Business | Sharon Lechter (Co-Author of Rich Dad Poor Dad) Shares Why You Can’t Delegate Your Financials + Amy Baltimore, CPA Explains How Clay Clark Helped Her to Achieve Both Time & Financial Freedom w/ Her Business AmyBaltimoreCPA.com

All right, Thrive Nation. On today’s show, I’m going to introduce you to a wonderful CPA who we’ve had the opportunity to work with over these past few years, and I really do want you to hear her success story because she’s been a great client to work with, and she’s a great woman. Amy Baltimore, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you?

I’m good. Thank you. How are you?

Oh, I’m fired up to interview you today. So I want to ask you, having worked with you from 2017 to now, how’s your life different now? 2023 versus 2027?

Well, in 2017, I was not paying myself anything and I was having to borrow money to make ends meet. I had so many employees and just trying to cover payroll and get the work done and train all these employees because we were so unorganized and inefficient. Just looking back on it now, it was a miserable experience. And I just looked at year over year from last year, I am down last year, from this time last year, I’m down 12 employees because we have become more efficient and my net income is up. January/February of last year to this year it’s up $38,000. My take home pay is up $30,000, and our equity in the company’s at over 120,000.

Hey, man, that’s great.

I know. I know.

So Amy, I guess for anybody out there that’s thinking about hiring you, who’s a good fit for you there, ma’am?

So I want small businesses, partnerships, sole proprietors, S Corps, things like that. We’re kind of becoming more niched into the contractors area, home builders, subcontractors, flippers, roofers, things like that. We’re working with them about getting their finances under control, their daily work schedules under control and making sure that they have the money that’s coming out of the business to support their lifestyles.

And who do you think is a good fit for us? Somebody out there looking for business coaching, who do you think is a good fit?

Well, I think I was a good fit for one, but it’s a lot of work. You have to be able to put in the work and the time and listen to the coaches and listen to what they’re recommending and actually follow through and do it.

Amy, it’s been an honor us serving you over these past six years. I’m so glad you’re in a great spot and it’s just wonderful to hear that, and that’s why we do it. So people out there can prove that you’re not a hologram, what is your website people can go to if they’re looking for you?

It’s amybaltimorecpa.com.

Amybaltimorecpa.com. And how long have you been a CPA?

Oh, probably about 30 years, I guess by now.

Really?

Yeah.

What made you want to become a CPA?

You know, I grew up on a farm in Kansas, and so my dad had me helping him with his accounting work, and I just kind of moved on into that through college.

And where is Amybaltimorecpa.com located? Where? Where’s your business located?

We are in Covington, Tennessee, which is just about an hour north of Memphis.

And I know it’s been many years, but how did you first originally hear about us?

From another one of your clients, actually. Yeah.

Really.

Yeah.

And where were you needing the most help with at the time that you first met us there?

Oh, my business was just kind of out of control. We were growing faster than I could keep up. I couldn’t get employees, I couldn’t get them trained. We were unorganized. It was chaos.

And how long ago was that? Do you remember how long ago that was?

I want to say it was maybe 2017.

Okay. Yeah. And so you have grown and a lot of great things are happening, and you’re going to be taking your business into a completely new level, new direction here very soon. You’re offering some new services. Can you kind of talk about some of the growth that you’ve experienced since 2017 to now?

Okay. Yeah. So when I first came on, I was just your typical CPA. We were doing tons of tax returns and lot of work, low profit margins, lot of stress. And then we went through COVID and the IRS shut down and the chaos with that. And my clients kind of started struggling and I started realizing that there was more that I could be offering to help my clients and to help myself, actually. And I was working with Derek at the time. And so we started kind of reorganizing the business and I became more of a valuable asset to my clients and to myself, actually. And I started hiring better, more qualified people, and it is just all of a sudden, it started to come together and I was more organized and more efficient. And so things are going great right now.

And what are all the services that you provide at amybaltimorecpa.com?

So we’ve moved away from just the individual tax returns and the retail side of the practice and we are more into what we call CFOs for small businesses. And so the larger companies can hire a CFO and handle their finances and things, but we work with the smaller businesses that can’t really hire a CFO, but they can share one.

And are you working with clients in all 50 states, or are there certain states you’re focusing in on, or…

No, we work across the country. We have less clients now with larger profit margins, and so we don’t work as in as many states as we did with the tax returns, but we’ve got clients in Utah and Idaho and Florida and Georgia.

If people want to hire you or learn more about what you do, how do they get ahold of you? What does that process look like?

Well, so they can get on my website and see my phone number, and there’s also a little link there where they can contact me and we will give you a call back.

Okay.

And one of the parks with this new business model that we have now is they have more access to me. And so once they sign on, I have three different packages. If they sign on with the middle or the larger package, they get my direct phone number and I will pick up the phone when they call.

Got it. And so you’ve grown the business quite a bit. And if you could go back and go back to 2017 when we first met you, what kind of changes did we help you to implement or what kind of changes did you make in the business?

Well, we got more organized for one thing, and probably the biggest asset that we came upon was the morning huddle. My employees love the morning huddle. We get together, we talk about our burning fires, and we train. We find things that people have questions on, and we drop what we’re doing right there and we train on it. And so the clients, their employees, I mean, they’re more involved in the business, they’re more hands-on now, and they’ve started training each other, which is pretty awesome to see. It’s not all falling on me now.

Amen. Now, for people out there who are listening who are thinking about becoming clients of ours, I know we’ve helped you a lot with the websites. Can you talk to the listeners out there about maybe some of the work we’ve done with you on the website or marketing materials?

So when I first came on in 2017, I had created my own website through one of those canned programs where you just go on and change your name and boom, you have a website. So you guys helped make it a little more professional, more customized to what I was doing. And then over the last year, we’ve actually customized it even more. And then you’ve also helped me with the search engine optimization, which has been huge.

Are you getting more leads now or how many more leads are you getting now as far as leads that you used to be getting before we started working with you guys?

Oh, I used to not get any leads from my website. Now all my leads come through the website and we’re to the point now where we’re turning people down. They Google me and I’m at the top of the search, and so they call me and I have to turn them away. We’re [inaudible 00:09:33] out.

And our whole thing, much like yours, is we only work with 160 clients. And so it’s kind of a thing where I don’t want to waste anyone’s time who’s not a good fit, but I also want to help people that are a good fit. How would you describe how the business coaching has helped you since 2017 to grow your business?

Oh, it’s helped me hone in who exactly I want for clients and who’s a better fit for me. And so we’ve done our immutable laws where we can determine what kind of clients we want, and we were able to weed out the ones that just were not a good fit for us. And now, we have honed into the type of clients that we want to work with now. Our maximum that we’re going to take on now is 25, because we do a lot of work with the clients that we have, but we do, we want small business owners who are serious about making a successful business and not just the business, but their own lifestyle with their families and their own personal time. And then we also help with their financials, their investments and retirement planning, succession planning, things like that.

Two men, 13 multimillion dollar businesses, eight kids, one business coach radio show. It’s the Thrive Time Business Coach Radio Show. Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show.

Out of the way. (singing)

All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the conversation. It is the Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast download. Now Shep, as a business coach, you and I have both worked with a lot of top level high-flying entrepreneurs. We’ve also worked a lot of entrepreneurs that come to us slightly broken, they’re a little bit down and we’ve helped repair them and helped them get into a level of success.

Stitches and band-aids and things, yeah.

But one of the things people always want to talk about is marketing and branding and sales. But people never want to talk about accounting and bookkeeping. They want to talk about the holy [inaudible 00:11:58], marketing. Branding, sales, they love that.

Oh, man. So sexy.

Feelings and visions and-

New deal.

… new deals and growth and build-outs. But no one ever wants to talk about financials. They always want to delegate that. But yet, every, single successful entrepreneur I’ve ever met really has a fundamental grasp of the financial aspects of the business. And so on today’s show, we are interviewing a certified public accountant. Check. We’re interviewing a New York Times bestselling author. Check.

Check.

We’re interviewing the CEO of the Rich Dad Poor Dad organization. Check. We’re interviewing somebody who worked with Robert Kiyosaki to write the 14 books of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. Check. We’re talking about the lady who took his idea, which was on a piece of paper to make a board game, Robert Kiyosaki’s idea to make a board game and turned it into a book empire. Check. We’re talking about a lady who was asked by the national CPA Financial Literacy Commission to serve as their national spokesperson. Oh, by the way, this is the same council that served both President Bush and President Obama. Check. This is a lady who has a team of over 5,000 people who help her with her various entrepreneurial projects. 5,000. That’s a lot. Check.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a person here who’s written Napoleon Hill’s, or she helped re-craft Napoleon Hill’s book Outwitting the Devil. You see, Napoleon Hill wrote a book, the manuscript for Outwitting the Devil in the 1930s. But when the best self-help, the bestselling self-help author of all time went to release it, his wife told him not to because she thought it was too controversial. And so years later, Sharon Lechter revived the manuscript and helped to release Outwitting the Devil. Check. She also helped to write Think and Grow Rich for Women. Check. She also helped to release the Napoleon Hill Book Three Feet from Gold. Check.

Ladies and gentlemen, our next guest is bonafide. She’s an unbelievable author, a dynamic speaker, a top level entrepreneur, which indicates that she does not know who I am because if she did, Shep, she would not have agreed to be on today’s show. So ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, our exclusive interview is Sharon Lechter, and she’s teaching you why you just cannot delegate your financials.

Now, as far as the financials, look at the numbers. Sharon, very few entrepreneurs… I mean, we have a ton of people that attend our workshops. When they come to the workshops, and Dr. Z., you’ve seen this.

Oh yeah.

People want to talk about marketing. Oh, the vision, sales, and then they want to go back to talking about the vision, marketing and then sales. Then Sharon, sometimes they’ll go back to the vision and then back to sales, then back to marketing. And yet, but you have to know your numbers. And I’ve heard you talk at length about this, but I’d like for you to share with the listeners about why you can’t abdicate your financials and why you can delegate them to a certain extent, but why you as the owner of the company, have to be aware of what is going on financially. Can you coach us?

Certainly, and I can’t agree with you more. You do a webinar or a seminar on sales and you sell out. You do a webinar or a seminar on understanding your financials and it’s hard to get people in their seats-

God, I’m alone, here.

… because it doesn’t sound exciting.

Crickets.

But at the end of the day, your numbers tell a story and you’re creating that story. And so if your story isn’t going the way you want it to go, the sooner you know about it, the better. And so it’s very important for entrepreneurs. And sometimes you can’t be the one doing the numbers because you want to focus on growing your business, but you need to make sure you have the right people on your team. But you always need to know your numbers and you need to have a dashboard or something so that you are constantly on it.

As I sit at my desk right now speaking to you, I have my accountants outside working on some things for me. They know that I need to, at any given time, I know what kind of accounts I have, I know what kind of money I have just because of my years of experience. But as a CPA, that’s obviously important to me, but it’s more important to me as a CEO. If you own your company, if you don’t know what the numbers are telling you, then you can get a very rude surprise. And it’s very important for people to understand the importance of understanding the income statement, which is telling you over a period of time how you’re doing, and then also to understand your balance sheet, which tells you basically like a snapshot of a day and time, showing you what your assets and liabilities are and how those two play together are very important.

Sharon, it’s painful for me to see it and as a coach, and I write for Forbes and so I have a certain platform, but you have one of the biggest platforms in the world. So I’d like for you to maybe give the tough lesson to the entrepreneurs out there listening who are saying, “Yeah, I know accounting, I know I need to know my balance sheet and I know I need to know the income statement, but I don’t, because my accountant handles that.” Could you give us the tough love for somebody out there who is refusing to know their numbers? Because I’m sure you’ve met people like this before.

Well, they know the stat of the number of businesses fail in the first three years, and the primary reason they fail is lack of capital, lack of funding and lack of financial management. And what happens is those entrepreneurs that fall into that category, Clay, are the ones who put their head in the sand and they think that if they just drive faster and they make more sales, everything’s going to be okay. The issue is unless you understand the whole picture and you understand what your margins are, understand what the bottom line is, you can’t really grow your business and people that are losing a nickel on something say, “If I can just sell more of them, I’ll be okay.” No, you’re just going to lose that much more money. You have to understand the cashflow of your business. And more importantly, you need to understand the timing of your cashflow.

It’s not just understanding that you’re selling a lot, but you need to understand when that money’s coming in and when you have to spend money in order to make the product. So let’s say you sell a million dollars worth of product, well, you have to have that product in your inventory or you have to have the money to build it so that you can collect a million dollars. And so you probably need a lot of that cash upfront. And so what happens is business owners who don’t pay attention to that end up having to go to very expensive money, factoring those receivables to be able to pay for the inventory, and they get themselves further into debt, further into problems. And instead of feeling good about being successful, that success costs them their business because they have not paid attention to the numbers, to the cashflow and the timing of that cashflow.

Our show, we’re all about teaching listeners specific action steps they can take. And so I want to take a second to brag on a listener that’s actually doing this properly, but Aaron, who I mentioned earlier with Shaw Homes, one of the things that gives them an unfair advantage over their competition is that they know the costs of the materials. So when the cost of plywood went up drastically recently, Sharon, they know that. And so they were able to quote the clients accurately and they don’t get to the end of the… when you finish the home, you close on the home, the new buyer moves into the home, they don’t have to tell the buyer, “Oops, it’s going to cost more money,” and they don’t run out of cash.

So I’d like for you to put on a little mini seminar here about what we need to know about cashflow, because Shaw Homes knows cashflow, they know their expenses, that’s why they can quote people a price and honor it, but their competition, I mean, if you go online and read the Google reviews, there are so many reviews by customers complaining about the bait and switch move. And I don’t think the other builders are dishonest as much as they just don’t know their numbers. Can you talk to us about cashflow and just kind of cashflow 101? What do we all need to know?

Well, Aaron’s business is a perfect example of the timing of cashflow that I just mentioned, because you don’t build a house overnight. And so they have to have the financing to get that house done knowing that the payoff is in the future. And when that payoff comes in, hopefully it’s going to not only payoff their expenses, but give them the profit on top of it. And those expenses include all those materials you’re talking about, but even more so the labor of all the people on their team. And so just as in when I talk about cashflow, I want to take a minute about materials.

We talk about just-in-time ordering. So when they’re building that house, they have to have the plumbing in before they can pour the concrete over it. Those things have to come in. There’s a stage in which you have things done. You can’t have the roofers waiting to put the roof on when it’s not ready for them. And so each stage of process of building a home has to be timed appropriately so that you have the minimum cost of labor for the people and the technicians doing their job. And that has to be perfectly timed. And so that takes talent, that takes people who know what they’re doing, but it also underlying takes that expert individual understanding what every minute of that costs them. So when they have a delay or they have products, the lumber isn’t there, they have a week delay in lumber, they have to recalculate and find out what that’s going to cost them to make sure they’re always working to their budget to make sure they have the profit that they’re expecting at the end of the day.

We talk about remodels as the homeowner, all right? You always say it’s always going to take another several months past what they promise. It’s a guarantee and it’s going to cost you more than what you originally commit to because you’re going to have surprises, and that’s something that can be very painful. But that’s those unexpected things. Every business has unexpected things. The issue is the sooner you find out about them, the sooner you can plan and recover. And that’s all about cashflow.

cashflow comes with… from the moment you start your business, one of the things that can kill you is that you think you have sales and the sales are there, but it’s going to take you 60 to 90 days to collect on those sales. Well, you have to have the cash to be able to build the product, as I said earlier. Well, what happens when all of a sudden you’re hugely successful and you have a huge order that comes in and you don’t have the ability to respond to that order? Your business can crumble. And that’s why it’s so important to always have a pulse on your cashflow, not just your income and expenses, but also the cashflow, which is the timing of that. That’s why when Fortune 500 companies, they do an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cashflow statement so that you can see what’s happening within the business, because the assets could go up because they’ve got outdated inventory. You know that when you start looking at the cashflow statements.

Now, one of the things that you have created that was powerful for me as a young whipper snapper, Sharon, the year would be 1999, I believe. Because you wrote the book in ’95, is that correct? You and Robert came out with the book in ’95?

Well, we published it in April of ’97.

’97. Okay, so the year’s 1999. Dr. Zoellner can vouch for me here. I dressed like Eminem, I had no idea what I was doing. Sharon, I went on to build the largest wedding entertainment company in the country called djconnection.com, and we did 4,000 events per year at the peak before I sold it. But I’m there working in a call center and I’m reading this book, the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, and at some point you’re talking about this cashflow quadrant concept, and I’m not sure how refined it was at that point. It was probably 2001 when I really started paying attention to the book and really understanding it.

So it’s 2001, so I might have even read Cashflow Quadrant, but you talked about there’s this quadrant, and you said to me directly like it was yesterday, you said, “Clay, you start off as an employee. Step one.” I’m going, “That’s good, it’s good.” Step two, you become self-employed, you own your job. I’m going, “Yeah, that’s awesome.” Step three, you own a business where other people work at the business. It creates jobs for others and time freedom for you. And then step four, you become an investor.

And I realized I am an employee and I can’t afford to become self-employed yet I now must get three jobs. So I worked at Target, Applebee’s and DirecTV. My wife worked at Office Depot in Oral Roberts University. I turned off my air conditioning, Ms. Sharon. You caused me to turn off my air conditioning. It is your fault and your credit. So it’s very hot in Oklahoma in June and July, we had no air conditioning. It was hot and I’m reinvesting in myself, but I didn’t quit my day job until I could afford to become self-employed. Can you walk us through those four steps about being an employee and when it’s time to make the jump to become self-employed and what it looks like to become a business owner, just walk us through your cashflow quadrant?

Well, the cashflow quadrant, if you imagine just across the top left corner is E for employee. The bottom left is S for self-employed. And so that left side of the quadrant, that’s what school teaches us. That’s how we are taught and that’s exchanging your time for money as an employee or self-employed individual, or even a small business owner who really owns a job, not a business. The right side of the quadrant, the top right corner is B for business. And that’s where you have systems, you have other people working for you and the real test of whether you’re an S or a B. As a B, you own a business. If you walked away and came back in six months, it would still be operating. It’s not dependent on you being there. So you totally own an asset and that asset is the business and the business is being run by systems and people.

And then you have investor is the bottom right, and investor is where your money is working for you, whether you’re invested in real estate or in the stock market or in IRAs, whatever that is, that’s your money working for you. So your personal business is your personal financial statement. When you put money into your asset column, they’re like employees working for you. Those are your investments and every wealthy person in the world has one thing in common. They own investments, they own assets and those assets work for them.

So on the right side of the quadrant, school doesn’t teach us how to be business owners. School doesn’t teach us how to be investors. We learn that through the real world education or through the world of hard knocks. As I sit here today on this phone call, I live in all four quadrants. The vast majority of my income comes as an investor and a business owner, but I’m still an employee of my own corporation. I still am self-employed. When I go out and speak, I get a speaker’s fee and that’s the left side of the quadrant. But I want more and more of my income to come from the right side, because that’s not me working for money, it’s my assets working for money, business owners and investors.

And so you don’t have to be in only one. Everyone wants to have money in as investors that are working for you and have a business owner. And if you own real estate, that’s a business. You are in the business of real estate. So all of those things work together, and your ability to earn money on the left side as an employee or a self-employed person is finite. You only have so many hours, so many days in a week. However, on the right side as a business owner and as an investor, your ability to make money is infinite.

I think a lot of people get stuck there in that self-employed area where their ability to earn is limited, it is finite. They get stuck there. Why do people get stuck there, Sharon? You’ve helped people get unstuck in that area. What’s that doom loop, where people are stuck in that self-employed area?

Well, I think a lot of times you start getting so busy working in your business, you forget to work on your business. People feel like they have to do everything on their own. They don’t bring in the talent to help them grow their business. I mean, in order to be able to go from a small business to a big business, you have to have systems. And when you do everything yourself, it’s going to be hard to grow and nobody’s going to ever be doing it exactly the way you want to. But if you create the systems, obviously we can think of the most perfect example, McDonald’s everywhere, the owner’s not there. It’s run by teenagers and it’s done that because the systems are so ironclad that all that somebody has to do is follow the systems, and that’s the ideal of going from a small business to a big business. A big business has systems and you manage the systems, not necessarily the people. And you have people working for you, your systems are working for you, other people’s money, and that’s what really gets you out of a small business to a large business.

Now maybe you as a small business, you’re a doctor or you’re a lawyer, so how do you do that? Will you hire other doctors or other lawyers? And you start building a practice around it and so that you have the ability to earn, have systems on how the operations are being handled and other people and you make a percentage off the other doctors and lawyers. You’re taking the overhead and your ability to grow and leverage. You might have a very successful small business, but a successful small business can only scale and therefore be sustainable if it has systems.

I feel like the systems involve checklists, processes, workflows, and sharing their things that, they’re so boring. I mean, they’re not vision, they’re not sales, they’re not marketing. The systems thing, I’m kind of a sick freak and then I actually enjoy making systems because I like the result and I think I also just like the process of making systems, but I think a lot of people get stuck in that rat race and they’re not even looking for a way out.

Why do you feel like a lot of people get stuck and they’re not even… I think people will come up to you at a seminar, they’re 45 years old and they’ve been stuck in the rat race for 20 years and then it just occurred to them for the first time at your seminar that it is possible to get out of the rat race. Why do you think people don’t even try to get out of the rat race? Is it just they don’t know or they they’re overwhelmed? You’ve seen it probably more up close than I have. Why do you think a lot of people get stuck in that rat race?

Well, sometimes we get in a world of comfort and that comfort turns into complacency. And even though we’re not where we want to be, we’re able to pay our bills and we can put our head on the pillow at night and we end up just getting too comfortable. And what happens is a lot of times we have a crisis and we get thrown into chaos and we end up having to become creative again, and that gives us the ability to have a bigger vision, the whole concept of understanding what’s possible.

I think a huge issue is your environment. Are you hanging out with other people that are in that same category? People who are just getting by, people who are on the rat race? And if that’s the environment you’re putting yourself in, then it seems normal. If you want to get out of that environment, then you need to put yourself in an environment with people who are really striving for success, because they can help you.

And most of the time, school certainly teaches us to do it on our own. And so we come out in the business world and we think we have to do everything on our own, and it’s so important that we realize that you have the right people around you, the right team, the right peer network, we have the opportunity to really grow more quickly. The right mentor. Mentors are priceless because they’ve been successful where you want to go and they can help speed your way to success by opening doors, steering you around the pitfalls. And there’s a difference between a mentor and a coach. A coach may not have that success, but they know what you want to do and they can help you be accountable and make sure you stay on track.

Oh, Thrive Nation, we just had Sharon Lechter on this show. How is it possible, Shep? It was a Sharon Lechter lecture.

I was nervous.

So good.

I was nervous.

Yeah. Well, you should be. She’s an authority.

“Sharon, do you remember when you wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad?” That was pretty cool.

I’m just telling you, she is such a great lady, kind lady, and she’s agreed to be with us on six separate shows, which is so exciting and so on our next interview with Sharon Lechter, we’re going to ask her about why college is probably not the right move for most people. We’re going to ask Sharon, “Why do you feel that college may not be the right option for many people?” And so she’s going to question the great religion of college, which I know is heresy to many people. You can question people’s religion, you can question their politics, you could question a lot of things, but you cannot question… Shep, I think questioning, even asking the question whether you should go to college or not, I think asking that question to some people saying, “Should I go to college or not?” Is a lot like getting a kiosk at the mall and setting up a nice, beautiful… Shep, can you grab my megaphone over there by the land sink?

It’s like setting up a kiosk. Imagine this, Thrive Nation. Imagine you’re at a mall, a local mall area, there, where there’s a lot of stores there. There’s Victoria’s Secret, there’s Bath and Body. What is it? There’s Champ’s, there’s a Foot Locker, there’s an Orange Julius, there’s a Chick-Fil-A. It’s the standard American mall-

Dillard’s.

Imagine that you set up a kiosk just outside of the food court and you play this game.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, step right up. It’s going to be the weight guessing game here. The white guessing game. I’m going to guess your weight and if I get it right, you win a magical prize. If I get the weight wrong, just keep on walking here, folks. I’m going to start with you there, ma’am. You’re looking like wait 187. No? Okay. [inaudible 00:34:59]. Want to play again? I’m not getting a lot of interaction, here. I’m not getting a lot of feedback from you. I’m going to say that you weigh 152. Still a little bit high? Okay, all right. Oh well. Not getting a lot of… Ma’am, where did you go? [inaudible 00:35:15]

Sir, sir. All right, we’re going to play the IQ guessing game here, folks. Sir, you look like your IQ is a seven. Oh, okay. You want to guess? You can’t go over. Like The Price is Right, you can’t go over. Is it 50? Okay, we’ll go back to the weight guessing, but ma’am, ma’am, you look like… folks, let me guess your age. Let me guess your age. Ma’am, you look like you’re 47. 22? You don’t say. Wow. You drink? All right, ladies and gentlemen. All right, now [inaudible 00:35:46] folks. Step right up and I’ll guess your weight, I’ll guess your age, I’ll guess your IQ. It all is happening here. All you got to do is just walk by our guess. If you don’t win, you can just keep on walking.

That’s not going to go over well, Shep.

Oh, no. That’s not going to get you very far.

But because I have a megaphone available at all times-

This is true.

… in the man [inaudible 00:36:03], we were able to imitate that scenario with perfect quality.

It’s funny how many times you’ve said that. “Hey, Shep. Grab my megaphone, would you?”

All right, so Thrive Nation, stay tuned as Sharon Lechter, on our next episode here, asks the question, is college right for you? And as always, without any further ado, three, two, one, boom.

Three, two, one, boom.

Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Morrow. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a market increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month, and overall, our average is running about 40 to 42% increase month over month, year over year.

The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proven turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you are looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983 and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. I established my practice here in Tulsa in 1985.

One of the things that I hear in my world a lot as a business consultant from business owners is they will tell me, “Clay, I want you to help me, but my industry is different.” And so on today’s show, I’m going to introduce you to a wonderful client who’s a pediatric dentist, and I also am going to introduce you to a wonderful client who’s a real estate agent, and I’m also going to introduce you to a wonderful client who does mortgages and a wonderful client who’s a family doctor and a wonderful client who trains dogs and a wonderful client who runs the UPS Stores for all of Canada. Then, I’ll introduce you to a wonderful client who has a massive real estate empire, real estate franchise empire. Then, I’m going to introduce you to a wonderful client that sells new homes. Then, I’m going to introduce you to a wonderful client who sells insurance, and then a wonderful client who runs a church and a wonderful client who sells insurance. I think I mentioned that. A wonderful client that has a research lab.

And at the end of the day, you’ll discover that if you will follow the proven systems that I will teach you at our in-person workshops or through our one-on-one coaching program, it’s like bumper bowling for business. It’s like if you’re tired of throwing gutter balls and you want to have success, this system will absolutely change your life. It’s a step-by-step system, it’s a linear workflow, it’s going to absolutely change your life. And now without any further ado, here is Dr. Morrow sharing about how this system has changed his life and his business’s life, and the lives of his employees and the growth of his pediatric dentistry. So here we go.

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 Clarke has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise, and Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy’s just an amazing. He’s key.

This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Cockerell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours, where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers and graphic designers and web developers, and they run 160 companies every, single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies.

So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So he’s seen guys from startups go from startup to being multimillionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system: critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business.

One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy. Elon Musk kind of smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him, he cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. And that’s what I like him most about. He’s a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time, a coach is actually helping you get to the best you and Clay has been an amazing business coach.

Through the course of that, we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it and when we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him and he told me, he’s like, “I’m not 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 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 because our clubs were all closed for three months and you have $350,000 of bills you’ve got to pay and we have no accounts receivable. He helped us navigate that, and of course we were conservative enough that we could afford to take that on for a period of time, but it was… anyways, great man. I’m very impressed with him.

So Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing and I encourage you, if you haven’t ever worked with Clay, work with Clay. He’s going to help magnify you. And there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps four, maybe six hours a day and literally the rest of the time he’s working and he can outwork everybody in the room every, single day and he loves it. So anyways, this is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Thank you Clay. And anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay, it’s a great, great opportunity to ever work with him. So you guys have a blessed one. This is Charles Colaw. We’ll see you guys. Bye-bye.

Hi, I’m Aaron Antis with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them and actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate, so honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes, and then I met Clay and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing 800 million in sales over a 15-year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of sales people for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes and I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, “Man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen.”

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

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

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

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

I think in the 35-year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us, and I know if you give him a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me, the thing I would’ve missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would’ve missed out on literally an 1800% increase in our internet leads going from 10 a month to 180 a month. That would’ve been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it, because we sure haven’t.

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

My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand-in-hand and we just rolled with it. I love people. I love working with people, I love the building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things, the processes and the advertising and marketing. I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us.

We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago, and in that time we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today building a business, having 16 agents, but I have to give credit where credit’s due and Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen.

I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer an insurance companies, I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was, “I can do this all myself.” I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, “I went to medical school, I can figure this out,” but it was a very, very steep learning curve.

Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just, a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with a specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic.

Hey, Clay Clark and my Thrive peeps. It’s Steve Carrington, as you can tell, although I’m not wearing my signature green shirt as usual, but I am riding in my signature green Lamborghini and I just wanted to say how appreciative I am of Thrive and all the guys at ThriveTime and the show and everything that you guys have done. At Total Ending Concepts, we have had tremendous growth and a lot of things changing, especially on the marketing front, and from a coaching perspective and from a web presence and branding and our internet leads are up, everything is hammering on all cylinders, and really we’re just trying to figure out how we can leverage the systems and the processes that we’re learning at Thrive more in our business.

So now we’re setting up a lead tracking system that has been long overdue and we’re doing lots of stuff, but I wanted to take a minute and say thank you, thank you, thank you to Thrive and Clay Clark and Dr. Z and everybody for all the help in helping us grow our business and hopefully buy more Lamborghinis like this the more we sell. So appreciate it, guys. See you.

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. Here is where we used to live. Here we 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 4 to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we systems in place, we’ve gone from 1 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 [inaudible 00:55:25]

So we really just want to thank you, Clay, and thank you Vanessa for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys.

Bird, they said it couldn’t be done. They said you couldn’t fill up the BOK Center. They said it was impossible, but yet if you look, it appears to be full. Oh, we’re making America boom again.

Very full.

Oh, very full. Lots of marketing, courtesy of John Kelly and Devin and Darlin.

And this mind.

And this mind, and this hat.

[inaudible 00:55:54]

So there it is, [inaudible 00:55:59]. Sold out, baby. Oh. Oh. Oh.

My name is Taylor Hall. I’m the general manager of the Tulsa Oilers professional hockey team. Our goal every night here at the BOK Center is to try to fill the seats with lots of people and create an exciting environment so when somebody comes to a game, they want to come back.

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

My name is Nick Smith and I’m an agency owner with Farmer’s Insurance. I grew up in a middle-class family all the way up until I was about 13, and then my dad lost his job and then all of a sudden he was gone and I was being raised by my mom, by herself. She was probably making 20 grand a year. In order for me to have a car, I had to pay for the car, I had to pay for the gas. I had to do everything on my own. So the independent thinking had to come early if I wanted to do anything.

A couple years ago, man, I was stuck in a rut. I really honestly was, and I couldn’t see it. Not because I was doing it wrong, it’s because I didn’t know any better. Rates were not good. Selling was difficult. Staffing was just unbelievably difficult, to keep good staff in here. I was having a ton of turnover and I was about ready to hang it up and sell out. I was just done. And that’s about when I got introduced to the concept of the Will of Wealth and Thrive.

Some of the specific things I’ve learned about running my business is systems and being organized. Before, I think I just kind of shot from the hip a lot of times, but man, since I started this whole journey I’ve developed systems for each of the employees, but not just the employees, but for the position. So the fear of wondering when I’m gone, wondering if things are being done, I don’t have to worry quite as much. Business-wise, finally got over the hump and we’re actually growing again, whereas before we were just declining, declining, declining, and now we’re back up and we’re back over what we were a couple of years ago now. The training’s ongoing. Even from where I’m at now, I still feel like I need to get further.

The training itself is just, it’ll rock your world. It really will change the way you think and look at business. So all those things just kind of culminated into this big successful business that I feel like I have now. All that stuff has just been life-altering.

Clay’s awesome. He’s very entertaining, very energized, has some quirky, unique ways to get engagement with the audience. So really pleased to have Clay do our keynote today.

Well, I think it was being willing to take some risks on stage, taking some risks relative to how to set the audience up. I think that kind of created this sort of what’s going to happen next? And so just risk-taking sort of created a unique tension that I think ultimately resulted in a great experience. Well, I think Clay would be an awesome presenter for a number of reasons. One, I think that the material that he delivers is spot on, but he also can deliver some additional products and services to the organization even beyond just the things that he does on stage.

My name is David Druker, the president for UPS Stores Canada, also a member of the AFA board in our honorary position. So kind of a crossover with both sides. I thought it was great. I thought Clay did a wonderful job. I think any time you’re able to get a diverse group together to start finding the commonalities, you’re starting to pull the threads together that are going to make something for the future. And I think that was the objective for today, and I think Clay was really able to pull that out.

I thought Clay was really good at shifting speeds. He was fast when he needed to be fast, detailed when he needed to be detailed, was able to read the room every so often. If we started drifting off too far to the left or too far to the right, he was right there to rudder us back on course. So I mean, really, I don’t think we could have chosen a better guy for the day to lead us.

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 systems that Dr. Zoellner have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website, we’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. Now, we’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems. So now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve.

You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I’ve built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get-motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it, 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 Zoellner and Associates. Look them up and say, “Are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system?” When you do that research, you will discover that the same system that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’ll even give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you.