Entrepreneur | 3 Principles For Creating Your Own Momentum + 3 Proven Strategies for Saying “No”

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! Good look as a father of five, that’s what I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now 3, 2, 1, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do. Hey, Clark, how are you doing, my friend? I’m doing good, man. I’ve got this back. My back is, I woke up this morning, and my back decided to go out. Wow. So I feel like, it’s my physical pain, but I’m pushing through it. Yeah. So if you just fall over, we know why. Yeah, well, I can’t even really fall. I just would kind of go. I’m just going to. Well, listen, today we’re talking about the three reasons for having a job. Yeah. OK, and I know you personally. And so I know some of those for you is being able to buy yoga pants for yourself or organic kale and whole foods. Those reasons, are those the kind of reasons we’re touching on today? I feel like you somehow are reading my diary because I wrote in there like, Dear Diary, I hope to buy yoga pants. You’re big on those. People love it when I wear them. Yeah, well it helps you when you’re, you know, reading books and whatnot. It’s a freedom aspect. Listen, today we’re talking about why it matters to have a job, okay? Three reasons to have a job. And I wanted to know though, does any kind of job count? Like if you’re a cat juggler, that counts? Are you endorsing that as like, these reasons apply? I am honestly saying, any job, controversial thought here, every job is an entrance to another opportunity. So every job is an entrance to another opportunity. So I mean, if you have a job right now, you’re working as a barista, you’re working at a mall, you’re working as an accountant or an assistant to a doctor, no matter where you are, you have this great opportunity to really build relationships and to build some skills and to really earn money, yes, but let’s focus on learning, not just earning. Now, I don’t think most people understand or think of their job as an opportunity lots of times. I know a recent Gallup poll said that 70% of Americans hate their job. Not only don’t think of their job as an opportunity, but passionately hate their job I realize that not everybody watches Star Wars 1 2 & 3 like I do the originals like everyone Technically it’s episodes 4 5 & 6 that’s everyone watches those every week like I do every week Well, I watch them often Okay But the thing is is that hate is a strong word the Emperor was into hate and Darth Vader was into hate when you say Hate I mean hate is a strong word. To hate your job? Well, and a lot of people, though, are at jobs that they don’t enjoy, that they hate. And not only do these people hate their jobs, though, but it’s not even helping them get closer to achieving their goals. USA Today says over one-third of Americans of all ages have nothing saved for retirement. And you might think, OK, well, young people don’t think of that. Listen, people ages 50 to 65 have absolutely nothing saved. 26% of those people 50 to 65. So why are people in jobs that they hate so much if it’s not even furthering them to achieving their goal? Well I want to say this. If you’re at a job, and I’m going to use my board here for a second. You going to write some claimations or something? Some claimations and with the back injury it’s a slow walk. But the thing is, if you’re here right now with your career, if this is where you are, and you know where you want to be, you know where you want to be in terms of your financial goals, your life goals, if you know where you want to be, then your job, your job you’re at now should help move you a little bit along this path. And I’ll just give you a quick example before we dive into it. But when I had my first job, and I’m working construction, I mean, I was working my first kind of serious job was construction. When you’re working construction, I’m talking about we’re hauling massive quantities of concrete, we’re building things, we’re getting up at 5 in the morning. We actually got to work at 5 and we’d work from 5 until about 7 p.m. But that job helped me earn that 20k that I needed to buy my first DJ system. Without that first $20,000. I could not have done that. And that led to the DJ business. But because I was so terrible at that job, I had to work as a DJ and at Applebee’s and at Target simultaneously. And that led to the next job, which led me to tax and accounting software, which I met Tim Redmond. And that led me from that job to the next. So if you look back now and you look at Thrive over here, Tim, who I met at this third job along the way where I was an intern, is now one of our board members. Or you look at some of the investors I met while working at Target, those are guys who are investing in the company now. These people, it’s but you have to work to build that reputation, that education, the compensation. But if you don’t know where you want to go, it’s hard to see, because I can tell you when I was working 12 or 14 hours a day doing concrete, I didn’t feel like I was getting where I wanted to go. But I knew that it was getting me where I wanted to go because I was saving money each week to buy that first sweet DJ system. So the purpose here is to remind you why you’re at the job you’re at and help you evaluate why you’re there and make sure those goals are defined. So what we’re going to be going over today are these three principles. One, when you can’t eat, you can’t dream. Oh boy. OK. Two, building your network will build your net worth. Yep. Three, building your reputation and your practical education. OK? Absolutely. All right, so let’s dive on in here. First one is when you can’t eat, you can’t dream. OK? Now, I know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, OK? Some people have heard of it, some people haven’t. I want to go over this and kind of marinate in this for a little bit right here. The definition for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a system of the motivation of all humans that is unrelated to rewards. It is often depicted by a five-level pyramid. You’ll see the graphic up here on the screen. This five-stage model can be divided into two categories, basic needs and growth needs. The first level of the pyramid is physiological motivation, then safety, then social, then esteem, and on the very top is self-actualization. Okay, so Clay, why do we need to know or I guess, why is it worth spending any time here on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs right now? Well, a lot of us have jobs and a lifestyle that can’t keep up with that job. So when Vanessa and I, my wife and I, we first got married, I was working at Target and at Applebee’s, and I also had a job where I was working at a place called Faith Highway. We sold evangelism commercials to churches. And so those three jobs produced a weekly income, weekly, for all that, 70 hours a week working, sometimes even 80 hours a week, I have tips and everything. I was generally lucky if I could make $800. And my wife was going to college. So right here, right at the bottom of the pyramid, we’ve got to focus on eating. We’ve got to focus on shelter. We’ve got to focus on those basic needs. And I see people who are making $800 or making maybe more than I was making then or a little bit less, but they’re out there buying the luxury apartment. They’re buying the luxury car. They’re upgrading. I’m talking about, when we were here, we ate chicken panini. I’m talking about chicken panini. Why? Because I was aware of a budget, but the problem is because of credit, the easy access to credit and credit cards. So many people are getting out of school with student debt, so they’re like, well, I might as well just get some credit card debt. I mean, at a certain point, you already have so much debt, why does it even matter? So people start financing their $7 salads. I’m telling you, we didn’t go out to eat ever. I’m not exaggerating. There was never a time at all during those jobs where I ever went out to lunch. I never ate out for lunch. I always brought my brown bag lunch every day. And we were eating these 96 cents chicken paninis. Why? Because I didn’t have the money to get here and I realized if I couldn’t just provide basic shelter and food and that kind of thing, I can never move up. We’ve got to start to save. Because when you save money, you’re buying opportunities. Alright, now I don’t want to get too personal here, okay, but I know that you during this time of focusing on that that first level, went for a period of time without any air conditioning. Can you go ahead and do a little story time here and tell us what that was like, why you were doing that, and how that applies to this principle? One, it was humiliating. I know that people would come by and visit me a lot. I would always try to play it off, like, hey, let’s meet up at Taco Cabana. And a setting, just to clarify the setting here, you live in Oklahoma. It’s like 100 degrees in the summer and maybe 20 in the winter sometimes. There’s some serious humidity issues. It was extremely hot and extremely cold. But we have love. Yes. All you need is love. All you need. But people would say, well, hey, we should get together. And I’d go, yeah, let’s meet up at Taco Cabana. It’s right down the street. And you could basically order tortillas with salsa for $2. And now we get a water. And I would just be there, and I would play it off like no I already ate or I’m good or whatever But I didn’t have enough money to afford food and I was a married guy And I didn’t have anything any money and I couldn’t afford air conditioning and people if they did ever come over to the house Or to the apartment. I was always embarrassed because it was it was so hot I felt like I was a failure. I felt like that. My business was terrible like I was an idiot, but I also knew that I was saving money up. I had read this book called The Millionaire Next Door that talks about how the average millionaire started off basically poor. Three quarters of Americans started off poor. And so I had this hope and this faith that I was gonna get there. And so every week I would just kind of build up my bank account, $100, $200. Remember the first time I had a thousand, and 2,000, and five, and 10. And then, and so it’s just a deal of deferring what you want now for what you want later. It’s learning, it’s the maturity of thought of learning that this job that I’m at now, I’m here to build a reputation, I’m here to gain skills, I’m here to, and not feeling bad about it, but kind of wear it as a badge of honor, like I’ve been through this, I’ve learned to sacrifice. So it’s deferring, you said, what you want now for what you want later. Yeah, there’s a quote I like to tell people, but if you buy what you want now, you won’t be able to afford what you need later. That’s huge. Well, I’m going to go ahead and we’re going to do a little notable quotable here, okay? It’s from a well-known book, the Bible, so you can take it and read it. Bible schmeible, buddy. That’s controversial. Here we go. Here we go. Proverbs 10.4 says, a slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. And then Proverbs 12.24 says, the hand of the diligent will rule while the slothful will be put to forced labor. This is an important aspect of this principle. I mean, if you’re focusing on the basic needs, you’ve got to have that diligence though, if you want to move up to start thinking about your dreams. I would say that, I would say the one thing I would say, because I know there’s about half the audience that probably just disagrees with you and your quoting of Proverbs. Yeah. I will say that, and just a purely secular perspective, there are people in the office, and we have an office, we have core businesses that we run, and then Thrive is my baby, that’s what we do, but there’s other businesses that we own. And I will tell you, in the photography company, it’s hysterical, you’ll see an employee sit there and text, text, text, she’ll be busy texting, texting, thinking I won’t notice, texting. So I will fire her as soon as possible, right and I don’t feel bad and I will talk to her and I’ll say Hey, I want you to know you’re not performing stop texting. Hey, I need you to focus hand agent engage hand agent But eventually when you’re at the end of the month at the end of the week when you’ve done half as much work as the person Next to you guess who I’m gonna promote I’m gonna promote the guy who’s diligent and just in our own photography company that I own right now We have a young man who in the past three months he’s doubled his wages because he has decided that he wants to do that. And so I as he’s been diligent I give him more tasks and I give more tasks he moves his way up. So I am choosing to reward him but it selfishly benefits me as the boss. Right. If I put good people on good things and they move up. Yeah. But if you give someone a small task and they can’t handle a small task I’m not gonna give you more. And I think a lot of us love the mindset that I had back in the day when I was at Target for a while there was, I’ll start working hard when you start paying me good. You start paying me more, I’ll start working hard. You promote me, I’ll work hard. If you will promote me, I will work hard. So we’ve got to take that first step. You have to start working hard before you start getting the pay you want. That’s huge, and I don’t think that a lot of people think like that. Let me ask you this, though. What is the action step here? What’s the action step? Is it just the working hard before you’re seeing the reward? Is it the diligence? The action step right now is one, no matter what job you’re at, live below your means. Okay. Live below your means. Move into the garage, get with a neighbor, move in with a friend, cut those expenses, be very, very aware right now of what you have to do to eat. Get a third job, get a second job, get an eighth job, I don’t care. Honestly, no exaggeration, I have worked many, many times, many times in my life for more than 70 hours a week to make it work Guess what so did Steven Spielberg guess what check the biography of Steve Jobs? So did he right guess what check the biography of anybody who’s ever been successful and you’ll notice they all had three jobs It’s not like it’s a tough deal It’s just life But you’re you’re at where you are right now to help you provide for your basic needs Okay, and to move a little bit longer a move a little bit farther down the road So cut down on the cost focus on the basic needs BAM. I love it Okay, principle number two here is building your network will build your net worth. Oh, that’s tough So got a little notable quotable here from Napoleon Hill your favorite. Yeah, this is what Napoleon Hill says He says a friendly alliance with one or more persons. This is how he defines. I’m sorry This is how he defines the mastermind. Okay, you can read more about it in his book, Think and Grow Rich, but this is what he calls the mastermind. A friendly alliance with one or more persons who will encourage one to follow through with both plan and purpose. Now keep in mind, Napoleon Hill is a guy, he was pretty intentional about building his mastermind. He had some incredible names in his mastermind. Well, Napoleon Hill, again, back story, he actually was a guy who wrote for Ladies Home Journal. He was a writer. And he grew up poor and he says, you know, I want to do something big with my life. I want to interview the world’s most successful people and ask them how they did it. And at the time, you know, people are like, whatever. He says, no, I really want to do this. And so he reaches out, reaches out, reaches out, reaches out. Finally gets a hold of Andrew Carnegie, who was the second wealthiest man in the world. Andrew Carnegie says, I will give you the knowledge that I, that you seek in your brain. I’ll teach you all this stuff. I’ll help you write your book only if you’re willing to devote the better half of a decade to Doing this and I’ll pay for your room and board, but I’m not gonna pay you so he starts to say I Think I think I could do it. Yeah, and he said he was almost scared when he decided to take the project on well Anyway, Carnegie starts introducing him to his best friends Thomas Edison William Wrigley, Henry Ford, Roy Firestone. Pretty soon, he knows all of the major players. It’d be like going to work for Larry and Sergey at Google right now. And they’re like, hey, you mind doing a little dinner here with a little Mark Zuckerberg action? Or do you want to hang out with Oprah this evening? Or I’m going to go over to Richard Branson’s house, and we’re going to go ahead and do a little jet ski. It’s just unbelievable the connections at the time that he had. How have you seen this principle benefit you, or maybe the clients around you? How have we seen this? A little story time here. Well, here’s what you have. Here’s what you have, okay? When I worked at Target, and this is what you shouldn’t do. I worked at Target, and there’s a guy, Greg, if you’re watching, I ain’t mad at you. I hope he’s not mad at me. Greg’s probably mad at me. But the deal is, I’d work there, and I was at my job, and I wanted to get here in life. Right. And because I wanted to get here, uh-oh, this is just me behaving badly, I didn’t acknowledge Greg ever. Because he wasn’t on my path, I thought. I’m here to earn some money and to peace out. I’m not here to talk to Greg. Greg’s like, what’s up, Clay? And I’m like, alright, and I keep going. My whole thing is I felt like Greg was in my way, right? But what you realize is you get into life is that once you begin to develop Relationships you start to have this relationship Once you begin to have a network you start to build net worth Long story short. This was me behaving badly I should not have treated that person that way If I get punched in the face. Yeah, I earned it. It’s cool. Now, the next thing, though, is I started to get the mindset at Target of the network. Okay. And one guy walks in here named Todd Starkey. Oh, I’ll never forget. Todd Starkey comes in here, and he’s looking to buy a video camera. Okay. He’s, I’m trying to buy a video camera. I said, okay. I just started doing this principle. Yeah. And I was like, so what are you buying the video camera for? He says, well, for my wife. And I said, well, what’s the occasion? Oh, it’s Christmas, you know, but I want to get something early for her because we have this vacation coming up and I’m like what kind of camera? He tells me the kind of camera. He says I want this camera and this camera was like $400 a video camera. Okay. And I said you know I don’t know if you want that one. This one actually from what you’re telling me seems better and it’s a little bit less. I recommend this one instead. Same great camera. You’re just not paying for a feature no one uses anyway. Anything else I can help you with? And he’s like yeah I’m looking for a CD of… And I’m like, instead of saying, well, the CDs are over there, I walked him to the CD, got the CD. Well, at a certain point, Todd says, what do you do? I remember that. What do you do? And I was like, oh, I work at Target. I’m the CD electronic guy. And he’s like, no, I mean, what do you do? And I said, well, I work here and I own a DJ business. I’m kind of getting that off the ground. And he said, how much do you make? And at the time, I don’t remember if it was $6.25 or $7.25. It was something like that. And I remember saying, well, I make about that much per hour. And he says, why? And I said, well, I’m trying to work here to provide health insurance and make some money and just make ends meet. And he goes, I own a company. He goes, I work at a company that’s owned by a guy. Well, it’s a company that was owned by the two Tims. But Tim Redmond, one of our Thrive mentors, this was his business. And Todd says, yeah, I actually am a recruiter, and I’m in charge of recruiting interns and new people, and I think you’d be perfect for the program. Have you ever studied accounting? And I’m like, yes. I love accounting. Yeah. So anyway, I ended up moving from here to here, and I think when it’s all said and done, I ended up being, before, I think I ended up making about $15 an hour, doubling it from this job to that job as a result of getting in there and moving up to the top of my group. Then from there, building the relationships there, that led to my next job where I was making about $30 an hour. I say an hour. They’re paying me commission, very small base commission. At the end of the day, I was making about 30 bucks an hour. Okay, so what you’re saying is that, one, you worked up where you were at Target. You were diligent there first. You planted the seeds. You were diligent there. But how do we go about building our network then? I mean, what’s the jump there? Just meeting people, how do you do that? On a practical level, any time that you meet somebody, and I don’t want to get super spiritual because I know a lot of people disagree with me on this, but I’m just going to work with me on this for a second. And to be honest, we’ve got a lot of awesome networking episodes. Go check those out as well, deep dive into it. I want to say that I believe that every person on the planet was put here by a reason. Now, some might just say by a lightning bolt or from amoebas. I don’t care, but I think you’re here for a God-appointed reason. I think you’re here for a reason. And once you start realizing every single person has three major attributes. They have value. Every single person regardless of their physical skills, if they’re handicapped, mentally handicapped, if they’re old, if they’re young, if they’re a man, if they’re a woman, they have a different faith in you, a different orientation in you, different whatever, they have value. Every person has value. The second thing they have is every single person has some kind of skills that you don’t have. So you might be terrible at math, but I’m great at it. Or you might be great at speaking, and I might be bad. You might be awesome at sales, but I’m not. But you have skills. The third thing is every single person has relationships or a network. They have people, they know people that you don’t know. So let’s look at a very basic example. If you are Bill Gates, and you are Paul Allen. I’m a voracious reader of autobiographies and I encourage everyone to do it as well. But Bill Gates couldn’t sell anything. He had huge quantities of nerd. Huge quantities of brain power and nerddom. Paul Allen had zero nerd skills. How do you use a computer? Now Paul Allen though could sell anything. And this guy, no sales skills. Well guess what? Because Bill Gates thought highly enough of Paul Allen as a human and didn’t prejudge him and realize he had value, he had skills, and he had relationships, those two, one nerd, one non-nerd, one technological idiot, one technological guru, one sales expert, one non-sales expert. They worked together to build Microsoft. Then, with their combined connections, this is amazing, but one of our Thrive mentors, his name is Paul Pressey. Well, Paul Pressey, right here, is a very good friend, right here, with Clifton Talbert. Well, why does Paul Pressey know Clifton Talbert? Because Paul Pressey played basketball at the University of Tulsa, and Clifton volunteered to add value to the lives of those kids, many of which didn’t have dads. Paul did not have a dad. He did not have certain skills, but Clifton invested in his life to build that relationship. Well, Paul goes on to play in the NBA. He needs somebody. Yeah, I guess in the NBA he just happens to now coach with the Lakers and he happens to know Byron Scott He just happens to have played with David Robinson All of a sudden you realize that Clifton Talbert Who is a guy who spoke at an event that I was at who was the guy I did not know Here’s a guy where I is a young man reached out to Clifton to try to over deliver and help him and add value to His companies even though I didn’t know him and he wasn’t going to pay me. I tried to reach out to him and try to intern, try to add value, try to work with him. But by building a relationship with Clifton, that relationship transferred over to Paul, to David Robinson, I can go on and on. But the point is that everybody who’s watching this right now, if you’re at your job and you’re either emitting a signal right now, you’re like a radio station and you’re emitting this signal. And the signal either says right here, this is what it says. It says, go away. You’re telling people either go away, you’re telling your opportunities go away, I don’t want you, I’m not interested, I wanna be poor, I wanna stay poor, I hate my job, or the law of attraction, you’re saying, come to me. You’re saying, bring me the deals. I’m open for business, I’m ready. I’m ready to be promoted, I’m ready to be hired. I don’t need to be responding inspired I’ve already got my own mojo, but it’s either one way or the other I can tell you this when I was at Target I used to sit there like All the time I’m else my face You know, yeah, I don’t know why I made that face is a stupid face. It’s a stupid face. It’s an apathetic face It’s a face that a lot of people make though we go Why are we making that face? We’ve got to turn the frown upside down, notify our face that we are happy to be on the planet. That was before you were wearing the yoga pants. That improved your mood a lot. I’ll tell you what, when I was wearing those yoga pants, my wife runs for the hills. Wow. People I know run away, but I know they run away because they’re intimidated by the office. That’s right. That’s what it is. That’s right. I feel like the first thing that we do right now, though, having heard about this, networking improves your net worth, is just to ask ourselves, who’s in my mastermind group? Right? I mean, we should ask ourselves who’s in my network. You do that and I’ll ask yourself though, are you telling people to go away? Because if you have a small network like if I had and you’re going, if you do, I agree with you, you say, if you ask yourself who’s in my network and the answer is nobody, it’s probably because you have the face of an idiot. Yeah. You’re probably going, that’s what I was doing all the time. Or you might have idiots in your network. I remember I used to do this move at lunch. Check this out. I used to do this move during meetings. Those are all stupid activities. Stop yawning. Stop sleeping. Stop acting like an idiot. Tell the world I’m ready for business. Right. And this is this is a reason for having a job. I mean, this is huge. People don’t think about it. You don’t go to work always thinking, who can I meet, how is this going to improve my net worth, but that should be on our minds you’re saying. If it’s not, if this is not what you’re going to do at your job, if you’re not, I hate to say this, I even hate myself, I hate it like the emperor, I hate it like Darth Vader, I hate that I’m saying this to you. It’s strong, it’s really strong. I’m saying to you, if you’re not going to go to work to build a reputation, to build your network, to go out there and achieve your goals, don’t go to work. Just stay at home, get food stamps, because you’re working at a job you hate. You’re certainly pissing off your boss. You might not even have money to retire. If you’re not having any money to retire, just go live under a bridge. Right. Okay. Principle number three on that high note. Thank you so much for that emotional note. Sorry to get so uplifted. Principle number three, building your reputation and your practical education. Now, we hear the word practical, but I want to go ahead and define it. Because this is big. People don’t always focus on practical education. So we’ve got a definition magician here. Practical, of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas. How often do people focus on just the theory and ideas in terms of education? I’m going to say 90% of people when they think of education, they’re thinking of like, I remember studying the lower intestine back in college. I remember reading about papyrus. Didn’t we, education, I’m thinking about the periodic table. I begin to use words that are multiple syllabic. I start to use the word plethora. I begin to just talk about the syllabus. Remember the word syllabus? How awesome the word syllabus. Students today were using a syllabus. And I begin to write papers. Now, don’t act like you didn’t do it, because you know you did. You know you did. There’s a paper. You wrote a paper. And the teacher said, it’s got to be 10 pages. And you know you only had six pages of anything real. Maybe even five and a half. Probably five and a half. So what you did is you started filibustering. You started making up funk. You started talking in circles. Well, you can actually increase the fonts. You can increase the spacing. You’ve done all those moves one move. I would do is I would say in hints study out of yet yet because Yeah, yeah, and we said because you can now have circular conversations and come back to something you’ve already stated seven times unbelievable That’s the kind of BS you do in non-practical education, okay? But education is huge though if you want to continue growing increasing your wealth your net worth According to habits rich habits. It’s a study done by Thomas Corley. He’s the author of the book Rich Habits, actually. He did a study of wealthy people and their habits, OK? And this is what he found. 88% of wealthy people read on a daily basis, as opposed to 2% of poor people who do this. This is not really a fun statistic. That’s kind of convicting. 30 minutes a day. The wealthiest people in the world are doing this. Why is this so important? Well, I’ll tell you this. The world’s changing so fast. And if you’re at a job, you need to spend at least 30 minutes a day studying how to get into the top 5% of that job. So I know, like, when I was doing sales at Faith Highway, I was terrible. I remember I was doing customer service at tax and accounting. I started at the bottom. Almost everybody, if you’re being honest right now, if you’re thinking about your career, ask yourself, are you at the top 5% of your field? Because if you’re not, who are they going to promote? They’re going to promote the guys at the top. They’re not going to promote you just because you’ve been there a long time, unless you work for a union, in which case, well, we don’t have any episodes. But the thing is, you don’t want to have to hide behind a union to get promoted. You want to be promoted because you’re doing the right thing. You want to get promoted because you’re in that top 5%. And to get in the top 5% requires studying. So I used to just study sales books every day. I mean, literally every day I would take a half hour and just read a sales book every day. Because you know what? I’m going, oh my God, when you read those trainings, you start to go, man, you start to reflect and go, my close, when I go for the close, is terrible. Or I sound high pressure. That’s awful. I’m really terrible at delivering benefits. My rapport skills are awful. So you’re saying the reading here helps you in your job. The reading or however it is that you’re improving your education. But you’re also implying that we need to be learning at our jobs and that adds to our education somehow, or should it at least? When you’re at your job, and I’m just gonna walk you through this, I worked at tax and accounting software. We had this thing called a CRM. Other humans might call it a customer relationship. That’s kind of a sound I make when I’m running. Management. Okay. All right. Customer relationship management software. So what happened is every time the customer Every time a customer would call, if you called today, and let’s say that today was 5-1, and then let’s say 5-2, then we got 5-3. If you called today and you had an issue, I would write, spoke with Caleb, T had issue. And I would write all this stuff down, and the next day I would put spoke with, and I learned the shorthand that is the newest information goes on the top that’s how it works you add it to their file well when I was growing the DJ business I remember one of our sales guys we were doing about ten weddings a week right not 50 or a hundred and the guy says I don’t remember what I said to this lady I’m like I don’t either I can’t ever remember what we say to these brides right we you know we got to do? We need to quit taking so much notes because we’re not even going to use them anyway. So we quit taking notes. We stopped taking as many notes. We said, we’re just going to quote the price. Because if we quote the price, we’re going to… How did that work for you? Well, sales went down dramatically. Wow. Then I remember reflecting back. I’m like, God, this is not working. Right. I remember reflecting back, how did tax and accounting grow to a $100 million company? How did they do it? How did Tim do it? Why can’t we do it? And then I started realizing, I don’t have a customer relationship management system. I’m not taking notes. And in the absence of value, people only focus on price. I remember when Tim used to always say, if you’re casual, it causes casualties. I started to remember all the things I learned at that job, and I started to realize, I’m an idiot! What am I doing? And I had to go back and take the knowledge that I learned here, right? I took this knowledge and I added it over here and I used it to earn more. What? So I took knowledge that I learned at my job, I took that and I added it to what I earned. I transferred that knowledge. Just like if you learned to ride the bike, you can ride the bike here, or if you move across the country or to a different state, you can bring a bike with you or buy a bike and you can transfer, you can ride the bike there too. But I don’t feel like many people focus on going to work each day and thinking, what can I learn, what am I learning here, what skills am I adding to my repertoire? Well, like at Applebee’s, you had to be able to take orders and then be able to communicate with people who were hostile without being hostile. I remember there used to be like, you used to have the big old boy who would come in, a big old boy, usually you can kind of picture him, the guy’s about like biker guy. And if you’re a biker, I’m not disrespecting him, this is the guy I remember particularly, he set it off for me. He comes in and I was like, hey sir, can I interest you in a beverage? He’s like, yeah, yeah you could. I’m like, okay, all right, yeah, well what do you think? You know what’s coming to you guys? You’re about ready to watch me explode. And I’m just like, OK, you know? I don’t know what’s going on. Well, anyway, he blows up at us. He yells at us, says that he was waiting forever. No one acknowledged him. He thought we were being racist. He thought, he’d go on and on. It was the craziest deal. And I remember being just rocked, like, oh my gosh, this crazy person. Well, then over time, I started realizing about one in every 20 people who came into Applebee’s was crazy. That’s one of the valuable parts of being at that job. I learned though that because I started freaking out. I remember telling my boss, Ian, Ian, someone freaked out. Someone yelled again. He’s like, one out of 20 people who comes in here is nuts. That’s the human race. But what we can do is you can learn to manage your emotions and not let them control yours. So I learned some valuable skills I was able to take from Applebee’s to tax and accounting. And if I had not have those skills, you want to talk about a crazy guy at Applebee’s, you talk about a crazy mad accountant come accounting season. That company was called Tax and Accounting Software Company. We provided software for accountants. And when it came time for tax time and they couldn’t access their customers’ information, they were freaking out. But theory gets you nowhere. I mean, it’s got to be that practical education you’re saying. You’ve got to be able to apply what you’re actually learning at these places. Well, let me give you some idea real quick. Thomas Edison, just as you’re writing it. No, Thomas Edison says vision without execution is hallucination. Hallucination. So if you had been at Applebee’s, gaining these skills and not applying it, it’s worthless. Well, I think that I want to, I 100% agree with you. I want to just share this because if you’re talking about, if it doesn’t have, if it’s not applicable, it’s meaningless. When I was at college, they talked about the Electra Complex. Anybody know what that is? Basically, Freud came up with this thing. There’s one called the Oedipus complex, and one’s called the Electra. But what he believed was that secretly, men wanted to get with their mom. He believed that secretly, men wanted to marry their mom. He believed this, and that women secretly wanted to marry their dads. And secretly, he had this theory. I remember I had psychology 101 about this. And we spent at least four weeks going over this. Now I’d say you take that knowledge over to Applebee’s or over to your job or over to tax and accounting and you go like, well guys, I know what’s gotten into Sarah. She secretly wants to marry her dad. That’s why she’s bitter at all of us. Whatever! That’s a bunch of crap! That’s a stupid theory. It’s a stupid idea. It’s ridiculous. Freud should have been in jail for all the stupid experiments he was doing on people. It’s a dumb idea! In the periodic table, I’m not going to come to work and go, guys, you know what? There’s a chemical right now. It’s called californium. And it’s actually in the periodic table. A lot of people don’t know it’s a newer one on there. And then I feel like that we should talk about that today because that’ll allow us to fix our performance. Shut up, get back to work. But we don’t know anything we need to know because our brain is filled with that garbage. So we need to start focusing on practical knowledge, just like you said. Are you saying that’s the action step here? I mean, what’s the action step for the Thriver? Talk to the Thriver right now. What do we do with this principle today? Tomorrow? You need to get into the top 5% of your career. The top 5% of your job. Okay. Because if you’re at Applebee’s and you’re not trying to get in the top 5%, you’re not going to learn anything. Okay. I mean, you know, you guys know what I’m talking about. You can go to your job right now. I’ve been to jobs. I’ve done it before. I had my mindset change. Nothing is as powerful as a changed mind. But I did that. I would go to a job, mail it in, not work. I didn’t have text back in the day. But, you know, pretend you’re working, screw around on the computer, not do anything. And you know who gets hurt? You get hurt and you get fired. But if you’re engaged and trying to get to the top 5%, you’re going to get those skills. That’s the action step. Go for the top 5% through more ongoing education. Absolutely. Okay, I love it. In summary then, what we’ve talked about, the purpose of this is to remind you the reason why you’re at the job you’re at. And there’s three valuable, valuable reasons. One, when you can’t eat, you can’t dream. You got to focus on the basic needs, save, live below your means, then you can start working on that dream. Two, building your network will build your net worth. You’re saying there’s people who are going to meet there at work that they can contribute to it. Absolutely. Three, building your reputation and your practical education is huge. Those are the three reasons why having a job is valuable. I will say this as kind of a capstone thought. If you’re at your job, let’s get promoted out of the job, like our boss promotes us to a new position. If you hate your job, let’s get promoted out of it to another job, or let’s create an opportunity through our network where we get promoted or hired somewhere else. But let’s not get fired out of our job, or let’s not just quit, or let’s not just… You know, if you hate your job, you can exit in a positive way or a bad way. Let’s exit because someone hired us because they heard about our great reputation or we got promoted or we’re making more. So let’s not leave our job in a bad way. Okay, I love it. Now let’s go ahead and turn off the cameras. I’m going to just step on your back and try to crack it back into place, okay? Yeah. Just lay down right here. I’ll just do that real quick. I appreciate that. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma and we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now. Okay. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has. By being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on What they’re listening or ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews You know asking our customers for reviews and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest and Lawn company in the Tulsa area and that’s really helped with our conversion rate and The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay, so 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy. But also, we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one-and-done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really really contributed to our success. But that like is of the diligence and consistency and doing those and that system has really really been a big blessing in our lives. And also you know it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. We were in a rut. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind. Absolutely, it’s been a grind this last year. But we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut. Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So, I just wanna give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore, I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42 percent increase, month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing the use of services, you’re choosing to use a proven turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983 and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockwell, head of Disney, with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. Think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. In the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks. He’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, 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 has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. Anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey, guys. I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right? This is where we used to live years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing, and this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing, and this is our new team. We went from four to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales which is awesome but Ryan is a really great salesman so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13-point business systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever. We wouldn’t give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop, all you’ve got to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you.