Clay Clark Client Testimonials | “We Started Seeing Those Numbers Increase. In About 2 Years We Have Gone from 700 Members to Now Over 1,800.” – Luke Owens + Thousands of Clay Clark Client Testimonials At ThrivetimeShow.com

Audio Transcription

Hey guys, my name is Luke Owens and I own the Hub Gym in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. And you know, we started seeing those numbers increase and we also have seen our membership increase. So in about, I don’t know, two years or so, we’ve gone from about 700 members to now over 1,800. My name is Luke Owens and I am the founder of the Hub Gym here in Broken Arrow. My wife and I had a vision for the Hub Gym

to be the center of health and fitness in the Broken Arrow area, just to be a place where a multitude of people could come and feel comfortable getting healthy, achieving their goals. The vision sort of changed a bit. I think that our vision now would be to expand this community into other communities, sort of the idea of franchising the hub just to be kind of a worldwide presence. Our clients find acceptance, find something that they don’t find in other fitness centers,

you know, where they’re able to get clear with their goals, fitness goals, life goals as a whole and we just help facilitate that space where they can realize them. Michelle, she is a testimony I guess that we can share. When she came in, it was sort of the dead of summer and she was in a full sweat suit. Totally uncomfortable, but uncomfortable

to not be completely covered. And scared to kind of start her journey. But through our team, through the support we offer here, she has lost well over 160 pounds. Comes in in tank tops now and just completely comfortable within her body. I remember a day she came in and she was sort of emotional.

I’m like, what’s going on, Michelle? And she said, my son hugged me today. And I’m like, I mean, your sons are pretty old. Have they never hugged you before? And she said, no. He said, that’s the first time I’ve ever put my arms all the way around you.

I’m like, holy crap, you know? And so that really inspired me, and that’s the why. That’s why we are and who we are and do what we do, is for stories like that. I’m passionate about people, and fitness just happens to be the vein that I run in,

that I’m comfortable in, in sort of expressing that love and passion for people. And so that just lends itself to putting me in the face of people when I was asked About 12 years ago if you didn’t have to do what you’re doing today What you would what would you be doing and the only answer I could give was affect people

I wanted to impact people’s lives and that’s gotten more clear as I’ve gone along I just want to be an inspiration, you know, and I want people to realize that they themselves can be an inspiration.

From on the path to literal suicide, to on the path to thrive, today we share the Luke Owens success story.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women,

13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow.

One, two, one, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get there. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom…

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Dr. Z, we have a five-minute show that I think is going to blow the minds of the listeners.

Is that even possible?

It is possible.

I’m going to take the show down and then take the show back up. So we have Luke Owens on the show, who is the founder of the Hub Gym. I went to graphic design college with this guy at Oklahoma State University. You and I reconnected at a conference, I want to say, three and a half years ago.

Almost, yeah.

Almost that. Reconnected and it feels good.

And you’re a lighthearted guy. I’m lighthearted, but I’d like for you to share, what were you on the verge of doing before you came to the workshop? Well, the morning that I learned about your conference, I walked into a local coffee shop

and I sat down to write my suicide letter to my wife and family. Okay. That’s, wow. And there was a gentleman in the coffee shop that I knew, and he had just been to your last conference, and he said, hey man, I think there’s something

that might help, and he knew me and the business, and that might help your business. And I just increasingly got more and more pissed as this guy’s talking to me, because that’s not what I was there for. But he spun the computer around and I saw your face,

and I thought, I know that guy, and I’ve done some work with him, and I’m not sure why that changed my mind or sort of put that on pause, but it did and I’m grateful it did.

Wow. And the thing about it is I spoke at a conference years ago where somebody else called me years after and said, he was actually a banker guy, and he said, I was on the verge of suicide and I saw you speak at the Community Bankers Association event in Vegas and I literally was at the end. My bank was on that stress test, wasn’t doing well,

and I had no idea how to market that thing. And the stuff I applied, it fixed it, but then the philosophy about the F6 life stuff you teach, at the time it was F5, we didn’t teach fun. This would be 2011 or 12 I was teaching this. And he said, it saved my life,

and I want you to know that. And I go, no, I mean, you’re saying that, but do you really mean that? And he said, no, I seriously was on the verge because I couldn’t figure it out. And I didn’t know about the group interview, so I couldn’t find people. Right. I didn’t know about how websites work, so I couldn’t get customers.

I didn’t know why reviews were important. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.

Well, try being a graphic designer who went through school to teach you how to properly promote a business, and it’s still not working. You know, I was I was in business at that time for 10 years. And I don’t know if you and Dr. Z remember that conference when I sort of like grabbed you both and spun you around and said, I have to do this with you guys. I don’t advise people grabbing either Clay or Z, but I did that.

That’s where I was.

A good spinning though is not a bad thing. I mean, it’s just a general thumb.

I would like to do, because I wanted Z to hear that too, because that’s why we do this. I’ve met your wife, great lady, met your father-in-law, great person. Please explain what you have implemented and I know you’ve got to go to do your rest of your life but I have five areas I want to hit on in three minutes. Let’s see if we can do it. The group interview. Yes. Getting to the top of Google. Yes. Firing idiots. Let’s go there. Group interview, how’s that helped your life? Well, I haven’t sold a membership and I don’t remember when. I am no longer working as much in the day-to-day of the business.

Instead, now I’m working on the business and we’re seeing growth. So we’re a hundred members away from our goal number that we’ve set together. And I also have time freedom, which was the first thing, you know, you guys asked the question, what is your financial goal? I didn’t have one at the time. I just wanted to be happy and be alive and have time freedom to be with my family. And I’ve achieved all of those things.

You’re a graphic designer. You went to school for graphic design, so you know how to design things. But they were unfindable because you were not anywhere near the top of Google. And now you are. So talk to me about adding content to your website, crappy content or good content, and getting reviews. Because you’re now beating billion-dollar fitness companies in the search engine results

when people type in broken arrow gyms. How has adding crappy, consistent content to your website and getting reviews changed your life?

Well, it’s funny. This morning I was looking for an old ad, and I came through this folder that was just every week I was producing multiple different ads, multiple different offers, trying to get this thing to go. And when you started asking us to write content,

I’m like, man, I’m going to have to make this really great or whatever. It’s just a matter of building that content so that Google can find you. And that’s happening, and we’re now at the top. Firing idiots. Dr. Z talks about this a lot. Unless you’re a life coach Z, you shouldn’t…

Say a few words. Buh-bye. Yeah. So Z talks about this, which might seem mean on the outset to to fire people, but Z’s always told me, hey listen, if somebody, people change seldom and if people need a life coach, then tell them they should go hire a life coach. Right. But don’t be a life coach unless you are a life coach. Right. Talk to me about firing idiots. Well, I ran my business as a life coach hiring people who needed help, period. Because you’re an empath. Right. And also,

I wanted to feel good about how crappy I was being in my life. So I would hire people who I felt like were in a worse off shape than me and felt like maybe I could help them. But what I’ve learned is that you cannot get advice or take direction from people who do not have what you want, period. And so now I surround myself with people who have what I want in life, period. And if that’s not you, you can go work at McDonald’s until you are, and then maybe come work with us.

I don’t know. Yeah, wisdom is hiring people that are smarter and better at you than what they’re doing. Absolutely. Because fear keeps most people from doing that. Fear of, are they going to take the business? Are they going to be, are they going to, are they going to, are they going to, is everybody

going to like them more than me? I mean, all the things that fear comes over here, forget about that. The wisdom is to hire people that are smarter and better, more clever than you, and gather them up on your team. It makes your team much, much stronger. And if more people would do that, they would have better success rates.

Now I’ve worked with so many fitness companies, so many, and I mean, literally dozens. And when I’ve worked with fitness companies, they always are told at these fitness conferences, you should change your offer every week. Freshen it up. Every week there’s a new offer, there’s a click funnel, there’s a new offer, there’s a click funnel.

There’s a click funnel, there’s a new offer, there’s a new… So these marketing companies pitch it because that makes the money because there’s always something new to design.

And it doesn’t work.

There’s a new special. So keep them coming back. For seven days, for seven days and $77, you too could lose seven pounds. Offer ends Sunday. Right. So this goes on. I mean, seriously, there’s constant. Make sure all your pricing ends in a seven. Sure. And do social media posts with you and celebrities. And it’s just you spend your whole day on Facebook engaging with the men and

women. Talk to me about creating a no brainer and just sticking with that freaking thing for

three years. You know, we have never changed our no brainer offer ever. What? We don’t turn it off. It’s been one dollar for your first month since the beginning and it will not change.

How is that possible?

Going back to what Z just said about hiring people who kind of push you to be better or make you a bit uncomfortable. You’ve met my manager, right? Right. The guy’s like Sheldon from Third Rock. I couldn’t stand this guy when I interviewed him because I saw so much. He just was not like me at all.

But now, Clay, he comes to our meetings and he has what I don’t have naturally. And he makes me uncomfortable all the time, and that’s why our business is growing.

Right.

Now, the final – you have grown from about 700 members. When we first started tracking, we didn’t know how many members. Yeah, we weren’t tracking. And so you’ve gone from around 700 members-ish to on the verge of 1,900 members now. Correct. And three years, almost tripled the guy’s business here.

Great things are happening. Let’s talk about creating a purposeful schedule, because you’ve met people, you’ve met people, you’ve met a guy even recently who said, he doesn’t like me. And I’ve never met this guy. You’ve met a guy who said he doesn’t like me. I’ve never met the guy.

Right. But he’s got an opinion of me. He didn’t like me. Yeah. I’ve met people that don’t like Z and you get down to a Y. It’s because they hate because they ain’t.

Correct.

So here’s the deal. Z has told me and other people, I will not meet you for lunch. I appreciate you, but I will not because I have other plans with my son or my daughter or with whatever I’m doing. You’re now purposeful with your schedule, which means you’re saying no to Grow.

Talk to us about that. I say no to anything that is not on my task list or does not involve my family, period.

Zee, wow, that sounds kind of narrow-minded.

Well, actually, I’m pursuing my master’s in psychology, so one day I will be a counselor, and I will say yes if you decide to pay me to say yes.

There you go.

Now, Zee, I would-

Pay me the money.

We have time for you to ask Luke any question that you would like to ask because he is the fruits of our efforts. He’s why we do it. I mean this. I only know of two people who are on the verge of suicide, but I met a guy at a church. I did not want to speak at a church.

I do not like speaking, especially at churches because I oftentimes curse. And so the show is great because I can edit it. You know what I mean? I’m like, but in a church, you’re like, oh, so I, a certain pastor asked me to speak and the rules were don’t curse. You can say earmuffs. Okay.

So I’m speaking and there’s a guy in the audience who I kept referring to him as the brown guy and I’m the white guy. Geez. No, wait a second. No, this is good. And he said, and Andrew can vouch for this, he has said that that interaction at his church

changed his life and he’s almost doubled the size of his company as a result of implementing this stuff. But I went into this church and I was speaking and I just said, I referred to myself as the pale male and him as the brown guy. We had a lot of fun right there. And but anyway, it’s like I got his attention by messing with him a little bit, making fun of myself, changed his life.

You’re the weird, you’re why Z and I do this. We have a lot of fun doing this, but you’re why we do this. Z, what question would you have for Luke or what feedback do you have for Luke? Luke, how many men have looked at you with the seriousness in their eyes and a voice like this and said that they were your father? Way too many. Yeah, okay. You got to play a little Star Wars. Yeah, we’re right across from each other. Yeah,

yeah. I was expecting a little Star Wars like, you know, Luke, you are my son.

Sorry I was kind of slow on the trigger today.

You kind of missed that.

Sorry about that. Through editing I can come back and catch it.

Luke, you were in a desperate time in your life. Absolutely. And you were getting ready to make decisions that you thought at the time were your only out.

I was minutes away.

And this occurrence happened, and at what point, and what happened specifically during the course of the next however many hours or days where you tore up that piece of paper and your mindset shifted? Is there anything that you can look at that one thing that happens is a series of events? I mean, that’s a pretty dramatic point to be at in someone’s life, and there’s someone listening right now that’s at that point.

I promise you. Yeah. And it’s a it’s a horrible thing that’s going on in culture these days. I mean, you know, people out there, you know, on the we all look at this Instagram and Facebook and think everybody’s having these perfect lives and then they take their lives because they’re not right.

And that’s the reality of what really what’s going on. This fake life that everybody posts on social media. It is not reality. But that aside, we know there’s people out there right now at that juncture or close to that juncture in their life. What turned it around for you specifically?

And can you speak into someone who may be getting ready to go to a Starbucks and write

that letter out?

Yeah. So, I mean, I don’t know what exactly to say to a person that’s maybe going to do that now other than reach out to somebody because there there are people there for you Even when it seems super dark I’m a not a religious person, but I’m very spiritual and I truly chalk up that transition To a god thing I truly do because it makes no other sense to me Whatsoever that and I picked on you a lot of the conference because I felt that God thing. Yeah, I told Vanessa

I don’t know what it is, but I kept doing it the whole conference. I think I called on you more than I’ve ever called on somebody at a conference. Did you remember that? I kept being like, Luke, Luke, you wore red shoes. Yeah, absolutely. And so I’m grateful.

I can say that. I have three beautiful kids and an amazing wife. And I could not imagine having put them through something like that. So I am extremely grateful.

Well, Luke, we’re grateful that you would have the courage to come on and share story a lot of people wouldn’t do that so on behalf of the thrive nation half-million people listening thank you for being you man and uh… we’re gonna interview somebody else with a story that’s less epic but still great

i appreciate you so much i think so good thank you buddy thank you see correct and now without any further ado

Boom!

You have questions? America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your broda from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of Ask Clay Anything on the Thrive Time Business Coach Radio Show. Oh yes, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the conversation. And today we’re answering the question that so many people have,

how do I make my business grow? With Luke Owens with The Hub Gym. He’s a case study, meaning that he is a real, bona fide example that you can verify of a real entrepreneur who’s having real growth in his real business as a result of implementing the real system. So, Chubb, I’m going to walk you through real quick the steps you have to take to grow your business and then I’m going to have Luke Owens share his hot and fresh take on how we did

it.

Okay? Let’s do it. Step number one, Luke had to establish his revenue goals. Step one. Step two, he had to establish the number of customers he needed to break even and to achieve his goals.

Step three, he had to establish the number of hours that he was willing to work on his business to grow the business. Step number four, he had to determine his unique value proposition. What makes the gym different from other gyms? Step five, we had to improve the branding, right? Step five, improve the branding.

Step six, we had to create a three-legged marketing stool. Step number seven, we had to create a sales conversion system. Step number nine, we had to create repeatable systems, processes, and file organization, aka checklists, the whole deal. Step number 10, we had to learn how to manage people effectively. Step number 11, we had to create a sustainable and repetitive weekly schedule.

Step number 12, we had to learn human resources and how to recruit people. And step 13, we’ve had to learn how to do our accounting. So step number one, Luke, talk to me about the revenue goals. I’m not asking you on the air here to share your specific numbers, but why was it so important for you to start tracking your numbers and how has that helped you?

Well, initially, that was the first question that Chup asked me, like, what is your financial goal? At that time, it was kind of tough to identify that, right? Which taught me that if you’re running a business, you probably should have some idea of where you are financially and where you want to go. So that was the first lesson for me.

I hadn’t identified that and I obviously was not running business properly because I would say I didn’t care about the money. Well, unless you’re a non-profit or independently wealthy, I think you should.

Yeah, and that was a thing that I see with a lot of new clients, Clay, and tell me if you see this as well, is a lot of people are there in the burning fires, they’re in the day-to-day, and you say, what are your revenue goals, where are you guys at right now?

And they’re like, I feel like.

Yeah.

And that’s not a good place to be. You need to know when it comes to your bank account, because if you run out of cash and you can’t pay your team, you are hosed, homie.

Well, what you’re gonna have to do is get out a whiteboard today. Get out a whiteboard. If you don’t have a whiteboard, go buy a whiteboard. Build a whiteboard. Get a whiteboard.

And I want you to write down the financial goal that you have for yourself and your business. So I’ll give you an example. Elephant in the Room, our men’s grooming lounge, I can be very transparent with the listeners. We only want to have 4,000 members there, okay? And we essentially already have 4,000 members. And what?

What? You mean you don’t want to grow the business?

Exactly.

Our business, Elephant in the Room, is designed to serve the, it’s designed to be a home run on the levels of the three P’s, okay? We want to have a great profit, we want to have great people that work there, and we want to make a product that we’re proud to serve the community, okay? We want to have a product or a service that we’re proud of, that’s the P number one, the product or service.

Two, we want to make a profit that makes sense. And three, we want to have great people that work there. And so we’ve decided we’re probably going to open up a fourth store to service a different part of Tulsa. Because, Luke, whether people love the Hub Gym or not,

the reality is very few people are going to drive 25 miles to get their hair cut. So for elephant in the room, I mean, there’s a lot of people that don’t come to our locations because it’s not practical to drive from the west side of the river over to the east side of the river to get your hair cut is a general

rule. And at the Hub Gym, it’s probably not super realistic for a ton of people from Owasso to drive to the Hub Gym. And so it’s kind of a deal of like you have to know how many members that gym can support, how many members you want to get to, and then your growth needs to be, once you hit that number you can decide, do I want to open up another location?

Do I want to just optimize this location? But I think in your mind you have to know kind of, and I’m going to ask you for a number, but I think you have probably a number of how many members that gym can probably support.

Yeah, and you know, our initial goal was to get a thousand members, and today we’re sitting at about 1350. Yeah. And, you know, so I don’t know that we’ve met that threshold, but I would say at this point maybe 2000.

That’s kind of what I’m thinking about, 2000 members. But it’s so important that you write down a number out there because we’ve had so many people approach me with Elf in the Room saying, hey, what if we team up? As an example, there is a local adult beverage business. They make local IPA beers. They make local, it’s a local brewery there, Chup.

And they’ve said we should team up and do a competition where whoever has the best beard wins free beer or something like that. And that’s a great idea, right? Except I don’t want to do it.

There you go.

Because I don’t want to team up. I don’t want to be a part of the community. I don’t want to do any events. I don’t want to do anything at all related to local events. We give money back. We take $1 from every haircut, and we give that money back

to the boys’ home there in Tulsa. So when you come in to get your haircut for a dollar, the first time, that dollar goes back to the boys’ home. And really, I don’t want to team up with any other organization other than the boys’ home. And Shep, why is that important that I know what charity I want to give back to and the only charity I want to give back to?

Yeah, because the business is a vehicle to serve you and get you to your goals, not everybody else’s. So it doesn’t matter how many great ideas or good things that people can bring to you if it’s not on your goal list or on your schedule or your plan? You don’t have to do it.

I’ve had a ton of people come to me and say, hey, why don’t you open up a fourth location in Owasso? Yeah. And I haven’t done it. You know why, Chep? Because you don’t want to.

Right. And Chep, you know why I’m not doing that local brewery thing?

Because you don’t want to.

Right. And you know why I’m not going to do the big old, what is it, November, the Mo-vember, where you have like a cancer awareness where you don’t shave? You know why I’m not going to do that?

Because you don’t want to.

Right.

Yes.

And you know why I’m not going to team up with the downtown Sobo district, the South Boston, why I’m not going to team up with them to do some kind of local fun run?

I think it’s because you don’t want to.

Right. And these are all things I don’t want to do. In fact, I don’t want to do anything other than to service those 4,000 customers and to hit the three Ps. Great product that I’m proud of, to have great people that work there, and to have a great profit.

Don’t forget about the W.

What’s that?

The wall that you live behind.

I love to live behind the wall.

That’s another thing that you like.

Now, step number two.

Step number two. You have to establish the number of customers you need to break even. Luke, why was it so important for you to be honest with the numbers and to go, okay, this

is how many members that I need just to pay the bills? Well, again, the biggest light that we shined on the thing when we first started was that I had no idea, truthfully, where I was, right? I could surmise, I could guess, but that’s as best as it was going to get at that time. So why it’s important is because you need to know where you’re at to determine where you’re going.

Now, Chuck, this just in from our home office here. Lee Cockerell writes… I need some echo here, Chup.

Okay, here we go.

And Matt, if you could pile on, because Chup recently has been really off his echo game.

Don’t want me in with Steve Carrington.

I need this to be like a prolonged echo. So here we go. Let me get my quotable voice ready. Here we go. One of the main reasons people don’t improve is that they are not honest with themselves. Lee Cockrell, this guy’s name is Lee Cockrell. He’s a former executive vice president. Make the echo stop.

That was short and to the point right there. OK, now Lee Cockrell is the former executive vice president of Walt Disney World Resorts, who used to manage 40,000 employees. And he used to manage, again, Walt Disney World Resorts and he says one of the reasons people don’t improve is that they’re not honest with themselves.

So I don’t think Luke you’re running around going I’m gonna deceive myself and not be honest. I just think we hadn’t had those discussions yet. You never thought about

okay this is how many members I need to break even. Right and and too you know what I’ve learned with working with you all is that you can either work on your business or in it.

Explain the difference.

Well, when you’re working on your business, it’s sort of from a bird’s eye view, right? You’re looking at the whole picture. And when you’re working in it, that’s like selling memberships and scrubbing toilets.

Oh, yes.

You know, and they’re only 24 hours in a day. And so, you know, it’s just not effective. And what I was trying to do was work in and on it simultaneously, doing really neither very well. OK, and just to pile on Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel in their bestselling book called Scale,

they write, a level two business is a business that works, but only because you, the business owner, are there every day to make it work. You make most of the decisions. You generate most of the business. You meet with all the key clients

and perform most of the important work of the business. The painful reality is that most level two business owners get caught in the self-employment trap. They’re so busy doing the job of their business that they can’t step back and focus on growing the business. What’s more, because of the way they are building the business, the more success they have,

the more trapped they become inside their company. So Luke, can you explain some of the things that kind of kept you so trapped in the day to day of running the company that you weren’t able to take a step back and actually work on the company? Sure, so again I was the front desk so that meant I was selling all of the memberships. I was the lead trainer so that meant I was training all the people doing all of the first steps which is

our onboarding program and if there was a disaster like an overflowing toilet or something. I hate to keep talking about toilets, but those are things I had to deal with. If there’s a call in the middle of the night because we are a 24-hour gym, it was my phone that was ringing

and my car that was starting to come up to the gym to deal with that.

And let me make sure the listeners out there get it. These are just some very practical tips that you can do right now to free up your time if you feel that you are trapped in the day-to-day. And Chip, we’ll put this on the show notes here, okay? One is establish a rule with your team

to only talk to you at your daily meeting. So like daily, just have a huddle and establish to your team, do not call me, do not text me outside of that particular daily huddle. And then step number two, create an org chart of who they should reach out to if they have an emergency.

I see so many business owners, Chuck, though, that have their phone on them. As an example, like today, you know, I basically, every Friday I turn my phone off at about noon and then my phone is off until Sunday night and then I guess it’d be off until basically Monday at about 6 a.m. So my phone’s off, you know, 48 to 72 hours in a row there. And some people say, how in the world can you do that? Well, I’ve established an org chart.

So at the Elephant in the Room, my son was selling Boy Scout popcorn, Boy Scout popcorn this weekend. By the way, he sold $490 of Boy Scout popcorn. He’s got about $700 more to sell to hit his goal to go to Disney World. So we’re getting close there.

But he goes to the Elephant in the Room, so I dropped him off at 815 on Saturday. He goes in there, Wendy helped him, and he’s selling popcorn. I checked on him at noon, and then I checked on him at 5, you know, just to make sure he’s doing good, pick them up, that kind of thing. And he’s learning the dark art of sales. But I don’t have a constant stream of text messages coming in with emergencies throughout

the day. Now, I know on Saturday at the three stores we had at least two to three quote-unquote emergencies absolutely on Saturday because every Saturday we have two to three emergencies and this might blow the mind of the listeners but every week we have and Chuck you’ve been in our management meetings on Monday every week do we not have some kind of emergency? Always we’ve you know you’ve

got how many how many customers again every there’s about four thousand customers and 90 employees how could you not right with that many employees and that many customers coming in there are going to be issues. And if you think you can run a business that’s that interactive with the community and not have issues, you’re not telling yourself the truth. And so you have to be proactive, like Clay is saying, and deal with these things at one time instead of every single time stream of consciousness.

But I think a lot of business owners, Luke, they make themselves available for every second of the day. They make themselves available because they’ve been reading a lot of these motivational books a lot. They’ve attended a lot of these motivational seminars. And Ben Horowitz, this is a guy who sold his company, Opsware, to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. He writes, every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, that’s

fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation. The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those great people develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things.

The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organizational chart that you’ve just designed. The hard thing is not dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream has turned into a nightmare.

This is a… Luke, have you ever found yourself in a spot at the Hub Gym previous to working with us where you felt like it had become a nightmare?

Oh my gosh. I mean, the day that I came to the first conference, I was in it. I was living it. And you know, I remember saying, I will give this thing away. I would have given the gym away to relieve that stress. Thankfully, I came to your conference

and I remember talking with you and Zellner and saying, hey, I don’t know how to make this work based on the financial situation the gym was in at the time, but I have to do this in order for us to move forward.

And that’s the only reason that I do what I do. I love helping people achieve time freedom and financial freedom, Chup? And I think a lot of people just don’t know these 13 steps and that’s why we’re stuck. And the problem is, Luke, you’ve gone to college Eric, Chup, you’ve been to college. What college did you go to, Chup?

Oklahoma State University. And I went to Oral Roberts University. You graduated, Chup, with a degree in what? I have two degrees, one in management and one in marketing. And do you use any of the

management

things you were taught in college ever on a daily basis to either A. coach your clients or did you use them when you ran your own business? Let me think. Subtract that. No, zero times. Right. Basically zero times. Because everything they teach at college is crap. It’s even worse than that, Clay. It’s like we talk about it’s all memorization, even at the college level. And so even if it wasn’t crap, I wouldn’t remember it anyways because it’s like study here, study here, remember this, put it on the paper. Now all completely different things and there’s no application at all.

And it’s wrong most of the time.

Absolutely.

I would say all the time it’s wrong. As an example, Luke, as an example, here we go. We’re talking about step number three, establish the number of hours you’re willing to work in your business. College never teaches you that. In fact, I had a professor at one point, I remember teaching this in college, he said

that if you’re a good small business owner, you need to be responsive to your customers all the time. So I know a lot of people who went to Oral Roberts University, I know these people who literally own restaurants and businesses who are now in their 40s, who work every freaking hour of the day because they believe they’re supposed to be… Another example, I remember teaching, I got asked to speak at a local college, and the guy speaking before me, the professor speaking before me, was talking about social media and how you need to respond to

all of the comments and reviews real time. Yeah. And he’s showing case studies of how the best companies respond to social media as soon as possible. Chuck, if I did respond to all the social media comments, could we possibly grow elephant

in the room? No. And that’s the whole thing is like scale out those ideas, everybody. If you’ve got a new concept or a new idea, Clay talks about on the show, it’s like your main marketing strategy is networking. Scale that idea out. Where does that take you? Is that actually even possible? And that’s what

we’re saying. It’s not even possible to respond to every single message. You

wouldn’t have time to be proactive and prepare. Luke, have you been to some of those chamber events or networking events where somebody’s speaking and telling you the importance of making sure that you’re involved in every community event and that you network constantly and that you need to constantly update your social media status. Have you ever seen these kinds of events?

Yeah, of course. And you know, thankfully, my first business partner told me, you know, he kept an eye on me, right? And so one day I left to one of these networking meetings, right? And being the only person in the gym, that meant the gym had no one there. I was gone for like three hours or something, networking, trying to build my business.

I wasn’t in it. So that was the last time I ever did that. There’s one group.

I can’t seem to place the name, Chup, and I don’t want you to help me figure it out either. But it’s called I think it’s called One Million Containers or One Million Mugs. One million, one million containers. It’s one million things that hold beverages, whatever that group is called. One million somethings that hold beverages.

And I also call it the mental masturbation festival. And you go there and you’ll usually have a professor from the university of somewhere who will get up there and will talk to you about three hot topics. There’s three hot topics they love to talk about.

One is the importance of being a good, a good community member. They love to talk about, as a business owner, give back. Second thing they talk about a lot. They love to talk about social justice and environmentalism. They love to talk about, you’ve got to be more responsible, social justice, you’ve got to recycle.

Third, they love talking about how the internet has completely changed and the only way to market your business today is by being a social media superstar. It doesn’t matter who speaks, but it’s usually gonna be someone who speaks, who has a startup, who is failing, and they get to speak, and everyone’s like,

oh, this is good, I’m gonna take notes. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re successful at all, you just get to speak, because they rotate, Luke. Look, if you go to enough of these events, you get to speak.

I don’t want to speak.

So you get up there, you’ve seen these events? Yeah, yeah.

You get up there and you’re like,

my name is Kevin and I started a company that gives back. It’s environmentally friendly and I care a lot about the community. We turn recycled furniture into matches. These are my ways that I market on social media.

Here’s what I know. Yes. Okay. Zellner told me, he said, you know, if you want to operate as a nonprofit, do that. Right? Start a non-profit. But you’re in business to make money.

Make it a body.

Right. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Right?

No. No. No.

But some people have this idea that they need to be serving the community. Well, you can’t serve the community if you’re broke.

Bam!

Right?

That’s right.

So, you know, you just got to scrap that.

Now, okay, step number three, though. You got to determine the number of hours that you’re willing to work So I’m telling you specifically if you want to run a company This is how you get your schedule as small as possible. These are the hours you have to work one You have to do the weekly group interview. That’s one hour weekly. You have to interview all your candidates That’s one hour hour two. You have to have an all-staff meeting every week every week

You have to have an all-staff meeting every week. Okay, you got to do a group interview all staff meeting. Three, this is the third hour. You have to do your accounting one hour a week. You have to look at your numbers at least one hour a week.

All right?

Four, you have to do a daily huddle. Now, if you’re able to run a company effectively, you should be able to run the company and only need to work there about seven hours a week. That’s about all you should need to work. Now, if you want to work zero hours a week, like my main man, Dr. Z, does, then you want to hire a very effective manager like Monty.

And effective managers usually are about $80,000 to $100,000 a year. So before you go out there and say you want to have… This is what’s so ridiculous, Chuck. There’s so many stupid events where they talk about passive income. I want to go off for a little bit. I haven’t gone off about passive income.

Please. I feel like it’s been a long time.

Can you be passive about it, though?

Okay, real quick. Passive income. How in the crap can you make passive income? So let’s think about all the ways that you can’t make passive income, but that people claim you have. Matt, have you ever heard about making passive income?

Oh yeah.

Okay, so let’s get into multi-levels first. So this is how you make passive income. Step one, convince your friend to auto-ship a product that’s unproven to work, that has been made and tested in some ambiguous laboratory in Europe. You probably don’t even need to be right and you want them to auto ship whatever the crap is they need to auto ship more crap make it

ever possibly consume if it’s toothpaste they need to auto ship more toothpaste and they could possibly ever use if it’s supplements they need to auto ship more supplements than they could ever possibly use well they have to because

if they’re gonna build their down leg clay then they have to but even under

even under that paradigm you have to get in touch with your team every month to make sure their cards go through. When the cards get declined, you’ve got to motivate them to give you a new card. You’ve got to talk to them about the future of the product. There’s nothing passive about multi-level. In fact, step number one, destroy all of your relationships and exchange them for a paycheck.

That’s step one. Then step two, continue harassing and beating up your friends every month to get that passive check.

I gotta get that Mercedes, man.

Please preach. Gotta get that. Okay, so that’s that. Let’s do real estate. Okay, that’s passive, man.

No. Have you ever had a tenant?

Chuck, have you ever rented a property to somebody?

No.

Have you, Luke?

I have not, but I know about this.

Okay, let me tell you about this. Step one, you get a good property. Oh, yeah. You take care of that property. In my case, I rented it to a guy that I knew very, very well. I’ve seen the photos of this said property. I rented the property to a guy I know very, very well. A guy who had a good background. I thought, this guy will be a good renter.

And so he decides to use my deck as a backdrop for his graffiti art. True story. He decides to remove my ceiling fans and to bring them to his new office. He decides to remove my built-in bookshelves and he decides to pull them out. I had a lion head, a decorative lion head where water came out of a fountain. He decided to just remove that and he won’t tell me where it is. He decided to not mow the lawn for usually 60 days at a time.

Take the fence down too, right? So every time his check bounced or it didn’t go through or he couldn’t pay, we’d show up at the property to collect the money. And it looked like he was trying to take his front lawn and turn it back to the native Oklahoma prairie.

It was like Jumanji, right?

It looked like he was building the gathering place, all that local grass that’s growing. It was like an Amazon. Tunnels and bridges everywhere. It was crazy. It was. Nothing passive about real estate, nothing passive about multi-level, nothing passive about having a business.

Luke, how passive is the staffing of the Hub, Jim? Could you just disappear for 90 days and come back and I’m sure you’d have a great staff? I don’t know the name of any of my staff. No, it’s not passive. What are you talking about? People teach that crap all the time.

You have to touch base.

You have to touch base with your staff.

It’s not even a realistic goal. There’s so many books. If you have a book out there written about passive income, burn it. Burn it. No, I tell you what. Bring the book to my office.

Yes. Bring it to the Thrive 15 headquarters. Bring your book. Bring your book. If you have a book out there about passive income, please bring the book to the Thrive 15 headquarters in Jinx.

It’s at the Riverwalk, 1100 Riverwalk Terrace. Bring the book to 1100 Riverwalk Terrace. Bring your book about passive income. Bring it. I’m going to do, I promise you I’ll do two things. One, I will burn it. Step two, I will pee on it.

Right there in the chimney.

I will, I promise you. Now I’m not gonna let you watch because you don’t need to be seeing that kind of thing. But you have to, because it’s not even a realistic goal.

That’s right. Why would you want that anyways? Like, it just doesn’t even make sense.

It doesn’t make, I mean seriously, you say, well Dr. Z has passive income. Dr. Z has managers, and they’re not passive. He has to maintain relationships.

That’s what I was going to say. He touches base with them every week and there’s an org chart and everybody knows.

But there’s so many people pursuing passive income. Have you been watching YouTube videos from some guy from Australia? Hey, mate. Hello. Oh, good to see you there. I didn’t see you.

Didn’t see you there.

Here I am.

Get out of my Lamborghini.

There’s some attractive ladies behind me. I’m at my pool and I want to teach you eight ways to make passive income overnight overnight income i’d make over nine thousand dollars a month from my laptop to know you don’t you don’t why you record is commercial right now you liar but why is this even a goal right it’s unbelievable and i see these two of the chambers give you a goal like your business should reinvigorate downtown

what how is that a goal that your business downtown should reinvigorate itself, so I’m moving my business down there. So step four, you have to determine your unique value proposition. This is what makes you different. Now Seth Godin calls this the purple cow. Eric, if you had to describe what makes the Hub Gym different from other gyms, how would you describe that?

Well, first of all, I would describe just the look of inside the gym. A lot of the gyms, the big boxed ones you go to, they’re very sterile. It’s all the same. Everything looks exactly the same and you can tell Luke is taking time to plan out each workout area There’s inspiration. There’s art everywhere over the walls. It’s kind of it’s eclectic, but not in the homeless kind Yeah, we’re gonna continue taking it to the next level. Yeah, it’s gonna continue getting better. He’s got a gorilla

I mean come on man. Oh, yeah, can you tell us about the gorilla?

Man, this guy is great you when you told me buy an inflatable gorilla. 20 foot gorilla. I thought, what in the heck are you thinking, right?

But he didn’t say that, he just did it, and that’s a good thing.

You know, if Clay says it, I’m doing it, let’s just do it. But we put him out, you know, randomly as weather permits, and people pull in. It’s crazy.

Isn’t it crazy? A large inflatable gorilla.

How tall is this gorilla? I literally think he’s like 20, 30 feet, something crazy.

I don’t know.

People just show up.

They drive in and they specifically mention the gorilla.

Exactly. So it’s a purple cow. Now, a purple cow, according to Seth Godin, Seth Godin, the bestselling author who sold his company Yo-Yo Dine to Yahoo for $30 million, writes, in a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. Not standing out is the same as being invisible.

Boring is invisible. Remarkable people and products get talked about. So I ask you there Mr. Thriver, Mrs. Thriver, what makes your company unique? Think about that. Really think about how can you make your product stand out in a crowded marketplace. Now step five, you gotta improve that branding.

Now the branding is, I think a lot of people can get woo-woo about this chap.

There’s a lot of

woo-woo. So I’m gonna read the notable quotable and I’d like to have Matt break it down because Matt you work at the Thrive Time Show offices. I’d love to get your take on this. You are not a business coach. I’m not asking you to be one, but you are a guy, you’re a man of the world. You know what’s going on. Okay here we go. This is what Michael Levine, by the way Michael Levine, my wife and I just signed Michael Levine to be our PR consultant for the Thrive Time Show. Michael Levine, he’s the PR consultant for

Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Nancy Kerrigan, and for myself. So this is what he says, he says, if you give someone a present and you give it to them in a Tiffany box, it’s likely that they’ll believe that the gift has a higher perceived value than if you gave it to them in no box or a box of less prestige. That’s not because the receiver of the gift is a fool, but instead because we live in a culture in which we gift wrap everything.

thing. Our politicians, our corporate heads, our movie and TV stars, and even our toilet paper. Matt, why does branding matter so much? Because branding is all in the mind of the buyer. If you can make your product or your service stand out and seem like it’s worth more, well then, in their mind, it is worth more. So Luke, we’ve had to go out there and optimize your website, the look of it. We’ve had to optimize your logo. We’ve had to optimize

your one sheet. We’ve had to optimize your marketing videos. We had to optimize signage, optimize exterior lighting. And we’re really never done optimizing things. There’s some really neat, we talked about on Friday, some neat things that are going to be updated in the gym. Can you talk to me about why branding has,

or how branding has impacted your business the most?

Yeah, absolutely. So we have the U in our logo, right? My wife and I spend a lot of time thinking about those things. And it’s you, babe!

It’s all about you.

And there is a sign with our U on it in another place in town, and people are recognizing it, right? Oh! And initially it was, you’re not Nike, so the swoosh doesn’t work. And it’s working now. The people recognize the U, and it’s synonymous with the hub.

And your idea to embroider the U on your head is a really controversial idea. I’m glad you haven’t pulled the trigger on that one yet. Now, step number six, you want to create a three-legged marketing stool. Now, a lot of people get woo-woo about this. Chup-woo-woo, woo-woo. They feel like marketing is the theoretical, always-changing event of the week.

Event of the week. People feel like marketing is the event of the week. Clay, it’s getting stale. We’ve got to change it up. Things are… So what I’m going to do is I’m going to read to you a notable quotable from Chet Holmes.

Now, Chet Holmes is the best-selling author of The Ultimate Sales Machine. He was a partner of Charlie Munger, who was Warren Buffett’s partner, okay? So this is Chet Holmes. His book is called The Ultimate Sales Machine. He passed away a few years back, but I want to read you his notable quotable. He says, the missing ingredient for nearly all of the thousand plus clients I’ve worked with directly to improve their business

is pig-headed discipline and determination. We all get good ideas at seminars and from books, radio talk shows, and business building gurus. The problem is that most companies do not know how to identify and adapt the best ideas to their business. Implementation, not ideas, is the real key to success. So Luke, can you share

what the three-legged marketing stool is that we’ve been applying, implementing there at the Hub, Jim?

I can. So we have been running Facebook ads. Facebook ads. Do we ever turn them off? Never, and it’s never changed, right? Are you still running? Yes, I’m still running it. It’s working. And then we do Google ads as well and AdRoll. Retargeting ads. They follow you around.

Right.

So…

Search engine optimization. Yeah. So that’s what we do. I want to make sure we’re recapping the moves here, okay? We never stop optimizing the website. Never.

This month, we’re putting back about, I think, about $2,000 into search engine optimization. Yep. We never are done. We are never done gathering reviews from our real clients. For never, never? We’re never done launching our…

We’re never done running our Google Ads. Never? Never done with our retargeting ads. Never done with our Facebook ads. Now you’ve said, Clay, I thought it was a three-legged marketing stool. The way it works is you don’t want to add a new leg until you have three stable legs.

Right. So let me just give you an example. This podcast, uh, Chup, as of the time of the recording of today’s show, we have, we’re approaching 1,400 podcasts you can find at Thrivetimeshow.com.

That’s a pile.

Now, why is it important that we don’t add any other kind of marketing until we can consistently just record one podcast a day? Why was it so important for us just to start one podcast a day before we launched Retargeting Ads?

Well, one thought is that you’ve got to be fruitful and then multiply. Right. So do what you’re doing. And then the other thing is you’ve got to measure. You don’t want to go jump out there with 12 legs to your marketing system because it’s going to be too much to measure and you won’t know if your resources are being allocated

properly. And Luke and I have done this, we’ve gone through this. We know who is ideal and likely buyers are. We know the average age, the average income, where they’re from, where their kids go to school. We’re not going to be running a lot of ads to go after South Tulsa for a gym in Broken Arrow. Because people just aren’t going to drive from

151st or 111th and Memorial over to the Hub Gym. But people who live in the Broken Arrow area love the gym. If you’re living around the Lynn Lane area, the Elm area, anywhere in Broken Arrow people love it. It’s convenient. If you live over there by REMA, if you live over there by the Lowe’s or the Warren Theater. Those are the people that are going to see the ads. Right. And also if you’re into that, if you’re into the concept of a Royd Rage, you probably won’t like the Hub Gym.

It’s not a gym where there’s a lot of…it’s not their niche. How much does it cost a month to go to the Hub Gym? So after the initial month for only a dollar, you’re looking at a whopping $29 a month for

full access to the club 24-7.

And the ads won’t work unless you have a no-brainer. That’s right. Correct. So you can have all the ads in the world, but what gets you the entrance into the game, the golden look, is having a no-brainer. Tell us again Luke, what’s your no-brainer?

So your first month is only a dollar. What? And you can find that on thehubgym.com or on Facebook, check out our ads.

Surely you can’t be serious.

I am very serious. I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.

A lot of people don’t get hung up on that. They say there’s no way possible that you could run a gym and have your first month be a dollar.

How is it possible, Luke? Well, you know, I remember when we first started talking about this and I thought, offer a dollar, the doors are going to be flooded, I’m not going to be everybody’s… and that just isn’t the case, you know. It’s just a good leader to get people in, have a great experience, and it’s working.

I mean, yeah, I don’t know how, I don’t know the math behind it, but it is, and we’re going to continue

doing it. Now as we talk about step number seven, before we get into step seven, which is creating a sales conversion system, I’d like for Matt to be able to ask you a few questions. Because Matt, you’ve often talked about, I know you want to eventually own your own business someday, and you’re also involved with the ministry. Luke is doing it.

There’s a lot of people that talk about doing it, but he’s doing it. Luke has done it. He’s done a lot of these steps, and now we’re just scaling the steps. Do you have any questions for Luke about implementation? Because so many people talk about wanting to grow their company, but as they begin to grow the company, Chuck, they mentally cannot handle growth.

I see a ton of people that say, I want to grow my company, I want to grow my company, and then we help them grow the company and they can’t mentally handle it. So here we have a real example of a real guy who’s doing it, the Hub Gym, Luke Owens. Matt, do you have any questions for Luke about implementation?

Why did you choose the marketing methods that you chose? Like why not a billboard or a TV spot? Why internet marketing?

So here’s what’s cool about working with Thrive. You don’t have to think about those things. It was never a question of, hey, are we gonna spend $2,000 a month on a billboard. If that makes sense in the future, we’ll talk about that. But they have a proven system, and you just

have to be willing to follow it. And that just wasn’t one. There were a couple of things we talked about initially, and we tried them. They work. If we tried them and they didn’t work, we didn’t keep doing them.

That’s a very different, what you just said, Luke, it’s very different than most marketing firms or even most businesses. Most businesses try a new form of marketing every week.

That’s wasting a lot of resources.

Can you talk to me about what it was like when you were running your business with the idea of the week? It always happened. Maybe a new fun run or a new marketing idea or a new social media strategy or a new t-shirt or a new banner or a new print piece or a new ad in a magazine. Talk to me what that felt like.

Well, exactly how I just felt when you were listing all those off. Crazy, right? And so, you know, what you’ve taught me is that the business is to work for you. And that’s how it’s contrary, right? Like I was working for the business, which meant I never saw my family. My first son, I think I literally never put him to bed or woke up with him the first few years, at least,

of his life. Because I was always at that next event or behind the computer creating something new, it was always a reactionary existence.

I want to walk the listeners, Chuck, inside the mind of the average business owner that’s doing ideas of the week marketing. Oh boy. So here we go, here we go. AdWords, Amazon, automobile raps, mass mailers, mass texting, mass voicemails, AdWords, blog-based advertising, automobile raps, mass emails, mass email, Aweber, constant contact, SurveyMonkey, business development partnership deals, buying, merging, selling,

celebrity endorsement, cold call marketing, door-to-door sales, Dream 100, email marketing, Facebook advertising, flyers, Google Maps, Google Reviews, Google Shopping, maybe I should do magazine advertising, maybe mall shopping, center traffic, outdoor signage, newspaper advertising,

Pandora, Pay-Per-Click, Spotify, pop-up shops, public relations, celebrity tie-in strategy, expert strategy, give-back strategy, national news tie-in, the chamber ads, buy an ad, yellow pages, do those still work? Yelp, YouTube advertising, Valpak, trade show advertising, text marketing, targeting online ads, television advertising, social media, maybe I should be a public speaker, maybe

I should write a book, maybe I should get a sign flipper, maybe I should do a snort engine advertising, where do I start? What’s new? Maybe I’ll go on YouTube. I just read a blog. Google’s changed everything.

Google’s changed everything. Oh my crap! Google’s changed everything! This is what happens. That’s inside the mind. Inside the mind of idea of the week marketing.

It will cause you insanity and then soon you’ll live in a van down by the river. Okay, now step number seven. Creating a sales conversion system. This is the part where everybody has to do this. And when people don’t fight you, like Luke, it’s awesome. Okay, here’s what happens is, step one, you gotta write a call script.

Gotta get that, gotta get that boom boom boom boom, that boom boom, gotta have that call script, gotta get that, why do you have to have a call script?

Or you’ll end up with a hashtag tattoo on your wrist. So, we were in the office and Chuck said, hey, why don’t you make a sales call? And I said, awesome, I can do that. I’ve been doing this for years. He’s like, where’s your script?

I don’t need a script. We get on the phone and I have like, it was crazy town. And so the phone answers and I start to speak and I lose my mind. And then I start cursing on the phone like I don’t know what the errant say

and I this is still live and then I realize it’s live and so I just hang up and we all lose our mind like what are you doing and then you know he brings Marshall in to share in this awesomeness and Marshall says why didn’t you just hit the pound sign I guess that stops the call or does something the voicemail.

Which you should never do.

And so now I have an awesome hashtag tattoo on my wrist. It’s a reminder of that one epic fail. I never want to forget that.

You’ve got to create an inbound sales script and an outbound sales script, okay? Then you have to have a pre-written email that goes out. Pre-written emails. You’ve got to have pre-written text messages. You’ve got to create a sales one sheet and you’ve got to use Clarity Voice or some recording program to record your calls. And in your case, Luke, you guys are more of a gym than like a personal training business, right? But let’s say in the gym or if you have a personal training company, you got to install cameras and

why do you have to install cameras in the actual gym? How is that helpful when

you put cameras in the gym? Well, you can review what your staff and your clients are doing. You’re dealing with people, right? So things happen and you definitely don’t want to be about somebody’s opinion or word. You want to know and be able to verify.

That’s what you do. You’ve got to record your calls. You’ve got to put in video. That’s why things are growing at the hub. Now step eight, the Ocho. You’ve got to figure out what it costs you to acquire a new customer. Determine the sustainable customer acquisition costs.

Determine the sustainable customer acquisition costs. Why is it so important that we track every single week, Luke,

how much you’re spending on advertisement and how many new members you’re getting? Well, because that converts to a cost per member, and you want to make sure that you’re converting at a rate or the money you’re spending is converting those members at that rate, at the cost.

You can scale it up then. Right. If it’s $40 per new member, then you can decide if you’re going to scale it up.

That’s right. This is the first steps to, let’s take the Hub Jam or Elephant in the Room. You know if your no-brainer is working based on knowing these numbers. If you don’t know what these numbers are, you don’t have your customer acquisition cost, and you don’t necessarily know if your no-brainer is a good deal for you as a business owner.

I see so many people saying, I’m not going to spend any money on advertising, I’m going to market on social media. What’s that going to cost you? Your whole day?

Yeah, you’re telling people. Your whole day writing your viral tweets, you genius you? Yeah, telling people that already know about you, about you. Like, that doesn’t help.

You know, Clay, you’ve had me over the last week or so start really diving in to the expenses and income of the gym, right? That’s all we’ve been doing. Because we’ve been growing, and that’s great. We’re over 70% growth. But we’re noticing, where is that?

And so we start looking at that, and we get to see where we’re spending money. You say, make cuts. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I would have said there’s nothing to cut, and we’ve cut over $2,000 a month.

$2,000 a month. So we’ve generated $24,000 a year of extra income as a result of just cutting things. And by the way, no one got laid off. No. We didn’t sit there and fire people. We just got rid of unneeded expenses. And it’s very easy for those expenses to creep up by entropy, by

default. They just happen. So you’ve got to be very mindful of your expenses. Now, step number nine. Once you’ve begun to sell things and you’re growing, now you got to create repeatable processes. Essentially, don’t over spiritualize this. You’ve got to have a checklist for everything.

Luke, how has having a checklist for everything helped you? It’s helped me immensely. It’s sitting right next to me here on the table, and what that allows me to do is say no to a lot of things. If you’re not on my list, and it’s just something I don’t have to say yes to, right? And so it’s allowed me to say no, and it keeps things out of my mind. I don’t have to remember everything, which in turn means I’m going to forget everything.

It’s right there on the list.

It’s allowed you to duplicate yourself within the business, right? Oh my God, yeah. Like you were saying, you don’t have to be there 24-7 every single day because you’ve created these systems and processes for your team to use, right? How do I clean the bathroom? How do I open the gym up? How do I restock the shelves? How do I clean the equipment? It’s all in a process of choice.

Right, and I don’t want anybody else. I just want a business that serves myself Myself I don’t want Anything else oh no. Oh no that song is so good and so gross you remember that you were that song You’re doing I want a business that serves no Really we’re not think about clay. No do you remember that song? Yes, I do.

Matt, do you not remember that song?

Nope. Really?

Nope. When I think about you, I’ll touch the moon. Whoa, okay. Ah! It’s a group I call the Divinals, all right? And it says, I love myself, I want you to love me.

When I feel down, I want you above me. I search myself, come on, jump. I want you to find me. I forget myself. I want you to remind me I don’t want anybody else

Matt, when I think about you I touch myself Oh, I don’t want anybody else

Oh no, oh no

That’s what you missed out on, dude

I think that was before my time When were you born? What year?

93 93? I feel like that song came out probably in 93 That was the year of you, man That song came out, let’s see what year, can you find out what song? 1990! Oh my god.

Dude, that was three years before your birth. Here’s my theory, you were conceived to that song.

Oh no!

Yes!

Three years later.

Now we have a Matt.

It took a while for it to happen, but it was a three year process. They would just crank up those jams every night and we’d create that loving feeling, and all of a sudden, Matt emerges on the stage. This is the, hey Chubb, this is the circle. This is imaging. Oh wow. Okay, nice. Okay, we move on now. Now, step number 10, the management and execution. Why has it been so important for you to learn how to manage people? And how are you managing people differently now

than you used to? I’ll make that a simple statement. I managed from emotion before period right Tried to make everybody happy Sorry When you manage emotionally what happens dude, it just doesn’t work. You’re that You know, it’s what do you say called click funnels or whatever?

You become that. You become that, right? Because everybody’s coming to you about their story and about what’s going on in their life, all the while yours is going down the tube.

Let me give you an example. Let me just give you an example of what terrible management looks like so you guys can get this idea. It’s where you give someone a task to do, right? And you say, I need you to go to the store and purchase paper, and I need you to shut the door every day, lock the gym on your way out.

Lock the gym, I need you to purchase paper today, and I need you to clean the bathrooms. If you feel like it. And then every time you follow up with the person, every time you follow up, right, because you’ve now been to a motivational event, you’ve read the first chapter of a management book, you didn’t follow up for the first time. And all employees have the following three excuses until you learn how to become a good manager.

All employees have the same excuses until you learn how to become an effective manager. Now, the employees that don’t give you these excuses are what we would call A players, and that would represent 20% of the workforce. But everybody else has these three.

I’m sure you’ve heard these. They say, I forgot. That’s excuse number one, I forgot. Guy forgot. The second thing they’d say is there was a miscommunication.

Right? And the third is they just simply choose not to, but they have an emotional justification for it. Oh yeah. Did you ever run into those things, Luke, where people just emotionally gave you a justification

for not getting something done? All of the time. When you’re emotional, they’re gonna be emotional.

That’s how it works. So now how do you manage now?

How’s it different? It’s very cut and dry. We set expectations. We hold people accountable and you know if you choose not to do it more than about once, you know we’re just going to move on.

And when you stop acting in that emotional sphere, that emotional realm, you stop saying yes to everything, right? And you begin saying no and that’s where your time freedom creation begins because you’re saying no to things that are not on your goal list.

That’s right. And as we wrap up today’s show we have step 11, 12, and 13 which wouldn’t you couldn’t manage people effectively if you don’t do these next three steps. So step 11 is you have a repeatable weekly schedule. You now have a weekly staff meeting and you have daily huddles where you know if something’s weird before it gets out of control. You know if somebody’s operating below the standard quickly so you can nip it in the

bud. You’re not waiting for a quarter to go by or a year to go by. Colleges would encourage you to give people an annual review. How insincere is an annual employee review? You meet with somebody at the end of the year And you just remember like the last things they did in the last two weeks

Yep

And then that somehow becomes a summary of their annual no what you do is you meet with people you have a weekly schedule We have a weekly staff meeting and a daily huddle and if something gets weird you can nip it in the bud because you have a repeatable schedule that your employees can count on you must create a sustainable and repetitive weekly schedule. Step 12, human resources and recruitment. You’re never done doing the group interview. Why can you never stop doing the group interview, Luke?

Well, I don’t want to be behind the desk selling memberships anymore, so I’ve got to have people in the batter’s box, if you will.

Nice. Now, step 13, you’ve got to do your accounting and automate the earning of money. What you have to do is you have to sit there and do your accounting and you’ve got to be intense about paying yourself first. You’ve got to, in your mind, you’ve got to automate this concept of I’m going to pay myself first. I’m going to do my accounting and every, the way I do accounting with you, I’ve been helping

you the last month or so on this, it’s very active. It’s very, it’s like offense meets accounting. Accounting typically is something people do if they have time, but we make it an aggressive thing and we’re aggressively cutting wasteful spending. We’re aggressively focusing on paying you. And why is it so important that we focus on paying you, Luke?

Well, I’ve got a certain level of lifestyle that I want to attain. You know, I have three children and a beautiful wife and a dog. They all need food and shelter. So it’s kind of one of those things. And I don’t want to work 80 hours a week like I have for the last 12 years. So by default, you weren’t paying yourself.

No, no, no, I was not. So everybody who worked there was making more than you were. And I’ll tell you, doing this active management of the funds, we found over $4,000 in errors day before yesterday. We would not have found those. They would have been gone for the month,

which skews everything. I was able to deposit that money into the bank. You’ve got to be intense about your accounting and schedule a weekly time to do your accounting. My name is Clay Clark. I’m a business coach. I do this because I believe in you. I believe My name is Clay Clark. I’m a business coach. I do this because I believe in you. I believe in your power to change. I know that you have the capacity and the tenacity needed to succeed, but you cannot get anything done unless you’re willing to take action.