Business Podcasts | 5X Business Growth | The ShawHomes.com Success Story | Learn How to Clay Clark Helped Aaron Antis & ShawHomes.com to Grow Their Business By from $19 Million to $20 Million & How You Can Too!!!

Audio Transcription

All right, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, what we’re going to focus on is how to grow a successful company. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to pull up a graphic that is the theory of how to grow a successful company, but vision without execution is hallucination. And so if you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, you can download a book that I have written called A Millionaire’s Guide, How to Become Sustainably Rich. You can download it for free at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, but you have to actually implement that which is in the book. And so on today’s show, we’re joined by a very successful person in the home building business, a great friend of mine, a man by the name of Aaron Antus. Aaron Antus, welcome on to The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m doing great, Clay. Thanks for having me on. Hey, so I got to ask you this for people out there that want to prove you’re not a hologram. First off, what’s the website for your company so people can verify that you are in fact a real business? You bet. It’s shahomes.com. S-H-A-W-H-O-M-E-S dot com. Shawhomes.com. I’m pulling up Shawhomes.com. That’s the website. Shawhomes.com. And when you and I met, before we met, you had been already very successful as a home builder. You turned your dream of being a home builder guy into reality. And so how many homes had you sold or what kind of sales had you done and your career as a home builder guy before you and I even met? Before we met, probably about 750 million in sales prior to meeting you. And then you did, the year we first started working together, what were the sales totals that year? We were at like 19 million. 19 million, and then when you ended 2022, obviously we’re in 2023, and so we’ll see how this year ends, but as far as ending 2022, how much sales did you do last year at the end of 2022? 2022, we were at like 84 million. Okay, so from 19 million to- 84 million. 84 million, so you’re doing some things right here, and what we’re gonna try to do is kind of demystify the plan here. Okay, so here we go. So, establishing revenue goals. Yep. When you and I first started working together, we started off with a 13-point assessment. We went over your goals. I’m not going to ask you to share your goals on the air, but why is it important that you have goals? Well, I mean, goals are sort of your guideposts that, you know, you set something out there in front of you and you start chasing after it. And without that, you’re just kind of floundering in mediocrity. You don’t have any reason to get up in the morning and really get after it. And so, you know, I think goals are, you know, it’s, you can have lots of different types of goals. And we’ve talked about a lot of this. We’ve talked about, you know, having financial goals and having, you know, fitness goals and having friendship goals and just all these different areas. I know you’ve got the F6, you know, so that’s kind of something that, you know, we touched on very early on. You asked me, like, is the goal, is one of your goals more income or is it more time? And so I said, well, really at this point, it’s more income. And then later it became more time. So you know, it’s changed over the time I’ve known you since 2016, we’re going on seven years and the income went up considerably. So now it’s, you know, turned in the last couple of years towards more time. Now the break even numbers, again, I’m not asking you for the numbers on the show, but you guys have a lot of fixed costs. I mean, if you go to shawhomes.com, you’ve got framers, you have plumbers, you have tile people, you have so many skilled people, you have a full-time sales team, you have an admin staff, and if you don’t sell a house, you still have the service of the land, you still have all the overhead. Why is it important for every listener out there to know their break-even point? How many deals they need per month just to break even. Well, yeah, because you’re going backwards real quick, and it doesn’t take very long if you’re at the beginning of your business. It doesn’t take very long for you to be in a place where the creditors are knocking at your door, and you can’t pay your bills, and all of a sudden you’re going to lose all your… For us, all of our trades, all of our suppliers are going to start backing out. So, you know, you’ve got to know what that number is that lets you tread water so that, you know, okay, this is the worst case scenario, everything above that, at least I’m into the profit zone. So, you know, you go out of business pretty quick. Most businesses don’t last more than just a few months if they get below that break-even number. So now folks, again, these might seem like simple steps, but they’re all the linear steps you have to take to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And if you want to grow your company, this is how you do it. Box number three, though, is you have to know the hours you’re willing to work. Now, your incredible wife is here off camera. It’s for accountability. At any point, she could yell, like, amen, or boo. You guys are on the same page with the hours you’re willing to work. You guys, as a couple, I want to brag on both of you. You guys both committed to sacrificing time and energy and a lot of things to get to where you’re at in life. And then as you had your children, you raised them, you decided to devote time to raising said kids. And now that your kids are older, you’re devoting time to raising these kids. So it’s not like you advocated being a parent while also growing a company. You did both well. I’d love to get your thoughts on sitting down with your spouse, if you’re watching this today, or your significant other, and making sure you’re on the same page about how many hours per week you’re willing to work? Well, yeah. I mean, you don’t want to grow a business to make a whole bunch of money just so you can split it in half later. Oh. Because that’s kind of what happens when you don’t work out those details ahead of time. And so my wife and I have been married 25 years. We’ve been together for four before that. And so, yeah, sorry, 26. Did I just say 25? 26. Wait, real quick. I hate to do this to you. I just got in trouble. I hate to. Your wife just turned 27 on Thursday, and what you said is 100% false. Okay, so the unique value proposition here. Now, let’s talk about this. Whether it’s growing a home building company or a dog training business or a haircut chain or a carpet cleaning franchise or whatever business we’re involved in helping to grow, you have to sit down as a listener out there, as a business owner, and you’ve got to figure out what makes your company unique. Absolutely. So I want to ask you, what makes Shaw Homes unique in the marketplace with other home builders? Yeah, we have more furnished and decorated model homes than any other builder in the market. So, you know, a lot of times people, when they walk into a home and they’re trying to decide if they like the floor plan, the layout, whatever, they usually, most builders in our market have an empty house that they walk into. It’s just kind of echoes when you walk through it. There’s no furniture or anything. And we completely, as you can see in this little video here, we completely furnish and decorate it, make it beautiful. We are the most award-winning builder in the state of Oklahoma. We’ve won like five times as many awards as any other builder in the market. So definitely that is one of our big takeaways. And I’m going to throw you under the bus real quick, and I don’t mean to do this super passively aggressively it’ll just be more of a subtle passive aggressive. When I met you, you guys had all these awards but no one knew. That’s true. It was like this weird bizarre thing where you had all these awards. I remember talking to you and I’m like, what makes you guys different? And you’re like, you know, we do a good job and you’re going to be nice about it. You’re a good salesperson. But I said, well, I mean, tell me about the awards. And you’re like, well, we got this award, that award, this award, like 45 minutes later, it’s like that award, this award, I need to shave now, this award, that award, I need to go brush my teeth, this award, that award, I want to go mow the lawn now, this award, that award, I’m thinking about retiring, this award, my kids are turning 18, I can see it, this award, and this award, and that award, and so we put those on the website and that helped. And the other thing you guys were, we needed to change was all these people were saying great things, but we didn’t have video reviews of them saying it on camera. Right. So it was like your online reputation didn’t match your real world reputation. It’s so much good momentum there. And so many people love you guys. And now you guys have, would you say a hundred video reviews? Oh gosh, I would say more than that. We’ve got, yeah, we have a lot. Everyone keeps scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And this is actually all that’s on this page. If you go to our YouTube channel, we have way more than this. So again, and this is all the stuff. You’re going to grow a successful company, folks. Step one, you’ve got to figure out your revenue goals. Step two, you’ve got to figure out your break-even goals. Step three, sit down for an hour of power. Sit down with your spouse. Make sure that you guys are on the same page of your hours you’re willing to work. Step four, unique value proposition. Figure out what it is that makes you unique. And we have an in-depth guide that you can download for free at Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire if you get stuck. Next box. You got to improve your branding, your website, your one sheet, in your case model home presentations, business cards, social media branding, everything that a customer sees needs to be first class. And I was talking to a guy named Ronnie Morales today and it’s Morales brothers. I think you met him at a conference. He told me this and I’m not slamming Ronnie. Ronnie, if you’re listening, I’m not slamming you, this is the real thing. Ronnie said he’d listened to our show for seven consecutive years before ever reaching out. And now he’s reached out and he’s up 57% in about eight months. And we’re going to put his story on part two of today’s show because he’s in Texas and he’s seven years behind you. But he’s doing a great job. What do you think that thing is where people have bad branding and we’re not aware of it? Someone hasn’t brought it to our attention? What causes bad branding? You know, the number one thing I hear business owners say is, well, you know, I don’t really need good branding because I sell everything by word of mouth. Oh yeah, baby. I’ve got such an incredible reputation. You do. Everybody just comes to me by word of mouth. And then it’s like, okay, yeah, but how much business did you do last year? Well, not very much. And, you know, I’m really unprofitable, but I’ve got great reputation out there and I get a lot of word of mouth. So when people switch over to starting to improve branding, I know you helped us a lot with that in just creating a lot better looking website, creating a, you know, we’ve got an office environment now that is when people walk into our model home, they are blown away. We truly wow our customers when they come to our model homes. It’s a one of a kind experience in the state of Oklahoma. And the process of that, you know, just going through branding it so that it looks really top-notch. And, you know, that includes everything from, you know, marketing to all of your senses and everything else. So it just really brought us to another level. And when the customer comes in and experiences us after having walked through other builders homes, they usually come in and go, you guys are just on a whole nother level. It’s sights, sounds, smells, experiences, everything that your customer sees, they’re grading you on. And you might not know that they are even judging you because they’re not filling out the form. And I have a funny story to share with you that’s kind of sad. I was working with a fitness guy years ago and I’m not gonna tell you what studies and what study folks, I know you wanna know but I’m not gonna tell you. And he filled out the form because his wife wanted him to schedule a 13 point assessment he did not want to. He tells me, Clay, honestly, I’m just doing the call because my wife wants me on the phone. I got to, I don’t really don’t get leads from social media. I don’t get leads from marketing. I get all my leads word of mouth, like you were saying. And I said, well, let me just do this. Let’s just this first month working together. Let me get all the passwords for your Facebook, your Google, your YouTube. And I’m just, as the first month, we do this with every single client. We optimize your YouTube, your Facebook, your Instagram, your Twitter, all that. We log on, this is a fitness guy. He was spending like 400 bucks a week, every week on ads. And he hadn’t known, he wasn’t aware that every time a lead came in, it got stuck in Facebook and went to an email address that he wasn’t checking. So think about this. That’s not good. And it’s like 15 to 20 leads a week for years this guy had. That’s not good. And he didn’t even, so I’m going, you’re spending, you know, 20 grand a year on ads that you’re not getting anything from. And are you aware that the phone number on your site rings to a phone that’s no longer a real phone. And I’m serious, this was real. And then he had before and after photos where somebody had had the idea of let’s get before and after photos. You know where you interview someone before they start working out? But then they never completed the thought. You know what I’m saying? I do. Where it’s like they interview them about getting in shape, but then they never actually like aired the part where they’re in shape? Oh no. So it’s just sort of like an interview with people that are not in shape, and I’m like, and again, he’s a busy guy, busy entrepreneur, that kind of stuff is very common. It’s kind of laughable if it’s not your company. But okay, next box. You gotta determine your customer acquisition costs. How much does it cost you to get a customer? So Aaron, you guys run ads on Google, on Facebook, on retargeting ads, you have massive signage, there’s a lot of stuff you do. Why is it important to know how much it costs you at the end of the day to get an actual new buyer of a shawl? Well because if you want more of those, you know what it costs to go generate more of those. And it’s a cost where it’s like, okay, well, I’m down in sales this month or this quarter or whatever, and I need four more sales to make it a good quarter here before the end of the quarter. And it’s like, I know I can go put money into that and it’s going to cost me X number of dollars per customer to get there. And so then it’s just a matter of, do I want to spend that money to get to that point? So, you know, for us, it’s, you know, a pretty high number cause it’s a lot, it’s a big ticket item, but for some people it might be, you know, very small to get that, you know, each customer, but for us, you know, it’s you got to know what the number is because ultimately that goes into the price of your product and whatever you sell, you know, we’re doing homes. That is one of our line item costs in our homes. That’s a cost. Yeah. Now, if you go to any of the businesses that I’m involved in, you go to eitrlounge.com forward slash staff. I put in the password here. Once I put in the password, I have all of the documents needed to run the company and they’re all saved. So the checklist for the manager, the opening checklist for the assistant manager, the bathroom cleaning checklist, everything needed to grow the company’s all in one place. And therefore the business, everybody who works there knows where to go to find those documents. This is the kind of stuff that fires me up and it makes other people crazy. So with the conferences we do, if we ever do a conference that’s out of town, I have a checklist of stuff I print out. I know it seems kind of crazy for people, but this is real. I print it out and it’s like, okay, socks. I’m gone for four days. I want to have 12 pairs of socks. Why? Because it could be hot. I don’t know. It could get wet. I don’t know. I have a list of deodorant and socks and shaving, and I have a laptop and a backup laptop, and I have patch cables and XLR cables, and we bring three… You’ve seen all this stuff, but it’s multiple monitors, backup monitors. It’s backups for everything. When you guys build a Shaw home, you’re not moving off of guesswork. There’s blueprints, there’s plans, there’s systems, so houses don’t fall down. There’s somebody out here listening right now that doesn’t have systems in place, they don’t have checklists, they don’t have it, and so they have to think about everything all the time because if not, they forget a step. What would you say is the importance of having taken the time to have built these systems now. It is the night and day difference between running around like your hair is on fire every day, constantly playing firefighter, or you hear people say, I’m up to my armpits in alligators. It’s because you don’t have systems and processes. And every time at Shaw Homes, every time that we have a problem come up, we automatically go, okay, what step in our system did this fall apart in? And what’s broken in that step and how can we fix it so it never happens again. So we go fix the process. You know, we address the problem for the customer, but then we go back after that and we go, how do we fix the process so we don’t repeat this problem? And the business owners that are running around with their hair on fire all the time, it’s because there’s no systems, no processes. Everything is urgent. Everything is hair on fire. Correct. And it is a, it is a chaos world that you live in and if you’re gonna build homes for a living and build a lot of them you cannot live in that chaos world. Now this next box I get excited about all these boxes this is what I get excited about this this right here is what I care about okay the next box is management and execution. You have people on your team and I’m just gonna give some examples and I hope this benefits somebody out there listening. You have people on your team it’s their responsibility every time that you do a new house, they go out there and they design, or they get the blueprint on the website. They get the new design of the home because people want to see floor plans. So somebody’s job is to get those up there. Somebody gets photos of every house that you guys are building. Somebody gets videos of every house. Somebody puts them all up for sale. Somebody answers the phone every day. Somebody calls the leads every day. Somebody cleans the bathroom every day. Somebody builds the houses every day. Now this is what I find, and I’m sure none of our listeners can relate to this. Some of our listeners fire people and then nothing happens. So work with me on this. There’s listeners out there that I talk to every day because we do free 13-point assessments. So I talk to two or three people a day who go to ThriveTimeShow.com. They want to schedule a consultation. And the other day you heard me talking to Jordan. I said, Jordan, go ahead and keep setting those. He set an appointment with someone who’s definitely not a good fit. And you could tell he had a little question if that was okay. And I said, I would rather you set an appointment with somebody than not because I don’t know if he’s a good fit or not. But the idea though is I sit down, I was talking to a guy the other day and he was like, you know, the reason why my team did not get Google reviews or videos that reviews this week is because we fired a guy. And I go, because I’m just asking him, you know, where are we stuck? What’s your biggest limiting factor? I have a big process I go through my evaluation. I said, who calls the leads? He’s like, well, normally I have a person that calls the leads, but we just fired her. And I mean, this time I’m going, how long have you been in business? This guy’s been in business for over 10 years and he’s reaching out for help. Good person, we’re trying to help him. I think it’s going to be a good fit. So I said, so basically everybody follows the systems until they don’t work there anymore and then no one does the systems. And you go back and forth vacillating from things being done to not being done. And one of my favorite things about working with you guys is that you’re honest people. What does that mean? You do your best to do what you say you’re going to do and you hold yourself and the employees accountable. Absolutely. But what would happen if every week, if somebody wasn’t performing, you remove them from the position and then the houses weren’t built for the week because something wasn’t going well or because maybe a salesperson wasn’t performing at the peak, you let them go and the next thing you know… What would happen if you managed your company that way? It would be a disaster. I can’t just fire my superintendent without having somebody already ready to take over all of those responsibilities because I’ve got materials showing up at the job site today, tomorrow, and the next day. I’ve got trades showing up who need some supervision, need to know what they’re supposed to be doing. If I fire that guy with no warning, somebody else has to come fill in that position. For us, we try to never have that gap happen. Sometimes it’s like you know that you’re going to need to fire somebody, and you can see the writing on the wall, but you want to get the next person up and ready to go before that happens. You guys have a weekly meeting. We talk a lot on this show from an employer perspective, but how frustrating would it be to be an A-player employee and you’re working for a C-player boss? A boss that doesn’t have a staff meeting, that’s not organized, that doesn’t pay people on time, that’s constantly emotional. I see that a lot. And so management is a learned skill. And thankfully, you know, when I first met with you, you’d already really mastered, in my opinion, managing people. But this next box is where I thought we needed some help, was to build a system for constantly recruiting new people because certain people work for Shaw Homes for three years or four years, and then they want to go move, they want to have a baby, they want to stay home, they want to get a new job. Even though you have a low turnover at Shaw, certain people get to their expiration date and it’s time for them to move on to something else. And because we didn’t have a process in place at Shaw at that time to consistently bring in a pipeline of new people, it made it difficult to do the management that was needed. Can you talk about the importance of implementing a human resources program for hiring, inspiring, training, and retaining good people. It’s huge. I mean, that was definitely an Achilles heel for us. And you helped us a lot with that. Putting in a, where every single week I’m seeing potential candidates that could come work for us and they’re job shadowing and seeing what it’s like to work in our company every single week. It does multiple things. It helps the people who work there to know, hey, there’s other people who desire to come work here. And if I’m not doing my job, I might get replaced. So there’s a little bit of that. And then it’s also a thing of the people who are shadowing get to see the job being done by people who are happy doing their job. And it helps them to want to come be a part of Shaw Homes. I’ve got a very long list of people right now in every single position that would be excited to come work for us if I did all of a sudden find myself with an opening, you know, because occasionally people leave with no notice or whatever, you know, something happens, family emergency, whatever. Right. And you have that, oh, I need to replace somebody immediately. And the great thing about it is I have a whole bunch of people that I could plug into that position very quickly because every single week I am interviewing. Now, the next box here is you got to do your accounting and in order to automate, in order to earn millions, you have to automate your accounting. What does that mean? You have to have a system in place for making sure you price your products and services correctly and that you pay yourself first, that you set aside a set amount of money to pay yourself and your staff. And all these things work together. And what I find is people ask me, often just not knowing, they come from a place of a good heart, they don’t know, they say to me, Clay, what is the most important step in growing Shaw Homes? I’ve heard Aaron on the show, he’s a great guy. Clay, I’ve heard PMHOKC on the show. Clay, I’ve seen OxiFresh on the show. What was the most important thing they did? And to me that’s like asking a hiker, what was the most important step you took to get to the top of that mountain? Well, it was the one we took there an hour ago. I took a left step. No, it’s so, so, all right, that gasket of baker, what’s the most important ingredient? Is it milk? Is it sugar? Is it eggs? Is it, you know, it’s like asking a farmer, what’s the most important thing, feeding the animals or watering them? What’s the key to your success? There’s just certain questions that I understand people want to know, but all of this has to work together and nothing works unless you do. So I have three final questions for you. For anybody out there that’s thinking about scheduling a consultation, a free consultation with thrivetimeshow.com and myself, obviously they’re stuck with me if they fill out the form. I’m the only person that does 13 point assessments. I believe we, I’ve seen it since 2005. We help people decrease their costs, increase their time, freedom and profits. What would you say is the benefit of scheduling that 13-point assessment? Well, actually, the 13-point assessment was very eye-opening for me. You asked me a lot of tough questions that I probably should have been asking myself and wasn’t. And so as we went through the questions, I was like – I think at every question you asked me, I was like, oh, that’s a good question. And I was like, hang on, let me think about that for a minute. So I find that it kind of helps open your eyes to, you know, hmm, these are some things that I know I have some areas of weakness. And then there were, I think, a couple of the questions where I was like, oh, I know the answer to this one. I got this one. No problem. But it helps you sort of identify, I walked away having identified areas of strength and areas of weakness, even though that really wasn’t the purpose of the phone call necessarily. It helped me to see that. And then I was like, hmm, I think I have a need in a couple of these areas, and I didn’t really know what to do for myself. I didn’t have the answers. You know, in part three of today’s show, part two, we’re going to show the Ronnie Morales story. In part three, we’re going to do a testimony with Myron, and Myron just bought his first Lamborghini today, and he’s super fired up. So Myron’s about six years down the path. We’ve been working with you for about eight years, whereas Ronnie’s been with us for less than a year. And it’s at a certain point that we have to take action. Knowledge without application is meaningless. What would you say to somebody who’s like, you know, it’s $1,700 a month, and I’m spending that much right now on random ads and that much money on random regrettable purchases at the gas station and a lot of iTunes I’m downloading. I’m spending $1,700 a month on various things. And I don’t know if I can afford it because I’ve just bought another vehicle that I can’t afford, but I’m leasing it. What would you say to anybody who’s kind of on that fence? I mean, I would say you need to do it. I mean, it has been a game changer for us. I don’t know why you would sit there and think $1,700 a month is too much money to spend. Go find the money somewhere. Go empty out your sofa cushions. Go sell the stuff that you have in your house that you’re not using. I mean, go get, you know, whatever you need to do to get to that place, you need to find that $1,700. And I will say this, that cost was very quickly replaced with the extra money we were making. And I’ve seen, I’ve actually seen, because I’ve been around you for a long time, I’ve seen a lot of your clients come in and right off the bat, they’re real nervous about, am I going to be able to, you know, because maybe they’re a smaller company or whatever, and they’re like, I’m wondering if I’m going to be able to handle this 1700 a month. And then I see them six months later and I’m like, how’s it going now? And they’re like, man, we’re just hitting record after record. I have referred several business owners. And they’re doing great. That are killing it. And that, you know, I’ll give one example. I won’t name the person, but I did send one of my very good friends to you who was on the verge of losing his business because he just wasn’t able, he had bought another one of the shops of what he does. He opened it and it was not profitable and it was gonna take under both of his shops. And I sent him over to you. And I remember about three months later, I asked him, how’s it going? And he goes, man, we just had a record breaking month. This was amazing. And by the way, he said, first, he just had another record breaking month, just so you know. Yeah, and I know right now, not only does he have way more income, but he has a lot more time freedom because he’s been working with you for many years now. And so that was, it changed his life, just like it changed my life. I would say, if you’re thinking about, you know, doing a 13 point assessment, stop thinking, dial the phone, pause this video, make the phone call, reach out to Clay, get it started right now. Now, final question I have is, I think people look at oxyfresh.com and they go in, there’s 500 locations now. Yeah. And they look at Elephant in the Room and they go, there’s five brick and mortar locations now. They look at Shaw Homes and they go, you know, these are big success stories. I don’t know that I can do it. What would you say to somebody out there that just feel like they might not have the, like all this stuff they’re gonna learn is gonna be over their head, too complicated. What would you say? I would say the information, the ideas are easy. It’s the application that is difficult for people. The ideas that you share, there’s nothing that’s like, oh, my God, I don’t have a Ph.D., therefore I can’t do it. I feel like it’s all very, very simple stuff, but it is a lot of action to get traction, and you’ve got to get the action going. And I think if somebody has diligence and discipline or can learn diligence or discipline, they’re going to do extremely well. And it’s not about education. It’s about action. Now, Aaron, I got one thing I want to say, and then we’ll wrap up today’s show with a boom, because boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. And that’s what’s required to have success. People watching this, they’re going, Aaron, he looks like a normal guy. Well, that’s true. They say, well, he sounds like a normal guy. Sounds like an all right guy. You know, that’s true. But the one thing you can’t quite picture on the show, and I want to give that gift to you folks who are watching is Aaron smells tremendous. It’s like a, it’s like a, if you had smell-o-vision, if you could just get up there and just smell that, it’s incredible. And it’s really, it’s, it’s his aroma that allows him to achieve massive success. So unless, so if you’re out there and you’re going, what’s the secret sauce? It’s not a sauce, it’s more of just a smell. So I don’t know if you qualify to have the kind of success he has, unless you smell like he smells. It’s a really tremendous smell. Okay, let’s do this thing with a boom. Here we go. Three, two, one, 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 on 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’ve 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 probably 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. And 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, whereas your contract is 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. You know, I need somebody that knows the business part of it. And 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 on last year’s first quarter to this year’s first quarter. So that was huge for us. And I’m personally a growth 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 huddles 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, you know, 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 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, 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. You know, get the reviews, you know, get the video testimonials. It just makes it to where, you know, you have an assignment and let’s 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? 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 really 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, 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. I had my own way of sales and what I thought was working really wasn’t working. And at first I put up a law, 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. 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… are leased 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 with you, it’s so important to have a daily huddle with your team, 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 have 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 it like, you know, how is that client doing? How is this project on schedule? But when 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 interruption throughout the day. Now, the final two areas I wanted to cover here is, 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 got to 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 these 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 without listening 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 out 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 just been great. Now, final two questions for you. People out there that maybe wanna 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, you know, 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 and I personally will actually be in touch with you and I have a conversation with you. And 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? Well, I would say don’t wait any longer, jump in, because if I would have jumped in seven years ago, I’d have been in a whole different place today. I guarantee you would be, I’ll say that though, and I’m not prophetic, I’m saying you’re on pace, you’re on pace to have a business that’s gonna be about five times larger than what it was when I first met you. And 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. 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. Well, ladies and gentlemen, on today’s show, we’re interviewing an entrepreneur who is kind, who is diligent, who is the kind of person you’d want to hang out with. And I think if you’re out there today, we’d understand that money is just a magnifier. Money just makes you more of who you are. And I hear nothing but great things about today’s guest and long-time client. Myron, welcome on to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? Hey, thanks. I’m doing good. Hey, so real quick, let’s get into your background a little bit here. How did you first hear about us? How long ago was that when we first started coaching or working with you? So that was, it had to be about six, six and a half years ago. Steve Currington, one of you guys is a long-time client as well. He actually recommended me to you guys about six years ago and I went to one of your conferences and I was blown away by what I seen at the conference and I had to join. Now someone wants to verify you’re a real person and also it might turn into a couple deals for you. What’s your website so people can pull this up and verify you’re not a hologram? Yeah, check us out, whitegloveautotulsa.com. Whitegloveautotulsa.com. And with White Glove Auto, what are all the services that you guys provide at this point? So the services that we provide right now are services like paint protection film for your vehicle to protect its paint, ceramic coating for your paint. It’s another form of paint protection. We do window tinning, and then we do vinyl wraps. So you guys at White Glove Auto, I mean you guys do quite a few services. Also these mics I have right here, you guys auto wrap these microphones, is that accurate sir? Yeah, exactly, yeah. We printed out that wrap ourself and we wrap those. That’s awesome. So that’s again folks, that’s White Glove Auto. Now as far as growth, since we’ve had the opportunity to serve you, what kind of growth have you seen over these past six and a half years? So that’s the crazy thing. So our growth has been absolutely insane. I averaged it up over the last eight years I’ve been in business. We’ve averaged about a 52% growth year over year, and that is just insane. So you’ve grown, if you had to go back six and a half years from when we started with you to now, do you know what that total growth percentage would be? Is it like five times larger or 10 times larger? Oh man, I mean… 50% of a big number is… When I first started with you guys, I think I had just done $100,000 for the whole year. This year I’m probably going to do $2.1 million. Wow, so you guys are up 20 times. Yeah. Okay, now for anybody out there that hasn’t worked with a business consultant, I always tell people what we do is very analogous to what a personal trainer does for fitness. And I would also say that what you guys do at White Glove Auto is very similar to what a personal trainer does, but you do it for autos, for automobiles. So if you’re out there today and you want to auto wrap a vehicle, I guess you could get a manual about it. And I guess you could get all the equipment. And I guess that you could devote years, usually years, to learn the craft and master it and then invest in the physical building to auto wrap your own vehicles. Or you could go to an expert. Can you kind of explain what it’s like working with a business coaching program on a weekend, week out basis? Yeah, so like working with the business coaching program is phenomenal. It’s something that I’m very glad that I’ve done. Every week, meeting with you guys, for instance, is just nice to know updates on my SEO and how things are going. And anytime I have questions about things I might be stuck on and being able to have those questions answered has just been great. And with the meetings, I think one of the things I think is very important, whether you have a business or you have a business coach, you need to have certain core, repeatable, actionable processes that you go every week so you don’t drift. There are certain core, repeatable, actionable processes. Could you talk about maybe how those meetings have helped you to make sure that you’re not drifting and that your organization is continuing to knock out those core repeatable, actionable processes? Yeah, absolutely. So that’s one of the biggest things I learned from you guys’ meetings is doing checklists and processes and just making sure I’m doing the same thing every day. And when I go to my meetings, my coach is always following up with me, making sure I’m doing my action items. And if I’m not, he kind of gets a little upset with me. So it keeps me on track. But yeah, learning those processes has definitely been a huge help for us as well. Can you maybe peel back the onion and maybe share a couple core repeatable actionable processes that you have to do every week that might seem kind of mind numbing, but that actually produce results? Yeah, so I mean, this is something I do every week. I do actually every day and that’s finances. Going over my numbers and seeing my exact expenses and how much money is coming in, how much money is going out. I do that every single day for about an hour, hour and a half a day and it’s mind-numbing but it’s something I got to do and that’s something I learned in Thrive as well, is making sure you’re in top of your numbers. And my understanding is you now are the owner of a Lamborghini. Is this an accurate thing? Did you just buy a Lamborghini and it delivers today. And what does it look like or what kind for people out there that don’t know what it is? Can you maybe describe it or tell me what kind of Lamborghini is it? Yeah, it’s a 2020 Lamborghini Huracan Evo. It’s actually like a purple color. So by a little passive phase, what the color is called. Yep, Huracan Evo. Evo, got it. I am not a car guy so I’m gonna just hack away here and see if I can find it. So this is kind of what it looks like but yours is purple. Yep, exactly. It’s purple. So it’s not a convertible either, it’s actually the coupe, but that is pretty much what it looks like. And has this been on your wish list for a long time? It has been, yeah. It’s been on a wish list for a very long time. I can’t believe I’ve actually been able to buy a $300,000 car, but here I am. Now let’s talk about this for people out there that are thinking about coming to a workshop. You know, I always tell people it’s $250 to come to a workshop or whatever price they want to pay. What can people expect if they come to a workshop? When you come to a workshop, I mean, even though it’s, you know, $250 or, you know, whatever you spend, you’re going to get a ton of value out of that. Whenever I go to a workshop that you guys have, I always learn something new every time I go. There’s a bunch of information, a bunch of questions that get answered that maybe I didn’t know I had. So anyway, it’s very, very helpful. And talk about website edits and graphic design and branding and print pieces. I think a lot of business owners, they have a consultant they hire and then the consultant they hire tells them, well, you need to go optimize your website, or you need to go launch ads, or you need to go look at your numbers. But they don’t actually sit down and help them with their numbers or help them with their website or help them. How has that helped you having a turnkey, one point of contact where every week when you meet with our coaching team, after that meeting, you’ve got a team that’s doing the photography, the videography, the web development, the search engine and helping you with those things behind the scenes? Oh, it’s a huge help. So, I mean, if you guys were just telling me, hey, do this, do that, do that, and not giving me any type of actual coaching on how to do those processes, I probably wouldn’t do it because it would be a little too difficult. Maybe it’s a little overwhelming. So it’s definitely nice to have a lot of help on the back end from you guys. Now, let’s talk about this idea. In business, there’s always a new idea. People like to bring up new ideas and obsess on new ideas and not execute the proven ideas. Can you maybe talk about that? Because I see a lot of wonderful entrepreneurs that reach out to us. They schedule a 13-point assessment. And I find out that for 10 consecutive years, they’ve been hopping to the idea of the month, the idea of the week, the idea of the hour. And they’re always hopping from idea to idea, but they don’t actually get anything done. Can you maybe talk about how coaching kind of helps you stay on track with what works? Yeah, I think really the biggest thing is just having that coach there that’s behind you and every week, like I said, whenever you’re meeting with that coach, you know, they’re just making sure that you’re staying on track. Again, you know, having somebody who’s there and you knowing that they could get upset with you because you’re not staying on track and doing your action items is a huge help. You know, if I didn’t have that person behind me kind of helping push me, I don’t think some of this stuff would be getting done. Now, you know, we charge $1,700 a month as of the time of the recording of today’s show. $1,700 a month, we operate at a 20% margin for what we do. And we’re very clear about that. It’s $1,700 a month, it’s month to month, and it’s 20% margin. With your business model, you guys do auto wraps. And if somebody out there is looking to auto wrap, let’s say a truck or a car or a vehicle. What kind of a… Has Andrew been able to help you be intentional about making sure that you’re not doing auto wraps where you lose money? Because I know a lot of people in your industry that I’ve met at conferences that do beautiful wraps but they found a way to lose money on every transaction. Has Andrew kind of helped on that aspect to make sure that you’re profitable? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s the thing is, you know, there’s a lot of people out there, a lot of people do wraps, like you said, that are just afraid to charge what they want to charge. And one of the things that’s helped me, like from Andrew, is just helping me not be afraid to charge what I need to in order to be a profitable business. And I actually get a lot of hate, a lot of shade thrown my way for charging higher prices, but it’s what I got to do to run a profitable shop. Now, this is probably an awkward time to place that order, so I’ll put it on the agenda that we share. I need to get six more SM58 mics, you know, the ones with the red, white, and blue? Yeah. Where it’s the red, white, and blue SM58 Shure mic that we have, and it’s just the three colors. I think the mic itself is blue, and then I think the handle is maybe red, or something like that. Yeah. I sincerely, I wanted to order, I need to get six more of those from you. So for me and for anybody out there that wants to order stuff like that from you, what’s the best way to do that? So if anybody wants to do any type of ordering like that, they can just give us a call at our office number, which is 918-806-2780. And we’re happy to help you. I mean, of course, our biggest thing is automotive. We can do automotive anytime, but we like doing little things like the mics or going out to actual properties and doing some jobs on site. We like doing a little bit of everything. So, you have to give us a call. I’m going to pull this up so people can see what I’m talking about here. So, this is the mic here. This is an SM58 mic. It’s the mic made by the Shure company. And this is the mic here. It’s blue on top. It’s got the white and the red handle there. That’s the SM58 mic. And you guys auto-wrap this. I’m going to put that on your agenda with Andrew so you guys can talk about it. But you guys do auto-wraps, I mean you guys do mic-wraps. Anything else you wrap that’s a common request right now that people are asking you about there, sir? You know, a common thing here recently has been refrigerators. You know, people want to have their little man caves and, you know, put their cars in their garage and they want to have their refrigerator wrapped with like car logos or whatever it is. The refrigerators, yeah, it’s kind of a weird. Refrigerator wrapping. That’s awesome. And again, final question I have here for you. What would you say for anybody out there thinking about scheduling a free one-on-one consultation by going to thrivetimeshow.com, maybe they’re on the fence. We had a guy I talked to last week who’d been a listener for seven consecutive years. And he said, I don’t know what the deal was. I think I had a phobia of reaching out to you guys. But he reached out to us and in nine months his company’s grown 57%. So in nine months he’s grown his company by 57%. And on part two of today’s show I’m going to introduce our listeners to this man because he’s doing really well. What would you say to anybody out there that’s thinking about scheduling a consultation but they have yet to do so? Man, I say you’re making a mistake if you’re not reaching out ASAP. I mean, you’re just holding yourself back. Working with Thrive is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for my company. I’ve been with them for six and a half years now, and it’s something I really, really recommend everybody do. Well, brother, I appreciate your time. I know you’re a busy guy. Thanks for covering up time for us again, folks. That website is whiteglobeautotulsa.com. You can auto-wrap a refrigerator, you can auto-wrap a mic, you can auto-wrap a Lamborghini, which now Myron now owns. So if you want to buy a Lamborghini from Myron, maybe he’ll sell you his new Lamborghini at a reasonable markup. We’ll see, folks. So you can buy a Lamborghini from Myron, you can buy an auto wrap for the refrigerator, you can buy an auto wrap for the microphone, you can buy all of those wonderful things at whiteglobeautotulsa.com. Myron, thank you for carving out time for us. I really do appreciate you. No problem, man. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye. Well, Thrive Nation, on Part 1 of today’s show, we talked to a guy by the name of Myron Kirkpatrick. Now, Myron Kirkpatrick, as you just heard, is a guy that just bought his first Lamborghini. You might say, well, that’s awesome for him. Well, the thing about Myron is Myron heard that his buddy, Steve Currington, just bought a Lamborghini. So he had that curiosity, and he said, well, you’re a mortgage guy. How is it possible that you just bought a Lamborghini? Man, you must be doing a lot of mortgages. And Steve said, I am doing a lot of mortgages. In fact, a lot of them, a ton of mortgages. In fact, if you go to stevecurrington.com, I’m the mortgage guy. And Myron says, well, how are you doing a lot of mortgages? And he says, well, I’ve got a proven system. And see, I’ve been working with this guy, Clay Clark. And he says, you’ve been working with Clay Clark? And so next thing you know, Myron, as you just heard folks, he became a client six and a half years ago, and he just is having his Lamborghini delivered today, his brand new Lamborghini. His business has grown by 20 times. And all it was was a quick conversation that caused a complete change in his destination. So what am I saying? Today’s guest has been a long time client, and I believe that he has a solution for you that may just change your life. This is a man who has built a business and a system that has grown and scaled. He’s been a long time client. We have a lot of confidence in what he does. I have confidence in him as a person. I endorse him as a person. I endorse his company. I endorse what he stands for. He’s the founder of a company called Window Ninjas. Over the past three years, we’ve had the honor to work with him. His company has continued to grow and now he’s to a place in space where he’s offering franchising, which means he’s going to allow you to use his super proven recipe, if you want to, for a fee. So without any further ado, Gabe Salinas from Window Ninjas. Welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I am wonderful, Clay. Glad to be here. I got to ask you, when was that moment in your life when you thought, you know what, I think I’m going to open up my own business. Do you remember where you were or when you were when you had that thought of, you know what, I’m, I’m, things are going well, or maybe things aren’t going well, but you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to make a change. I’m going to make it, I’m going to make a, of the first step, maybe make the first call, maybe start my own company or what was, what did that aha moment happen for you? Um, early on in my life, Clay, I’ve, I’ve always been an entrepreneur and I’ve always been interested in business. So as a youngster growing up, I was always hustling. I was always going out and knocking on doors so I could cut somebody’s grass and earn some money and doing all those little things, washing cars, you know, as you do as a kid. But I was always interested in entrepreneurship, being my own boss, opening my own business. And man, early on in my life, I just kind of continued to have that mentality. And I knew probably right around the age of 19, 20 that I was going to do my own thing. It’s really when I was committed fully to really focus on my business. So when did you start windowninjas.com? When was that moment where you started windowninjas.com? We started Window Ninjas three, almost three and a half years ago, going on our fourth year. Actually, two, three, what year is this? Yeah, at any rate. And I had actually opened up a franchise early on in my youth and had ran with that for quite a number of years. And it allowed me to be able to see what a poorly run franchise system was like. And over a 10-year span of dealing with that specific franchise system, I gained a lot of knowledge, good things to do, bad things not to do, and it just kind of turned my mental state into I was going to get out of this bad franchise system at some point and then turn myself into my own entity and then build a good franchise system. So I was kind of driven to things in a little bit different manner than most. And you have how many locations now of windowninjas.com? We currently operate in 12 different cities throughout four states. And for just some context so people out there know with Myron he was talking about he’s you know we’ve worked with Myron for almost seven years at this point. When did you and I first connect? How long ago was that? Right around three, three and a half years ago. Right when we opened up Window Ninjas probably I guess well no forgive me Clay I’m getting old but um so if I go back in time me and you’ve been together since right around three and a half years and then coming up on almost four now, now that I think about it, I think we started in August. Yeah. And then we’ve actually had Window Ninjas for three years prior, two to three years prior to that. So I actually, yeah, five to six years we’ve had Window Ninjas. And you guys have grown over the past, I mean, on the tracking sheet over the past three and a half years that we’ve been with you, I think you guys have doubled the business. And now you guys, I mean, is that accurate? I mean, you’ve doubled, I mean, your business is rocking. Absolutely. There’s gotta be somebody listening right now and you’re like, man, I kinda wanna own my own business and I don’t know the first thing about owning one or where I would even start. Kind of guide people through, what does that first step look like if somebody wants to learn about opening a Window Ninjas franchise? Well, the first step’s pretty easy. If you just go to my website at windowninjas.com and click on the little franchise page link. It’ll show you some information there. You can simply fill out a form at the request service page as well. But just send me an email, put your information in there. Let me know that you’re interested in franchising out, and I will get that email and then we will start the conversation. I’ll pull up my phone call, set up an introductory meeting and go over the things of what it takes to be a Window Ninjas franchise owner. And I’ll get to know a little bit about them as well. Now this isn’t a backhanded compliment, I’m just trying to give people some context. This is a client I’ve worked with for a long time, the Colas, we’ve worked with them since 2017, we’re now in 2013. Their business has grown quite a bit and if you wanted to open up a Colas fitness location, what you’d have to do is, you know, spend a million dollars to open up a huge building and to buy all that equipment and then you’d have to train all those people. And that’s what it looks like to own a Cola Fitness. I mean, you have to get a big building, a lot of equipment, train a big staff. And that’s what it looks like to open up a Cola Fitness company. If you scroll up here, this is all from my newest book. You go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire and you can download this book. It’s thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire. And this is a millionaire’s guide, how to become sustainably rich. You can download it for free at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire. Now you look at that and you go, wow, the co-laws are successful, but I don’t have that first million dollars sitting around. Well, Napoleon Hill, the bestselling author says here, drifting without aim or purpose is the first cause of failure. So if you know you’re not gonna have a million dollars sitting around to buy your own fitness company, what I would recommend you do is get realistic and set some smart goals and say, how can I go about opening my own business now? Like, what is the most realistic path for you? And I think for a lot of people, a great place to start is to open up a franchise, open up a proven system that’s been shown to work time and time again. So how much money are we talking about? If someone wants to open, if someone says, I don’t have a million dollars to open up a co-law, but I do want to open a business, how much does it cost to open up a Window Ninjas? It’s not as much as a million dollars, Clay. We’re a little bit more reasonable than that. I’m not saying that Koval is not reasonable. Sure. However, with us, you got a $50,000 franchise fee and then you’re purchasing your truck, your equipment packages, things of that nature. New vehicles today are running about 50 K. So all in to open up a window and pressure cleaning company with us here at Window Ninjas, you’re looking right around the $150,000 mark, give or take about 25K on either side, depending on what type of package that the individual wants to purchase. So this is a thing where, you know, this is a business that it isn’t a million dollars to get started. Now, if somebody gets started with you guys, the first step is to schedule a consultation. And that consultation is just to find out if you’re a good fit, to ask any questions, to see if it’s a good timing, good fit, but I wanna go over kind of the most commonly asked questions, so I’ve got five rapid fire questions for you. One, does anyone have to have any experience in the window cleaning business or the window cleaning, the gutter cleaning, the pressure washing, the chimney sweeping or the dryer vent cleaning business before they need to get started with you? Absolutely not. Okay. Second is, does somebody have to already have a vehicle? Does somebody already have to have a warehouse? Does somebody have to have a big business acumen before they get started with you? If they had a vehicle, we would prefer it to be a white truck because that is what we utilize. GMC is the brand that we use as well. So if they had that, that would be a step in the right direction. And as far as business acumen, absolutely not. I mean, if they are typically what we find, Clay, is that people that may not have had their own business are typically inclined to have their own business are already in that business mind set. They want to work for themselves. They want more time, freedom and financial freedom. And they know the best way to do it is to start a business or open up a business that has already been franchised out. Now, one of the mind numbing things involved in owning a company is discovering that you always have to answer the phone. And Window Ninjas or Oxifresh, these are two franchises that I’m involved with. I’m just trying to give people some context. I believe in this model. This is kind of how I try to do it. But if you buy a tip-top canine franchise, obviously you have to love dogs. If you open up an Oxifresh franchise, there’s 507, I think, locations open as of right now. So you have to find a territory that’s open. If you go to a Window Ninjas, it’s a growing brand and so there’s much more availability. But with all three of the brands, the phone does not ring to the local owner. So when the phone rings, a scheduling center or a call center answers the phone. Kind of explain to our listeners how that works. It’s pretty simple and it’s a very, it’s a huge benefit for the companies like ours that actually have a call center that takes all of the phone calls and does all the scheduling. It’s pretty much that we set up a local phone number for the specific location. That phone number rings into our call center and one of our one of the many 10 to 12 agents that we have will pick that phone call up and facilitate the needs of that specific client. I mean it’s really huge. Clay, for example, I was talking to somebody yesterday in Utah and they had they were they were asking me about my call center and they were actually asking me about you as well. We had a good conversation about franchising. But they also were amazed that we had this call center. These are guys that do like auto detailing, boat detailing and they even detail planes and they got these mobile detailing service and they actually have a shop too. And I told them about my call center and they were like, wow, that’s huge. We never thought of that. And I said, yeah. I said, how would you like to be waxing the Lamborghini or putting a nice fresh coat of wax on the airplane and then have to answer a phone call and then you forget where you’re at on the airplane and then you’re taking and facilitating the need of the client over here and trying to schedule it and you’re just you’re kind of multitasking. benefit. I said, absolutely. It’s a benefit to the client and it’s also a benefit to the franchisee. We take that step out of their hands and it allows us or it allows them to be able to do the great things with the individual customers that they’re working with day to day. And I think that is just absolutely a home run and a lot of details to go behind your excellent call centers. You guys have call recording in place. You have proven call scripts in place. You have ongoing call training and mentorship for your representatives to work for you. You have a turnkey hiring system so you always have a great call center team that you’re always coaching and mentoring up. There’s so much value there. The next is the proven turnkey advertisement. I think a lot of people get stressed out about buying a business because they think how I possibly generate leads? And I know I have a kind of a confirmation bias because we’ve worked with you to help you build those systems. I know your systems work well but maybe explain to people a little bit of a detail of the turnkey marketing system that you provide to franchisees. Well, with your help, Clay, we’ve been able to really detail, really dive into the nitty-gritty with our marketing plan. We always run AdWords. We manage those AdWords campaigns for each one of our locations. And then just the production of content, whether it’s the content that we’re putting on YouTube or blog articles that we’re writing or just other content articles that we’re writing. We produce a lot of content every single day that is relevant to the industries that we we service and within that content we are optimizing that content so that it ranks high on Google and we typically become the first item when somebody’s searching for one of our services we’re popping up there. Most of the time you’ll find that it’s an article that we’ve written or a blog post that we’ve written about something that the consumer actually has questions about concerning our specific services that we offer. Now, one more thing, and I want to kind of wrap it up with this. You guys really look at the numbers, too. A lot of people worry about owning a business because they say, I don’t know what I would do with my accounting. I don’t know about the legal. I don’t know about the numbers. There’s kind of a phobia around the numbers and the finances of a company. You guys have really thought through the numbers, and when someone schedules a consultation, you’ll go over those numbers with people in your open book and it really helps people to have that confidence. But can you maybe talk about the numbers and just knowing the margins and knowing the pricing and knowing what you’re gonna charge for things. So I think that’s a big benefit that you offer as well. Oh yeah, I mean, you definitely gotta charge the right amount in order to make the right amount, right? We’ve taken all of that and just dialed it down. We’re looking at numbers on a day-to-day basis to make sure that we are charging the right amount, that we’re making the right amount of profit that we intend to have. We’re making sure that the numbers add up so that the employees get paid properly. You know, if there’s any deductions or maybe there’s a coupon or a giveaway that a consumer is going to give, we got to make sure those numbers are right. But there’s a lot of stuff that goes into looking at the numbers on a day-to-day basis, making sure that our vendors are getting paid and things of that nature. But we really dialed all of that in and that’s part of the benefit of being in our franchise system is that we teach everyone of our franchises the nuts and bolts of the accounting as well. So it’s more than just cleaning a piece of glass or pressure washing a house, but it’s actually running the business and having the business serve you. So if I’m listening right now I want to get a hold of you guys again, Gabe, a lot of our listeners are driving while they listen to the show. What’s the first step people need to take today, sir? First step would be visit our website. Go to windowninjas.com. That’s ninjas with an S. And just browse our website. Go to the franchise link on there. Fill out that form. You can find a form on pretty much any of our pages. But take that first step. Just send me an email. Give us a call. Whichever one you want to do, we’re always happy to facilitate the needs of somebody that’s interested in working with our team over here at Window Ninjas. Hey, brother, thank you so much for carving out time. And again, that’s windowninjas.com. That’s Gabe Salinas with windowninjas.com. Gabe, have a great rest of your day. We’ll talk to you soon. Thanks, Clay. Have a great one. Keep sharp. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now. Okay. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex. They’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has. By being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews, and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pessimon company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay. So 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to, first of all, 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. Uh, that script has been refined time and time again. Uh, it wasn’t a one and done deal. We, it was a system that we, that we followed with Thrive and in the refining process, and that has obviously, um, the 411% shows that that, 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, 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, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut. The last three years our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year. But we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s going to take in order to really succeed. So, we just want to give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatrician. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients 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 proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you are looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with like Lee Crocker, or Head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours on the day-to-day. He does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. 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. I’ve seen guys from start-ups go from start-up to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, 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 and that’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. 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 and 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 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 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. Here you go. 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 fourteen 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 Thrivetime Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. 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. 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. 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. 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 going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey with Tip Top K9 and I’m the founder. I’m Rachel Wimpey and I am a co-founder. So we’ve been running Tip Top for about the last 14 years franchising for the last three four years. So someone that’d be a good fit for Tip Top loves dogs, they’re high-energy, they want to be able to own their own job but they don’t want to worry about you know that high failure rate. They want to do that like bowling with bumper lanes. So you give us a call, reach out to us, we’ll call you, and then we’ll send you an FDD, look over that, read it, fall asleep to it, it’s very boring, and then we’ll book a discovery day, and you come and you can spend a day or two with us, make sure that you actually like it, make sure your canine dogs do something that you want to do. So an FDD is a franchise disclosure document. It’s a federally regulated document that goes into all the nitty gritty details of what the franchise agreement entails. So who would be a good fit to buy a SITCHOK K9 would be somebody who loves dogs, who wants to work with dogs all day as their profession. You’ll make a lot of money, you’ll have a lot of fun, it’s very rewarding. And who would not be a good fit is a cat person. So the upfront cost for Tip Top is $43,000. And a lot of people say they’re generating doctor money, but on our disclosure, the numbers are anywhere from over a million dollars a year in dog training with our Oklahoma City location did last year to 25 35 grand a month to train and Train by us for tip-off canine to run your own tip-off canine. You would be with us for six weeks here in Tulsa, Oklahoma We’ve been married for seven years eight years So you’re watching this video you’re like, hey that one sounds super amazing, go to our website tiptopcanine.com, click on the yellow franchising tab, fill out the form and Rachel and I will give you a call. Our Oklahoma City location last year, they did over a million dollars, he’s been running that shop for three years before he was a youth pastor with zero sales experience, zero dog training experience before he ever met with us. So just call us, come spend a day with us, spend a couple days with us, make sure you like training dogs and own your own business. Well, the biggest reason to buy a Tip Top K9 is so you own your own job and you own your own future and you don’t hate your life. You get an enjoyable job that brings a lot of income but is really rewarding. My name is Seth Flint and I had originally heard about Tip Top K9 through my old pastors who I worked for, they trained their great Pyrenees with Ryan and Tip Top K9. They did a phenomenal job and became really good friends with Ryan and Rachel. I was working at a local church and it was a great experience. I ended up leaving there and working with Ryan and Tip Top K9. The biggest thing that I really, really enjoy about being self-employed is that I can create my own schedule. I have the ability to spend more time with my family, my wife and my daughter. So my very favorite thing about training dogs with Tip Top K9 is that I get to work with the people. Obviously, I love working with dogs, but it’s just so rewarding to be able to train a dog that had serious issues whether it’s behavioral or you know whatever and seeing a transformation taking that dog home and mom and dad are literally in tears because of how happy they are with the training. If somebody is interested, I’d say don’t hesitate. Make sure you like dogs. Make sure that you enjoy working with people because we’re not just dog trainers. We are customer service people that help dogs. And so definitely, definitely don’t hesitate. Just Ask all the questions you have.