Entrepreneur | 7 Proven Principles for Managing Your Accounts Receivable

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! Good look as a father of five, that’s what I’m a 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. Starting from the bottom, now we in. Vibers, we are back. We are here with the US Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark. Clay, thank you so much for joining us today. Well, you’re stuck with me. Well, that’s one way to put it. Now today, I’m excited because we’re going to be really getting into this topic. This is a super awesome topic here about managing your accounts receivable. I know some people are going, well, this doesn’t seem very exciting. It’s not very motivational. But I’m going to tell you, there are thousands of business owners listening right now who have a business where they’re charging people for services or products, and people owe you money. And so we’re going to talk about how to get that money because rumor has it that you’re in a business to exchange goods or services for money. So I’m excited. So this is a crazy important training for all of the thrivers that are out there. We’re going to get into seven different principles so that you can manage your accounts receivable more effectively. Clay, I want to set this up with a notable quotable here. Do it. This comes from Scale. It’s a book written by Jeff Hoffman. Clay, who is Jeff Hoffman? Why is this important? The homeboys who wrote the book, Scaled, there’s two authors. We’ll put the book up on the screen here. But the guys who wrote this book, they built Priceline. Okay, so Priceline, you might have heard of that. William Shatner, you know, the Priceline where you name your price kind of thing. And they’ve built numerous other successful companies. That’s kind of their most notable. And that book is a really good, specific, it could be almost like the spine of a business. It’s very systematic. It’s very specific. And it’s kind of the core of a business or the spine of the business. So other than just having you come to their office and help them through the growing of their company, that book is one of those great thing to have. You either get you to come to their office, or you get that book. OK. So this is what they say from Scale. It says, it’s our observation that most business owners are simply uncomfortable or even afraid to look clearly at their collection practices. They bury their heads in the sand and passively wait to get paid. Many are even afraid of upsetting clients by asking for payment and push it off onto their bookkeeper or another poorly equipped member of their team. Clay, what is he saying here? I don’t want to steal the thunder from other stuff we’re going to get into, but I want to just make sure we’re getting this. Most business owners, if you’re watching this, probably not you, it’s probably the guy next to you or something, but most people, I’d say at least six out of ten business owners that I’ve consulted with over the years, struggle with this area. And what happens is that they kind of over time begin to say, we start to say, well, you know, I’ll deal with it next month or next month or next month. Then pretty soon you realize we have a problem here. So we can’t bare our head in the sands. We’ve got to learn the specific systems. And the good news is we’re going to teach you specifically what to do. And if at any point you get stuck and you don’t know how to do it, you can click the Ask the Mentor button and we’ll help you that way. Or you can get yourself out to a workshop here and we can help you face to face. So either way, we’re here to help you. So we’re going to get into the seven principles here. And so I’m going to go over them real quick and then we’re going to dive into each individual one. And I’m just going to keep adjusting my mic stand because it’s one of these days where you wake up. You ever have a bad hair day? Yeah. I’ve had a bad hair year. Oh. And this mic stand, I just want to keep adjusting it until I get it exactly where I want it. I kind of want to do mine now. Stop, stop. Okay, back to you. All right. So the seven principles. Principle number one, you are not a bank. Principle number two, collect that cash. Principle number three, invoice early and invoice often. Principle number four, don’t delegate debt collection to passive people. Principle number five, fastidiously determine who owes you. And principle number six, don’t let your accounts receivable become unbelievable, ba-bam. Principle number seven, collect fast or you’re kicking your own. Hey, hey there. Hey now. Okay, so Clay, we’re going to get into each of these seven principles here. Do it, buddy. Principle number one, you are not a bank. Okay, so Clay, Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel, they go on with another quotable here. I want to read it for you. The cost to most small business of not collecting money due to them are huge and only compound as the business grows. If a business is struggling with cash flow, one of the most common causes isn’t a lack of sales, it’s poor collections. Clay, poor collections, and why, is he saying that most companies, they can at least sell, they can at least bring money in, but once they’ve brought the money in, they’ve got that commitment to bring money in, they’re just not actually swiping the card, they’re actually just, what’s the deal? I’ll give you an example. I was working with a doctor about five years ago. The doctor was a very successful doctor. People come from all over the world to see this guy. He’s really, really good. Just so we know, this isn’t only a male problem. Years ago as well, I worked with a female doctor, same problem. What happened is that the sales kept going and going and going and going and going. He’s thinking we’re growing and we’re growing and we’re growing. He buys this laser cannon. I call it the laser cannon. I’m sure it wasn’t actually a laser cannon, but he buys a laser that allows him to perform even more procedures. So now he’s doing more procedures because now he’s a great doctor with these awesome tools. He’s doing more. He’s doing more than all of a sudden, uh-oh, we’re out of money. What happened? We look into it, and I’m not kidding. I’m an outside consultant, so one of my first moves that I do to help a company is I go in there and I look, who owes you? And I am not exaggerating. People owe the guy millions of dollars. Millions. And you go, millions? That’s an exaggeration. No, no, it’s not. And I’ve worked with plumbers and builders and basketball coaches and football coaches, and I’ve worked with strength trainers. I’ve worked with a lot of fitness stuff. I’ve worked with roofers. I’ve worked with fencing companies, photographers. Some people call it photographers, but that’s the wrong way to say it. But I’ve worked with a lot of different industries, and in all cases, it almost always is a situation where somebody owes them a ton of money and they don’t have a system for collecting it. So today, we’re going to fix it. Okay, so principle number one, Clay, get into this. You are not a bank. So what does that mean? Just that. Here’s the deal. If I’m going to, let’s say that I am a plumber and you need to have something fixed in your house, okay, so you call me, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. I say, what’s up? This is Clay Clark plumbing and you know cat Emporium But anyway, I you scheduled me to come out there and to fix your you know, your your your bathroom And you say, you know, could you fix my shower? Could you fix this? Could you fix that? Could you fix the sink? Could you fix the toilet so I fix everything and at the end I go Okay, do you want to do debit card or credit card and you go? Oh Well, can you give me an invoice? An invoice is not Something that should be happening. You shouldn’t give people an invoice because when they’re asking for an invoice, they’re asking for you to be a bank for 30 days. So you’re going to give them the invoice and then they’re going to wait 30 days to pay you and then you’ll call them. Hey, I wanted to see if you were going to go ahead and you know pay and you go, oh, could you send me the invoice again? I couldn’t find it. Or, oh, I didn’t know how much it is. Or could you email it to me again? I didn’t get it. Or, oh, it’s in the mail. What you need to do if you’re a plumber, listen to this right now, when you meet someone on the phone, you go, thank you for calling Clay Clark Plumbing. How can I help you? Yeah, Clay, I’m looking to fix my toilet. Yeah, yeah. You say, OK, cool. Here’s how we do it. I’ll come back to your house today. I’m going to give you an estimate of what it’s going to cost, a quote. And then we charge half down to start on debit card or credit card, and then half down when we’re done. And that’s it. But you can’t, I mean, think about if you were a taxi driver and you give people invoices, would you ever get paid? No. So why are you doing it if you’re a doctor? Why are you doing it if you’re a drone pilot? Why are you doing it if you’re a photographer? Why are you doing it if you’re a ninja training school? Why are you giving people invoices? And I’m not kidding. What happens is then once you give people invoices… Does that make you cough? Do you get emotional? Yeah, it’s working me up here. Okay, what happens is you’re giving people these invoices and now you have to pay somebody on your team to follow up all the time. It’s so stupid. If you’re going to book me for a speaking event, I’m talking to you, you know who you are and you’re going to say, is there any way you could send me an invoice and then that way I’ll pretend like I got it and then pretend like I didn’t get it and then I’ll see if I can mail you a check. No, if you want to book me, it’s debit card or credit card. If you want to book our DJ service, debit card or credit card. If you want to book the plumbing companies I work with. If you want to work… Just stop invoicing people. We have to do this. You’re going, hey man, wait a minute. I work with the government and I have to invoice them. Okay, then we’re not talking to you, but we’re talking to everybody else. Okay, so nine out of ten people stop doing it. And somebody else is saying, well, I do work with the government and also with the private sector. Here’s what I would say for you. Do whatever you can do to work with the private sector as much as possible, unless you have a long money and the ability to just finance. Because unless you’re a finance company, stop financing. Stop doing it. So you say, what are specific ways for me not to be a bank, but to offer banking services? One is you could set your clients up on automatic recurred billing, where you can say, hey, Marshall, so you want to go ahead and reserve our services and I realize you don’t have the financing available to do it. Are you aware of our financing options? And you say, no I’m not. And we can work with a company called Synchrony. We’ll put them on the screen. Synchrony, S-Y-N-C-R-O-N-Y. They used to be GE Money back in the day. But there’s companies like that. There’s a company called Care Credit. It’s a medical company for medical credit. And you can set up those services for your clients. You can go, hey, you can apply today for care credit and see if you can qualify if you’re a doctor. Or you can say, you can apply here. If you go to Guitar Center right now and you want to buy your kids something or buy yourself something, you can go there and apply for a credit card through Guitar Center. But guess what? Guitar Center is not the bank. Synchrony is the bank. Care Credit is the bank. GE Money is the bank. You can tell your clients they can pay them debit card or credit card. And guess who’s the bank? The credit card company. But you do not want to become a bank. Stop doing it. Stop giving people invoices. I think that I feel like I’ve fully articulated that idea. So what most business owners need to do is they need to remember is it’s great to have all these sales but don’t get into the business of financing all of your customers and it’s really going to probably wreak havoc on their cash flow. If you’re a business owner and you’re operating at X profit margin, and you’re having a portion of your customers just not pay you. Let’s be specific. If you’re going to get a small business loan, an SBA loan, the banker is going to look at you and go, hey Marshall, how much money do you make a month on your snow cone business, or on your haircut business, or on whatever? If your profit margin is not about a 30% profit, most banks aren’t going to lend you money. So somebody listening to this is going, that’s not true at all. I have a business that makes a 7% profit and I don’t need it. I got a SBA loan. Well, it’s probably because you have awesome credit and probably because you have some collateral. You put your house up on the line or something. But for most people, you’ve got to have about a 30% profit. So to your point, if one customer doesn’t pay you and you make a 30% profit, how many customers does that wipe out of profitability? You probably lost the profit on three customers. We gotta move on to principle number two or my brain’s gonna explode. Principle number two, collect that cash. Okay, Clay, so get in to collect that cash for me. What are we really talking about here? What is important about this principle for all the thrivers that are out there? Well, okay, so if somebody, for whatever reason, you invoiced somebody, or you’re in a business where you have to invoice you find that you now have people that owe You some money there are some super moves that I have I use and they work And I’m gonna give those to you, and I think this will help you okay, so Super move number one is you want to make the call okay? Don’t send them a letter stop doing that call them boop boop boop boop. I’m gonna do it with you Hey, this is Marshall Morris. Yeah, this is Marshall. Hey Marshall, how are you doing, man? I’m doing well. It’s Monday. Actually, that was a false statement because I know it’s not. We’re here recording. But anyway, the point is, I have this little company that I have set up and I guess you had bought a cell phone in our store and I just noticed that I didn’t get your final payment this month and I just wanted to go ahead and call you and see if you wanted to put that on a debit card or a credit card. Oh, so I mean, so I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. I’m going to call you and see if you want to put that on a debit card or a credit card. Oh, so I mean, so are you going to send me something? Yeah, well, it’s actually past due. And so I said you do a debit card or a credit card, we’ll knock it out. OK, well, is that something I can do online? No, we just have to set up right now. I’ll run online right now on the phone with you, and I’ll send your receipt in two minutes. OK. Debit card, credit card. I guess probably my visa. OK, that’s how you do it. And I do that all the time. Because no one’s going to care more than you. Second move, if it deteriorates. So check out, this is what happens. Hey, is this Marshall Morris? Yeah, this is Marshall. Hey Marshall, I wanted to just call you real quick. I wanted to see if you wanted to do debit card or credit card. So I didn’t get an invoice. Well actually, we had sent the invoice to you, and I talked to you last month about debit card or credit card and it looks like you didn’t send in a payment. And so I just wanted to call you one last time and ask if you want to do debit card or credit card. So how long do I have to pay this? Well, it’s past due and so we need to go ahead and collect that money right now, Ski. Okay. Now let’s pretend that you for some reason are defiant. So go ahead and just reject me. So you want to do debit card or credit card? You know, Clay, I just don’t think I really want to pay this. Okay, boom, boom, here we go. Drivers, we have letters, a form letter we can put. Marshall, make sure you put it on the notes here. We have a letter you can send people, and you need to send these people letters, and the letter needs to be intense. So the letter’s going to say something to the effect that you have an attorney that writes it on the attorney’s letterhead, and it says, attention, Marshall Morris, and it’s very official looking, and it says, from accounts receivable, due to delinquent payment on yada yada you’ll be paying a finance charge or an interest fee or whatever your term is you’re gonna pay a charge of X amount of dollars and failure to pay will result in legal recourse. So let’s take legal action. We’re gonna get involved legally and most people don’t want that letter right? So I’ll send a letter to you. Now if I made the call and I sent the letter, then, okay, this is the final move, okay, you’ve got to understand this, okay, is that most people do want to pay you. Most people, you’ve got to be nice about this, most people, I find most, not everybody, but most, nine out of ten people, they really do want to pay, it’s just we’re not asking properly. If you call somebody and ask them, debit card or credit card, and you send them something, most people, not everybody, but most people will pay. So you need to make sure that you do those things. I’m telling you, I’ve discovered that most business owners are mailing invoices all the time. Why are we doing that? If you’re a hockey coach, if you’re a basketball coach, if you’re an orthodontist, why are you mailing stuff? Stop doing it. Just call people. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Get the payment. I’ll tell you why we’re not asking, because most people are afraid. Most people have fear. You know what I’m saying? And so what happens is if you have a passive approach to accounting, you’re going to, listen, this is deep thought. If you have a passive approach to collecting money, you’re going to have an immediate, very active financial panic. That’s what’s going to happen. You said immediate financial panic if we approach finances and collecting payment very passively. Okay, and let’s just give an example. Let’s go with big governments and we’ll go with companies. Big governments for 400, Alex. Okay, Greece. So the guys at Greece are like, Hey, you know, everybody, you know, we need to borrow some money. Let’s borrow some money. So Greece borrows money from the European Union and they keep doing it and they keep doing it. Well, eventually it’s a what? Financial panic, because now they need the money immediately. So it’s very, very, very important that every single person listening right now, that we get serious and urgent about collecting money. So I’m just telling you what I do. The first of the month, I go get it. I mean, X gonna give it to you. I get intense and I’m going to collect, that’s a DMX reference, I’m going to collect that money and I’m not going to stop talking about it until it’s done. I’m not going to invoice you and mail you something. I’m going to call you, get that money. You’ve got to do it. I would recommend, as part of your company right now, you would just kill the whole idea of invoicing entirely. Someone says, could you send me an invoice? Absolutely, I’ll send you a receipt. You want to do a debit card or credit card? Stop doing it. This is huge. I’m telling you, six out of ten people who own a business are not collecting their money. This is a huge problem. Principle number three, invoice early and invoice often. Okay, so Clay, John Wooden, Hall of Fame basketball coach here, don’t let making a living prevent you from making a life. There’s a notable quotable here from John Wooden. Tell me, what does he mean by don’t let making a living prevent you from making a life? What does he mean by that? Well, specifically what he’s talking about, this is a Hall of Fame basketball coach, and he’s talking about people that obsess so much on their career, they can’t pursue any aspects of their life. Now, just being real, for me as an entrepreneur, I love doing Thrive 15, I love it. I love helping you guys, that’s what I do, it’s my passion, I love it. So for me, I would much rather be recording Thrive15.com trainings and answering your questions than be going out to eat with people, golfing, swimming, doing almost anything outside of hanging out with my kids and my wife. Literally, I just would rather be here helping make great trainings for thrivers than doing anything else. So for me, that’s something I enjoy. You might say, well, you’re a workaholic. All you’re doing is you’re a workaholic. Well, that could be true, but I love what I do. But there’s a lot of people who don’t tell me, you love collecting money from clients. Don’t say, what I love to do is I love to just collect money. I love to just call people and argue about money and do accounts receivable. Maybe we know a guy. Maybe we have a guy who likes to bring the lead pipe and show up and, hey, boom, Marci you owe us some money, boom, I’m going to break your leg. Maybe this guy is like that. But most people don’t like collecting money. So he’s talking about, as we relate it to this particular idea, is that you don’t want to make your accounts receivable such an issue that you now can’t enjoy your life because when you finish providing the service for the customer, now you have to act as though a bank without interest and you run around chasing people down. And you understand a bank, I mean, they make money by charging you interest, right? I mean, there’s no, you know, they’re not misleading us there. That’s how they make their money. So we need, if you’re going to be a bank, then make your money off collecting money. But if not, stop doing it. Stop having that system. And so I want to give you an example. There’s a college that used to hire me to speak. And every time I would go out to speak at the college, they would say, oh, now did we owe you today? I’m like, yeah, we did half down deposit to book the event, and then the other half’s due when we’re done. Oh, so could you invoice us? So I made the mistake, and I actually went through the process of invoicing them. Then guess what happened? I never got paid. Why didn’t I get paid? Because it’s a major, major university and they owe me $2,500 and it’s sitting on the desk, my bill is sitting on the desk of who gives a crap and who gives a crap doesn’t give a crap and they are not going to pay the bill. There’s no consequence for them not to. If I sue them, if I take legal action, I don’t know any lawyer in the world who’s going to help you collect money for less than $2,500. So you’re not even going to get the money back. You know what I’m saying? So we just don’t want to be in that situation. Another example, when I had a DJ company back in the day, there was a local high school and I’m not going to mention the name of the high school. Here we go. You ready for the story, Marshall? You know who you are. Okay, so here we go. So what happened is the lady, she says, oh, I’m so sorry we forgot to pay you. I had at that time to my name maybe $50 and I had to pay DJs so the money would come in every week from the clients and I would pay the DJs when the money came in. And so I realized I’m going to do this major event for the school and they’re not, they’re literally not going to pay me tonight and I won’t have any money to pay my team. I’m not advocating this, but I’m telling you this is how stressful this can get for you. So the lady’s like, I’m sorry, I just don’t have the money. I just forgot the check. I just forgot it. And this is like every time I worked with them they would say this. But this time in particular we had so many proms out, I literally didn’t have the money to make payroll if I couldn’t pay people. So I was like, I’m going to take all of your, you know how basketball teams have chairs they sit on? You play basketball. All the players, you sit on chairs with the team’s name on it. So I literally was like, I’m going to go ahead and take all the chairs. She goes, are you stealing the chairs? I said, no, no, I’m just going to take all the chairs as collateral for your basketball team because I know you guys have a game tomorrow and I’m just going to take all of your chairs. She’s like, you can’t. I’m like, well, I’m kind of going to. So I took all of their chairs, all the chairs, I mean for both sides, put them in my van and I just drove off. Well, the lady was like, call me the next day. You have our chairs, you stole them. I said, well, you know, we agreed to DJ for you and you kind of stole our DJ service. So the way I look at it is you can bring me a check and I’ll bring you to tears.” And that’s literally how I got paid. It was the only recourse I had. And I got myself in that situation by setting up these stupid financial terms, right? And if you’re somebody in business right now and you’re setting up these stupid financial terms and you don’t have a massive line of credit that’s available, you’re going to put yourself in this situation. You’re going to spend half your week collecting money and half your week doing stuff. And you just have to stop doing that, Marshall. We can’t do it. So for the people and thrivers that are watching and they are submitting, they’re working with a company that they have to submit an invoice, for this principle, what is the invoicing best practice? What do they have to do if they can’t get around it? I’m just telling you, specifically when you’re working with a company and you or a client, and they call you and say, how much is it going to be for you to be, if you’re a home builder, how much is it going to be for you to install the pool, to build the house, to deliver the photography, to coach my kids in basketball, whatever the service is, tell your customer up front your payment terms and say, hey, we require an X percent deposit to reserve the service or product, an X amount, and we’re done. I mean, if you sell a product, I go buy stuff all the time at the store, the grocery store. I go buy salad, I go buy lettuce, I buy whatever. I go there, the lady’s not going, hey, do you want to go ahead and pay today on a debit card or credit card? I go, oh, can you invoice me for this lettuce? I just wanted to get an invoice. I mean, stop it. We have to move past, and we’ll put up the stat on the screen here, but well over 60% of the businesses in the country, the employers, are small businesses. And so if you’re a small business owner, this can kill you. Stop extending credit. Even think hard about do you even need that customer. I would argue it’s even better. There’s one home builder I worked with back in the day, and he did home remodeling. And we just literally stopped working with anybody who wanted to invoice ever, period. It was just like you do debit card or credit card to start, half down. You do debit card or credit card to finish, half down at the end, once we deliver service, there’s no credit, there’s no invoicing, there’s none of that, and it helped his business, and he turned down a lot of stupid, stupid, if a client can’t afford to pay half down for their deck, and they don’t have outside credit with the bank, why are they working with you? You’re not a bank, unless you’re, if you’re a bank watching this, then just argue back, but if not, if you’re not a bank, quit being a bank. Principle number four, don’t delegate debt collection to passive people. Break this down for me. I want to reference George Michael. And so George Michael, he’s one of my favorite musicians. His voice is just awesome, seriously. The guy can sing. And so George Michael, if you go on YouTube right now and you watch George Michael Symphony or George Michael Orchestra live in London. It’s an unbelievable performance, George Michael. You wouldn’t want to hire me to replace George Michael. You wouldn’t want to get the symphony and get all the people there and get everyone organized and then go, hey, we have a… He couldn’t be here tonight, so Marshall and Clay are going to do it instead. Because we’re not as good as George Michael, right? We don’t have any musical talent here, you know? So you wouldn’t want to delegate to someone who shouldn’t, you know, you wouldn’t want to delegate to anyone other than George Michael for George Michael’s concert. You feel me? Yeah, I’m with you. So when you’re doing collecting money, if you do have to collect money, don’t delegate it to a passive person. Okay. Delegate it to somebody who’s intense. I’m being real. I mean, there’s people who are so passive. There’s people watching this right now, and you know who you are, and you won’t even ask somebody, you won’t even say, excuse me. Someone could walk right in front of you and you wouldn’t even say, excuse me. You wouldn’t do that because you don’t want to be confrontational. You hate confrontation. You don’t want to get in the way. You don’t want to speak up for yourself. That’s your deal. You’re the kind of person who literally, somebody could sit down at your desk and start working and you wouldn’t even tell them, excuse me, that’s not your desk, that’s my desk. You let people borrow a shirt from you. You know who you are. You went to college and you let your roommate borrow a shirt and they didn’t ask you and you let them borrow it so often that eventually they thought the shirt was their own shirt. That’s who you are. And if you’re someone like that, you don’t want to be doing collecting because you will literally end up in poverty. And so what happens is these business owners, they have people that are on the wrong seat on the bus, so to speak, and they’re doing the wrong task. So you have an accountant or a bookkeeper or someone who’s passive who’s in charge of debt collecting. If you’re going to have debt collecting, if you’re going to have to do it, have a salesperson do it. Get somebody who’s aggressive. Just don’t delegate to passive people. It’s a bad deal. So Jim Collins, he’s the author of Good to Great. The book is awesome. It’s a best-selling book good to great built to last great by choice a number of these different business books it’s awesome did you write that book called dating tips for Marshall Morris time is gonna know I don’t know I am I might be some kind of a class classic yes timeless yeah apparently no one apparently the guy he wrote it for never read it mmm-hmm turn ouch turn um Lee he writes this notable quotable leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with where, but with who. They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. So what he’s saying is that you need to start with the people that are in your company. Clay, break it down for all the Thrivers that are watching. Why is this important? I’m sorry, I was breaking it down there. Break it down. Anyway, here’s the deal. We had a wonderful lady come to our office this week named Pooja. Pooja, I hope you’re watching. I hope you’re watching this episode. But Pooja is from India, I believe, right? From India? Super talented, right? Sharp. I don’t know if she’ll be the right fit or if she wants to work with us, but why did I say we need someone like that? We needed somebody sharp because they are people of high integrity, the capacity to learn, the growth mindset, and then somebody that had the same mission, the same vision for the company. That’s it! I don’t even care if she knows how to do the specific coding I need yet. If you went to school at Carnegie Mellon and you’re studying coding or computer science and you kind of know what you’re doing, enough to get to a 4.0 or a high 3.0, whatever, and you moved here from India and you’ve adopted the language and the culture and you’ve learned, I’m pretty positive you can handle coding. I’m pretty positive you can learn new skills. But now if you’re somebody who went to a top school because your parents got you into school and you couldn’t get a high GPA and you couldn’t attend class on time and you can’t seem to figure out how to do life No, no amount of skill will compensate for your jackassery So we see this all the time. They’re super talented musicians. They’re super talented artists They’re super talented people But if they don’t want it They don’t have high integrity if they’re not coachable and if they don’t have these certain skills It doesn’t matter what job you give, they’re going to fail. So what I’m getting at here, just to make sure, is when you hire somebody to do debt collecting, these are the three attributes you’re looking for, okay? You’re looking for somebody who does not mind confrontation. Two, somebody who’s money motivated, they want to get money, they’re like a salesperson, right? And three, is they have high integrity. That’s how you do it, but you just got to get the right people. So if you’re delegating, and I see so many business owners where they have like an alpha female who owns the company, or an alpha male who owns the company and their wife or husband helps them in the business. And they’re like, hey, could you collect the money? Could you do it? I mean, I know you’re really passive, but if you could just break all your personality traits, you know, if you just would throw what you normally do out the window and then just become aggressive for this task, that would be great. It’s not going to happen. No one’s going to do that. Stop hiring the wrong people to do the job you need to get done. Don’t do it. So as an action item for all of the Thrivers out there, do not assign chronically inaccurate team members, inaccurate communicators maybe. Yeah, I mean, they’re just people that you can’t have them clean the checklist for the bathroom because they’re not high integrity. They’re not detailed. Don’t put them in charge of your money. I’m telling you, stop doing it. I see it so many times in small businesses. You know how it is. You have to wear so many different hats You have to be owner the founder the marketer the president the HR director the accounting person you so we people Owners tend to do is they tend to delegate the accounting but money collecting and don’t do don’t delegate to betas. Just stop doing it principle number five Fastidiously determine who owes you okay, so clay go ahead and begin breaking this down for us. Bring visibility to it. As an action item, I have a whiteboard or a spreadsheet that you can see, and on it is a list of people that owe you money. So just as an example, my own life. This month I had about six people that owed me $15,000. And I just finished collecting it all yesterday. What day of the month is it right now? Today is the 13th. The 13th. So I’m up by the 12th. So it took me 12 days to collect the final 10% of money that’s owed to me, roughly. And so I’m talking to a guy and I said, hey guy, I want to make sure I get my check today. And the guy says, oh, did I owe you money? Yeah, you did. Did I get an invoice? Nope, because you owe me money. And we don’t get an invoice to you because we’ve done this every month for a long time. I need you to pay your debit card or credit card. Oh, well can I mail it to you? Nope. I literally, God is my witness, that’s the conversation I had. Nope, you can’t. Well, could you come back later tonight? Nope. So, oh, let me get my checkbook. That’s right. That’s how I do it. Because you can’t, I’m just telling you, you’ve got to know who owes you money. If you have a big business like I have or a lot of Thrivers have, you have 4,000 people out there who are customers every year. You can’t be invisible. People owe you money. Put it on the whiteboard. Put it on the spreadsheet. Make it visible and go get that money. Clay, in your experience working with all of the different businesses and consulting clients, how many clients out of 10 typically remind you that it’s time for them to pay or remind you how much they actually owe you? How many in your mind? I’d like to say all of them but really none of them. No one ever calls me goes hey just so you know you didn’t charge me this month I just wanted to be honest with you I just I had this feeling in my heart and I wanted to let you know that you didn’t actually charge me. Furthermore if clients say that you screwed up and the card doesn’t go through, they won’t call you either and say, hey, I just wanted you to know that my credit call did not go through and I did not get the check in to you on time and I wanted to just let you know. For some reason, I think that European people sound honest. I don’t know what that is. They seem smarter. We have a lot of European thrivers. I’m not sure what that is. When I talk to you guys, I just feel like you’re super trustworthy. That’s kind of my trustworthy voice I do. But it’s just that no one ever does that. So you’ve got to understand, usually people are like, oh, I didn’t. And again, if you’re like a Bostonian, I love Boston, so just calm down. That’s why I got my Tom Brady stuff here. But people typically, they’ll go, I had no idea. I had no idea. I was overdoing it. I didn’t know I owed you money. I mean, are you sure my car, it got declined? I mean, come on. Boom. I know it didn’t happen. No, no. I definitely paid you. And you go, no, I really, you did not pay. No, I did, I mean, it’s on my check register. Boom, it’s right there, boom, you know? Okay, so fastidiously determine who owes you. You have to have either a spreadsheet, so as an action item, set up the spreadsheet, set up the document, the whiteboard of who’s paying you on the monthly bids. Set up a hologram that follows you around. Set up a team of ninjas and on each ninja you paint 10,000 or however much they owe you. Just paint it on their bodies. I mean, put it on your mirror, get a tattoo of it, but get it! Get the money! You’ve got to bring visibility to it. You can’t see it. It’s hard to manage. You’ve got to see it before you can manage it. Deep thought. Principle number six. Don’t let your accounts receivable become unbelievable. Okay, Clay, let’s get into it. Don’t let it become unbelievable. Well, okay, here’s an example. You have an energy drink on your desk. Okay. And I don’t have any energy drink right now because this month I’m out. So what I do sometimes is I’ll just keep taking it. So I think I’ve taken like 14 scoops this month. So I’m going to buy you your very own at the end of this month, it’ll be like a nice little gift. So you’re going to actually probably get more than I’ve taken, but I’ve taken a lot. And if we eventually don’t have an accountability meeting where I have to give that to you, eventually it will become unbelievable. You’re like, dude, you have been mooching my energy drinks for like seven years and now you owe me like $4,000 of energy supplementation. You know what I mean? Another example, just to keep them real, keep them simple. There’s a lot of small businesses. I can picture a deli. Here we go, a deli. Going to a different time and place. Do you have any deli music? Do you have any music for delis? Like kind of a story, kind of a story deli. I just want to go there. Okay, nice. So there was this deli in an office building I used to be in. And this lady, her name was, I think her name was Shelly. It could have been Susie, but I think it was Shelly. Shelly, maybe Sally. I think it was Shelly. And Shelly used to say, true story, hey, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. And I was like, okay, I’m going to go to a deli. Susie, but I think it was Shelly. Shelly, maybe Sally? It was Shelly. And Shelly used to say, true story, Hey, Clay, do you have a credit card, a debit card? And I remember one time I said, no I don’t, let me go to my car. And she goes, no, don’t worry about it, I’ll just make a tab. So I guess a tab is like a tabulation of how much money people owe her. Well, the guy behind me is like, hey, I don’t have enough cash, can I go ahead and get a coffee? She’s like, oh, sure. eventually and I’m not kidding I had to talk to her one day and she was totally like super stressed out I go what’s going on she goes I’m owed like ten thousand dollars right now and I’m like really she’s yeah I just got my credit card bill from all the stuff I’ve been buying and Sam’s and the good news is that the sales are just rocking people are buying tons of stuff I go what do you mean just but they’re not paying me. So now, I’m not even kidding, she had to go up and down the elevators all day collecting people going, hey, you owe me $2. You owe me $2.26. Was that a six or a five? I think you owe me $2.25. And she’s running, and people are going, no, I paid you. I paid you. And it got unbelievable. And that is a bad story, but that story is happening all across America right now. You talk about Bernie Sanders, and you talk about Donald Trump, and you talk about Hillary Clinton and you talk about making change and changing the world and fixing the economy. I’ll tell you this, if we would just collect the money people owe us, the economy would improve a lot. You know what I’m saying? Yeah, so you just get on the same page with the people that you’re doing business with. It’s not going to be a long-term financing option. You don’t let the mountain of accounts receivable get to an unbearable point before you go and and collect it. There’s always this stupidness. This is how the human race works. This is why I I’m like really really good in business but I the human race thing sometimes I just don’t understand it. But this is the thing. The human race, this is the moves and I would like for you to make sure we put these on record here, okay? The human race has three moves they do when they owe money to people. One is they fake an illness of a relative. Like some sort of like they usually use the word can’t cancer is usually the answer. So they owe you like $4,000 and they’ll go, Oh, I have cancer. And you go, Oh, and now you feel bad because they owe you money. But you’re like, Oh, Oh, Oh, I didn’t know. That’s one. It’s like a huge debilitating disease. Okay, seriously, that was cancer is the answer to I’m not making this up. I’ve probably had a hundred people tell me they’ve had cancer or a death of somebody. But the problem is usually those people will say that a lot. So like, yeah, I was gonna pay you. I was gonna pay you. What happened was is that my brother had my check and he died. That’s one. Okay? Two is it’s unbelievable details. Like unbelievable, very detailed stories. This is the one. You say, hey, you owe me some money, Marshall. And usually the story you get from people when they’re, again, they either make up an illness or they have a very detailed story. They go, well, what happened was I was going to pay you, but then like I transferred money from this account to that account. And when I did that, the bank totally screwed up. And what happened was, is that now I’m talking to their BP right now. I’ve already got, I’ve got all the way to the top. I have talked to the top. So you’ve talked to the CEO of Bank of America? Absolutely! I was there at 227 on Tuesday at their corporate office on their jet. Their corporate office is on a jet? Yes! And that is why I shall pay you very soon. So it’s the disease, two it’s the detail, and the three is just the absolute Complete like so dumb. They have no idea what you want. They just act like they had they’re just oblivious to the fact They owe you money. Oh, so like My car didn’t go through And they just can’t comprehend it. Oh, so it’s like oh gosh Wow So I bounced a check. Oh Gosh, we had a guy this year who I want to turn his face into, I’m going to do it. I’m writing this down. I’m turning his face into a dart board in the next 10 days. I am so mad. I’ve committed. Thrivers, come to Tulsa, hold me accountable. You’ll see this. I’m going to do it. But this guy literally was bouncing me checks all the time. Oh, I didn’t know. So it didn’t go through? Oh, why don’t you try it tomorrow? The bank must be having some issues. Oh, I just really owe you money. I just, I could have swore I mailed a check. I just, gosh, I don’t even know. So again, those three moves, the human race will do this when they owe you money. So write these down again. I’m just making sure we’re getting it. One is a super illness. Two is incredible details, right? Incredible. The third, the third, what’s the third? Ask yourself, what’s the third? The third is, I didn’t know. I just, I had no idea. Don’t wait to collect the accounts receivable. Don’t let it get to this insurmountable mountain of bills. You gotta stay diligent. For the thrivers, do you schedule a time or what do you do? How do you stay on top of that? One, I’m trying to weave in an Elton John reference right now. George Michael, now Elton John. But if your account receivable was a human, the actual song we would sing is, Don’t let the sun go down on me. Don’t let, because you don’t want the day to end and then have no idea who owes you. I’m telling you, I deal with this all the time. It makes me crazy. And that’s why I’m helping you here, Thrivers, because I want to help you make this your most successful year ever. And don’t feel bad. There’s this guy, fourth bonus move. There’s this freaking coffee shop guy who’s in the Midwest. He’s done it to every business owner in town. He makes you feel bad when you call about collecting money. So let’s pretend I’m that guy. I’m the coffee guy. And I definitely, as the coffee guy, I owe you like 10 grand for some build out you did. Okay. Watch my move. Okay. So, hey, Clay, we finished the build out for you. It’s time to go ahead and pay for it. So did you want to do that with credit? Did you invoice me? What happened? Did you invoice me? Yeah, we sent you the invoice. We emailed it to you. Are you guys having some cash flow problems? I mean, are you guys in a bad spot financially? No, we’re just- Is this how you treat customers? This is how you treat them? We were finished with the job So this is how you do it though I’ve been working with you for like a decade and now you’re gonna sit there and do that I mean, did you want do you want reviews on Google? Do you want people to tell you me to tell people on Google what you guys do to customers? Well, it’s about that time because I’m gonna tell you this I’m gonna say my wife has been in the hospital Okay, very serious illness and I will tell you this that with your kind of behavior, you’re a lucky people in town dude, but do you have any idea who I am? Are you really on the phone right now? I’ll tell you what, I’m going to allow you to get off my phone right now and I will get you a check, but I’m tired of you calling me. I want an apology, and I swear to God, this is what he does. I’m not kidding, this is real talk. This is not Thrivers, this is real stuff. This is how it goes down. So I’m talking to Homie because I had to call on behalf of my customer who was owed money. So I call him. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Hey, and I’ll just pretend you’re the guy named Marshall. Hey, is this Marshall? Yeah, this is Marshall. Rumor has it you’ve been kind of hostile to our staff about money that’s owed. So let’s talk about it. You are 30 days late, and I’m not interested in hearing your story. Even if your wife has cancer or just died, I’m still going to collect payment, or I’m going to send a letter to you from my attorney, and now I’m going to come prosecute the heck out of you, okay? So let’s go ahead and square up today. Okay. Boom. That’s how I shut it down. Boom. That’s like, that’s a nuclear option, but that’s real talk. That’s a little fourth bonus move. It’s where the person makes you feel bad for asking. Stupid. Okay. So, so as an action item specifically set up that time when you’re going to collect that put it in the calendar, baby, put in the calendar principle number seven, collect fast or you are kicking your own. Hey, hey there. Hey, okay, so clay What do you mean collect fast if you don’t collect money quickly? You are now eating into the profits of the next month And if you do that for two months now you have no profits you do it for three months now You’re out of business and most businesses do not have enough Liquidity enough cash enough enough money enough coinage enough monetary goodness, enough cheddar, enough lettuce, enough money, enough, uh, uh, uh, scrilla, enough, enough, uh, uh, uh, you know, they don’t have enough money to, to just sit there and let the debt pile become higher and higher and higher. Now if you’re listening to this right now and you’re like, bro, I have like a gold chandelier, you know, and I like, I use diamonds just to cut meat, because it’s the best, it’s the hardest surface in the world, so I have a diamond knife I use to cut my steaks. And I don’t even eat those steaks, because those are beneath me, and I feed those steaks to my dog, who’s a purebred, right? And then my dog, who’s a purebred, eats lobster tail only when he’s not eating steak. And that’s just because that’s beneath me. Now for me personally, I only eat escargot fresh, that’s what we float in every day. I’m going to have my Ebbian water on my custom hand-painted table that I had made from the forest using recycled mahogany wood pulled from the… You know what I’m saying? If you’re that kind of person, then forget this episode. But for everybody else, you’ve got to collect the cash and quit feeling bad about it. You have to collect the cash, but not only collect it, but collect it fast. Why is collecting it fast important? Because you have a fast month. If you get to the end of your money before the end of the month, that’s a problem. Check it. If you get to the end of your money before the end of the month, that’s a problem, right? This is a bad deal. This is not a healthy deal. And so many business owners, I am not exaggerating these numbers, drivers, I’ve met people like you at workshops. You’ve come to Tulsa, we’ve talked, we’ve connected, we’ve marinated. And you know what? You’re not alone. But what happens is you are allowing the people to take advantage of you. Stop doing it. Don’t get into the banking business. You’ve got to collect that money now. Ha! Okay, so we’ve covered the seven principles specifically for managing your accounts receivable. True. And Clay, I want to go back through all of them, make sure that we have a lot of really good lesson nuggets for all the thrivers today. How about this? We’re going to do like Run DMC style. We do that occasionally. Okay. Yeah. You go ahead and fire off the principle and I will fire off the nugget. Okay. I’m learning this language. Run DMC style. Here we go. So principle number one, you are not a bank. Unless your core business is the finance business, you simply are not in the finance business and cannot afford to dabble there either. Drivers, quit screwing around. Quit being a bank. Find a third-party banking solution like a Care Credit if you’re a doctor, or a synchrony bank, or some sort of third-party lender, or maybe your customers are aware of credit cards, maybe they can borrow money from their uncle, but not from you. Stop becoming a bank unless you are in the banking business. Principle number two, collect that cash. It’s hard to use an IOU note, like a little post-it note, IOU, to deposit stuff at the bank. It’s hard to use an IOU to deposit money at the bank. They don’t accept it. You can’t go buy things with IOUs unless you’re Greece. Greece, I ain’t mad at you, but you guys are screwing up. Principle number three, invoice early and invoice often. You got to make the choice early, you know, to invoice early and to invoice often. If you are the kind of person who has to invoice, the day you were into that service, baby, get that invoice out of there. Get that invoice out as soon as you possibly can. Just last week, some jerks, did they not do it? Oh, yeah, they come to town, yeah, we’re here to work with you guys. Oh, we didn’t get an invoice. Oh, and then we won’t pay you until 30 days after you get the invoice. Okay, so here’s the invoice right now. Oh, and it has to be mailed and signed. And, and if that’s you, you know who you are. Principle number four, don’t delegate debt collection to passive people. Yeah, I mean, this is just huge. I want to make sure we’re getting this. Your linebacker and kicker probably should not switch positions if you want to win a football game. You don’t want, look, it’s our really great former soccer player, but not good enough to play pro soccer, who’s now a kicker. Let’s have him play linebacker this game and see what happens. No, don’t do it. You just get the right people on the right seat of the right bus. Principle number five, fastidiously determine who owes you. Well, this is a funny little nugget here before you but it’s important. Dancing in the dark may be fun but collecting in the dark is a lot like playing spin the bottle when Jabba the Hutt is in the room. What am I talking about? What I’m talking about is that you have to know who owes you money. You got to know who does it otherwise you’re going to have a very unpleasant surprise. Principle number six. Don’t let your accounts receivable become unbelievable. You cannot manage what you cannot measure okay? You have to measure what you treasure you got to measure what you treasure and keep your accounts receivable under control You’ve got to measure what you treasure and keep your accounts accounts receivable under control and principle number seven Collect fast or you’re kicking your head now. Here’s the deal here’s a lesson nugget Don’t extend payment terms to every charity case or client. You’re gonna end up robbing Peter to pay Paul. Don’t do it! I see it all the time. I see good people reduced to chronic check bouncers because they’re extending credit to customers. If you extend credit to customers that you can’t do, now you have to do what? Bounce your payroll checks, can’t take care of what you promised to do. So you’re just creating a problem. You’ve got to stop the line. And if people get upset about it, it’s their issue. It’s not yours. So Clay, thank you so much for diving into all of these accounts receivable principles here. I really do think that this is one of the most important trainings for the Thrivers here and help get them on the right track for their accounting. I just want to share this. We had a Thriver I talked to yesterday, and neat, neat guy. He knows about Thrive because his pastor at his church told him about Thrive. And the pastor knows about it because his friend knows about it. And I would just ask all the Thrivers listening right now, tell your friends, if you have a friend who needs to know this, share it with them. And remember, the workshops are included in your $19.99 a month. So get out here, come to a workshop if you need help. We’re here to help you. That’s what we do. There’s no upsell, no scammy scam going on. We’re excited to help you guys. And we just want to thank you so much. And we can collect all that cash as soon as possible. Thrivers, we will see you next time. George Michael. George Michael. 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 listing and 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 Pessamon 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, 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 and 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. And it’s incredible. But the reason why we have that success by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created an implemented checklist that when everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned, that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business and we were in a rut. The last three years our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So, 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% increase, month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof and 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’s just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockrell, 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 start-ups go from start-up 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 the most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. 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. This is where we used to live. Here’s the house. 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. Whoa! 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 with 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 gonna be the best business workshop ever and we’re gonna 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 gotta 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 affordable for you.