asks the question, is college right for you? And as always, without any further ado, 3, 2, 1, boom! Well, Thrive Nation, we have an opportunity all the time. We have so many wonderful people that go to thrivetimeshow.com and they reach out to us to schedule a 13-point assessment. We also have a lot of people that go to thrivetimeshow.com and they schedule a free 13-point assessment and they’re not a good fit because I only work with diligent doers. I only work with people that are willing to actually implement the proven systems that Dr. Zellner and I both teach and implement in our own companies. So people say, I do want to grow my business seven times faster. I do want to reduce my working hours. I do want to increase my time, freedom, and my profits. I think we’re all in agreement that that’s a good thing. However, we can only help people that are willing to put the work in. And on today’s show, we’re joined by a man by the name of Ronnie Morales. His company is MoralesBrothers.net. I hold him in high regard because he and his family-owned business, they actually are growing, I would call it dramatically. If you look at this, Inc. Magazine right now shows that 96% of businesses fail. Inc. Magazine says 96% of businesses fail. That’s not good. Whereas this guy’s business isn’t growing by 10%, it isn’t growing by 20%. It is growing dramatically. But again, if Ronnie Morales had filled out the form and had scheduled a consultation and wasn’t willing to actually implement what we were teaching, it would all be for naught. So I’m excited for you to meet somebody who I would consider to be a diligent doer. He’s based in Richmond, Texas. And without any further ado, Ronnie Morales, welcome to The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? Hey, I’m doing great. Thanks, Clay. Hey, so how did you first hear about us? How did you hear about The Thrive Time Show? I listened to your Thrive Time Show podcast for those seven years, and I was learning so much. I was like, man, I got to give this guy a try. So you listened to our podcast seven years ago? Yeah. Really? Four or seven years. Do you remember the first podcast you listened to seven years ago? I don’t. I don’t remember. I listened to so many of them. Okay. I saw I listened to, you know, more than once. Now, when you’re listening to the podcast, I try to feature clients on the show so that you know there’s real people really doing it, really implementing the systems. When did it occur to you that you might want to go ahead and fill out the form at Thrivetimeshow.com and schedule a consultation? I got to the point where I just needed to take the next step. I’ve been in coaching before, like group coaching and different things like that. But I just felt like everybody on your show was making tremendous changes in our business. And coming from you and Dr. Z, I felt like y’all had the experience and it didn’t matter if it was, because I’ve been used to doing construction, like peer groups and construction coaching, where it’s contractors only. Well, I felt like, you know what, I need business, somebody business minded to help me grow this. I don’t necessarily need a group of just contractors. I need somebody that knows the business part of it. What kind of growth have you had since you began working with us as far as a percentage? Do you know a percentage or what kind of growth? Yeah, so we had about a 57% increase from last year’s first quarter to this year’s first quarter. That was huge for us. And I’m personally a girl too. I honestly just as a business leader and a team member here in my company, I’ve grown a lot to be a better leader, learn how to delegate better, learn how to get these 15 minute hodl started every morning. And it’s been great. I’m just continuing to learn and I can’t wait to keep moving forward. Well, you know, people always ask me, they say, what’s the most important part of business consulting? And that would be to me like asking a baker, what’s the most important ingredient in a cookie? I mean, is it the flour? Is it the sugar? Is it the eggs? I would say if you take out any one of those core ingredients, you’re going to have a weird taste in cookie. So, in our business, consulting, we focus on marketing, branding, sales, hiring, leadership, management, accounting, all of those things. So let’s kind of go through the process. From just a branding perspective and a marketing perspective, how has the business consulting impacted your company? No, it’s been great. The branding, the marketing, I mean, people around town are telling us, hey, I’ve seen your trucks here and there. I see it all over the place. When people are searching Google or whatever it is, they’re finding our videos and they’re reaching out to us. I think one of the biggest parts with business coaching for me has been the accountability. Like just having somebody to tell me like, hey, get this, this and this done and have it done by this day. And, you know, we move on to the next step. So it’s been great. Now we have a weekly meeting. The purpose of a weekly meeting is so that you have a week to get your homework done. We have a week to do our homework. I mean, we do photography, videography, web development, search engine optimization. And you and I meet on Saturdays at 6.30 AM. I find a lot of my clients like to meet in the mornings. How important is it to have that weekly meeting? Because again, I’ve done, I’m 42, but when I was 21, I was hiring business consulting programs that would do quarterly meetings or oftentimes even monthly meetings. And I found that nothing got done. How important is it for you to have a weekly meeting? I think it’s very important as a business owner to have that weekly accountability to make sure you’re staying on schedule because as a business owner, just you wear so many hats. It makes it difficult to get the important things done that you need to get done, but that you want to put on the back burner. But when you know you have somebody to be accountable to and it’s a weekly thing and they’re steadily putting in your ear, like you got to get these things done, get the reviews, get the video testimonials. It just makes it to where you have an assignment and you just get it done. Now at the business conferences, we walk people through the entire system. This is the system we teach from. This is from my newest book called A Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich, which everyone can download for free right now at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire. You and I, we track the numbers every week. So box number one, we establish those revenue goals. We do that. We know the break-even numbers. We know how many hours you’re willing to work. This is crazy. You’re married. Your wife loves you. You love your wife. I’m not ever advocating during our coaching meetings, like forsake your family and grow your company. Can you talk about that, how important it is to work with maybe a coach that understands that you want to have a healthy family and a healthy company? Oh, I think it’s very important. You know, like yesterday I had a good dinner with my wife, you know, and we had a good evening with live music and we enjoyed each other’s company. You know, I took my kids camping twice this month already for four days and we’re enjoying the summer. But I think it’s very important that as a business owner, as you put the hours in, put the hard work in, but you also take the time to spend with friends and family. And I mean, it’s important, you know, rising up early to get my meditation time is very important to me too. So I think just again, having somebody that knows the value of these things is important. Yeah, as we go through, I mean, you are knocking it out with the marketing and the branding and all the things we have to do to optimize your website and make the ads work. We’ve determined your unique value proposition. We’ve improved the branding. We have a three-legged marketing stool. We know how to generate leads online and offline and referrals, the sales process. And I’m not picking on you, but I mean this, you’re like a super humble guy. So I feel like that the sales process was something that once you learn the proven process, you kind of took to it right away. But I think a lot of contractors don’t want to come across as too aggressive or too passive or too whatever. And I feel like the sales process of your team really doing a good job of calling all the leads and the calls are recorded for quality assurance. I feel like that’s been a big needle mover for you. Maybe I’m wrong. I’d love to get your thoughts on that. Yeah, no, it’s been great. I had my own way before I joined your team, had my own way of sales and what I thought was working really wasn’t working. And at first I put up a wall, but once I was opened up to the, why you do it the certain ways you do it. It really opened up more ways to be more successful. You know, with the call scripts, with the recorded calls, we’re still tweaking scripts and things like that, but it’s like an ongoing process. But it’s been great, and I think that it has helped us a lot. We do have, we call our leads back right away within hours, a few hours most of the time. And it’s important, and we’ve gotten a lot of leads and where I needed to hire my first sales employee. And now we’re working on more of the systems, you know, creating these repeatable systems and managing a large group of people. In that daily huddle, can you talk, I hammer all my clients, it’s so important to have a daily huddle with your team, to give, you know, to huddle with your team every morning and to have a weekly staff meeting. Could you talk about the importance of implementing these human resource strategies for managing people and what impact that’s had for your company? Yeah, so the impact that Daily Huddles has had for my company is that it brought the team together. All of our employees, which is 17 of us full-time, it’s brought us all together to where we’re getting to see each other in the mornings and grow together. We start off with some wins, keep it brief. We go over company updates. Then we go over all our projects and we ask, like, how’s that client doing? How’s this project on schedule? But what it did, it helped us a lot with the daily interruptions with, hey, so what’s going on here? And these questions that can be answered in the morning. So they learn to answer these important questions in the morning so that there’s less interruptions throughout the day. Now, the final two areas I wanted to cover here is, you know, there’s so much to growing a company and that’s what we talk about on our weekly coaching calls, but building a sustainable and repetitive weekly schedule. You know, like every week we’re doing the group interview. Every week we’re gathering objective reviews from clients. Every week we’re gathering before and after images. Every week you’re gathering testimonials from your happy clients. You have to do this stuff every week. It’s like a garden, you gotta pull the weeds every week. Could you talk about the importance of having these human resource systems in place where you do these systems every week so it’s proactive as opposed to reactive, doing the same things over and over? Yeah, I think it’s important to do it every week and repeat them so that things don’t fall through the cracks. And if you get too relaxed on not doing it or you go two or three weeks listen to recorded calls or whatever it may be, you start to slack off a little bit. The next thing you know, you’re in trouble. And now you’re putting down another fire that wouldn’t have been there if you had been on track and keeping up with the systems and processes. So just doing it repeatedly helps with building that system. Everybody knows it’s this day at this time. Our morning huddles are every day from 7-07, you know, last 15 minutes. And everybody knows to be there and it’s been great. Now, final two questions for you. People out there that maybe want to do business with you, they’re hearing about you. Again, it’s very hard to gather objective Google reviews if people don’t like you. It’s very hard to gather video testimonials if people don’t like the work you do. What’s your website and how do people go ahead and get ahold of you if they’re looking to hire you guys for maybe a big project? Yes, our website is moralesbrothers.net and you can definitely just fill out our get in touch form to reach out to us. I personally will actually be in touch with you and I’ll have a conversation with you. For anybody out there that’s contemplating coming to one of our workshops or scheduling a free 13-point assessment, what word of encouragement or what advice would you have for anybody out there? I would say don’t wait any longer. Jump in because if I would have jumped in seven years ago, I would have been in a whole different place today. I guarantee you would be. I’ll say this though, and I’m not prophetic. I’m saying you’re on pace to have a business that’s going to be about five times larger than what it was when I first met you. I say that because the first thing you see is the leads coming in, and you start to see new teammates joining your team, and you’re building that foundation for success. I totally see you guys going to a great place right now. So I wish I would have met you earlier. That’s my only complaint. That’s Ronnie Morales. Ronnie, I really appreciate you. I’ll give you the final word. What do you want to say to everybody out there that’s maybe contemplating taking their business to the next level? Like I said, guys, don’t wait any longer. Reach out to play in the team, do your assessment, and be a diligent doer. Amen to that. Ronnie Morales, take care, sir. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. We have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. What we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now, okay? I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminix, they’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has. By being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews, and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest and Lawn company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate and the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay, so 411% we’re up with with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten, people really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process, and that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals and more new customers last year than we did the first five months or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned, that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives, and also it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut, and we didn’t know. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut, and if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So we just wanna give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore, I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proven turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you are looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983 and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockrell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Wendell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. So, think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So, in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building into a franchisable scalable business Like one of his businesses like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with So amazing guy Elon Musk kinds kind of like smart guy He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much when I say that like Clay is like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways just just just an amazing man so anyways impacted me a lot he’s helped navigate anytime I’ve got nervous or worried about how to run the company or you know navigating competition and an economy that’s like I remember we got closed down for three months he helped us navigate on how to stay open how to how to get back open how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house, right? This is where we used to live years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The 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 systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars with no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s gonna be the best business workshop ever and we’re gonna give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it.