Business Podcasts | How to Overcome the Consistent Adversity That Comes w/ Being An Entrepreneur + The Window Ninjas 2X Super Success Story “We’ve Doubled Since Working w/ Clay Clark.” – Gabe Salinas

Audio Transcription

When I think of adversity, I think of tolerance of rain. I think of dark clouds. I think of things that you don’t have any control over, and yet they’re coming at you. And you have to make a decision, what do I do? Do I just stand here, or do I move? You know, growing up in the Mississippi Delta, as I did, during the era of legal segregation, it was a time that adversity was surrounding one’s life. It was like torrents of rain that had been coming for generations. And sometimes it seems as if it would never stop. But somewhere along the way, you ask yourself the question, How do I get out of this rain? What do I do? What can I do to make a difference and bring some sunshine into my life? Into every life, as the song says, some rain must fall. And rain is what people run away from to get out of, but it is also the rain that waters and nurtures those incredible ideas that live within us. I think that adversity is challenging, no question about it, but it also becomes a great teacher as well. Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show. Three, two, one, boom! All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to another special exclusive podcast edition of the Thrive Time Show. Now, Eric Chup, people are just beginning to discover I’m getting worried because people are starting to discover in droves that if they know that they can email us to Info at thrive time show comm we’ll actually answer it right here on the podcast Edition of the thrive time show because when we do a radio show we only have you know a two-hour format that we have to Kind of stick with it, but on the podcast we check we have an infinite amount of time. We can stay here for 37 hours in a row if we wanted to. Or until I need to go have breakfast with my kids. Okay, that’ll be here in a little while. So we have about 15 minutes to do whatever we want to do. So here is the… Which is to be in a podcast. We can do it. We have as much time as we want for the next 14 minutes. Okay, so here is the question from a Thriver. It’s, how to deal with stress and how do you overcome adversity? All right, so let’s go ahead and, Chip, I’m going to break it down. All right, let’s do it. As I break down the steps, if you could put them on the show notes, I want to make sure… Then we’ll kind of break them down together here. I’ll do it. Step number one, write down the worst case scenario. Whatever you’re stressed out about, I don’t know what it is. Maybe you’re worried about getting the wrong house. Hypothetically, maybe you have to buy a house in like five days because if you don’t you can’t possibly close before your wedding. Oh I mean that could be a situation. I know that’s not a situation that anybody on the other side of that camera or the microphone could be relating to. Perhaps you are really really worried about a relationship issue. You know perhaps you’re worried about your business. Bankruptcy. Perhaps you’re worried about your mother-in-law visiting. Perhaps you’re worried about anything. So step one, though, you write down the worst case scenario. Whatever it is that you fear the most, just go ahead and write it down. Then step two. I mean this. This is my second step. Embrace that the worst possible thing is going to happen. Just say to yourself, this really, really terrible thing, I’m not going to find a house in the next five days. And then just say, I need to buy a house because I’m going to get married, hypothetically, in 30 days or so. And the house I was supposed to buy, it didn’t actually come through because of some weird… there’s always weirdness on real estate deals. Yeah, there’s like some appraisal things maybe where things could happen. If anybody’s ever bought a house, inspections don’t pass, whatever. So you’re saying to yourself, I want it to happen. I want it to happen. But let’s just go ahead. Step one, write down the worst case scenario. What happens if you can’t close? Two, step number two, embrace that it is going to not happen. Embrace that the worst thing is gonna that you’re not gonna get the house embrace that you’re not Going to get the house. You’re not gonna get the job. You’re not gonna get the deal You’re not gonna get the the whatever it is that you want step three Believe and embrace that God has a plan and If you do your best forget the rest. I mean you just do, I’m not talking about kind of your best or close to your best or I did my best and you didn’t do your best. I’m talking about you do everything possible in the natural and then let God do what he wants to do in the supernatural. But don’t get that mixed up. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t work and you did your best, but don’t put a half-ass amount of effort into something and then hope that God is going to help you because there’s all sorts of scripture we’ll put on them on the show notes but Proverbs 10 for says you know that God blesses the diligent I see a lot of negligent people who are wanting blessings you have to do your best but then you just forget the rest you say you know what so if it doesn’t happen so as an example of a and I want you up to break these down but this is just an example from my life I remember I wanted to get into the Dallas Bridal Show. It was called the, I think it was called Dallas Bridal Show dot com. I wanted to get into that show, and I wanted to get into the Tulsa Wedding Show. You did, that’s right, you did. Specifically that Tulsa Wedding Show was my first one I wanted. I wanted it so bad, I could smell the victory. Because if you go to the Bridal Show, all the brides, not all the brides, but two-thirds of the brides who are getting married will typically go to a Bridal Show to find their DJ, their photographer, their limo, their catering, all that stuff. It’s a wild scene. And so you show up at a hotel and it’s lined with booths and booths. It’s a big trade show. Each booth is 10 by 10. There’s all sorts of pipe and drape and skirting and all that. And I just, I attended it before wanting to get in it, but I was told I couldn’t get in it because they had another DJ. And you couldn’t get in because there’s already like five disc jockeys. There’s already five photographers. So, Chup, you had a maximum amount of vendors per category. That was the rule. You had a maximum number of vendors. You had like five per category. That’s all you’re allowed to have. You couldn’t have ten. And so, I remember talking to the person who put on the show, the advertiser, and I said, I want to buy a booth. And Chup, she says, you can’t buy a booth. We’ll get back with you. And I kept here, we’re going to get back with you. You know what that means. We’re going to try it, we’ll see, but you know, Clay, we can’t have more than five of a particular category. We just can’t do it. We just can’t do it. We can’t do it. We can’t. We have nothing you can do. We’d like to do it. I said, we’ll call you back. We’d love to do it. And I’m not bitter about it, but I do remember. So I remember saying, okay, so I can’t get in. What do I need to do? I mean, how could I possibly get in? She said, well, you call the other DJs and they’ll let you in. So, like a blind, naive idiot, I did call the competitors. Numb and dumb, right? And they were like, well, it’s not really up to our control. But it’s passive aggressiveness. The point is, they were blocking me out of the show. Because I was a up-and-coming DJ who, at the age of 20, was the Entrepreneur of the Year for the city of Tulsa. And these 40-year-old guys are losing market share. So I thought, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to talk to my buddy, Lori Montag. I got a plan. So I go talk to Lori Montag. And she owns a company called Montag Photography and she had a prominent booth at the show. And I made a plan. I typed it up on an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper. It was probably, you know, a 10-step plan, something like that, knowing myself and what I would have done back in the day. It would have been very detailed. And I said, hey, here’s the deal. I’m going to rent out the Renaissance Hotel. I’m going to rent out the Renaissance Hotel and I’m going to have my own wedding show there. She said, well, what vendors are going to be there? And I said, you, me, us, them, we’re all going to have a show. And she says, how are we going to pay for the show? I said, well it’s about, you know, 600 bucks to rent a booth at the other show. She says, no, no, it’s about 800 to rent a booth. I said, it’s like $725 plus all the fees, 800 to rent a booth at the other show. We’re going to do a show for the vendors that can’t get into that show. And we’re going to do that thing for $500 a piece.” She says, honey, that’s like $20,000. And Lori Montag just has a… She built the ZanyBands and the Slap Watch franchise. She sold $60 million of the ZanyBands and the Slap Watch. You should look that up. The Slap Watch was featured on The View with Barbara Walters and Barbara Wawa. And so she has been featured on that. She’s been featured on Ellen. I mean, she… But this is before that massive success. She had a very successful photography company at the time. And she said, are you all in? And I said, oh, I’m all in. I’m going to burn the boats, baby. I’ve got to do it. So she says, I’m in. So I used my Discover card. It pays to discover. And I paid a deposit at the Renaissance Hotel. So I went out, not just a small ballroom, I’m talking about the big kahuna. The big dug. I’m out like maybe 20 grand if I can’t fill it up. Then I cold called, I cold called the Meadowbrook Country Club. And I remember a lady who worked there, I think her name was Libby or something, Libby. I said, hey, here’s the deal. And by the way, if you’re listening, Libby, no hate, no hate, just reminding, just reminding. I’m not hateful, I’m not bitter, I just want you to know that I remember it. So I went to, how’s it going by the way, Libby? So I decided to go out there and I called her and said, hey, we’re doing a bridal show and I’d like to have you in it. It’s gonna be, well, it’s featuring, it’s gonna feature the Renaissance Hotel. It’s gonna feature Lori Montag and myself and other vendors. She says, we’re not interested. Okay, I called the Golf Club of Oklahoma. And I’m not bitter, I’m not bitter. I’m just, I’m just, I’m just, ever since I can remember, I can remember this. So I reached out and Kitty with the Golf Club of Oklahoma. Not Libby, this was Kitty. Kitty, she says, yeah, we’ll do it. How many other vendors are there? I said, well, it’s a startup show. We’ve got commitments from many people, including the Renaissance Hotel, and you meant like tiny people, not like multiple people. Yeah, tiny, small people. Many, many tiny people. And so she said, well, we’ll do it for trade-out. I mean, we don’t have the budget to do a startup show. I said, sure. Cold call another company. I remember all this. I cold called the Embassy Suites and Linda Wall. I’m not bitter. I just remember who was for and who was against. So Linda Wall, she’s from Minnesota. She said, Oh, well, how many other vendors are going to be there? And I said, Well, we’ll probably have, I mean, we’re having huge, the Grand Ballroom. Oh, really? Who all is going to be there? I said, Well, you have DJ Connection, you have Lori Montag Photography, you’ve got the Renaissance Hotel, I mean, you’ve got the Golf Club, Oklahoma I mean, it’s just too many for me to remember. She says I’m in oh Don’t you know yes, Lori? We sold a real booth and I kept selling selling selling and I kept making the minimum payments as we got closer to the show Then I had to buy $18,000 of ads on Channel 8 oh boy, and I bought $18,000 of ads to promote the wedding show. So I’m buying my ads, Laura, no, Lauren, Lauren was my advertisement rep, and she sold the ads to me, and then I was on that show in the morning, just promoting that thing, hyping it up, telling people how big it’s gonna be, buying ads, cranking it up, cranking up the ads, just incurred selling boost, and I’m on the phone, just dialing, just boom, boom, boom, boom, and I’m not exaggerating, I would probably make 150 calls a day myself, just calling all the vendors If they ever put me to voicemail I hit zero and go I’m sorry. I guess I got missed missed transferred misconnected I waiting on hold just closing deals So it’s like two weeks before the show we got Galaxy Limo. We got Embassy suites. We got Renaissance in there We’ve got the Gulf Club Oklahoma got Montag photography We got everybody in there, and I cleared a profit of about five to six grand on the first show. Nice! But, let me tell you what DJs were not allowed into the Brattle Show. Those guys. Infinity couldn’t get a booth. No, no, Zack couldn’t get a booth. No, no, he couldn’t get a booth. Powerhouse couldn’t get a booth. The Wave couldn’t get a booth. Say wave bye-bye. And, you know, which really would, where would you rather have a Brattle Show at? Would you rather have it at the old school Double Tree Hotel, or would you rather be at the brand new Renaissance Hotel. And so not only did we put a dent in the other guys, we took a big large bite. And so, but the entire time I wrote down the worst case scenario, I’m going to have to pay massive interest on my credit card. I didn’t set it up where I would go homeless. I would just have to have massive interest payments on a card that would probably take me a year or two to pay off. Second, I embraced it. It’s going to happen. I’m not going to sell it out. I’ve already decided mentally, I’ve dealt with it. I’ve dealt with the pain mentally of not having it happen. I’ve already said it’s not going to happen, so how would I feel? That’s not how my dad died. It wasn’t that dramatic for me because I actually experienced it mentally before. I just said, when my dad dies of ALS, how will that feel? I actually remember taking a significant portion of a day to mourn for my dad and think about what that would be like, and then I moved on. But you have to embrace the worst thing. Then third, you’ve got to believe and embrace that God has a plan and if you do your best, then you can forget the rest. Because if his plan is for it to happen, who can come against God’s plan? I mean, if God wants it to happen, who is strong enough to outwit God’s plan? If it’s not meant to happen, who can, if it is meant to happen, who can stop it? There are things in my life where people have said, it’s not going to happen. I just feel called to do it. And then it happens. So again, that is my philosophy. That’s my system. That’s how I would do it. And, Shep, I’d like to have you break down each one of these steps. So step one, write down the worst case scenario. How have you seen that play out with the clients that you coach as a business coach, where they have a horrible stressor, a big adversity, a big source of anxiety. How have you seen them embrace the worst case scenario? Well, what this does for you is it’s kind of a cathartic release, right? You’re actually putting it down on paper. You’re spending time thinking about what is the worst that could happen? Because a lot of times it’s just kind of a vague, ambiguous, negative, looming feeling, right? Oh, this is going to happen. Okay, well, let’s break it down to the details. Okay, so you don’t get the big job that you’re hoping to get. You don’t get the big job. Okay, then what? Well, then you’ll just have to bid some more and get some other jobs, right? Right. You’ll just have to make some more calls. So, when you actually break it down to that tiny last, what is going to happen there? What is going to happen? Write down that worst case scenario, and you think about it, you’re being more proactive, and that just helps your brain. And even for extreme cases of bankruptcy, as an example, think about this Thrive Nation. How many times did Walt Disney lose everything? None. Zero. How many times did Walt Disney, the great Walt Disney, how many times did he lose everything? Twice. What about Henry Ford? Five times. Henry Ford lost it all five times. Do you understand? Think about this. Think about this. Do you know when he started the company? The company did not turn a profit for nine years. Nine! Nine! Nine! Wait, is that you saying none? Nine! That means zero in general? Think about that. Think about that, though. How many of you could withstand not making a profit for nine years? Then here’s the deal. In order to become profitable, do you know what he had to do? What? He had to lay off 1,300 employees. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of families. It’s a lot of guilt. It’s a lot of feeling bad. What about Elon Musk? Tesla. That guy’s a genius, right? It took him 10 years to make Tesla profitable. What about ESPN, though? ESPN, do-do-do, do-do-do, ESPN, do-do-do, do-do-do, ESPN. I bet you that they made profit real fast. After 13 years? What about FedEx? Go back to Elon Musk for a minute. We’re talking about this. You know, what’s the worst case scenario? The guy has built a rocket company. Yes. You see the videos online. What’s the worst case scenario? The rocket blows up. We watched it happen, and he keeps going. But before he built that, he built PayPal. Right. And PayPal, guess what happened with PayPal? Didn’t work. They had an error in the code, and every time that you did a transaction, it caused them to lose money, and it was scaling. That’s a system you want to scale, isn’t it? It’s like, we’re screwed. I mean, so again, I’m just saying that there’s nobody who has avoided some kind of adversity. So if it’s something as serious as losing a loved one or a spouse or a house, then what you have to do is you have to, step one, write down the worst case scenario. Okay, so we’re going to be living at the Thrive office. We don’t get this house, we’re living at the Thrive office. Okay, okay. We’re going to do a month-to-month apartment at the Vintage on Yale. We’re going to pay a premium for one month to live in a place. All of our crap is going to stay in storage, and we’re just… And if you’re newly married, you don’t even need furniture! You just need a blanket! Because you as the man can serve as the bed. There you go. Step two, embrace the worst thing that is going to happen. You have to just say it’s going to happen. Now, third, now again, if you don’t believe in the same religious views that I do, that’s fine, but you have to believe and embrace that if it’s meant to be, it’s going to happen, but you have to do your best. I see so many people going, Dear Jesus, dear sweet baby Jesus. Why do you always pray to the baby Jesus? I don’t know. I just prefer to pray to a baby Jesus. Sweet baby Jesus, is there any way you can help me get a job? I want my podcast to be successful. I want my business to make a profit. I want to sell more mattresses. I want to have a better marriage. I want to get in better shape, please help me.” But you’ve got to do something. Yes. You’ve got to do something. You’ve got to do the very, very best. And if you missed the Michael Levine podcast, holy crap, you need to listen to that, because he wages war on the idea of the 40 hour work week. If you want to be mediocre, go ahead and sign up for the 40 hour work week. But if you want to dominate and you want to create like the creator, you better be working six days a week, home skillet. You better be grinding, because if you’re not grinding, you’re going to lose. Don’t tell me that you did your best. Don’t tell yourself you did the best, because you’re going to have a cognitive dissonance in your head, because you’re going to know that you didn’t actually do your best, and that’s a freaking problem job that is a problem and one thing I see I love this quote do your best and get the Rest a lot of people I see have it backwards They’re having issue and they just want they get paralyzed by the paralysis by analysis, right? They just sit there and they rest and hope for the best But like clay just said you have to take action and one action step you can take that I see a lot of people that are stressed out. They they’re not managing their time, right? They’re reactive to everything, and so everything seems like a burning fire. So the first thing, a couple little steps you can do, is get a calendar. Get on Google Calendar, just find some calendar that you can use, and time block out your time to actually sit down and do these things. Do the things that you need to do in your business and your life, those repetitive tasks, and if the thing you need to block out is to write down this worst case scenario and follow these steps, then do that. But you’ve got to take control of your time. If your time is just running around like crazy, you are going to feel like you’re on fire every day. So step four, break down your big goal into small action steps. The big, big thing, now that this is a big thing we have to do, the big thing I had to do is I had to cold call all of the vendors in Tulsa to get a yes or a no out of all of them. Right. So I had to, step one, I had to write a script. Step two, I had to block out time to call them. So the final step, step five, you want to block out time to do what matters. Block out time to do what matters. To quote Lee Cockrell, nothing gets done that’s not scheduled. Nothing gets done that’s not scheduled. Who’s Lee Cockrell? Lee Cockrell was the former executive vice president of Walt Disney World Resorts, a man who used to manage 40,000 plus employees. And he said, you gotta block out time to do what matters. You absolutely must block out time for what matters. You gotta put it into the calendar. So again, the question was how to deal with stress and how to overcome adversity. Step one, write down the worst case scenario. Step two, embrace that is going to happen. Embrace that the worst thing is going to happen. Don’t falsely believe it’s not going to happen and say to yourself, well it couldn’t possibly happen. The fact that you’re even scared about it’s probably because it could happen. Right? So embrace that it could happen and just embrace that it might happen. All right? Third, believe and embrace that God has a plan and if you do your best then you can forget the rest. And on a very specific practical level, break down that big old elephant you’re trying to eat into small… Are you advocating eating elephants? Yeah, so rip off its ear, rip off the trunk, rip off the… Whatever that is. Whatever that is. But you’ve got to eat… You’ve got to rip it off in a bite-sized chunk. Why are we talking about eating elephants? Why are we eating like a cow? I mean, you want to eat one bite at a time. You’re not going to eat the whole cow at one time, right? Unless you’re an anaconda. Right? Unless you’re an anaconda. If you’re an anaconda, I want to applaud you for getting onto this podcast. Two, it’s freaky crazy. True. Sending emails as an anaconda with no hands and fingers. That’s impressive. Just the visual idea of an anaconda makes me nauseous. So I am sorry for going there, Visually Thrivers. But again, break down your big goal into small action steps, unless you’re an anaconda. And then step five, block out time to do what matters. And without any further ado, I’m kinda done. Ah! Gage Salinas, welcome to The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I am wonderful, Clay. I’m glad to be here with you today. And just to give people a little context, how long have we worked with you in your business, sir? A little over three years, Clay. We’ve been together for a little bit of a journey now. And I think we’ve picked the best of times and the worst of times to work together. I mean, it’s like right at the peak of the geopolitical craziness, that’s when we started working with you. But you’ve continued to grow. What kind of growth have you seen over these past three years, just so the listeners know that you do have, in fact, a business that can navigate through difficult times? Well, we have over doubled our business here at Window Ninjas since working with you. I actually went back and looked through our numbers, and I looked at some of our goals that we had set in the original conversation that I had with your team. We had surpassed my original number that I wanted to hit with you guys. I was quite shocked at how, I won’t say easy, but systematic it was for us to be able to get to where we wanted to be. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re going to grow a successful company, if you’re going to build a very successful company, one thing you have to do is you have to be consistent. What we’re going to talk about today is we’re going to be joined here today with an entrepreneur who has grown dramatically. His company here, Window Ninjas, has grown. And I’ll let him tell you about how many locations he has. I’m going to let you tell you about the massive growth. But if you’re listening today and you have a business that’s not growing, I’m going to walk you through the things that you need to be almost like a 20 questions and 15 minutes. It’s kind of one of these things where we’re going to go rapid fire. I’m going to throw out the thing that has to be done every week, and he’s going to tell you why you have to do it. Again, this is the founder of Window Ninjas. He’s grown a very successful company. We’ve had the opportunity to work with him the past three years, and now he’s franchising windowninjas.com. So again, we’re going to walk you through the core repeatable tasks that you have to implement on a daily basis if you are going to have success as a business owner on the planet Earth. Without any further ado, Gabe Salinas, welcome on to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m doing well, Clay. Thanks for having me today. So Gabe, real quick, we’re going to go rapid fire today, sir. What is the website people need to know about Window Ninjas and the services we provide and the franchise opportunities that we’re providing as well. How did you first get started? Tell us a little back story before we get into the stuff you have to do to grow a super successful company because we know that 96% of businesses fail by default according to Inc. Magazine and your business isn’t just surviving, it’s thriving. Tell us your background. What were you doing before you were cleaning windows? I was going to high school. I started cleaning glass when I was about 17 years old as a summer job before I went off to college, and I wasn’t a very good student to start with. I mean, I was OK. I just didn’t I didn’t have the normal habits of being diligent and as diligent as I am now. So I went to school, dropped out after a half a semester, came back, got my old job and picked up the squeegee again and just made a career out of it. And at what point did you recognize it was time to start your own business? Well, that’s an interesting story, Clay, because I actually purchased a franchise cleaning windows and I spent 20 years doing that, 10 years too long. I learned a lot, and I learned a lot about the ineptitude of the franchise system and the fact that they didn’t truly have good systems because I was always continually having to reinvent the wheel. had to be consistent in doing all of the diligent work that it required to write down each and every one of those aspects of those systems. So let’s get into some of the things that people will have to do. If they buy a Window Ninjas franchise, I mean, you’re gonna train them. How long does the training take if somebody goes to windowninjas.com and they decide to buy a Window Ninjas franchise from you? We’d like to spend two solid weeks with them in the training period. You’re gonna get a good solid week of actually physical work doing the learning how to pressure wash and learning how to clean gutters and learning how to clean windows and and those three core businesses that we are in. And then you are going to learn, we teach our franchisees the power of looking over their numbers. We put them through a vigorous accounting training session. We then train them on marketing. We put them through a rigorous aspect of training and that aspect of things that they need to do. And then we also teach in sales. I think that’s one of the things that most people overlook as well. They think they’re a great salesman just because they can naturally talk well. But there’s a lot of things that have to go into with selling. You’ve got to be diligent about that. You’ve got to make your phone calls. You’ve got to do your pop-ins. You’ve got to see people. You’ve got to network. And you’ve got to go through and rinse and repeat and do it all again. And so after two weeks of that rigorous schedule with us, a franchisee is ready to rock and roll in their backyard. So let’s get into a few of the things they have to do on a daily basis. Now, this isn’t everything they have to do, but if somebody buys a window ninjas or if they’re a small business owner out there, they want to grow that thing. One is you have to deliver an excellent service and then you have to gather objective reviews from the customers that you just delivered the excellent service for. Again, you have to deliver excellent service for your customers, but then you also have to gather objective Google reviews from those happy customers. Why do you have to do that? Well, because Google helps you in your search rankings online if you are an active member on their platform, which means if you get Google reviews from happy customers, then other potential clients are going to see that and Google is actually going to rank you higher in the search rankings because if you have the most reviews and the most rated or the highest rated, then Google rewards you for that. So it’s very important that a franchisee or a business owner goes out and works really hard and diligent on getting an honest, objectionable Google review from each and every one of their clients. Next, you got to do a weekly group interview. Every single week, you got to interview a large group of people. You just have to. Every single week, every single week on Wednesday at 5.30, I interview job candidates. Why can’t you just say, okay, we have a great team, we’re done. Why do you have to interview people every single week if you want to be successful? Because no matter how great a team you have or you think you have, somebody is going to drop off, whether their production drops off, whether they just forget to show up one day. Maybe they get sick and pass away. I mean there’s all different kinds of things that can happen, Clay. And it’s important that you do a weekly group interview so that you can continually find good people that are wanting to be part of your system. In case somebody drops off, you may not need them today. However, if you have somebody that’s really interested in your business and really interested in working for you, and you give them a, hey, look, I can’t use you this week, but I may call you next week or the week after, they are willing to maybe take a job that doesn’t work for them well right now. But if you give them a call, they’ll come back in and say, hey, man, I’m ready to be a part of your team. So you’ve got to always be hiring people. You’ve always got to be looking for people. You’ve always got to be looking for talent. And the best way to do it is have a group, I mean, a weekly group interview to find potential people to work for you that are going to be great. It has to happen. Now, folks, the next thing you have to do, if you have a website out there and you have optimized your website as an event. If you’ve taken the time to build a Google canonically compliant website, if you’ve taken the time, invested the time to build a website that adheres to the Google search engine optimization guidelines, you still have to write hypertext markup language content. So someone says… What you have to do… Someone says… Can you repeat that? What you have to do is you have to add hypertext markup language or original content to your website every single week. At windowninjas.com, why do you add content to your website every single week as opposed to adding it once a year or whenever you discover you’re not on page one of Google anymore? It’s like you said, Clay. I mean, Google is always wanting to give their readers, people that are searching for any specific service or question to an answer to a question that they may have, they want the information, right? And the more information that’s out there, the more Google rewards you, especially if it’s on your own company website. So whatever the question is that your potential customer or a client of yours is searching for, why not give them the information online? The best way to do it is to make that content, put it up on your website every single week so that other potential readers, clients, and visitors can come to your site and see exactly what’s going on, and then they’re probably going to become a client of yours. Now, we’ve had the honor of serving you and working with you for now three years, and one of the things I love about working with you is you’re very organized and you stay updated on your tracking sheet. You keep that tracking sheet updated. I always tell people, you have to measure what you treasure, and so many business owners, they do not have a tracking sheet. And since we’ve been tracking with you, I believe since we’ve worked with you, I think you’ve doubled in size. Is that an accurate assessment? Absolutely. That is correct. And you track every week. I mean, you do this every week and you do this for all… How many locations do you have right now? Right now we have 12 locations and yes, Clay, I do it for every single location. So talk to us, talk to the listeners out there about the importance of tracking every week. Again, because a lot of people might track for a day or they might track for two days or skip a month. But I mean, why do you have to track every single week and keep that tracking sheet updated, sir? Well, one of the most important reasons is because you’ve got to be able to figure out where you were at a year ago, or maybe a week ago, or maybe a month ago, in comparison to where you’re at today. So if I’m looking over my accounting numbers and I see that last year, this past week, we did, I don’t know, $50,000 in a week for a specific location. Great, well, if we did that last year and my goal is to do 20% more this year, did we hit our numbers? Okay, were we able to bring in that amount of revenue? Right? Same thing goes with Google AdWords or Google Local Service ad accounts and things like that, ad roll impressions, all of those things matter. Where were you at yesterday and where are you at today? And so you have to track those things. Leads, you know, that’s another thing we track over here at Window Ninjas. How many leads, how many new customers came to our site this week and actually made a call to action and gave us a call or sent in a service request? Man, if we see that we had 30 come in and all of them were for Google, well, that’s cool, right? But we need to do a better job of getting referrals, and maybe we need to do a better job of getting our truck seen. Or if we have a good balance in another location where there’s maybe 15 new leads came in from Google, you know, somebody saw us on Google because of our reviews. And then another 15 came in because we had referrals. We had a lot of great, happy customers and they referred us out, man. Now we know, hey, we got a good balance. We need to keep doing more of that, right? So tracking all of these different things with y’all’s help, man, really opened up our eyes over here at Window Ninjas. And it allows us to be able to be more successful tomorrow than we were today. Now, the next thing I want our listeners to really grasp, again, is there’s a rhythm of consistency. You’re not going to stuff out every single week. This isn’t a one-time event. This isn’t a daily, should I do this? These are the processes that you have to implement on a daily and weekly basis to become successful. This can’t be a willy-nilly. You’ll try to do it. If you want to become super successful, you have to master implementing these repeatable systems over and over and over. I call it the core repeatable actionable processes, or the crap. So if you’re gonna buy a Window Ninjas franchise, they have all the systems laid out, but you have to master the crap, the core repeatable actionable processes. So next thing you have to do is, you’re really good about this, you gotta keep your ads on. You can’t turn your advertisements off, and you gotta keep those ads on. And the next thing is, you have to get the call recording set up. You have to record the calls. If somebody buys a Window Ninjas franchise and leads come in, you have a call center that books the appointments for them. But again, you can’t turn on call recording and then turn it off and then turn on your ads and turn them off. Why do you have to consistently keep the online advertisements going and the call recording going week after week? Well, if you don’t keep the ads going, then you’re not going to capture new clients who are searching actively on Google or Yelp or some other format, whatever their choice may be. Yelp could even be Bing, if that’s still around. But you’ve got to have those ads out there. People want to be able to see your ad and then maybe click that button and then give you a call. So tracking that, monitoring that every single week is super important. And then the other thing, like you were talking about with call recording, man, you don’t know how good your team’s doing unless you pull their calls and listen to them, analyze them, and if they’re great, hey, you got to share that with your team. You got to share that with Jimmy, who just got off the phone and hit all key factors. Or you got to be robbing the office and say, hey, buddy, we got to listen to this phone call because you obviously didn’t follow the script, and therefore, we didn’t close this deal. And so you can use it as a training tool in both ways, good or bad. And so that way you can get your team back on track so they can be super successful. And that’s super important, especially all of this stuff that you’re talking about, Clay, is just, it’s super important because it all comes back to consistency. And if you’re consistent, then you create mastery. And if you become a master of something, then man, you got the world by the hand. Bam. Oh, now the final couple of questions I have here for you. You got to have an all-staff meeting. You got to do it. Every week, you got to meet with your staff. And then every day, you have to have some kind of a daily huddle where your team resets every day. Why do you have to have a weekly staff meeting, and why do you have to have a daily huddle to keep your team on track? Well, the weekly staff meeting is important so that everybody is on the same page. You can celebrate the wins of the week. There’s always a lot of great things that go on through the week, and sometimes that gets overlooked. You might celebrate a little bit today, but at the end of the week when you come back and you regroup and you say, hey, wow, man, what all did you do? What was a great thing that you did this week, man? Everybody acknowledges it and celebrates it. And then you start going through in the weekly meetings it’s important to go over things that, hey, man, baby, we had some burning fires this week. Maybe somebody burnt the coffee and forgot to put the coffee pot, turn the coffee pot off, so it created a big fiasco, right? So you got to let them know, hey, you got to turn the coffee pot off after you’ve used all the coffee. Whatever the case may be, whatever that burning fire may be, it’s important that you discuss it with the team so that everybody knows, hey, we don’t do that or hey, there’s a problem over here, we all need to come together, we need to fix it so that it won’t have that same problem next week. And then a daily huddle is just a quick regroup to get everybody’s mind right. Once people leave your office at 5 or 6 o’clock at night and they go out into the world and do whatever it is they’re doing, they got to come back and they’re all a little groggy in the eyes and they’re getting the sleep out of their faces and stuff and they’re trying to wake up and you got to snap them back and you got to say, hey team it’s time that we we do XYZ and we be super successful so that Window Ninjas or whatever your company is can be super successful as well. Those two things are extremely important. They got to happen every week and they got to happen every day. Final two questions for you. If people want to learn more about a Window Ninjas franchise, if they want to learn more about buying a Window Ninjas franchise, what’s the best way to get a hold of you and how much money does it cost to buy a Window Ninjas franchise? Well for $49,500 you can purchase a Window Ninjas franchise. That’s our franchise fee currently. And it’s really easy to find us. Just go online, windowninjas.com. We have a franchise button up there. It makes it really super easy for you. You can click on that. You can find out a little bit more about us. And it’ll actually give you the phone numbers where you can reach out to one of our representatives over here and start the conversation about joining our team and being a super successful person within our system. Brother, thank you for carving out time. Again, folks, that’s Gabe Salinas with windowninjas.com. If you’re looking to create time freedom or financial freedom, I highly recommend that you check out windowninjas.com. It’s an incredible opportunity for you. And if you’re out there today and you have a business that’s stuck in a rut, we’d love to help you grow that business. We have in-person workshops every two months. I’ve been doing those since 2005, and you can request those tickets at Thrivetimeshow.com. That’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Gabe Salinas, have a great rest of your day, sir, and we’ll talk to you next week. Thanks, Clay. Take care. Talk to you next week. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma, and we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah, so what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now, okay? I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both $1.3 billion companies. They both have 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts, and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also, we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pessimon company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay. So 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85%, and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. That has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. Last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually 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 by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews, that way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists, that way everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast, like Jared had mentioned, that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten 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, and we didn’t know. Okay, the last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut, and if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action, and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So, we just wanna give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we at where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40% to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with the 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’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Industry 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. And 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 Crockwell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country 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 6-8 weeks he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every 6-8 weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from start-ups go from start-up to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system of 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. Amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember, we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See, it’s nice, right? So this is my old van, and our old school marketing, and this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd. We’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month And we still have time to go We’re just thankful for you thankful for thrive and your mentorship And we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us Just thank you. Thank you. Thank you times a thousand The thrive time show two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems, so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re gonna leave energized, motivated, but you’re also gonna leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this and because there wasn’t anything like this I would go to these motivational seminars no money down real estate Ponzi scheme get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything It was like you went there, and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it It was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge. And they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner, and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey with Tip Top K9, and I’m the founder. I’m Rachel Wimpey, and I am a co-founder. So we’ve been running Tip Top for about the last 14 years, franchising for the last 3-4 years. So someone that would be a good fit for Tip Top loves dogs, they’re high-energy, they want to be able to own their own job, but they don’t want to worry about you know that high failure rate. They want to do that like bowling with bumper lanes. So you give us a call, reach out to us, we’ll call you, and then we’ll send you an 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’ll spend a day or two with us, make sure that you actually like it, make sure that training dogs is 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 Tip Top 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 stay there generating doctor money, but on our disclosure, the numbers are anywhere from over a million dollars a year in dog training, what our Oklahoma City location did last year, to 25, 35 grand a month. To train and get trained by us for Tip Top K9 to run your own Tip Top K9 You would be with us for six weeks here in Tulsa, Oklahoma So we’ve been married for seven years eight years So if you’re watching this video you’re like, hey, maybe I want to be a dog trainer Hey, that one sounds super amazing Go to our website tiptopk9.com click on the yellow franchising tab fill out the form and Rachel I’ll 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 it’s 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 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 behavioral or you know whatever and seeing a transformation taking that dog home and mom and dad are literally in tears because of how happy they are with the training. If somebody is interested I’d say don’t hesitate make sure you like dogs make sure that you enjoy working with people because we’re not just dog trainers, we are customer service people that help dogs and so definitely definitely don’t hesitate just just come in and ask questions ask all the questions you have.