Charles Ulrich | Learn How Clay Clark Helped Charles Ulrich to Grow www.CannonPumps.com By 200% + His TipTopK9.com Franchise | “Without the Weekly Calls There Would Be a Slow Implosion.” – Charles Ulrich

Okay, we gotcha.

So I can close my phone down?

Yep, let’s close the phone down. Okay, you got it?

Okay. I got it. There we go.

May the interrogation begin. Here we go. 3, 2, 1, and… Well, I know that many of you may consider coming to one of our in-person workshops or becoming a one-on-one business coaching client. But before you decide to take action and to invest the time in doing a free 13 point assessment with me, or invest in the time to come to one of our in-person workshops, I thought you should hear directly from one of our longtime clients who’s had a lot of success so he can share with you about his experience. So without any further ado. Charles Ulrich, welcome on to the Thrivetime Show. How are you, sir?

I’m doing great, thanks.

So Charles got to ask you, how did you originally hear about the business coaching services that I provide, sir?

I was listening to podcasts on iHeartRadio on my three and a half hour commute back and forth to my business in another state.

And so people can prove that your business is real, what’s the name of your company or what’s the website people can go to learn more about it?

Cannonpumps.com.

CannonPumps.-

[inaudible 00:01:13].

And what kind of services and products do you provide?

We provide a specialized, slick line concrete pumping service along the Wasatch front and southeast Idaho, and have for a lot of years.

And so when you reached out to us, were you looking to grow the business? What had you initially decided to reach out about attending a conference or the one-on-one business coaching?

I had just hit a brick wall, I had lost key people, it was back down to just me after years and I did not know what to do with my business and was struggling to put the skillset together and the desire to grow it and do anything else with it. And so I was just looking for answers, some answers.

And from the time that you reached out and scheduled that 13 point assessment to now, how much have you grown, sir?

At least 200% probably.

Wow. Wow. So you’re saying your company has doubled in size?

Yes, at least.

You think maybe more than doubled or-

Yes.

Now, when we do a weekly call with you, we like to cover the core repeatable, actionable processes. The reason why Dr. Robert Zoellner and I have a lot of success in business is that we’re both rigorous and very disciplined about following proven systems. And so a big key component, I would say the key component of component of what we do is we have a weekly call that’s designed to provide you with practical operational help for your business. How do those weekly calls help you steer the ship?

They make me focus on my business and they help me to remember the fundamentals. We’re always being asked, what about this fundamental, what about this fundamental? How is this problem being resolved? How is this problem being resolved? And over time you look forward to the meeting because it forces you to resolve any issues you have and work through them with proven solutions.

Yep, because it forces you to push through those problems and achieve success. I love it. Now I got to ask you this, how is the weekly do the weekly calls, how have they helped you with your sales process?

Well, a lot. We run our business for 25 years on our original Dream 100 and we didn’t have much more than that, so we were very limited. And so one of the first things we did was, of course, Google and the reviews, and now our schedule is full of non-regular customers. I don’t have a set of six customers dictating my whole business. I have a set of 150 customers dictating my business.

Now again, if you were to take those calls out of your life and not have those weekly meetings, what do you think would happen to the level of success that you’ve achieved? Because behind the scenes we’re optimizing the website, we’re running your ads, we’re making sure we’re tracking all the numbers. What would happen if you took the calls out you think?

Man, it would just be a slow implosion, not really even not slow, it would just be… There’s just so much ground covered in that, that it would be hard to, for me as a business owner and involved in the business, it would be hard for me to replace that even with people, time, money. The resources would be just hard to grasp, let alone implement it and be able to do a working system to have somebody do any of it.

Now, Dr. Robert Zoellner and I in our companies, what we like to do is we like to keep our meetings as short as possible, meaning we want to cover what we need to cover and then we want to get back to business, probably in the way that you like to pump concrete as quickly as possible and then move on to something else. I think a lot of people maybe don’t quite understand that idea. Again, we block out an hour every week for that meeting, but it doesn’t need to take an hour. Can you maybe explain it’s why it’s important to have that meeting regardless of whether it takes an hour or 20 minutes or whatever the time length is?

It helps you keep us focused on the core fundamentals of what we’re doing. If we don’t have that, pretty soon we’re going sideways and we’re worried about things that don’t matter as much. You’ve identified the things that we need to focus on, and that meeting, no matter how long it is, helps bring us back and forces us to look at those numbers, our revenue numbers, our reviews numbers, our leads numbers, are we converting. All of that stuff, it forces us to look at the information that nobody wants to look at on their own.

Now and with our coaching program, we only work with 160 clients and so sometimes you might work, if you’re a listener out there, you might work with me, I work with 15 clients, you might work with Carter, you might work with Devin, you might work with Andrew, you might have worked with Marshall, you might have worked with Eric, you might have worked with… There’s so many wonderful people that we’ve had a chance to mentor over the years. And inevitably the question gets asked, well, how could your coach possibly help me if he’s not a concrete expert? I want to ask you, how have the coaching calls helped you with your interviewing process and to know what to look for in a job applicant, even though your particular coach Andrew is not a concrete “expert”?

Just because you’re an expert in concrete doesn’t mean you’re a business owner. So Andrew brings a vast knowledge of all these other clients and so can answer a lot of questions about what we need to do employee-wise that I would really have no other answer to. And from that, even though he’s not a concrete guy, he knows more about business than probably 98% of all of my clients who are concrete guys.

Now, how have the coaching calls helped you with the hiring process in terms of learning how to run and launch your Indeed ads? Because I see a lot of business owners that struggle to recruit people. How has that, the coaching calls and the coaching program, helped you to effectively learn how to launch and run Indeed ads or the entire hiring process really?

One of the biggest things about getting going is just the fear of starting. Once you start, if you have little questions or things, you have a resource to go to answer those unknowns. So instead of being afraid of them, you can just say, okay, I’m going to do this and they just help you with the little details over top of it.

Now, how have the coaching calls helped you with managing your staff? I know internally we manage hundreds of employees, but then our clients themselves, I mean some clients I work with manage hundreds of employees and some clients I work with manage 15 employees, some manage dozens of employees, some manage… How have the weekly coaching calls helped you to learn how to effectively manage your team?

The coaching calls help ground you in the business principles, take a lot of the emotion out of it. Most situations with employees is cut and dry and wrong or right. As employers, we get emotionally involved and are afraid to do that. But when you hear somebody like Andrew as my coach tell me, “No, this is what needs to happen,” it’s like, okay, this is what needs to happen. Because he has seen it how many ever times with all his other clients.

Now, working with Andrew, we want to help you create systems. Our coaching program, we want to help you make systems so that everything is documented and over time making checklists and processes for everything so that way as your business scales hypothetically, it’s more systemized over time. How has working with our team helped you to build systems?

Well, one of the things that we’ve learned is remove yourself from the business and see how well it functions without you. So it seems like every time I break my leg, my business goes without me and it seems to function pretty well. So it helps everybody in the business be able to know what to do when nobody’s looking over their shoulder.

Now a part of the coaching process is it’s that core, repeatable, actionable processes. I call it the CRAP, but it’s the messy middle, it’s after the big new idea, the excitement about the new idea is gone. Somebody still has to follow up and do the core, repeatable, actionable processes. How has that helped you on a weekly basis stay on track, those core, repeatable, actionable processes after the excitement of the new ideas are gone?

Well, through the meetings helps me to realize that I am accountable to somebody, I answer to somebody. And so I go to my team and I hold them accountable so that I can make sure all of these things are done. So it just helps me to stay on top of making sure people are doing what they’re doing instead of having to go in and take care of everything myself.

Okay. Next question I have here for you, the coaching calls, a lot of our listeners, a lot of our longtime clients, if people go to ThrivetimeShow.com, they can see thousands of customer success stories. A lot of my clients will tell me that they learned a lot about time management in the coaching program. I have one client right now, I’ve helped him to grow his business dramatically. He’s on the verge of selling the company and he says, “Hey, I’m going to keep hiring you as I look for my new business because I need someone to help me maximize my time and to stay efficient even as I move into my new venture,” even after he sells his company. Can you talk about time management and how the coaching calls have helped you with time management?

Well, this is one of my great struggles is the time management. And so I try and work on it more and more. So by being able to have access to my coach, it helps me to formulate a plan and be able to keep my meetings and time management focused on what I need to do and not what other people want me to do.

How has the coaching calls helped you with your search engine optimization and generating more leads? I meet a lot of wonderful people that tell me, “Clay, I would hire you guys for the coaching service if it didn’t have the search engine optimization and the web development and the graphic design and the photography and all those services.” But specifically, I mean, it’s a flat rate. We charge $1,700 a month, it’s all included. How much has that helped you in terms of growing your business with our in-house search engine optimization, web marketing, online ad management team?

Hundred percent. People find us now. When I met you, I didn’t even have a website and the first thing you said was, “We have to do Google.” I just sighed. It was so distant to me, and now I can’t even imagine running this without what your team does for us in the back room.

Now, what’s kind of interesting about our relationship and it’s been fun is I co-founded Tip Top K9 Franchising. It’s a dog training franchise. One of my longtime clients, Ryan and Rachel, started the company TipTopK9.com and I helped them to scale the business so that way it could franchise, so other people who are not Ryan and Rachel could go out there and buy a proven business model that works. And you guys elected to open up a Tip Top K9 right there in Utah. You and your whole family opened up a Tip Top K9 franchise together. How big of a role did you, having previously worked with our coaching program, how big of an impact I guess, or how much of a decision, how much did that weigh into your decision to buy a Tip Top knowing that we would be implementing the same systems that we’ve been implementing in your own company?

It was probably the biggest factor because it helped us to understand from the beginning, we already were implementing all of the business principles in our concrete pumping. So when we were exposed to Tip Top, we already understand a lot of the policies and practices, which makes it easy to go in so we could hit the ground running at full speed because everybody on our team already knew what the Dream 100 was, what the Google was, why reviews are important, why search engine optimization, all of that. And it was a huge part of why we decided to do that because we want to use that as a platform to even get more Tip Tops and we feel that through your systems with that Tip Top would provide us that opportunity.

My father, he had Lou Gehrig’s disease, may he rest in peace. Before he passed away though, my wife and I, we organized kind of a going away party for him so that all the people in his life that mattered to him could all come and say nice things about him while he was still alive. And my dad told me that was like the highlight for him was hearing that. And I know a guy like Andrew, he’s a very diligent guy, he stays focused every day on growing your business. Every single morning we meet at 6:00 AM in our coaches’ meeting to go over any burning fires or any issues or any areas that we can help if we ever have a business owner that’s stuck, whether it be the Tip Top K9 franchises that we coach, or whether it be our non-Tip Top K9 franchises or businesses that we work with, and I know he’s committed to helping you grow your business. What would you say about the impact that Andrew himself has made as a result of him teaching you the systems and holding you guys accountable on a weekly basis?

Oh, Andrew’s been great. There’s a big age disparity between Andrew and I, but he’s never been afraid to… If there’s something he finds out, if we don’t know. But the other thing, he’s been a great example to my kids, all my kids work in my business by their choice, that you don’t have to be an old, stodgy guy like me to understand business principles. They’re the same. And so his influence on me and my organization is generational, literally.

So just to be clear, I mean, knowing that the business systems that we had in place, working with you with your Cannon Pumps business, those principles, you knowing that those principles and systems would be used at Tip Top K9, that was a big motivating factor for you?

Yes, huge, huge, probably the biggest factor.

And again, I talk to people all the time, and I’m not bashing their franchises, but I talk to people all the time that come to our conferences and you’ve been to our conferences, and people will come to me and they go, man, I bought a franchise of this company or that company where there’s no weekly coaching. They train you on how to do the skill or how to buy the business and then they go back to their local hometown and they feel like they’re just floundering. And they have a monthly call where somebody checks in with you, but there’s no weekly accountability. What do you think would happen to your Tip Top location if there wasn’t Andrew or somebody like that pushing you guys on a weekly basis to grow?

It would go sideways quick. We’d be doing the wrong things at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, because it would be more emotion based. And our phone call with Andrew, it keeps focused on the things that we need to accomplish to make it a franchise so that I’m not a business owner that wakes up every day and has to go in and deal with it.

Final question I have here for you. For anybody out there that’s thinking about attending one of our in-person workshops or scheduling a 13 point assessment, I don’t want to waste anybody’s time because I only take on 160 clients and I don’t want to waste anybody’s time because our conferences only can accommodate a hundred folks at each one and we want to make it very interactive. In your mind, what kind of person would benefit from our one-on-one coaching or the in-person workshops?

Somebody that has a business that wants to get to the next level, not sure what to do. Just for ideas alone, your workshop has so many things that you can implement into every level of the business and at least get your brain working towards being a business owner instead of the high paid employee you are.

Well brother, I really do appreciate you hopping on this show here. Hopefully we’ve benefited you greatly and it’s been awesome to get to know you over the years and I wish you continued success. Thank you for carving out time for us.

Hey, thanks for having me.

All right, we’ll talk to you soon. Take care.

Okay.

Bye.

See you.

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 franchising. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy’s just an amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry, he’s written books with Lee Cockerell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members, he’s friends with like Mike Lindell, he does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours.

On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top, he has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multimillionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system, critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable scalable business.

One of his businesses is like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy, Elon Musk kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that 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 most about him. 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. When I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and 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. 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. Anyways, just an amazing man.

So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve got nervous or worried about how to run the company or 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 he 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 Holmes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them, and I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate. So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing 800 million in sales over a 15 year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Holmes, and 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.

So 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 builders shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I’ve found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing, and Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him.

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

I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. 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 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 a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world.

He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan, he’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans, he helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web.

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

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

You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I’ve built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down real estate Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, “Oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop.” And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business.

And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, 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 him 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’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.