Entrepreneur | 7 Steps to Developing Long Term Relationships with Your Customers

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! Good looks as a father of five, that’s why 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. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’re here. Boom, boom, and boom. Thrivers, welcome back to your favorite show. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your drive time home. And today, it is a wonderful Wednesday, Z. We’ve reached the end of the political fatigue, Z. Half the country is upset. Half the country is rejoicing. Half is upset. But we’re not going to get into that. What we’re going to talk about today is we’re going to talk about the seven steps to developing long-term relationships with customers. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. In your ear, and I’m joined, as always, with the co-host, with the most, it’s Dr. Robert Zellner. Sir, how are you? It’s hump day. I would say you’re halfway there, but technically, now that you’re driving home, you’re three-fifths away there. And because the election was yesterday, we are now, it’s kind of hump day, we’re kind of like halfway to the end of the world. Half the country’s upset, half the country’s excited. We moved right over, right in the middle there, see? Well, you know, the good thing is people don’t tune in here to get gardening tips. That’s right. They don’t tune in here to get health and dieting tips. These are things we do not discuss. They don’t listen to us to get their political views manipulated. That’s right. We would not do that. We wouldn’t even attempt to do that. I don’t think we could do that. They call here because, you know why? Why do they call? Because more than not, 57% of the people out there listening, this is like a state. According to Forbes. These are just numbers. Math, I’m throwing at you right now. Secretly, inside their little brain, there’s a little seed called entrepreneurship that wants to grow into a business. And so, as you’re driving home, you’re listening to this going, you know what? I’ve always wanted to start my own business. We’re going to help you. That’s what this show does. Absolutely. And we brought on a very, very special guest today. We have a little over half of our listeners apparently are ladies. So we’re bringing more and more female entrepreneurs onto the show on your DriveTime Home. So today we have the owner of Royal Landscapes, Ms. Katie Worley. How are you? I’m fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on. Oh, we are excited to have you. So today we’re talking about, again, the seven steps to developing… Wait a second. Wait a second. Who did you say? Royal Landscapes? Royal Landscapes. Should we refer to her as Queen Katie? I mean, I don’t know I mean I don’t know it’s kind of I don’t know I don’t have an official like theme song or an anthem for that’s it’s a royalty But I do have this To me is how I want to show my tribute to the royalty here. We just kind of okay well there we go There we go okay now that I feel I feel much better now. I’m talking about royalty absolutely now What does he we’re talking about this step number one is deliver on what you promise. Now, I’m going to ask you this. I want to pick your brain before we get into this. How many times have you seen it in Tulsa? Because you’ve been in business a long time. How many years have you been open as an optometrist? How many years have you had your optometry clinic? You know what, now, this Friday will be my 25th anniversary. Oh! 11-11. Wow. Wow. In two days. That’s incredible. Yeah. 25 glorious years. So it’s my silver anniversary. Silver? Are you going to get yourself a cake? Yeah, probably. I don’t know. Yeah, maybe. I’m excited. I’m going to celebrate. I mean, that’s one of my core rules in business. When you reach milestones, when something awesome happens, you have to celebrate. The thing is, though, is your business, year after year, you begin to grow. And as you look at kind of the pie chart, if you’re listening to this right now, I want you to picture a big pie chart. This pie chart represents where your customers come from. When you first start, almost all of your customers are from advertising. You’ve just got to advertise, advertise, advertise, and advertise. So 80% of your customers are from advertising, 75%. But as you grow, a tipping point occurs if you do it right and you start to generate word of mouth business. Then that becomes the majority of your business is that word of mouth business. So the question I have for you is, what advice would you have for that Tulsa entrepreneur out there that is struggling to get their team to deliver on their promises? They’re struggling to get their teammates. They’re advertising, they’re marketing, they’re bringing in new customers, but they’re struggling to get their team to deliver on the promises they’re making to customers. Well, I’ll tell you what, that’s the core thing. That’s what you’re in business for. Shame on you for not duplicating yourself. Because the thing about it is when you start your business, you don’t have an enthusiasm and you have a passion for that thing, right? Otherwise, don’t do it. You keep punching the clock and showing up nine to five, working nine to five, working nine to five. But when you have that passion about it, now the key is instilling that DNA into the people that you hire with controls. And so that’s what this show is all about, is kind of the nitty gritty, down in the trenches, how to do it. Because it’s easy to say, yeah, okay folks, do this the way I would do this. Do what I want you to do. Do what I say. Don’t do what I do. No, no, do what I do. Anyway, so there’s a process there, and that process is not rocket science. It’s not rocket science. Why is it not rocket science? Unless your business is building rockets, I guess it would be. Yeah, Elon Musk, it is rocket science. Yeah, I guess. We’re sorry, Elon. Sorry. Yeah, I mean, you know, it could be. But the point is that by listening to the show and following the steps, we will teach you how to do that. We will teach you how to train, how to make checklists, how to keep them on point. And you know what? Sometimes you bring up a good point. Sometimes when someone just doesn’t get it and you just beat your head against the wall and you go, why won’t this employee do what I want them to do? I pay them money. You know what you do then? Do you get out the bomb? The bomb. You get out the bomb and you, as we love to say… You promote them to… Customer status. Okay, now I’m going to tee this up for Katie. I’m going to have a question for her about this, but first I’m going to give a notable quotable from our good friends at Harvard. Our good friends at Harvard, okay? The service profit, this is what it says, it says, the service profit chain establishes relationships between profitability, customer loyalty, and employee satisfaction, loyalty and productivity. The links in the chain, okay, the links in the chain are as follows, profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. But the point is, what they’re saying here from the article called the Service Profit Chain by Harvard, is that you’ve got to wow your customers in order for them to become loyal, which will make your business grow. So if you want to get your customers loyal like royal, you want to listen up here. So Miss Katie, what advice would you have for the entrepreneurs out there listening who are maybe struggling to get their teammates to deliver on the promises that the businesses make to customers. Very nice. Well played. We actually believe that you have to have the same customer experience vision from the top down. Kind of like Dr. Z was saying, you can’t just have a vision for your company and hire people and expect them to see that. We don’t want to just get the sale the first time. For instance, that we do a job for someone, we want a lifetime customer. We want a relationship. So if we don’t go there with that attitude the very first time, the customer is going to choose to experience something else. So we want them not just to get the service from us, but the experience. You’re listening to The Thrash Talk Show on Talk Radio 1170. You brought up something there, Katie, that for some reason I didn’t put this on the outline. I should have. But in the service profit chain, the most successful pizza guy in New York. The most successful pizza guy in New York. He owns a Domino’s, I believe. It’s in the Service Profit Chain book, this case study. Z, do you know what he tells his pizza delivery guys and all of his pizza people? Be on time. Be nice. He says, when you’re delivering a $10 pizza, whatever the cost is, I don’t want you to think of $10. I want you to think of the lifetime value of this customer to our business. I don’t want to make up the number, but if you get the book, you’ll have the specific. I think it’s like $4,000. It’s the lifetime value of somebody in New York City, a family that continues to buy pizza from them every week or every month, and they focus on that lifetime value. Yeah, and you know what Katie said was right on point. You know what it does? What does it do? It takes me to one of my favorite segments. Oh, what’s that? You know what one of my favorite segments are? Yee-haw! A little farm logic. Yeah, except today I’m not going to use my favorite farm animal, the pig. As we all know, love me my pig. But I’m going to take it to another famous farm animal, and that’s a sheep. A sheep? A sheep! Bah, bah, bah. And what she was saying is so true, and that is, it goes along like this. You can share a sheep over and over and over, but you can only eat it one time. You can only eat it one time. Greg, what does that mean? What does that mean? Greg! What does that mean? What does that mean, Greg? What does that mean? Farms, farms are so confusing sometimes. Do I need to put on pants for this episode? No, the camera just gets you by the toes. You’re fine. You’re fine. Yeah, just like you don’t stand up. Absolutely. Well, the point there is that, is that if you go in and you give them a bad experience, oh, no, oh, yeah. And you say, oh, we got them. Oh, man, we got them. We got a big sale. We got them. Oh, yeah. Look at that. We planted, you know, look how much we charge to plant those flowers, to cut their grass and to trim the trees and and remove their leaves. Oh yeah, that was the best sell of the month. High five team. High five team. You are unleashing a magical story that is starting to come up. Farm logic does that. Here’s the deal. My wife and I went to Vegas. I was an idiot. I had no money, but I thought I’ll take her to Vegas. We’d been married about a year and a half. So we go to Vegas. And you know in Vegas when you’re walking down the street, there’s a couple things that are going to happen. One, I’m not going to talk about because this is a family show. The second thing that’s going to happen is someone is going to pitch you a timeshare tour. What you do is you get a free buffet and a free show if you go on the tour. And the third thing that happens in Vegas is there’s just lights everywhere. There’s like flashy lights. If you’re easily distracted, Vegas is not the place for you. So I’m walking down the street and this guy says, hey man, you want to get a free timeshare buffet and you want a free show, free tickets, all you got to do is take this little time share tour. Now Z, have you ever been on one of those little time share tours? Have you ever been on one of those little ones, those little time share tours? I did one back when I was in college and I don’t know how I got on the list, it was in Branson, Missouri. I remember I was up in that area. Well what happens is that little tour becomes like a four hour saga. A four hour tour. And what he does is he realizes that I’m a skipper. You know? And that she’s Marianna. Was Marianna a character in the show? Yes, and Ginger Marianne. And Ginger. She was kind of a Ginger Marianne combo. But the point is that he did. So they decided to divide and conquer. That’s the move. That’s the move. So what they do is they pull me into this room over here and they start talking to me about this and that. Meanwhile, they’re getting her pre-qualified. Getting that credit pre-qualified. And they realize this guy’s got a 780 credit score, this guy’s got some money saved up, this guy is an easy mark. And so we come back, we’re going to talk about what happens when you attempt to be a hog, or you attempt to kill the sheep, you see. We’re going to talk about when we come back here, the importance of not killing sheep, and what happens when you attempt to do so. I tell you what, that’s what farm does. And everybody’s out there still going, what does he mean by sharing and eating? I don’t get that. Well, you know what, when we come back, it’ll all become clear. All become clear. Hello, Tulsa and Oklahoma homies. Welcome back to Tulsa’s only local business radio show. We are broadcasting live here from the left coast of the Arkansas River from within the dojo of Mojo, which is really carefully kind of nestled in the Thrive15.com world headquarters. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, but more importantly, I’m the father of five human kids. And I’m always joined here with the co-host, with the most, a man who knows more, he’s learned and forgotten more about entrepreneurship than almost anybody will ever, ever, ever, ever hope to know. He is the wizard of entrepreneurship, and every one of the words that I’m reading right now was written by him. I’m just kidding. It’s Dr. Robert Zellner. Sir, how are you? No, I didn’t write the part about forgetting. I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t write that. Clay, it’s always a pleasure to be here. It’s hump day. It is. And we’re so honored that all of our listeners out there in radio land and internet land via thethriveshow.com are listening to us and enjoying the show. And you know what? We’re here for you. So keep those emails coming in. Keep those questions coming in because you know what, we do mailbag and we want to get to them and we want to answer you in specific ways to help you start or grow your business. Well, and David, this topic we’re talking about is the seven steps to developing long-term relationships with customers. You see, there’s a lot of people listening to this show right now, and I’m thinking of some people right now, I’m thinking of two people, it’s three people, but I’m thinking of two in particular. What is it? What is bipolar? It’s a family business with three people, but I’m thinking of the two people that in particular come to my mind. They live up in Minnesota, and their business, bless their heart, will not grow. I’ve talked to them numerous times. They call me and they go, Clay, your businesses are taking off. How are they doing it? And I say, advertise, advertise, advertise. Make it a no-brainer, and then over-deliver, and referrals will happen. Again, advertise, advertise, advertise. Make it a no-brainer. Make it an easy offer where someone can’t say no. Great call to action. Great call to action. They’ve got to. And then over deliver. Try to exceed the expectations of every customer and then it will grow like a harvest. It’ll happen. So the seeds in it and they go, we’re having a problem with getting our guys to deliver. You know, we’re a little bit late. We’re a little bit over. They’re remodelers and they’re just constantly screwing up. And I think of these guys and I hope they’re listening because I want to help them here. And so we talked about step number one, deliver on what you promise. And you brought up the idea of the old farm logic. You don’t want to shear the sheep over and over. You don’t want to eat the sheep. Right. Well, you can, but you only get to do it once. So the idea there is that if a customer comes in and you put it to them, in other words, you don’t treat them well, you overcharge them, you get them, you sucker them into something that they really don’t want to do and they leave and they go. I mean, you feel like, yes, I had a good sale, man, I sold them every option I could, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and they left unhappy. You know what? You ate the sheep that day and guess what? That customer’s not coming back and that’s what we’re here today to talk about is building loyalty amongst the customers so they’ll not only come back but they’ll do what, Clay? The magic thing they’ll do. Bring friends. Tell their friends. Email their friends. Text their friends. Call their friends. All of a sudden your business is growing and they’re going to spend money with you over and over and over. Oh, that creates profit. Is that it? I don’t know about that. And what I was talking about before was I had gone to this timeshare in Las Vegas. My wife and I are there. They separate us, okay, Z? And they separate us. And so, by the way, we have a very special guest, Miss Katie Worley of Royal Landscapes in the house. Ma’am, how are you? Fantastic, thank you. So I was just sharing this story with Z and Katie and you, the listener here. So I’m in Vegas. They separate us. What they do is they pre-qualified us. And they discovered, they find out that we have a pretty decent credit score. Oh, yeah. And we have some money saved. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho. And so this guy, he could have sold us maybe like a package where you come once a year for maybe a week or something. Oh, yeah. No, no. No, no. He’s trying to sell us the grand poobah. And he ends up just trying every move. He tries the takeaway move, like the move of like, we might not have any availabilities if we don’t do it now. He tries the high pressure move. They’re going fast. Then he flips it and goes health. That was his final move when we were together. He was like, you know people who vacation together live longer. Do you want to live longer? Just that whole thing. So finally- Oh, where’s my checkbook? Yeah, I don’t want to live longer. You got me. No, I’m serious. He really pushed it. So anyway, long story short, my wife and I did not buy. She got very upset. I got very upset. Really? And it just didn’t work. But the thing is, he was trying to just kill the sheep rather than shear the sheep. He was trying to do it. Yeah, he just went too much. You know, like you said, you might have done something on a smaller scale. That’s shearing the sheep. And then they work you up and from there you’re like hey that’s not we’re having fun this week one week out of the year one weekend out of the year you know so I’m gonna ask Katie a situation so somebody calls you guys by the what what website where can they find out more about royal landscaping we are on the world wide web we’re at Royal Oklahoma calm Royal Oklahoma calm so you go to Royal Oklahoma calm you’re listening to the Thrash Time Show on Talk Radio 11 Central. Maybe I saw an ad or a special, and you guys come out there and mow the lawn. Now, let’s say that I’m happy with the experience. What other kinds of services do you guys offer beyond just basic lawn mowing? We do lots of things. We actually have a team that asks our customers for their feedback. And so that’s something that I don’t think, I think people are afraid to ask. So we do put that back into place and we’re constantly getting better. We have customer experience specialists, so to speak, instead of just sales people looking for the dollar. We do that and then we like to offer a discounted membership so it’s consistent. We’re just looking for ways to make the, you know, what is my lawn guy not doing to solve that problem for our people. But long story short, I mean over time, I guess, I mean potentially, like how much does it, I mean do you guys do tree planting? You guys do big rocks, the decorative rocks? You guys do outdoor man kitchen areas? Do you do that or is that somebody else? If it is outside, we do it. So you’re doing some of these big projects. The thing is, if you took every single person who called to get a basic mow and tried to high pressure them into installing an outdoor kitchen, you’d probably not have any people who want the outdoor kitchens, right? That’s right. I’ve seen some of the work you’ve done online. There’s massive thrivers. You get a chance to go check out their portfolio. Some of the who’s who of Tulsa businesses. They’ve worked with these companies doing just massive landscaping projects, but it all starts with this very simple step one, deliver on what you promise. Now step number two is you want to create a linear workflow. Now I know I just said a word that had multiple syllables. It’s freaking some people out. Linear, you know, it’s three, but to create a linear workflow service profit chain to design designed to deliver If you’re watching on Facebook live, I’m gonna hold it up here But it’s a it’s a workflow is basically a timeline from left to right that documents the steps in Your process and so we’re gonna fly virtually now kind of Figuratively mentally we’re flying over to Z’s auction, the Z66 auction. We’re over there now. So we’re over there now, Z. And walk me through just some of the steps that happen. I mean, first, how do you get customers over there at Z66? What’s your move to make that phone ring? How do you get actual customers? A couple things. One, we actually have physical sales guys that go out there, and there’s about 1,000 people that could be our customers, so we’re more business to business. We’re not a general public sale. We’re a dealers only sale. So we have about a thousand car dealers in our area that we target. And so we get out there door to door and we knock on doors. It’s kind of funny. We hired a guy to do that who didn’t have any experience. He owned a fencing company before. And he said, what do we do? And I said, well, number one, you show up. You show up. Number two, you go knock on the door. Number three, you find out something about the guys and something they want or they need or they like. In other words, they like donuts, take them donuts. You know, if the guy likes to smoke cigarettes, take him a pack of cigarettes. I don’t know if I can make that sound for cigarettes. Maybe I… Okay, well, okay, maybe I digress. But the point is, so then you build a relationship with them. Relationship. And through that relationship, you get what I call the golden look. Ooh, the golden look? Now, the golden look is not the business. It’s the opportunity for the business. And when we come back, I’m going to kind of deep dive into that just a little bit more. The golden look. The golden look. It’s not like you have the golden goose, you have the golden look, you’ve got the golden… I’m going to brag on you real quick. Head into the break here. Thrivers, this man has had success in multiple industries. And if you’re struggling to grow your business, you want to stay tuned. Thrivetime Show. Hello, Thrivers. Welcome back to the Thrivetime Show during your drive time home. This is an exciting place to be on your radio dial. It’s really the inspiration station, the place you can come to from 5 o’clock to 7 o’clock every single day on your way home, the Thrive Time Show. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, and I’m joined here with a man today who he started Dr. Zellner & Associates, the optometry clinic. He started the Z66 auto auction. He started A to Z Medical. He has started a Rockin’ Z Ranch. He’s started the Z’s Sleep Center. And he worked with Al Gore to invent the internet, allegedly. It’s Dr. Robert Zellner. Sir, how are you? Well, Al took all the credit. Oh, yeah. But not a lot of people know that. The whole project was off. You can verify everything else I said. That’s just the one thing you couldn’t verify. You’ve got to dig pretty deep to verify that one. That’s all I’m going to say. Into the deep, dark web. Into the deep, deep, deep, dark side of the web. And we have a very special guest today, Miss Katie Worley here with Royal Landscapes. How are you? Good, hey. Hey, now we’re talking today. You know what? Katie checks both boxes. What are the boxes? Well, she’s a female entrepreneur. True. And we love highlighting female entrepreneurs. That is true. Because if you’re watching on Facebook Live, you get tired of just looking at us two dudes. Well, I’ll tell you this. According to research out there, Forbes has named Tulsa, Oklahoma, as consistently one of the top five places, one of the top five cities for entrepreneurs. And one of the top for female entrepreneurs, too. Yeah, this just in. For female entrepreneurs, Tulsa is the hot spot. And the second box you checked is that she’s a successful business lady and so we like to highlight successful business stories here in Oklahoma. Yeah. And we like to get them on and and for you and for your listening pleasure. Yeah. And for your listening information. Yes. We like to pick up their brain. We call these people mompreneurs. Mompreneurs. Mompreneurs. There’s a lot of us. There’s a lot of you. It’s a growing army of mompreneurs. There are there are just there’s so much estrogen that we’re trying to harness and bring on to the show. Yeah, they just they’re in balance. They watch soccer all day and their competitive juices get flowing. They’re just like, what I’m watching some soccer model do something. You want to make money. Yeah, make some money. And so we’re talking about the seven steps to developing long term relationships with customers. And step one was deliver on what you promise. But step number two was create a linear workflow service profit chain designed to deliver. And we were talking before the break there, Z, how at your auction, you go out there and you try to get that business. And you had a little kind of a golden move you were going to unveil for us. So go for it, my friend. Well, the thing you’ve got to understand in business, whenever you get the opportunity to make someone a customer, see, everybody understands. People think, oh, they walked in my door, they’re now my customer. That’s not the case. That is your opportunity to try to make them a lifelong customer because that’s what it’s all about. You know, we don’t want to, like we said earlier, you don’t want to kill the sheep and eat it. You want to share it every year. It’s much more profitable at the end of a 20-year, 10-year cycle. Okay, I’m going to get into the nitty gritty. Oh, here we go. Now, this is what I did with the DJ business. I got a list of all the brides who were engaged. By the way, if you register at Bed Bath & Beyond or David’s Bridal or Target or your local bridal store. I was trying to get that list You know for the wedding ethical it was I don’t know whether it was ethical Here’s my move if you had the wedding show I committed that I was going to call you Uh-huh, I was gonna mail you. Oh, yeah, I was gonna email you I didn’t text those pretext pretext, but I was going to call you I told him We’re gonna reach out to them. Now, if the bride said, hey, we’re not interested, you know, then in my mind that’s like a die. We’re not interested. Cry is like, stop calling me. You’ve called me eight times. And I will relentlessly not stop calling until we’ve reached you. And then I would do the mailer, that kind of thing, right? And then buy as we’d set that appointment. Sure. So many entrepreneurs, though, you said there’s a thousand, there’s a list of roughly a thousand used car dealers in our area. Yes, yes, in our region. And you’re going to show up. You’re going to knock on doors. Knock on doors. Do you ever worry about, like when you hire a new rep, do you ever worry about, have we gone to this person before? What if we’ve already gone to them? What if they’ve already told us no last year? What would you say for someone who’s just, I just don’t know how to do it. When do I start? What do I do? Well, our move is we’ve got three sales guys. So if one gets a no, a repeatedly no, and can’t get the business, you know what I do? I send the next sales guy. Yeah. You just keep doing it. I just keep doing it. Of course. And then eventually sometimes I’ve got to show up. I mean, that’s how it happened. I show up and I find out, like, there was a car dealer in town that they were like the big tuna. They were number one on my wish list. The big tuna. The big tuna. You know, you’re out there fishing for the big tuna. You get them on, they get off, you’re not sure, and so one day, I sent all my guys, I sent all my people, and I finally said to myself, okay, it’s time for Big Papi. So I found out what the guy that was going to make the decision, what he liked, and I went and I purchased it, and I walked in unannounced, and I just gave it to him. You did? It was a surprise gift. I just said, hey, hey, I’m going to give you these and no strings attached.” He looked at me and one of his eyes kind of welled up a little bit, a little tear was forming in the corner. And he said, but I don’t do business with you. And I said, I know. I just want to give you this. No strings attached. No strings attached. I just want all your business. I’m doing the Jedi mind trick. You will send me your card. I will send you my card. You will come and buy cards. These are not the droids. There are no strings attached. There are no strings. You don’t see those strings because they are not attached, yet they are. So Kayden, I want to ask you, how do you guys at Royal go out there and get business? What’s your move? How do you go out there and try to get new business? Walk us through what you’re doing over there. Well as you probably know we do a lot of commercial stuff, a lot of commercial accounts and so we do residential but like Dr. Z is talking about we do have to build those relationships also. So we give you know gifts and cookies and things like that but we also here’s here’s one that people may not know about we call for no reason. Like we just call and make friends. You do? Yes, that we’re serving and we actually get to know them and we get personal with them. We call it the royal family. Oh the royal family Family so you guys are being happy you’re calling people for no reason. You’re just saying hey Z. What’s up? That’s right How you doing? How you doing? It’s a Wednesday be happy. We survived the election part of the royal family We survived these certain nuclear holocaust called the election. We’re all here. We’re so happy stay tuned Thrive Time Shop. When I think of adversity, I think of tolerance of rain. I think of dark clouds. I think of things that you don’t have any control over, yet they’re coming at you. And you have to make a decision, what do I do? Do I just stand here or do I move? Growing up in the Mississippi Delta as I did during the era of legal segregation, it was a time that adversity was surrounding one’s life. It was like torrents of rain that had been coming for generations. And sometimes it seems as if it will never stop. But somewhere along the way you ask yourself the question, how do I get out of this rain? What do I do? What can I do to make a difference and bring some sunshine into my life? Into every life, as the song says, some rain must fall. And rain is what people run away from to get out of. But it is also the rain that waters and nurtures those incredible ideas that live within us. I think that adversity is challenging, no question about it, but it also becomes a great teacher as well. Oh mighty for thee our bread, Hey, what are you doing? I’m just cleaning the bathroom. Looks good. Let’s go watch. Alright. All right. You’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to The Thrive Time Show during your drive time home on this beautiful and glorious, sanctimonious, wonderful, magical Humpty. You are now listening to Broadcast Excellence, where we talk about how to start and grow businesses because that’s what I’ve done my entire life, and that’s what Dr. Zellner has done his entire life. And so the whole game, the whole game out there in this wonderful country, regardless of how you feel about yesterday’s election, the whole game in this country is we are one of the few countries that has the freedom to get out there and to turn our dreams into reality. And Z, you’ve seen numerous presidents. You’ve seen Democrats. You’ve seen Republicans. You’ve seen them all. And you’ve gone through all the different administrations, but yet you’ve continued to succeed year after year. In fact, for 25 years. Is that right with you with your optometric clinic two days and counting 11 11 We celebrate 25 years of being open and if you did you have you had Success in years where we had a Democrat president yes, have you had the success when we’ve had a Republican president Yes Have you spent just a whole lot of time in the office every day going now that there’s a Democrat in an office like we? Have to change everything or mr.. Republican We’re just totally do you even worry about that and you just put blinders on and get out there and grow the business? Well, for anybody out there that thinks that the set of rules that apply today for your business, if you think that they don’t change, I mean like optometry. The way we practice optometry is vastly different in 25 years. I mean, rules change. Governments change rules. Industry patterns change rules. And so you have to be adaptive in your business. Just tell me the set of rules and I’m going to adapt my business to fit into those and to be as profitable as possible by playing by the rules. In fact, when you started your business initially with Abraham Lincoln and Moses, some of those early partners of yours. Early partners, yes. Abraham is a fine man by the way. Very tall. Yeah, I mean the technology was different back then. People didn’t have phones when you opened your business, right? Back in the day, yeah, we delivered the glasses on a pony. Yeah, I mean, it was way back when. Ze personally carved each lens using some sort of lens carving device. Out of oak and pine. Did you do a Ben Franklin spectacle? Yes, I did. And like I’ve said before, he’s rock. He was your original mullet. I mean, that dude, he was a lot of business up front, but he was a lot of party in the back. We have a very special guest today. We have Ms. Katie Worley of Royal Landscapes. Ms. Katie, how are you doing? Great, thanks. By the way, for people listening and who are going, Royal Landscapes, my lawn is getting out of control. My business is having some landscaping blowouts. We’ve all hired a landscaper, by the way, who says, I’ll be there on Thursday and then like four Thursdays later your lawns looking like the Amazon you started to have like a monkey that’s decided to take up residence in your lawn you’re like people going hey Z are you doing an Amazon Rick turn your lawn into an Amazon Rick going on the ill natural you turn it into a prairie tall grass prairie playing designation I mean you’ve all got to that point Oklahoma grass grows fast I mean he just so if someone wants to get a hold of you guys, what’s the website, what’s the phone number, what’s the move? We are at RoyalOklahoma.com and the phone number is 918-516-8443 and we actually call you back. Whoa! Whoa! That’s crazy! Oh man. I love your tagline though. We take the hassle out of landscaping your castle. Boom! Boom! Now, we’re talking about the seven steps to developing long-term relationships with customers. Step number one, deliver on what you promise. Step number two, create a linear workflow service profit chain designed to deliver. And the third, when you have problems, look at your workflow and determine what link in the service profit chain was broken. Work with me. When something doesn’t go right, I see it all the time in small business, and I used to do it back in the day. We just get emotional. And we go, man, I screwed up. The customer is mad at you. You’re frustrated. So you put all your emotional energy into just dealing with the immediate urgency of the problem. I mean, back in the day when I was running the DJConnection.com, we would go entertain for a wedding. And let me tell you what, the most awkward moment of my DJ career, there were many, but the most awkward moment that comes to my mind was the bride. She says to me, she says, I want to make sure that you play What a Wonderful Night. It was The Way You Look Tonight. It was The Way You Look Tonight. And I said, OK, you know, great. I’ll get it. Just my dad and I are practicing. So I said, The Way You Look Tonight. Now, anybody who’s listening to this right now, there’s two The Way You Look Tonight. OK, one is the Elton John version, the Elton John. OK, and the other one is the Frank Sinatra version. OK, so the Elton John is something about the way you look tonight takes my breath away. It’s that version, okay? And then, the way you look tonight is, just the way you look tonight. There’s two different beats. Two different beats. So, imagine you’re the father, and you’ve been practicing with your daughter. And being the father of the bride, you’re the one that stroke the chick. Stroke the chick. So, you, and her father in particular, did not want to dance very much. So here we are at the Summit Club, a beautiful place, it’s like a country club in the sky for people who haven’t been there. It’s downtown Tulsa, it’s like the Bank of America Tower, everyone’s there, dressed nice, everyone’s ready to go. And she said to me, this was back before I clarified what artist sang the song, see now I made a system, but back in the day I’d just go, okay, so you want to play The Way You Look tonight, you and your dad have been practicing for months. I know he’s nervous. I’ll nail it.” So I get up there. And again, they’ve been practicing to the Elton John version. Oh, no. So I get up there. You had a 50-50 shot. And this is back in the day when we had CDs. Oh, yeah. Okay, compact discs. CDs. No internet, no iPod, no downloading, no YouTube. If you didn’t have the music, you didn’t have the music. So I get up there. All right, ladies and gentlemen, esteemed guests, we are here gathered at the Summit Club for this wonderful celebration. Now this beautiful bride, she has been practicing. Her dad, who we know is not a dancer, he has chosen, he’s put it all, he’s sacrificed. He’s been going to dance lessons, folks, for three months. You’re listening to the Thrash Time Show on Talk Radio 117. At this point, people are starting to gather. Oh no. They start cheering. Oh no. I’m like, so here we go, ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it now for the father and daughter, as they do, that always important, very special important, the father-daughter dance. And I hit play. Oh, and I hit play and it’s, just the way you look. And it just, it was like lasers of hate were, he looked at me and you could just sense in his eyes, I hate you. And I hate you because he can’t dance anyway. So she’s trying now to dance with her dad to a new beat kind of upbeat and this guy is never really dance He needs rhythm therapy, you know And so I attempted to do was just to hide behind that booth to see where you kind of kind of lower yourself And I’m just telling you I was so emotional because he was so mad didn’t want to pay for the wedding people were upset I’m pretty sure that we had to pull people pull a few people off the ledge and say don’t jump don’t jump We’ll make it through the high up there too and you get emotional. So I got super emotional. I come home, my wife says, what happened at the wedding? And I go, I don’t want to talk about it. And so what you do as an entrepreneur, you just deal with the emotion of giving them the refund, dealing with the problem, but you don’t take the time to look at your workflow. Yeah, and then what you do is you figure out how did that happen. Like you said, I mean, it’s emotional and you’re upset and all that, but then you go in and then you change, you tweak your workflow. Quick confession. I didn’t fix my workflow until this scenario happened probably a dozen times. Well, thank goodness you were good at everything else. And you were able to survive that. Because some people make the same mistake over and over and over. And you know what? What happens? I don’t want to say this because I don’t want to dishearten anybody. And we’re changing this number. This number, we vow to change this number. 80% of businesses fail. According to Forbes. And that’s exactly some of the reasons why. Because they have a mistake in their chain, and their chain, they have a mistake, and it leads to a problem, and it leads to unhappy customers, so you don’t get loyal customers. You do it over and over. And guess what? You run out of advertising dollars, because that’s how you’re getting new people, instead of word of mouth also kind of pumping you up, that year two and year three. The word of mouth, absolutely, almost like you’ve gone to a testosterone clinic. It has to pump you up. It has to. You have to be pumped by that. But if you don’t wow people, you’re in trouble. So I’m going to give you a notable quotable from Jack Welch. He says, face reality as it is, not as it was, or as you wish it to be. So Katie, I want to ask you this, and I’ll kind of let you marinate on this for a second here, but in the world of landscaping, there’s got to be some problems that would happen over and over and over if you hadn’t made a system, like a customer service database or some way to keep track of customers. What are some of the problems that could happen over and over if you guys didn’t have a database or some way to organize your customers’ information? Absolutely. Being late. Oh. Not showing up, as like you talked about the other guys do sometimes Not showing up or having Off the schedule, you know the wrong service. We’re in irrigation Pretty pretty heavily also so timers have to be set and things like that. Well, nobody can memorize all of those things They’re not all in the same schedule. So we have to follow a system see and if I was running your landscaping company back Of the day, I probably would have like put the irrigation system in the wrong guys lawn or you know just done these repetitive mistakes and luckily like you mentioned Z we were trying to over deliver in every area so we would screw up it wasn’t like the end of the world and the business didn’t just completely go out of business but some people listening right now you’re in the medical business maybe I have a very good friend of mine is in the medical business he’s on the East Coast and his average waiting time the average time that people wait in his office was getting over an hour. Over an hour. That’s tough. And he’s like, how do you, I mean, again, no one’s perfect. No one’s exactly on time. But when you start to get known as the place where you have an hour and a half, two hour wait because no one’s even checking customers in, it’s hard. And then as a business owner, you have to look at your workflow and figure out what is the problem. Now here’s, here’s step number four. We come back, we’re talking about step number four, and this is the tough one. This is the one that’s going to rock your gourd. This is the one that many entrepreneurs are not comfortable with doing. You’re playing the song in Haunting Me. You’re bringing back these… We’re going to talk about the super move when we come back. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to that motivation station, the place that you go for that daily persuasion that you need to get motivated, to get activated, to learn how to really identify those things that are stopping you from building that dream business. Because as always, I’m joined here with Dr. Robert Zellner. Sir, how are you? I am fantastic on this hunt day. You know, there’s plenty of shows out there, Learn Gardening Tips. There’s plenty of shows out there to get your political feel. Yeah, I have not gotten enough political. Plenty of psychoanalysis shows out there. Paranormal shows? I mean, paranormal, and there’s like even UFO shows and all those. Sport shows? Oh, tons of sport shows. But this is Tulsa’s only, only local business show. And what we’re going to do here today, folks, we’re going to coach you up, because we’re going to take that 80% fail rate of new businesses. And our goal is to get it to what, Clay? Seriously, of the clients that we coach, because I coach clients one-on-one, and that’s why we built the online school because it wasn’t scalable. You can’t coach limitless numbers of people. There’s only 24 hours in a day. That’s right. And so what we did is we packed it in where we had 47 clients I was working with, and my wife’s like, hey, maybe you should scale that. You know, and I’m going, I don’t know. So anyway, you and I teamed up, we built this online school called thrive15.com, and I will tell you, I don’t know everyone I talked to, but I can tell you of at least several dozen entrepreneurs from all around the world, Australia, Canada, New York, whose businesses were failing. Ukraine, Ukraine. Ukraine, yeah. And they learned tips on Thrive that have allowed them to not only stay in business, but to move beyond surviving, hence the name Thrive, and they’re actually thriving. To me, thriving is having an abundance of time, time freedom, and financial freedom. What we’re doing is we like to showcase on this show local Tulsa entrepreneurs. We also like to teach these proven best practice tips. Today, we have a very special guest, Ms. Katie Worley of Royal Landscapes. Ms. Katie, how are you doing on this wonderful Wednesday? Great. Thank you for having me. Now we’re talking about this next move, which before the break I was mentioning, you were going through the seven steps here, guys, the seven steps to developing long-term relationships. What happens is step number three was when you have problems, you want to look at your workflow and determine what the link in the service profit chain is. You want to find where’s the broken link in my profit chain? Where is that limiting membrane? And here is the part that’s tough. Oh, now we’re getting to the tough stuff. Can we just get to the fun stuff? I’m gonna give you the Jack Welch quote. I love Jack Welch. He says again, face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. This is a guy who looked at GE, he took over as the CEO, he looks at it and says, our production in Louisville, Kentucky of the appliances we’re making there is not what it needs to be. In fact, I’m going to make a list of all of the divisions of the company that aren’t performing well, and if we can’t be the first or second best provider of that particular product in the world, I’m shutting down the factory, and I’m going to move our team, re-configure factories, reassign people, move them. So imagine you’re a guy who’s made refrigerators your whole life, and all of a sudden Jack Welch comes in, shuts down your plant, retools the plant, and says, hey, we are now going to make jet engines. We’re now going to make medical equipment. We’re now going to actually buy, I think it was NBC, and he went in there and he cleaned up the lineup. He bought RCA, they owned a major network. And so he looked at their stagnant lineup of shows, and he’s like, if that show’s not good, we’re cutting it. That’s where Seinfeld came out. Seinfeld is a result of him cutting a show that wasn’t working. And all these great products, now GE is known for medical equipment, they’re known for jet engines, airport security stuff, they’re known for their financial division. All that’s because Jack Welch could face reality as it is and not as people wished it to be. So here we go. As an entrepreneur, I remember looking at my workflow and I realized my phone was being answered slowly. People would say, I called you and no one answered. I’m sure that’s never happened for an entrepreneur. Well it does. It drives me crazy. They said, someone called. People would tell me all the time. They’d say, Clay, I called your office. I’ve called multiple times and I’m calling your cell phone because no one’s answering. And so over time I started to realize, step number four, I have to remove the biggest limiting membrane, aka a human. Oh, Billy. But Billy’s going to get to the phone. He was busy. And I kept being told week after week in our meeting, I’m so sorry. I was so busy. And I realized this person, they had a desire to not answer the phone. They had a desire to push away inbound business and to focus on things that don’t matter. I had to make that move. And Z, I’ve had to make that move a lot in business where I’ve had to fire or replace people that just refuse to do the job properly. That’s a tough thing for a lot of entrepreneurs. So, I guess what tips would you have for someone who’s listening who goes, I know I probably need to remove Billy, but I just don’t want to do it. Well, here’s the deal. Okay. And I’m going to try to make as many landscaping references as I can today. Since we have Queen Katie on of Royal Landscaping. RoyalOklahoma.com, right? That’s right. So I’m telling you, if you look at your business as if it was a fruit bearing plant. A fruit bearing plant. Yes. A study show, and this is science. I’m going to give it a little science. Science.com. If you prune it appropriately, in other words, you cut branches off of it. But I don’t want to cut any branches at all. I don’t want to hurt them, you know. It’s my favorite bush. If you do that, guess what? It will be more productive. So if we use that same mentality in our business, in other words, you’ve got Billy over there who not only will not answer the phone and follow his workflow chart that you’ve given him and the scripts you’ve given him to say, he’s actually been a detriment. So shame on you for not letting Billy go and pruning that bush because guess what? You get somebody else in there who’s aggressive and outgoing and wants to get those phones and get the stuff done, your plant is going to have a lot more fruit on it. I feel like somebody’s asking this question, though. They’re saying, you just said it real fast. You said, shame on you for not letting Billy go. I think there’s someone who’s stuck right there. They’re going, I can’t let Billy go. You just don’t understand how hard it was to find Billy. It’s so hard to find Billy. All right. I’m going to walk you through this. Pay attention now. Here we go. You’re listening to The Throckton Show on Talk Radio 117. You’re driving home. You’re in your car right now. You’re maybe in traffic. Maybe you’re merging. Maybe you’ve just merged. Maybe you’re getting over in the left lane. I want you to take that visor and I want you to lower it down. Lower it down. And flip up the mirror, okay? Okay. And then I want you to look up, just glance up in there and say, shame on me. Shame on me. I need to let Billy go. I need to let Billy go. In fact, I’m going to let Billy go. I’m going to let Billy go. This week. Let him go. Laser show of letting Billy go. I’m letting Billy go. I got it. Just keep saying it. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Billy’s got to go. Billy’s got to go. Billy’s got to go. He’s got to go. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Billy’s got to go. Billy’s got to go. Billy’s got to go. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. Bye-bye Billy. And a lot of people, listen, I know it’s hard, especially the first few times you’ve had to do it in your business, but trust me, trust me, not only will it help you refocus the rest of your team and everybody all of a sudden head on a swivel, you let somebody go and everybody else in the office is like, oh, oh, oh, I guess we’re serious now. We’re serious. We’re actually going to enforce the workflow. We’re going to enforce what we’re supposed to do. Uh-oh, am I next? I better work hard. It’ll change the whole atmosphere of a business. Now here is something that I’m going to give to the entrepreneurs out there who really want to break it down. They want to get deep. There’s a word called empathy, empathic. So we’re going to work on this. Sam Walton, step one, I want you to think about this. Sam Walton says the customer is the boss. That was the guy who started Walmart. He said the customer can fire everyone from the CEO on down. On down. To the janitor. Because the customer is the boss. Right. write this down. I’m writing. The customer is the boss. Okay, what’s that step one? Step two, we have empathy for the customer. Yes, we do. So we want to listen to them, we want to emotionalize them, we want to hear their concerns. We’re going to have empathy for the boss. We want to build a long-term relationship with them. That’s what this show is all about. And step three, and this is the part that’s going to almost just sound brutal. You want to have almost a sociopathic lack of empathy for non-performers in your business. Because look at this. The word sociopath means a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior. Basically, you’re Bill Belichick. You’re Bill Belichick. So he’s my guy next up you don’t care and so he’s literally this week the patriots are in the legacies of the past like ten days here on the patriots there they’re winning they have a by week to the winning the guys things are going well it’s announced that he’s cutting or trading for almost nothing their best defensive player yet again he does this all the time so jason collins is like their number one linebacker he’s is like well it’s trading for basically nothing and there’s a story of line behind that is the why it happened with the point is he is totally empathetic to patriot fans seriously he like wants to win their the boss and if he doesn’t win he loses his job bob craft is his boss that’s the owner the team if they don’t win he loses his job boom so he’s totally obsessed with bob craft what you want sir sir sir how can i observe servicer fans how can we win win win win but then when it comes to the players, he’s like, if you don’t perform or you’re not fitting within the contractual restraints, they have a salary cap, I’m moving on. And I think there’s somebody listening right now who started a business because you’re empathetic to your customers. They love your cakes. Oh, they love it. Oh, yeah. They love the way you groom their dog. They love the way that you mow their lawn. Yeah. They love it. They love it. And so now people say, you should open a business. So you opened up a business. Step one, you got that. So step two, you start to say, okay, I’m going to, I’m like, I got this game going on. I’m going to hold my team accountable. And then all of a sudden they won’t do what you want them to do. Yes. At least with the, with a fraction of the enthusiasm that you have about it, you’re like, you’re growing that poodle, you’re mowing that yard, you’re doing all that stuff. And you, and you have great enthusiasm and you do it with such care and such precision. And then you bring somebody on your team and you’re kind of looking at them going, well, why does Billy not seem like he cares? Oh, Billy. But you know what you’re going to have to do, Thrivers. Again, Zee, he taught us what to do, but it doesn’t do you any good unless you actually do it. So I’m going to repeat it. You want to tell yourself right now, I am going to let Billy go. You’ve got to do it. You gotta hold them accountable. You do. And if you don’t, then your business will suffer. And when your business suffers, you suffer. And you didn’t get into this. As much difficult as it is to build a thriving business, as hard as it is, don’t make it any harder by not making the tough decisions. And when you have a Billy, i.e. a guy in your organization that’s not doing what he’s supposed to be doing, let him go. Thrive Time Show. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Inspiration Station, the show where you go, this is like your audio dojo on your drive time home. You see, running a business can be tough. Thinking about running a business can be overwhelming. But when you’re listening to people who know what they’re doing, we know the path. We’ve gone down the path. Unfortunately, I wish I could tell you that Zee and I ran through the path and didn’t step on some landmines. But I will tell you, we’ve had issues, we’ve made mistakes, but we’ve learned, and now you can decide right now, are you going to learn from mentors or mistakes? If you want to learn from mistakes, it’s totally cool. There’s a lot of- Just change the channel. Yeah, there’s a lot of explosions. Yeah, just change the channel and don’t listen to us. We’ve made the mistakes, and we’re here to share them with you humbly and openly so that you don’t have to make them, because we want the success rate of businesses opening up to be greater than a 20% success rate. 8% of them are failing. I have zero tolerance for that. Now here’s the thing. We talked about it before we left. We talked about this before we left for the break there. That you as an entrepreneur, if you have extreme empathy for the customer because they’re the boss, then you have to be almost a sociopath when it comes to the people. You have to have no feelings. If people don’t perform, you’ve got to let them go. Wait, wait, wait. They’re my friends. We do bunko. I do bunko. Here’s what I’ll tell you. I do bunko every Wednesday with them. I have hired and fired many people who used to be my friends. Did you play bunko with them? Zee, I’m going to say this. You don’t understand the bonding that happens with bunko. I mean this. When you hire somebody, you’re going to get to see their core values and even though they might have been a dominant bunco player, when you hire them, you get to see their true, don’t you Z? I mean, when you partner with someone, don’t you get to see their true character? Yes. Business brings it out. It does. It really does. And whenever you’re, you know, in businesses, I use the word, it’s war. You know, you want, listen, if you’re going to go to war and you’re digging your little fox hole, and you’re picking a guy out of the group, you’re like, okay, they could be coming from this side to attack us or this side. So you, back to back, you face that way and I’ll face this way. You want to make sure you’re picking a dude. What side am I supposed to face? You’re picking a dude that’s baited digits. Got your back, got your six, got your back. I was looking on my smartphone and I totally wasn’t looking the other way there for a few minutes. They just came right on up, those North Koreans, and Kim Jong-un came up and got me. So the thing is, we’re getting at this, once you begin to become comfortable with having extreme empathy for your customers and holding them accountable and pruning the tree, cutting the dead wood, getting people off the squad who don’t belong there, what happens is people who are loyal to success and loyal to winning, they will stick around a long time. Which segue from loyal into royal landscaping. We have a very special guest here, Miss Katie Worley of Royal Landscapes. How are you? Good. Hey, Thrive. Now hey, you have people who have worked with your landscaping business for years. Absolutely. How long have many of your teammates been with you guys? We have four men that have been there over 10, 15 years. And so do you ever fire people over there though? Have you ever fired anybody over there? Unfortunately, yes. So I guess once you fire the wrong people, then the good people want to stick around. Is that kind of the theme? Absolutely. We actually have two generations that work for us. Now I have seen this thing, maybe it’s just in my businesses, but I’ve found that great people love to work with other great people. And they’re almost worn out by even just the physical presence of non-performers. Have you noticed this in your businesses? I’ll tell you what, if you’ve got a guy or a gal, you’ve got a person that’s underperforming and doing everything wrong, everybody in the business knows it. They all know it and they all look at you and they say to themselves, why aren’t you doing anything about it? Yeah. Why are you not doing? I’m busting my buns to help build your business and you’re not pruning the dead wood out of here. What are you thinking? Is this really a long-term play for me?” And then you actually start to affect the enthusiasm of the other co-workers, because they see you putting up with, and I love your book that you wrote on it, Jack Ashery, they start to see you put up with it from other employees. And it pulls them down too. They’ll say, well, if you let Billy come in late, you know what? I think I’m going to start coming in late. Apparently it’s okay. If you’re listening right now, I want you to take the challenge for me, Thrivers. Here’s the challenge I’m going to give you, okay? If you’re listening and you’re a first-time customer, you’ve never been in to Elephant in the Room before, that’s our men’s grooming business. You’re listening to the Thrived Time Show on Talk Radio 117. Now if you’re a dude, there are certain restrictions. If you’re a dude, it’s a guys, it’s men’s only, but you go in there, we have three locations. We have one at 16th and Boston, one at 91st and Yale, one over there in Broken Arrow by Louie’s off of Lynn Lane, 65th area. Your first haircut is a dollar. Now when your first haircut is a dollar, I want you to think about this for a second. The first time you walk in, it’s a dollar. But how much does it cost me to offer you a free haircut? So when you come in right now and you get that one dollar haircut, it’s almost free. But how much does it cost me? Let me guess. Can I guess? May I? Yeah, sure. Yeah, approximately. Really? Yeah. I think I heard that on a different show. People say, how does that happen? Well, one is that we have to do ads to get in front of you. Two, we have to have someone who answers the phone, someone who greets people at the front desk. We offer you a free beverage. We do paraffin hand dip, hot towel treatment. We have the person we have to pay to cut your hair. All those things happen. And if we don’t wow you, then you’re not coming back. We have a membership plan, a membership option, which allows you to get your hair cut more often at a discounted rate. And Z, this month we set a record downtown. You want to know what the record was? In Boston? We had 78% of people who came in for the $1 haircut signed up for a membership on the first time they came in. Well, that’s pretty good. Boom. Here we go. Just another Oklahoma success story. 78%. Now I will tell you, that number was as low at one point as 18% when we first started. And do you know why it was at 18% when we first started? Because no one was following the system. We either had a bad system, you had a bad workflow, they didn’t work, or somebody wasn’t following it. And check it out. Imagine that. Check it out. The system I built was stupid at first. It was a bad system. I thought it was good, but I tested it and then quickly got information, got feedback, and fixed it. Fixed it, fixed it, fixed it. Then the system. Oh, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Are you telling me, let me get this straight. You opened up a business. Yeah. And your system wasn’t perfect. Absolutely. And you survived. And there’s a book called The Lean Startup Method. Lean Startup. And I want everyone, everyone, if you’re listening to this right now, I want you to buy this book, Own It, Own It. Okay, it’s written by a guy named Eric Reese, and he is the head, he’s one of the top advisors for Kleiner Perkins. People say, well, what’s Kleiner Perkins? That is one of the biggest venture capital funds on the planet. And these homies have funded, check it out, Square, Uber, Google. I’ve never used Google. I’m going to Google Google to figure out what Google is. I bet you half the people listening to this today will either use Square, Google, or Uber. I bet at least half the audience, maybe three quarters of the audience will use one of those things today. And the people who’ve launched those companies and other, Kleiner Perkins, have developed a system called the Lean Startup Method. And here’s the four parts. Okay, here we go. Four parts. One is you define what you think is going to work. Two, you act. Act. Three, you measure results. Yes. And four, you refine. And that’s how you went from opening a business to building your system to measuring that you only had 18% conversion rate to fixing it to 78%. That’s how it works. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful thing. That is a beautiful thing. We want to help you do that there, Thrivers. So if you’re listening right now, look for the biggest limiting factor in your business. There’s tons of limiting factors. Look for the biggest, the most, the big, the most big. Look for the biggest limiting factor and remove it this week. It’s Wednesday. You still have time to do it by Friday. Yeah, absolutely. It gives you two days. And then 11-11, my 25th anniversary, which is also Veterans Day. Shout out this week. We should maybe get a veteran on Friday. Yeah. A veteran, a successful entrepreneur that’s a veteran. You’re putting a lot of pressure on me at this point. A lot of pressure. A lot of pressure on your co-host. Well, you know what pressure makes, don’t you? Diamonds? Diamonds. Fossil fuels? Fossil fuels. Gray-haired presidents. Gray-haired presidents. This is true. Pressure makes all these. Now, Thrivers, we come back. We’re going to talk to you about step number five. Hello, Tulsa, and welcome back to the Thrive Time Show during your drive time home. Many of you are finding this show for the first time and you’re saying, what is this? Who are you? What are we talking about? Should I listen? Because we have about 10 seconds to convince you whether you should listen or not. And I’m going to tell you this. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. That’s the Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year. I’ve started numerous successful businesses. And years ago I had an opportunity to meet a wonderful man and a mentor. A guy by the name of Dr. Z. Z, how are you doing, my friend? I’m doing fantastic. Happy Hump Day world out there. Now, Dr. Z is a man who started off, I want you to follow his career path. He started off washing dishes. Where were you washing dishes at? It’s called Chiquita O’Briens. And in fact, I found, I treasure, it’s a little t-shirt that I used to wear there called Chiquita O’Briens. It was at 41st and Garnett, actually right there on the corner. It was a Mexican restaurant. My first job. I was 13 years old, daytime dishwasher. And I, man, I owned that. Was it an automatic where you pull the thing down and it goes, when it washes or you had to hand wash all those things? No, it was automatic, but you had to, you had to bring, as Mexicans, you had to get a lot of the, you know, the big stuff off, you know, and uh, cheese and beans, maybe. And I pride myself, I had to clean my, Dick Slater, the owner of Chiquita Bryant’s, told me, a clean station is a happy station. And I remember that to this day. And so I kept my… My house was high and tight and clean, and I washed those dishes with pride. I took pride in having clean dishes. And from there you went to NSU, right? Yeah, North Texas State University. Where you studied some math? Yeah, mathematics. And then I went and did optometry school there. And then I came back to the wonderful city of Tulsa and started my optometric clinic 25 years ago in a couple of days. And then you went from there to open up a… Sleep center, auto auction, horse ranch, DME company. It all makes sense. It all just flowed off. Some other stuff. The reason why I mention this Thrivers is because he and I have had success in different industries. And you know what? Almost every business is the same. They’re almost all the same. I know you break them down to the same core things. And that’s why whenever you do your business coaching, which led us down this whole path, which is why we’re on the air. Which is why we’re on the air. Well, years ago, you started business coaching and you found out there was the same formula for every single business. It just works. It just works. And so then you said, how can I scale this? How can I get to where I can do more than one person per hour? That’s what led us in our journey to thrive15.com, our online business entrepreneur school, if you will. Yeah. And then that led us to this radio show that you are now enjoying on your drive home. Which and just so you know this radio show it’s owned by the EW Scripps families who produces this show. And these are the guys who produce HGTV, they produce all these fun reality shows. And there’s just tons of possibilities that are percolating about this show as it’s growing all over the world. People are listening to the Thrive Time Show all over the world right now. So thrivetimeshow.com, go up there and share the podcast. All the radio shows are archived there. You can share them. Right, right, because today we’re going over the seven steps to making loyal customers for life, really gaining the customer’s loyalty for their lifetime of their business buying. You may say to yourself, I just turned in, I missed the first four steps. Don’t worry, don’t worry. It’s okay, don’t wreck, keep driving straight, keep between the lines. You can, when you get home, you can go to thrivetimeshow.com and listen to the podcast as many times as you want. Absolutely. Now we’re on step number five is get the emotion out of the way and make the best business decision based upon the facts. Now again, based upon the facts, here’s a little thing I’ll give everyone. I encourage you to write this down, memorize this. This is how I do it. Get the facts, then act. That’s my move. Get the facts, then act. That’s the move. Okay, I’m going to give you a notable quotable to help kind of marinate on that, but this is from Napoleon Hill, the bestselling author who I named my son after. My son’s name is Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark. He says, put your foot upon the neck of the fear of criticism by reaching a decision not to worry about what other people think, do, or say. So again, get the facts and act. In between there is not worry about what people say. So Katie, over there at Royal Landscaping, by the way we have a special guest here, Katie Worley with Royal Landscaping. How are you ma’am? Great. With your business over there, when you guys fail to hit the mark, let’s say, or let’s say that you discover a certain advertisement isn’t working or you discover that a truck needs to be fixed. How fast do you guys like to act over there? Do you guys like to sit around, have meetings, form committees? How fast do you guys try to act over there? We are in a time-sensitive industry, so we have not a lot of time to sit around and deliberate. We get it done within seven days the problem should be fixed based on the size, obviously, of the problem. So you guys have a hustle. We do. You get after. Do the hustle. And so this time of the year, in fact, in your business, it’s seasonal. So different seasons have different needs. So this time of the year, if I’m listening, what are some of the services that you’re offering to your customers right now with a big sense of urgency? What are some of those things you’re offering to customers in green country right now? Right now, it is time for fall color. People have family coming, so they want the flower beds to look good. We take care of that. I don’t know. A lot of people are experts on their own irrigation systems. They’re like, how do I turn this thing off or on? We handle that very well for lots of people in Tulsa. And then, do you know, fall is time to plant a tree. That tree you’ve always wanted. This is the time? It is. Is this the best time to do it? It is. So if someone wants to get a hold of you, what do they need to do? We are on the web at RoyalOklahoma.com. You can fill out an easy form there and we’ll contact you. That’s two minutes out of your time. We also, you can call us, go old school, at 918-516-8443. People still call people? They do. What phone number can they call again? 918-516-8443. Now Z, this is something I want to know. This is a service, I don’t know if she offers this, this is a service I want to know. Do you do prank landscaping? Can I hire you guys to destroy someone’s lawn? Like pork from a yard or toilet paper? That’s something you’ll do. Unfortunately that market seems to be saturated. Now Zee, I have a story. We come back. I want to share with the Thrivers. But it involves Brett Favre, the Minnesota Vikings. Oh, Minnesota. And destroying somebody’s lawn. And such an epic display that it almost led to me getting in some serious trouble while in high school. But it’s Brett Favre. I could hardly wait because knowing you the way I know you, this is going to be a story that nobody out there wants to miss. So please stay tuned. All out. I don’t know the story, but I know it’s going to be good. Stay tuned. Thrive Time Show. Hello Thrive Nation. Welcome back here to the Thrive Time Show during your drive time home. You are listening right now to Tulsa’s only local business radio show on Talk Radio 1170. This is a, see on Talk Radio 1170, what we like to do is we like to give you some of those politics in the morning, get that political news. Get those juices flowing. Then we come back with some business in the afternoon, come back with some politics, come back with some business, come back with some politics. We’ve got a variety. Variety pack. It’s an unbelievable variety pack and it has people coming back week after week in case you missed it, in case you missed the earlier part of the show. We’re talking about the seven steps to developing long-term relationships with customers. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. Across from me, I’m joined with the co-host with the most, Dr. Robert Zellner. Sir, how are you? I am fantastic. Happy Wednesday to the world. And we have a very special guest with us to my left here. It’s Miss Katie Worley of Royal Landscaping. How are you? Queen Katie. Thank you. Doing fantastic. Now real quick, Zee was asking you off air, this kind of audio magic cannot be missed. You were saying, you were asking her, Zee, what’s the… Well, she was saying that one of the things they do, one of the moves right now in landscaping is doing fall color. Fall color. So I was going, fall color, okay. I think that means flowers. I’m a dude. I think that’s what that means. Basically it means flowers. Right? Is that what that means? Yeah, okay. So you’re going to come into my flower bed and then I said, what is the most likely flower you’re going to plant in my flower bed for fall color? And you said… It is like a pansy palooza. Like, we have pansies everywhere. Pansies. I know. I was just giggling because I thought, you know, here we are. We’re going to plant the flower. It’s going to survive the harshest time of the year. It was winter, the cold, and it seemed to pansy. When you said pansies, as a diehard Patriots fan, what I was thinking of was the New York Giants. When you said pansies, I thought… I thought you meant the Jets or something. Yeah, I wasn’t sure if you were planting New York Jets themed plants around… Yeah, I do. Green and white or something. But the toughest flower is the pansy. Yeah, isn’t that crazy? It’s kind of funny. It actually is funny. I’m just going to kind of marinate on that for a minute. Before we left, I was going to tell you this story because landscaping, talking a lot about landscaping here with having Katie on the show and just the whole royal landscaping theme. And one landscaping story that must be told is I was in high school, and when you’re in high school it’s always the juniors versus the seniors. And so I’m a senior. I’ve got a lot of time on my hands. In Minnesota, what I did is I graduated early. In Minnesota, you can take as many classes as you want. Z, I guarantee you would have done something like this if it was available for you. I’m basically like a sophomore in high school, and I’m done with school. I don’t have to go anymore, really. My junior year, I took college courses. Then my senior year, I thought I’m going to take nothing of any value at all because I can’t leave. I thought about just dropping out. I seriously was like, I’m going to just be done. My dad’s like, nah, you should definitely. So I played high school football for the first time in my life. I went out as a senior for the team. I didn’t even tell my parents. I just signed up and signed up. And I basically spent a lot of time taking some college courses and then just doing crazy things that only people with a lot of downtime do. Well, do tell. So here’s what I did. Because you said you, you tease us. You gave us a teaser. Here’s what I did. Minnesota. We had a junior, a high school junior, who we hated the juniors there at Dassel Cocado High School. You hate those juniors. Hate them. And this junior, he had the audacity to like the Packers. We’re in Minnesota. You can’t like the Packers. Brett Favre wasn’t on our team. He hadn’t defected yet. So we’re going, you can’t like the Packers. He’s always talking about the Packers and Brett Favre. He did wear a cheese head, did he? Tell me he didn’t wear a cheese head. Always. That kind of stuff. So I said, you know what we’re going to do? He’s on vacation this week, and his parents are out of town. I had no thought about the parents and what good people the Gangers were. I just talked to Mr. Ganger. Fine people, I’m sure. He called me the other day and we referenced this story. So I waited until they were on vacation. Zero empathy for him. I don’t know what was wrong with me. But I got a group of guys together. We had very detailed systems plans. We got that mower on the lowest setting and we wrote, FARV SUCKS on a huge lawn. They have a massive lawn facing the whole community. So you drive into town and you see, farm sucks. Then we took the paint, like it’s a football field, we painted an entire field where it looked like it, farm sucks. Then I got down to the weed eater and I cut it down to the dirt so it was permanently in there. And we just went down and we just desecrated, not just toilet papering, but we just covered every… Landscaping nightmare. So you were a landscaper. I just destroyed that lawn there. And so he could have used royal landscaping to come undo the travesties and the abominations that I had done. So again, Katie, if people want to get a hold of you, what’s your website? We are at royaloklahoma.com. Awesome. Okay, now we’re talking about step number six. Systematically insert a wow moment into your workflow. A wow moment is this. At Starbucks, they say, what’s your name? And they write your name on the cup. That’s a wow. Wow. Okay. Another example, build a bear. You can build the bear with your kids. Wow. Whole Foods, there’s a guy who’s obsessed with the Angus. Hey bro, what kind of Angus are you looking? Oh, this is fresh Angus, it just came in. Hey bro, do you want to see our kale? We just got this new kale and it’s awesome. Whole Foods, they’re obsessed with the quality. It’s your auction Z. What’s a wow moment? Every week you serve that incredible… We give a free lunch. Everybody comes in and goes, wow, free lunch and beverages. And it’s great. We cook it right there or we have it delivered in. I mean, it’s nice. Your optometry clinic consistently, every time you go in, it feels like a mall. It feels like major retail. It feels like it should be in New York City. Or maybe LA. You know why you did that? Because it creates the three R’s. It’s retention, repeat sales, and referrals. Those are the three R’s. You build your business on. Now, so many people are listening right now. They go, I wow people myself. Every time I talk to people, I treat them well. Well, you can do that. But if it’s you doing it, it’s not a system. See, it’s just you. So you want to put a system into place here. OK, that’s step number six. Now step number seven, now this is the final step. Get to know your customers and enter what you’re learning into a database. Is that ethical? Not only is it ethical. Can I do that? That sounds a little creepy. You’ve got to do it. Is it creepy? And these are the areas you have to enter in at a minimum. It’s called the four. The four. Family. Family. Occupation. Occupation. Recreation. Recreation. Enjoyment. So what are the things your customers are into so we’ll say well enjoyment kinda sounds like recreation the point of the concept is I don’t like their hobby yes I mean they’re into some every customer you want to enter into the database at some point took something about their family how many kids do they have where they from occupation recreation enjoyment there was a restaurant here in town it shut down now called the duck club the duck club and there was a waiter there by the name of Hamid and Hamid if you’re out there you’re and you’re listening to this, hello, by the way. But that guy had to have a little card system in the back. He had to. He had to. There’s no way I could go in two months after a dinner, two months. Two months. And him come out to the table, of course it’s all reservation, so they know you’re coming, right? Yep. And I know he had a database back there. He would come out there, name my children by name, how they’re doing, know their ages. I mean, he just, I’m just, look at him going, wow, you’ve either got a photographic memory of like an army of elephants, or you’re writing this stuff down, dude. He works for WikiLeaks. He’s just gathering information. But the point is, I was so wowed, I was so impressed, I was so blown away by that, that I would just be like, number one, every time I went in, he was going to be my waiter, and number two, I always tipped him more than, you know, I’m way over tipped him, because it was just so impressive. I just felt like, wow, this guy took the time to know those things about me and then talk about them as if he just remembered them from a couple months ago. Well, you know, if you read the service profit chain, that case study by Harvard, they have a notable quotable in there where they say, companies often overlook what can be the most important of the three R’s of loyalty, referrals. And this just in from our home office off the left coast of the Arkansas River. Nobody is going to refer your business unless you wow them. You have to wow customers or they’re not going to refer you. So Miss Katie, you guys over there at Royal Landscaping have built a business based off of building long-term relationships. What advice would you have for somebody listening out there who’s struggling to build long-term relationships with their customers? Any sale, I think, is based on trust. So you read an ad and you trust that they’re going to give you that ad. I think building those relationships also builds trust. So even if there is a mistake in the future, like you guys were talking about, they’re willing to repair that with you and to maintain loyalty with your business. So staying on top of that, staying in connection, and getting to know people. I will tell you this, if you’re listening right now and you’re struggling to build a database, don’t stress. Check it out. We have thrive15.com workshops where you can come to these and we can teach you how to set up an Infusionsoft. Or there’s a lot of other programs out there. But don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t make a super nerdy program. Just get a tool that is basic and is going to help you sort that customer information. Now, for anybody who’s listening and they’re just going, I love what I learned today, but I want to see people make actual workflows. I want to see specific, I want to go deeper. I want more. I want an access to thousands of videos. I just want the access to the world’s best business school. Where can they go, my friend? Well, you are fortunate indeed, because the gentleman sitting across from me, Clay Clark, in his usual business suit, if you’re watching on Facebook Live, you can see his uniform for the day. We have spent millions and lots of hours in designing a website for you that you can go to and for a measly, measly, measly $19 a month, you can learn all we’re talking about today and so much more. You have thousands of videos and you know what the best part about it is, Clay? What’s that? It’s just not me and you. We’ve got some really smart dudes on there, like Lee Cockrell, who ran a little thing called Disney World, 40,000 people. Disney World, you talk about customer service, Disney World sees over 52 million guests per year. They have over 40,000 employees. And the guy who managed them is Lee Cockrell. One of our mentors. He’s one of our partners. He’s down there teaching management. I mean, it’s the world’s best business school, and it can all be yours for $19 a month. That’s Thrive15.com. Thrive15.com. Get on it, check it out, and enjoy it. And as always, 3, 2, 1, boom. 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. 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. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both $1.3 billion companies. They both have 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually nonexistent 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 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 that we followed with Thrive and 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 the first 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 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 it 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 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, and we didn’t know. Oh, hang on. 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, and 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’re 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, we 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. 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 to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key 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 Crocker, the head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. So, think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every 6 to 8 weeks, he’s doing reawaken America tours. Every 6 to 8 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. Like 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. And 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 and Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. 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 and the guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. 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 a few 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 ten 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 system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re gonna 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. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert 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 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 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.