Entrepreneur | Answering The Mailbag Questions of The Week

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now 3, 2, 1, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and that’s what we’ve got to do. Christ’s Rhyme Nation, welcome back into your daily conversation about how to improve your financial situation. Why would you want to improve your finances, Dr. Z? Why would anyone who’s listening choose to tune into a radio show? We don’t talk about politics. We don’t talk about building a wall. We don’t talk about impeaching people. We’ve never had any conversations, really any good conversations about inflation or monetary policy. We’ve never talked about the IMF. We do talk a lot about Russia, we as in me, but we really don’t get into politics. Why would anyone want to listen to a show like this? And we also don’t go over your grandmother’s cooking recipes. I mean, I’m sure you have a lot of great pie recipes you don’t share on the show. I think you make a really good deviled egg, I’ve heard. You’re getting me going now. I don’t even know. We don’t even go over that. We’ve now heard two deviled egg talks. We also don’t talk about how to plant tulips or any home and garden tips. Pruning? Pruning? We don’t really cover, well, we cover business pruning, employee pruning, but we cover like plant pruning. I’ll tell you what, the ultimate segue, today we are definitely talking about employee pruning. Absolutely, but to answer your question, you said, why would we want, why would anybody want to listen to the show where it would make more dough? Oh, look at that. Oh, come on now. While they’re listening to the show. Oh, it’s a fun time rhyme. So they could be like Forrest Gump. You remember when Forrest Gump, all of his financial problems were taken care of and he’s sitting there talking and he said, you know, that’s one less thing I’ve got to worry about. That’s the whole idea, Thrivers. Don’t get all stressed out. The whole idea. We want to have some fun. The thing is we understand how hard it can be, how challenging it can be when you don’t know what to do. I understand how frustrating it can be to work every hour of the day. And then you read a quote like Jim Rohn, a best-selling author, he has this quote that just slaps you in the face. He says, you don’t get paid for the hours that you work. You get paid for the value that you add to those hours. Oh, gee, is this so mean. What we do is we like to capture local Oklahomies, people who’ve had some success, and we bring them inside the Box That Rocks so they can teach you the specific moves to starting and growing a successful business. And so today inside the show, inside the Box That Rocks, we have Mr. Tim Redmond on the show. Tim, how are you, sir? I am doing awesome. I’m excited to be part of this. And I will have to say, Dr. Z, we also have a mention of Falcon Pruning about every show. Wow. We do, and before we move on, Clay, I’d like to make a wager with you. A wager? Okay, here we go. Because I lost the last wager I made with you, so I’d like to be able to double down. Yeah, sure. So I’m going to let you pick. I mean, because just a couple of days ago, we had Tim’s son on the show, Robert Redman, who did a fantastic job. Do you think his father is going to eclipse his performance? I don’t know. I know that the Redwins are very competitive as a family. No, Tim is very competitive. I saw him outside the box at Rocks and he’s a really big believer in self-talk and positivity. He’s looking into a mirror and he says, if my performance tonight is not so good that it doesn’t make my son cry, then I quit. My performance is so good that my son doesn’t cry when he tries to realize he cannot possibly compete with his father. No, I’m just kidding. Thank you for toning that down, Clay, from what I actually said. So that’s good. That is good. Oh, and another thing, point two, normally you slip little bits of swag into the box that rocks, and I don’t always notice them. And next thing you know, they’ve been here for a couple three days and I go oh my gosh. There’s an axe on my desk I bet you know yeah, but today. There’s two just things that jump out if you’re on Facebook live You can see these yeah, or not then you can just imagine them with your brain Okay with your brain and that is one. There’s a five-foot pencil behind you in the corner now That’s that’s a new that’s a new move. I have a reason for it well, and then do tell the other one is your hat That hat is going to sweep the country. I’m sure. Here’s the thing. I have a hat right now. I had this custom made. It says, Make America Boom Again. Now, boom is the title of the workshop manual that you and I hand out at our workshops. And boom stands for what it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur and as a human. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, you just need to do this. And I’ll give you an example. Let’s say that employee a comes to work and they bring the boom an employee B comes to work And they don’t bring the boom even if neither one of them ever wants to become an entrepreneur if employee a brings the boom which is big overwhelming Optimistic momentum to even something as simple as sweeping the floors. They’re bringing big Overwhelming optimistic momentum to sweeping the floors they can get the work done of two to three people. Employee number two, if they’re not bringing the boom, if they’re just yawning a lot, Z, when you go to a meeting and you see a young man or a young woman at work yawning, what does that say to you? If someone doesn’t bring big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum, what does that say to you when you see it? It says right there that their brain needs oxygen right that very moment, but they’re also not being… Well, it… What do you normally do when you see that I just you go up to me say really no I mean if you understand that that’s person is not bringing the boom and you know You’re always looking for a plus players in your life and a guy that’s sitting on the edge of his seat He’s giving you eye contact who’s smiling, you know is paying attention I mean, I would take an army of them into arm into war. Yeah, it’s war, right? I take them into a war getting a foxhole with them Last thing you want to do is you’re sitting in your foxhole and you’re sitting there and thinking you’re like, hey, Billy, if you look around, he’s over there yawning and stretching, trying to take a nap. You’re like, dude, where did this is? Hey, there’s an enemy out there. You can’t have success when somebody is not bringing the boom. Tim, I want to ask you, you built a company from two people. You grew a company from two people to 450 people. This is called tax and accounting software. The truth is located. It was officing in the city plex towers back in the day. That’s the ORU property there at 81st and Lewis, the big towers. Many people go, what do they do up there? Is that the prayer tower? No, there’s a different prayer tower, but that’s a big building. We have a lot of prayers up there, though, I’m sure. Absolutely. I used to intern for you guys up there. Talk to the thrivers about it. If you see somebody and they’re not bringing the boom, the boom that we have on my hat, let’s make America boom again. If someone’s not bringing the boom to the workplace, what does that show to you? Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. Well I tell you what, I believe that people are contagious both to the negative and to the positive. Oh come on now. And we have filled up our company with contagious, mostly 20-something year old young men and women that were ready to change the world and we just channeled them and part of the interview process was to find out how positively contagious they were. And so we you know it’s a matter of you can’t complain about what you tolerate and so we did not tolerate the low energy people. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa back pump the brakes you just that was just a nugget of goodness that you just skipped over as if it was just nothing. Say that again, Tim Redmond. We cannot complain about what we tolerate. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, get that down on the list and boom, they bring the boom. That’s huge guys. Now Thrivers, if you’re taking notes today or you’re on the verge of taking notes, one of the reasons why I have this pencil behind me is because when you’re listening to this show, yeah we like to have a good time, yeah we like to help you, but at the end of the day the whole point is to help you learn actionable ideas that can actually increase the level of success that you’re having, aka you need to take notes. The mind will forget what the paper won’t forget. You need to take notes. When you listen to this show, definitely have some baked beans in front of you. Definitely have some pinion wood near you, but definitely have a pencil or a pen near you. Take notes. It’s so important to take notes and to activate what you’re learning, not just to learn it passively. Right. And if you don’t have notes, I mean, you don’t have a pen or pencil or you’re driving, what you could do is go to ThriveTimeshow.com where every show is put on there as a podcast. We have a hundred, almost 40 now, 130 something, what 138, 139, something like that. 138, I was just calculating how much it would cost to transcribe it today and it’s 138. Well there you go, there you go. But the thing about it is you can get on and listen to the podcast. You can pause it, you can rewind it, you can listen to it as many times as you want, take notes then, but Clay is absolutely correct. You hear something and go, wow, that’s impactful. I need to put that into action. I need to incorporate that in my business or the business I’m going to start, but you’ve got to take those notes because like Clay said, the brain will forget, but the paper won’t. Now, years ago I met a very successful pastor in Tulsa. I won’t mention his name, but he’s a guy who’s very, very successful. And I asked him, I said, how do you know with a congregation so big who your active members are? How do you know the ones who you want to talk to after the service? He goes, well, the people that don’t bring a pen or don’t take notes, those are people I don’t want to go target. But if they’ve taken notes, they’re sitting there active, you can tell they’re learning, they’re actually actively engaged. Those are the people I want to seek and fellowship with because I know they’re active participants in their faith. And so I don’t care whether you’re talking about religion or business, it’s so important to take notes. Also, Thrivers, it’s so important that you email us your questions because there’s no question too small or too big. In fact, I find that the smaller the questions are, the more indicative they are of where everybody starts. So if you ask us a question, I’m telling you, I went through the same thing you went through and Z did too. I call it the curse of knowledge, but a lot of times you learn so much you forget the questions you used to have. So we have a great question today that comes to us from a guy right here in Tulsa. Most of our questions have been coming to us from people all over the world, but this is from a Tulsan, and he writes this. Let me get my, in the news, let me get my mailbag question music. Oh yes, yes. This sounds very official. All right, this is just in. He says, I need a new desk person to organize files, answer the phone, and to keep up with scheduling. Should I hire my wife or look for someone to hire? Should I hire my wife or look for someone else to hire Z? Okay, I have three notable quotables that I want to read about this and I want to get your feedback on it Okay, all right Ben Horowitz who’s grew a billion-dollar company called ops where that they sold to Hewlett-Packard He says, every time I read a management or self-help book I find myself saying, that’s fine but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation. The hard thing isn’t setting a big hairy audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those great people develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a reality.” That’s kind of a heavy-handed quote there, Mr. Ben Horowitz, but I want to ask you, when you hire your wife, it might seem awesome. Oh my gosh, my wife, I think she’s a great person. I think she’s fun. She’s the joy of my life. She’s my love. She’s my… And then you hire this person, man or woman. You hire your husband. You hire your wife. Can we kind of coach? Because I have some opinions. I want to hear your opinion here. Well the problem is it’s either going to be really good or it’s going to be really bad. Wait, wait, wait. Let’s go back to the really good part. So it’s going to be really good. Oh yeah. Hey, baby. How you doing? How are you doing? Doing great, Z. Doing great. You did a fantastic job answering that phone. I know. Hey, what’s your next break? Maybe slip out back? Oh, nice. Have a little break time. Procreation. That’s a lot in the hands of a creator. I mean, so that… Or we could just hold hands down the hallway. But I mean, that’s something people think, like, my wife, I love her. We’ll work together. Oh yeah. We’ll share equal space on the print piece, on the website. I will refer to her in positive terms at all times. She’ll refer to me. And then guess what? When someone doesn’t do the item on the to-do list, you cannot fire your wife or your husband. So I categorically. Well, you can, you can. Dude, I, dude. It doesn’t go well, it doesn’t go well. I 100% disagree with the concept of going out there and trying to, now I’m gonna tell you what, my wife and I talked about a lot of things going into it beforehand and how we’re going to handle situations, but if you’re going to hire your wife or your husband, you need to talk about how you are going to break up the business relationship without breaking up the marriage. I mean, that’s a tough conversation, Z. Okay, but I handle the… You know, when it’s good. Now, I want you to handle a scenario when it’s… Oh, wait. I was giving you the eerie. I was giving you the bad. Oh, going out eerie. Oh, it’s called, yeah, but it’s… All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time show on your radio. Today we’re getting into the mailbag, answering questions that you have, and specifically, we have a Thriver right here in Tulsa. Typically, most of the questions we get asked are for people in New York and Singapore and Australia and Missouri, and for some reason, we don’t get a lot of questions from Tulsa. Tulsa, help me out here. Come on, Tulsa, represent yourselves and ask some questions. But this is a question from a Thriver right here in Tulsa who says, he says this, he says, I need a new desk person to organize files, answer the phone, and to keep up with scheduling. Should I hire my wife or look for someone to hire? I mean, so the first notable quotable that I read because I care so much, Mr. Thriver, was from Ben Horowitz, who’s a billionaire. He’s the guy who started the business, sold the business for two billion dollars to Hewlett Packard, and he wrote a book called The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which basically is that there’s a lot of things that happen in business that are tough, and I’m telling you, one of the ones that I don’t want you to deal with is firing your own husband or firing your own wife, so I would 100% of the time encourage everyone listening to not work with your spouse, unless, just like with any other business relationship, you write it down and you define how you are going to break it up without breaking up the marriage. Because I’m telling you what, I’ve coached many clients, and when the husband is supposed to have followed up on the business cards and he didn’t, and the wife is trying to hold him accountable, but yet she’s also trying to hold him accountable about something he didn’t do at home, and he’s trying to hold her accountable. So he goes, yeah, I didn’t do the business cards, but you didn’t pick the kids up on time. See that? And I see it all the time in business coaching, and I have to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, time out, time out. That’s not what you would see in the offices of GE, of Disney, Hewlett-Packard. Any big company would not be arguing about spousal issues in the office. So you’ve got to handle it professionally and you’ve got to separate business and work. And if you can’t do that, I just wouldn’t go there. Tim, I want to ask you, what would be your feedback as it relates to Ben Horowitz’s quote? He’s talking about the hard thing and how it kind of, when life gets real, should this guy go out there and hire his wife to work with him or should he hire somebody else? Well, you know, sometimes early in the game you’re just so desperate for cash flow and you’re trying to reduce the cash flow. You know, if they had a beginning and an end and they were super, super clear on the roles and the different channels and then they revisit that at least once a week. And this is something that helped my wife and I when we were working together and when we weren’t working together but we were working together, trying to work together. It was just disaster. Without the clarification roles, boy, you are asking for a lot of confusion and frustration. Now let’s take that back to the house. I just want to talk to you about my marriage. I don’t want to listen to your marriage stories, but I have one marriage story for you. The other day, I really, and Z, it’s probably rare, you’ve probably never done this, Tim, you’ve never done this, but I irritated my wife. Shocking. Shocking. Shocking. And so I irritated her, and what I did, and I knew that I irritated her, but the thing is my number one goal at home is to let my wife know that I love her and to cheer for her. I kind of view myself as a professional man cheerleader. So even though we didn’t agree about said thing, I was like, you know what? My goal is to make you happy. So mentally I’m saying this. And I just move. I just change my world view. I go, you know what? Whatever would make you happy in this situation, let’s do it. Because my goal at that time is to stay married. My goal in business, though, is to make a profit. And I will fire anybody, including family, if you don’t do your freaking job. Because that’s all I care about is the goal of the business is to make a profit. The goal of the marriage is to make each other happy. And I hate when people mix those two. Because I’m telling you what, there are many times where I’m waking myself up to do a show prep for this show in particular. I’m prepping for my show. It’s 5 a.m. And I don’t want to get up. And you know what? I have to get up because you, the Thriver, you deserve the show preparation that we deliver. But if I overslept, which I’ve never done in show preparation for this, but if I did oversleep and my wife was my boss and she didn’t have permission to hold me accountable, it would just be weird. And I just, I just, I hate it when I see it, because I see it all the time. So please agree on those goals and those roles going into it. Now Z, I have another notable quotable I want to read to you from Donald Trump. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. Yeah, but before you read that, you know, kind of wrap up, we ended the segment on the little kind of, you know, we talked about how when it’s good, it’s good. And I know we’re going to keep deep diving into this question, but you know what’s bad? It’s even exponentially bad. You know? I mean, it’s just bad. Because not only are you trying to keep your marriage and your family together and happy and moving forward, then when you mix that in, because the thing about it is that if you have a fight, it’s nearly impossible to separate the house from the business. And therefore, you don’t have that little area of comfort, that little base of, you know, I can get away to this, you know? And that’s why mixing the two is very, very, very seldom a good idea. You know what’s awkward is there’s a show that’s out there right now that is called The Fixer Upper with Chip and Joanna. And there’s another show on the channel where there’s a couple that was working together in California and they were flipping houses. And they just got divorced, but they have a four-year contract. So it’s either they forgo millions of dollars of their HGTV show, or they just stick it out. So they’re sticking it out, and they’re just awkward on TV. If you watch them, you can just feel the tension. And neither one of them can get away, because it’s like they’re not married, and they’re on a show together. Here we go. So I guess it’s making ratings go up, but it’s weird. You watch it, and you’re like, oh boy. It’s like meet the… You remember the movie Meet the Fockers or Meet the Parents? Yeah, yeah. And it’s just awkward. It’s that sort of Barbra Streisand, the humor in that movie where it’s like, what was the other main character in the movie? Neston Hoffman. Yeah, and he’s just awkward and she’s awkward. They were just outrageous. Now here’s a Donald Trump quote here for President Trump. It’s kind of fun to say President Trump. He’s actually the president. I probably shouldn’t say that to be respectful. So President Trump, quote, he says this. He says, in real life, he’s talking about in comparison to the show. He says, in real life, if I were firing you, I’d tell you what a great job you did, how fantastic you are, and how you can do better someplace else. If somebody steals, that’s different. But generally speaking, you want to let them down as lightly as possible. It’s not a very pleasant thing. I don’t like firing people. You know, so the show, he has to say, you’re fired. But as far as actually firing people, that’s a thing people don’t want to do. Now here’s the problem is, let’s just say you did hire your spouse, man or woman, to answer the phone, to keep up with scheduling and organize files. I’m just being real. There’s a business I worked with a couple years ago, and I won’t mention the locality of where I was. It was not in Tulsa, but the husband, his job was answering the phones, and so John and I, we always send through bogus leads. We send a fake lead every day, or every week, I’m sorry, through their website to see how often it gets called and emailed. And the wife was the owner of the business, and she’s like, sir, are you calling all the leads there, Greg? His name wasn’t Greg, but something like that. Are you calling all the leads, Greg? And he’s like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I call every lead. You calling them all? Yeah. And then she goes, well, I want you to know that I had the Thrive 15 guys do a mystery shopper deal, and you have not been calling the leads, Greg. And he’s like, and I’m going, and I’m just going, oh no, I’m killing procreation at home. I’m the cause of abstinence. And it’s just so awkward. I can’t deal with it. I don’t know what to do. Well, I tell you what, like Tim said, unless you’re a startup and you have no money and you just need to find someone that’ll work for nothing or free, then don’t, for the most part, don’t hire your wife to come in and do it, don’t hire your spouse to come in and do this, because what’ll happen is, and if you do, do this, make this your move, say, hey, listen, we’re starting up, we don’t have any money, and I need you to come in and answer the phone, organize files, and do this, make sure we have our good boundaries set up. But hey, listen, as soon as I can afford someone, as soon as we can, you know, get someone hired to do that, then you can, then you don’t, then we’ll get them in to do that. And then after we agree on that, let’s plan our Hawaiian vacation. You want to go to a Hawaiian vacation together? I said, let me get my ukulele. Sam, give me a ukulele. Driver, stay tuned. We’ll see if Dr. Z gets his ukulele after the break. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. We’re just listening to a little bit of Pharrell here. Dr. Z is our mix master. He’s bringing in the hot hits here, Thrivers. But welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. It’s business school without the BS. And yes, we’re going to answer all of your questions today. And Z, we’ve got a mountain of mailbag questions. People from all over the planet are emailing us questions and here is our next question This comes just from Virginia Virginia drivers in Virginia he says there’s If I launch a no-brainer ad for my retail business will it make my brand look cheap? Okay, he says if I get I repeat here drivers if I launch a no-brainer ad for my retail business, will it make my brand look cheap? Z, I have four points that I want to give to Thrivers. The first point involves both you and me. You see what I did there? I involved both you and me with that question. That was so kind. That’s kind of sweet. Here we go. If you go to eitrlounge.com, okay, so I’m going to eitrlounge.com. Thrivers, I’m giving you a moment to do it. Come on, Thrivers. Get up in the room. Thrivers, listen. It’s awkward on the radio when we’re all Googling. We need to work together. We need to go faster. Fingers on the home row. Let’s all do this. So you go to eitrlounge.com. It’s Elephant in the Room. That’s our website. Our first haircut is $1. The first haircut that you get is $1 because you’re doubtful. You don’t think the experience is worth it. You’re going, I don’t know, I’m going to get my haircut from a guy, I have a barber. Well, according to the statistics this morning, 103% of you that came in for your first haircut actually signed up for a membership at our Broken Air location, which means that not only did you sign up for a membership, but you signed your friend up. So it’s a deal where I’m offering a dollar for the first haircut because I’m so confident that the men’s grooming experience that you will have at either of our three locations is so good that it’s worth it. I’m going to pay $23 of costs out of my pocket for you to get your hair cut for a dollar. Guys, if you’re listening right now, you need to write this down. Women, if you’re listening right now, dudes, ladies, everybody, write this down. Write down EITRLounge.com and it’s a dollar. Why? Because there’s a certain swag and confidence we have in the experience. Now, if you go over to drzellner.com, it’s drzellner.com, there you will see it’s home of the $99 deal. Get one pair of stylish eyeglasses and an eye exam for only $99. Now, I don’t know your perception of he and me. I just know that we have, we are, Thrivers, you understand that we’re approaching 6,000 new members a year at Elephant in the Room who love it and are happy to pay $34 a month for the haircut we gave away for a dollar. And Dr. Z, I don’t know how many people a day are coming in to check out the offer, but I mean it seems to me that we’re doing okay, but yet we offer a no-brainer deal to get started. What advice would you have for this Thriver man? Well you have to do it. I mean part of the power of marketing is getting your message out in front of people. And people go, oh, that’s awesome. Well, they do this. They make bagels. They, oh, wow, a new pizza shop in town. Yeah, okay, great, great, great, great. But what makes it even more devastatingly wonderful is when you put that with a no-brainer, when you put that with something they just, they can’t help themselves. They’ve got to come, I have to come in. I have no choice. I have a story. I have a story. I have to share a story. My wife and I went over there, right by your location over there, to the mall. How long have you been in that location right next to Woodland Hills Mall? Since 2000, 17 years. So Dr. Robert Zellner and Associates, you have a location right there. You’ve been there for 17 years. And there was an orange leaf that unfortunately didn’t make it, but here’s the deal. They did an offer where they said your first time in, it was like a dollar or something. So I go in and I’m like, I don’t think you wanted to make that deal. So I get my little frozen yogurt cup. I go in and I load it up with all the, you know, the chocolate chips and Reese’s pieces and fruit and all that. And I go in and I just love it. And I eat it and I’m like, this is awesome. Yes, this is awesome. I ate more than my dollar. When I start to go back, well, Vanessa says to me, baby, listen, they’re charging you per ounce. They don’t charge per cup. And I’m like, you don’t even know what you’re talking about because I know that it’s definitely per cup, not per ounce. So I go in there and I heap it up. I load it up. All right. All right. That’s $23. I go in there and I end up getting like a $23. And they got me. I spent $23. You’ve never had that happen to you? Sam, our producers, it’s happened twice. So all I’m saying is they got me in there, okay? Now as far as their proforma and why they didn’t make it, that’s a different discussion. But Tim, when you built Tax and Accounting Software, you grew it from two employees to 450. Before you guys sold the business, how many accountants were you supporting with your software? We had 22,000 clients, renewing clients. Holy! And then the whole no-brainer thing, we would do a no-brainer offer and we would generate 45,000 demos. Holy cow! Just a bit outside. How did you do that? We would send out a CD that would talk to them and that would engage them. It was the latest in technology. And then we’d say, hey, listen, try it for free. We’re the first ones in the industry to do that. Everybody else followed us doing that. But really, the no-brainer offer, when this guy is talking about, gosh, is this going to achieve it, what a no-brainer offer does is it gets their butts in the door so you can have a conversation. Now the thing is that you guys ended up selling that business to Intuit. What was the final sales price when it was all said and done? The actual sales price was sixty two and a half million plus the balance sheet which is another eighteen million dollars worth of stuff. Holy cow! Just about eighty million. Here’s the other thing too, the Thriver when he sends his in, hey if I launch a no-brainer, you’ve got to understand one thing, a no-brainer doesn’t have to be financial. Oh, come on now, preach it. A no-brainer doesn’t have to be a discount offer. A no-brainer doesn’t have to be a dollar. No-brainer doesn’t have to be a $99 deal. A no-brainer doesn’t have to be tied into money, because I think that’s what you’re saying, Hayes. If I tell people I’m going to do something for such a low amount just to get their attention and get them in the door, I mean, I had billboards in Tulsa that said LASIK $1 on them. You don’t think my phones didn’t ring? I mean, that was a no-brainer. No-brainer. The thing about it is a lot of physicians, a lot of doctors that you’ve business coached over the years, Clay, I know a lot of them come to you and you’re talking to them about the no-brainer. I can just hear, I’m a fly on the wall, I can just hear. In fact, I had the room bugged and you didn’t know this. Oh, wow. And you mic’d and the doctor mic’d and the conversation went something like, kind of like this, I’m going to play it back for you right now. Go for it, yeah. So Clay, I’m a very serious doctor and I appreciate your business coaching, but if I do a no brainer like you’re saying, if I try to, you know, I’m a dentist and if I try to do something for that low a price, it’s just going to make me look like a fool to my colleagues and to my patients, isn’t it? And then I had actually audio, I recorded myself during that same interaction, so I was able to record myself. This is the audio of what I said back. I said, Shirley, you can’t be serious. I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley. All right, no, but here’s the thing. Why did I always call you Shirley? I don’t know, is it like a nickname or something? Here’s the deal, I have a question I want to ask all the Thrivers listening right now, that I would say to a client. I would say, so you’re asking the question, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? This is a question I’ve asked thousands of people. I’m not going to say it’s a no-brainer, but I’m going to say it’s a no-brainer. I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? I’m going to say, does having a no-brainer make me look cheap? This is a question I’ve asked thousands of people, and I’ll do it again. Does not having any money in your bank account make you look poor? And then we move on. Because it’s the whole stupid conversation. I mean, honestly, you’ve got the Minnesota Twins, I’m from Minnesota, their attendance at a Twins game was so awful, nobody wanted to go. By the way, the Tulsa Drillers, if you’re listening right now and you watch the game, send me an email and say you watched the game, because 90% of us are not going to watch the game. We’re going for a dollar beer night, we’re going to hang out. Do they have a game? But they have a no-brainer offer. So the Minnesota Twins did a deal where it was five tickets for $20, and it gave you five hot dogs. So it’s like five hot dogs, five tickets for $20. That’s the only way they save the Twins, and once you get in, you buy more stuff. You gotta make it a no-brainer, baby. And that got butts in the seats, didn’t it, Tim? Oh yeah. Stay tuned. Thrivetimeshow.com. Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. If you were born in America, if you moved to America, if you can pronounce America, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show. There’s nothing more American than the Thrive Time Show and we are on a quest to make America boom again. You could forget the political shows. Our whole focus is to make your business boom because I’m telling you what, something is so exciting. I remember before I sold the DJ business, I remember walking into the office and every minute you could hear a guy hitting a gong because he’s selling something. Just the energy of selling something and just knowing, bam, we sold it. Bam, we sold it. Oh, nice. You just felt the energy of the cowbell and the gong. You just feel it. Love it. And many of you are listening right now, and your business is in the financial toilet. You are not selling anything. You’ve got a great product, and you have a bias for the idea. But listen up here, baby. You’ve got to put the bias for the idea aside. Did you just call me, baby? No, but listen. You’ve got to put the bias aside for the idea and realize that it’s all about marketing. Have you seen the Shake Weight, Dr. Z, the Shake Weight? I got one right now. Every one of those commercials was an obscene commercial that was turned into a parody. I mean, that whole thing, you just, the visual, you can’t, have you guys ever thought about the five minute thighs commercials? Or you ever thought about like these ab flex, ab flex, five minutes a day, get your best, like you can’t get great looking abs in five minutes home skillet. You’ve got to work out. You’ve got to adjust your diet. And it packs up neatly and folds underneath your bed where it will stay and collect dust the rest of your life. They’ve got to deal more like this. A glue. Apparently you could put the glue on a parachute and it will somehow hold the parachute together. Whatever. That’s a bunch of bunk. I’m just telling you though. But something happens around like midnight or 1 a.m. Or your rubber spray. That’s one of my favorites. Rubber spray. Tim, what’s your favorite infomercial? Do you have a late night infomercial that you’ve seen over the years? Is it a real estate commercial? Is there a certain theme that you just go, that’s a good one? Ronco, 1995. But wait! You get two! There’s always the get two, my friend. Just the shipping and handling is $4,200. So I’m going to walk you through the level of how the infomercial mindset works, okay? Because infomercials that you’re doing to a daytime audience are different than the infomercials you do at night. But here’s the infomercial to the nighttime audience. You’re working off the assumption that step one, the person watching has had one bottle of wine. So now they’re like, oh, I’m walking, watching, see, this is the inner dialogue of the person watching. Oh, well, WWE is off. I’m going to switch over to ESPN. So they watch SportsCenter. I watch SportsCenter now for the fourth time, the same SportsCenter. You know, every half hour, they repeat that thing? I’m tired of it. So I’m going to go on over here to the show with a sweet old man. And he’s saying I can support Mugwai for as little as $2 a month. I don’t have time for that. I’m switching over to a different station. Oh, look, I can make millions with real estate? That doesn’t seem plausible. I know what I’ll do. You change the channel. I could dehydrate meat for as little as $1.50. I spend thousands on beef jerky. I should buy that. 1999 an installment and they’re throwing in Tim the free slicer dicer I’m gonna do it. I can barely, I’m so intoxicated I can barely read my own credit card But let me get it out And they call in. Thank you for calling Ronco. Yeah, my name is Barry and I’m Cod from Tulsa What Barry my number is and you just order that thing. That’s a no-brainer. It’s like their brains not engaged, but sober daytime marketing involves somebody You’re selling to that’s sober so you have to make the offer so compelling that I have to change my direction You know Jiffy Lube has a no-brainer. You want to see their no-brainer Z. Have you seen a Jiffy Lube no-brainer? No, I have what is it? Well you drive a lot of foreign cars You’re driving a Porsche. It has actually pulled me in. Has it? I have drunk that Kool-Aid. Here’s the dirty Jiffy Lube move. I love this one by the way. I love a move that motivates. I mean that’s what it is. I’m driving over there to Memorial off of 115th and Memorial. There’s an apartment complex there next to a golf course of some kind. And my move is I don’t like going to the dump. So I’ll take all my trash and I’ll just dump it in that apartment dumpster right there. Just put it right there. You probably shouldn’t have said that on air. No, I just said, they’re not going to, they’re not going to, you listen, if you’re listening right now, you’re like… Sam, you may need to beep that, do a little backwards. Yes, I’ll go in there and I’ll just jump in there, there’s extra space. So I do it at the end of the month, I know when their pickup cycles are. So I go in there, I drop it off, and what happens is I’m driving by one day and I realize, oh my gosh, Jiffy Lube for $9.99, they’ll change my oil, and I pull in with the Hummer, I pull in with the Hummer, I walk in… And that’s any car? It’s a Hummer. No, no, I mean any car, $9.99. Well, it just says $9.99 oil change. I pull in. I got the muscle pulling in with my Hama. I muscle pull in. When I just drive right past the apartment complex I pull in. Because the signs were before the apartment complex, just past Lowe’s. I pull in. The guy says, are you looking to do an oil change today? Yeah, boom, boom, boom. And I pull in. It’s $9.99. OK. I sit down. He says, do you want some popcorn? Do you want a refresher? There’s always like Sprite. There’s always some popcorn. There’s a lot of older people magazine. I sit down. He says, well, I’ll tell you what, looking here, recommended manufacturers, recommended you want to get the air filter changed out. Look at the dirt on it. You see the dirt on that? That’s not good. You want to go and change that out? I’m like, yeah, we’ll change it out. That was like $20. He goes, hey, man, your belt, it’s running through, and when it runs, I’m hearing a lot of eeeeee. And I’m hearing like, is this guy imitating a koala? Hey man, I’m just saying, when it runs, it’s like eeeeee. You could hear it back there. I mean, it’s eeeeee. You ever hear that sound? And I’m like, yeah, well, do you want to risk it? I mean, you know, it’s kind of, we’re not quite in the spring, but you know. Somebody, okay, hey man, your air, what we call it’s, what’s the engine coolant? You know, that thing appears to be. So next thing you know. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to the Thrive Time Show. No exaggeration. I’m walking out a buck fifty. A hundred and fifty dollars later. I got my nine ninety. You got popcorn and a Sprite and a refreshing cola. And I got a nine ninety nine. But he got me in, baby. He got me in. And so you know what, Mr. Jiffy Lube over at 115th and Memorial. Well done. I applaud you. I applaud you. You’re a great American. And Z had asked for it the other day. He said, Clay, can we not get a sound like a cheering sound effect? And Sam, our producer, he’s like on it. And so this sound effect goes out to any… If you’re listening right now and you have ever been to the Jiffy Lube at 115th and Memorial, I need you to run in there and say, listen, they’re talking about you in a positive way. Mr. Jiffy Lube, we salute you. You got us in for a no brainer. You upscaled me 150 bones and stuff. I’m passionate about what you just did. It was a no-brainer, Z. Yeah, it was absolutely a no-brainer. Like I was saying earlier, we had this mailbag question we’ve been kind of deep diving into, and that is, just to recap, if you just turned in the show, it’s, if I launch a no-brainer ad for my retail business, will it make my brand look cheap? And so all the examples we were kind of talking about were actually based on price, but it doesn’t have to be necessarily based on price. You know, like a no-brainer could be, you should do a no-brainer with your DJ company, and that is you would say, hey listen, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay me. A guarantee is an absolute solid move. That doesn’t cheapen the price. That doesn’t make anybody think that, well, you must not be good quality. In fact, it might even do the opposite. I’ve got one right now with a real estate agent I’m working with outside of Tulsa. And what she’s doing is if she can’t sell your house in 60 days, no realtor commission. No commission. Well, there you go. And so it’s a no-brainer to get you to move, to get you to call. As Mr. Tim Redman said, it gets butts in the door. It gets people to move. It gets people to turn in. It gets people to call. It gets people to get on the website and order. It gets action. It gets action, yeah. And that’s what you want. You want the phones to ring, you want the door to swing open, you want some action. Because then what you can do is you can come in and just like the Jiffy Lube move. $9.99 turns into $150. And you know what, he was just vertically integrating stuff that you needed for your car. He was like, hey, let’s get the cars in here because we know we get enough cars in here. We’re going to sell some brake pads. We’re going to go down the list. We all have cars. We know that. And that’s the move. It’s a beautiful move. And I have two more no-brainer examples I want to give you, Thrivers. I want to make sure we get this. If you go to macys.com, it’s M-A-C-Y-S dot com. When you go there, I mean, Z, do you consider Macy’s to be an ultra-cheap discounter or a discounter? I mean, when you think of Macy’s, is that like the highest of the high, the lowest of the low? How do you view Macy’s? No, I put them, I’ve kind of put them right in there with maybe the Dillard’s, kind of a, kind of a upper middle, you know? So like, yeah, but maybe upper middle. I mean, a little bit up. So like Coach is a high end brand and maybe a discounter would be like Walmart. And we’re saying it’s upper middle. Yeah, I would say, I mean, personally, upper middle. Now, you know, we, my thing is Tulsa. And so, you know, we, you know, our, our stretch is not as big as some of the cities in the United States, but that’s upper middle. Well, if you go to Macy’s.com, Thrivers, I want every single Thriver to go to Macy’s.com during the break. I want you to look at Macy’s.com. I want you to go to M-A-C-Y-S.com because every business in the world that is successful makes it a no-brainer until they don’t have to. That’s powerful play. Say that again. Every business in America that’s successful makes it a no-brainer until they don’t have to. And so what eventually will happen is that if you do enough no-brainers, you have such a demand for what you do, you can stop doing discounts. But Macy’s right now, go to their website, macys.com, and see what kind of specials they’re running right now. And when we come back, we’re going to talk about that and why they’re running that specific offer. And then we’re going to get into the Dream 100. Many of you are wanting to know, how do I generate referrals? How do I get people to refer me? And many of you are wanting to know, why won’t they just play more Bon Jovi? And I’ll tell you why. Because, really, I mean, we haven’t had enough requests for it. But now we have a request for some Bon Jovis. And who are we to deny the Thrivers? We’re givers. We’re giving here at Thrive Time Show. Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Some people might go fast, but we prefer to go slow. It’s all about mental marination. It’s the station where you go to learn what you need to learn about how to grow a successful business. I know it can be tough, it can be challenging, it can feel overwhelming at times. And so what we do is we make ourselves available to answer any business questions that you could possibly have. And many of the questions you ask are super, super practical. They’re very specific, they’re very detailed. And today, our plan is to get through the entire mailbag. But inside the box that rocks, for those of you who are not on Facebook Live and you can’t see here, we have the two incredible guests here today. We have Mr. Jesse Haynes. He’s a Tulsa University student. He’s an author. He’s a podcaster. He’s a blogger. That’s a video blogger, for those of you who are not yet in the know. Jesse, how are you? I am doing excellent. I’m so excited to be here with you guys today, so thank you for letting me join you in the booth. How did you hear about the Thrive Time Show? Did you have somebody say, don’t listen to the Thrive Time Show? Don’t listen to it. Were people chanting? Were they rioting? How did you hear about it? I actually tune into it quite often. So I have this nice commute to college and every time I’m in the car and I know you guys are on, then I tune right in and try to follow along. Oh, boom. Let me give you a boom. That’s awesome. That’s what… Z, how old are you? I’m 20 years old. Z, do you remember when you were 20? Do you remember that? Yes, I actually do remember when I was 20. And I want to encourage you because that’s when I started my first business. Are you suggesting that I’m so old I can’t remember when I was 20? No, I just want to be so encouraging for the Thrivers listening right now. You have no idea. I think we’ve got these two handsome men between us because otherwise I’d just jump over the table and just have a, just, we could do a WWE on Facebook Live right now. I mean, I mean, Tim, I mean, do you remember the, the, what it would, if you could go back and take what you know now and go back to a 20-year-old version of yourself, how pumped would you be? I’d be a billionaire, I tell you that right now. I want to be a billionaire. I’m just finding this, over time you can learn from mentors or mistakes. We have a great guest on like this. We have somebody on the show with Jesse who’s got a great vision, a great passion. I can’t tell you how excited I am to answer his questions, but before we do that, we want to wrap up this question from a Thriver in Virginia who was asking us, he says, if I launch a no-brainer ad for my retail business, will it make my brand look cheap? We talked about the example of Dr. Z’s business as well as my business, it’s Elephant in the Room Men’s Grooming Lounge and Dr. Robert and his Elders and Associates. And then I encourage you to go to Macy’s.com. You’ll notice right now they have a 30 to 70% off site-wide special. They have a 25% off special going for men’s private sale and clearance. Now I encourage you, this is a fun thing, I mean I’m not encouraging you to do this every day unless you want to just kind of take the challenge here, but if you go to their site every day for the next 30 days, I promise you, you will always see some kind of major special going on. But yet Macy’s is not known as a discounter. So Z, how is it possible that somebody like Macy’s could not be known as an ultra-cheap discounter when in fact they always are offering some kind of discount? How does that happen? Well what happens is they’re very purposeful. You walk into Macy’s and you have a certain experience. They have high-end counters, it’s polished, they’ve got, you know, the physical setting is nice, number one. They’ve got good branding, number two, and that’s very important. I mean, the little blue box from Tiffany just didn’t happen overnight. You know what I’m saying? Yep. And now Tiffany can run, they could run sales the rest of your life and you would never think of them as anything other than a quality place to get jewelry because they’ve spent the time and the money and the energy in branding themselves. And once you get yourselves branded correctly, then a discount offer or a deal for the day or a special of the month, that’s not going to take that away. So the thing is, Thrivers, you have to create an ambiance and a high-value package. The best notable quote I can give to you, I’m paraphrasing this, but this is from one of our Thrive15.com mentors, one of our teachers on Thrive15.com. His name is Michael Levine, and he says this. A gift presented in a Tiffany box is received with a much higher level of prestige than the same gift presented in a Kmart bag. So the thing is, you can offer no-brainers, but if you also offer a Tiffany box packaging, you won’t be known as a discounter when you offer a high-end experience, is it? Right, and Tiffany spends a lot of money, a lot of time, and it’s very purposeful. When you walk into a Tiffany, the experience you have, the smells you have, the sights you have, the touches you have, all your senses are stimulated in a particular way. And yet when you walk into a Kmart, it’s a different experience. But they’re purposeful about it. They want to be known as the discounter. They want to be known as the value-driven place to come and get your deodorants and your soaps and off-brand jeans that don’t fit you very well. I was running a commercial that would describe the ambiance of Dr. Zellner and I just wrote down a few things and I just want to say how you brand yourself. Are you looking for a man that’s handsome but not too handsome? Not just like a man that’s out with you. A man that’s approachable but not too approachable. Are you looking for a guy who’s looking for a nice long walk on the beach? A guy who appreciates the finer things in life like lagavulin and a nice cigar and he’s got himself a big old car with a button in the middle that makes the trunk go, eh? That’s Dr. Robert Zellner. You want a man that’ll talk to you in the chat room till all hours of the night? A guy who’s constantly available. No, but not too available. That’s Dr. Robert Zellner. Is he available enough that you wonder if he’s available? But I mean, the music can control the atmosphere, the ambience. And I’m just telling you what, Thrivers, you could offer great discounts, but when you have a certain ambience and atmosphere, it can totally, the accoutrements can totally dictate what you’re willing to pay the second time that you come in. But here’s the power of it, and here’s where it really gets electric. Oh, come on. And that is, we do that no-brainer, and they’re thinking, oh, a dollar for a haircut. Boy, this place is going to be a dump. It’s going to be a dump. You know, I got a dollar and I need a haircut. I’m going to go in. You know, and they go in and the place is, I mean, it just over delivers in every regard. It’s got like the orange wood on the wall. Edison bulbs. It’s got Edison bulbs. Paraffin hand dim. It’s got a lot of high end people with high end clothes with high end haircuts and that hard part on a couple of them. Custom styling. Their beards are oiled up just right. Mustaches. You deserve an experience, not just a haircut. You reach in the door with a beverage. Beverage, beverage, beverage. And they’re nice to you. People smiling. Smells good. The music. And you’re in there going, oh my gosh, I get this for a dollar. A dollar. That happens in my optometry clinic all the time. People come in for a no-brainer and they walk in, it’s a two-story building, it’s open. We’ve got, I mean, it looks like something out of New York or LA. They’re coming all the time going, this place is so cool. It’s clean, it’s well-lit, it smells good, we’ve got the latest equipment. People are wearing their scrubs all uniform, pleasant, nice, greeted, smiley faces. I have audio from one of your customers. They said, is this the coolest place on earth? And one of his employees had to walk up and say, no, you’re at Dr. Robert Zoner and Associates, but you are close, my friend. And then we cut their hair for dollars. No, no, we put an eye exam on them. I get the two places mixed up. But the point is, the note winner gets them in the door. Now it’s up to you to wow them. And when you put those two together, oh, it’s synergistic. In other words, it’s two plus two, but it equals seven. That’s synergism. Oh, that’s a beautiful thing in business. Beautiful thing. Now, we have our thriver inside the box that rocks, Jesse Haynes, Tulsa University student, meaning that he’s attending. Are you alleging that you actually attend the University of Tulsa? I am, I am. I go there quite often. And you drive there in your car from Skyhook? I do. Pleasant commute. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. All right, you can ask us anything, my friend. You’re on the hot seat. What questions do you have? What business questions do you have? All right, for one thing, with what I do as a creator of content, books, podcasts, stuff of that nature, that’s a little bit different than the stuff that most of you guys are doing in that you’re starting a company from the ground floor, building it up, you can sell it, you can monetize it in every way possible. So, how would you guys, if you were me, go about monetizing your created content other than just selling books? I have three moves for you, but my move number, my pre-move is just you eat that microphone with a passion and then America will love you so much more. So number one is definitely, definitely, and I encourage you to jot this down. I’m giving you the pin of integrity. Definitely study everything that Tim Ferriss has ever done. You need to like obsess about Tim Ferriss. You need to find a goat, the greatest of all time. Everyone listening right now, you need to find a goat, the greatest of all time. Somebody who is where you want to be and that’s what he does. He does what you just asked me. So Tim Ferriss is your man. He went to the University of Princeton, I believe, and while he was attending college, he proposed this hypothesis that he could become a best-selling author about the topic of time management without ever having managed his time outside of the campus. It’s a beautiful story. And his professor’s like, no, you can’t. So he ran an aggressive AdWords campaign for each book title that he was flirting with and the book title on AdWords that got the most clicks was 4-Hour Workweek, but he hadn’t written the book yet. Oh, it’s just, it’s just, it’s just, it’s a smile on my face that is just so beautiful. I just, it just makes me warm and pleasant. So, one, you need to look for a goat. Two, you need to find out what people are searching for on the internet. And I will just tell you three things right now that people are searching for on the internet, which is unfortunate, but this is true. Okay. Number one, not so bad, weight loss. Number two, not so bad, not so bad, not as bad as the next thing, weight loss. Okay. And then you have, and I hate to say it, but divorce. And then the third is adult content. All right. Now once you get past those big three, you move on into other topics. Find something that you’re excited about that people are searching for, and use semrush.com or moz.com to find it. Find what people are searching for, okay? Find a need and fill it. Find a niche and scratch it. Find a parade and stand in front of it. That’s what I’m talking about. So what I’m saying is, I am very, very interested in pinion wood, but I can’t monetize that. But because I can monetize other things, I can buy as much pinion wood as I want. You feel me? I feel you completely. I will go find a parade. And the great irony is recently Thrivers have been mailing me Patriots accoutrements, Patriots decor. We almost made it a show. We’re getting in all this Bill Belichick swag that’s been mailed in. And Thrivers realize, hey, listen, I’m fully booked out, but if you send me a Bill Belichick embroidered chair or a Super Bowl, some kind of swag or decor, I end up finding time on my schedule to talk to you on the weekends because I just love the soup I’ve got Patriots swag. It’s like my secret It’s my it’s my weakness, but you’ve got a one again You’ve got to sit down and study a goat the greatest of all time Two you’ve got to make sure that you just study what people are searching for and three you’ve got to commit to being in the best 1% in the world at whatever that niche is So I find that is a book called the outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and I want to get Tim’s feedback on these moves, I want to get Z’s feedback on these moves. But The Outliers said you have to spend 10,000 hours at something before you can be considered an expert or a great. So I have spent well over 80 hours a week for the past five years devoting every ounce of my energy into business coaching, and a decade doing it, but the last five years, it’s like 80 hours a week. So you add it all up, you’re like, whoa, homie, you’ve read some books. Either you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, or you know a lot about that subject, but you’ve got to dedicate yourself. So, see, let’s talk about the GOAT. Why is it so important that you find a greatest of all time to study? And I want to get Tim’s feedback on this as well. Well, the thing is, when you’re trying to build a wheel, you find the best wheel out there. Someone’s already built it. It’s a nice move. You know, and then you send your guy. He gets that wheel and you break it down. You say, oh, I don’t have to reinvent this. Luigi don’t have to reinvent this. I don’t have to spend any of my energy. Tell the marquee how he does it. I can just, you know, use the information that’s out there. Anthony does not have to reinvent this. You know, Luigi doesn’t have to reinvent this. That’s what a goat does. A goat’s a guy out there that has done, he’s paved the path for you. And all you have to do is find the path and then walk down the path. That’s much easier than getting a machete and going to the Amazon jungle and saying, I think there should be a path here. And then you spend hours and hours chopping to make that path when all you have to do is find the path that’s already there and walk down it. And they leave a digital trail that you can find at archive.org forward slash web. Archive.org forward slash web. And you can find how Tim Ferriss started, how he pivoted, how he changed. When we come back, we’re going to get more into the questions and the answers. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the Thrive Time Show, your audio daily dojo of mojo, where we talk about what you need to know to make your wallet grow. We’re officing on the left coast of the Arkansas River, where we broadcast daily on our magical microphones from Jinx, America, the epicenter of entrepreneurial education. Did you know that Forbes actually has consistently rated us over the past five years, Tulsa, Oklahoma, as being one of the top ten cities in the world to start a business? And did you know that 57% of you listening want to start a business according to Forbes? And did you know that eight out of ten businesses unfortunately fail if you don’t have a business mentor or a coach? You know, eight out of ten businesses are failing by default, Z. And we want to eradicate that number, my friend. I hate that number. And that’s our heart on this show is to take that 80 percent and shrink it down to like 0 percent. So if that’s why we have those in-person workshops now, you know, we just finished one up this last weekend. It was awesome. And you know what’s so fun? It’s seeing people’s eyes light up. You know, some of them, some of you seem kind of that that that knowledge bomb hits and then like, I did not know. I did not know that. I did not know that. I didn’t know that. And so we go over the 13 steps and how to start and then grow your business. We have downloadables, we have templates, we have hands-on training. We have, I’m telling you what, listen Thrivers, Clay Clark, I would put him up against any business coach in the world and they wouldn’t even have a chance to beat them. This guy is incredible. He’s been doing this for a long time now. He’s very successful, and he’s a great speaker It’s very funny, so not only you’re gonna laugh, but you’re gonna learn It’s laughing and learning and you don’t have to laugh you don’t want to I mean you know I mean a lot of people Try not to at all the first hour people show up their first time. This is what they’re saying This guy trying to be fine, and then the second hour they go I want to chuckle, but I don’t want to affirm him to me the third hour They’re like I haven’t had any upsells yet, but we’re going to lunch and we’ll see if he tries to upsell us after lunch. Fifth hour, sixth hour, seventh hour, they go, wait a minute, I just had an entire day, no upsells. Day two, they go, is there going to be an upsell? Day two, hour two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, then they go, whoa, that was two days, 15 hours, no upsells. What? And you know why they’re thinking they’re going to get the upsell? Because every other conference they’ve been to, that’s the move. That’s the move. I’m going to walk the Thrivers through the landscape. If you go to Thrivetimeshow.com, you get a chance to go up there and you can see the landscape because there’s choices. There’s options. They have options. We got this move from Southwest Airlines. They call this thing called transparency, by the way. It’s a whole other thing you can look up. But Southwest Airlines openly compares themselves to the competition, so you can see how they stack up dollar for dollar versus the competition. Now at Thrive 15, our workshops are $500 and there’s no upsells. And if you can’t afford it, you can choose your own price. What? So we’re just saying, Scouts Honor, if you’re in a bad spot, you can choose your own price. And Zee, I haven’t talked to you about this today, but if you go to thrivetimeshow.com, thrive15.com is now available. You can try it for a dollar for the first month. Not free, it’s a dollar. The first month you can try it out. And you know what? So far, everybody’s trying it out for a dollar, says, I’m happy to pay the crazy price of $19 on month two. It’s a dollar for your first month. You got to check it out. Now Tony Robbins is hitting you for a thousand dollars to come to the conference, which that’s a fair price, but then he’s going to upsell you the entire time. You go to the rich dad, poor dad, it’s $500. They’re going to upsell you. They try to upsell you to a $45,000 program. Then you have Maui Mastermind, it’s a $30,000 program. And then you have special guests on the show, like Jesse Haynes, he’s a Tulsa University student. And Jesse, I’m not asking what you are paying for college, because you’re a genius, you’re obviously on a full scholarship, you’re not paying anything, I’m sure. But what does Tulsa University cost per year at this point, roughly? It is about $56,000 a year, so it’s pretty steep. $56,000 a year? Yes, sir. Really? Yes, sir. Are you making that up? I am not, unfortunately. Oh, wow. Tim, did you pay him to say that amount? I don’t know where he got that amount, but it sounds like it’s a pretty expensive education. So he asked the question. He said, hey, I’m going to become an author, podcaster, vlogger. How do I go about marketing and how do I go about growing the business? And I give him my tips. And step number one was you want to find a goat greatest of all time. Tim what does he have to find a greatest of all time to study and to find and to pattern his career after? Well I’ll tell you it’s a great way to avoid a lot of mistakes. You’re hyperspacing into somebody else’s mind and methods that they may have spent millions of dollars learning to get there. So you hyperspace that, you jump into that and really when you talk about the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hour rule what I have seen people do and As a young man going after this I can see you making it to the top But here’s the deal along the line of the 10,000 hours we get distracted so easily We don’t keep our hand of the plow and this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. So the idea here is that there’s very few people that can stay steady for 10,000 hours doing the same thing over and over and over again and becoming the best in the world. Now I want to ask this next question here, Zee. Why is it so important, we talked about this tip here, to find a niche and scratch it, to find an actual problem that the marketplace is willing to pay to solve. Why do you have to find, for a guy like this, he’s a writer, he’s obviously talented, he’s a vlogger, he’s a podcaster, why does he have to find some already monetizable niche from our perspective? Well, because people are willing to pay money and it’s much easier to say, hey listen, what are people wanting now? I love your thing where you get on and you search the words of what people are looking for. Tim Ferriss’ story about where he put out like 40 book titles and then the one that got clicked on the most to buy or to look at is the one he then wrote the book for. I mean that is just beautiful. I mean why try to guess what people are wanting to spend their money on? Why not just, I know it’s crazy, ask them and you ask them by you can look at what they’re searching for. That’s a beautiful thing and so then you can do it with confidence. I mean Tim Ferriss wrote that book knowing, okay I already had so many hits, I already had so many people wanting this, it’s almost like pre-selling something before you even make it. And that’s a beautiful thing. That helps ensure that you’re going to be one of the 20% of successful entrepreneurs, not the 80% that’s not successful. I have just discovered this, Thrivers, that many of us out there are wanting to commit an idea that doesn’t make sense financially. And there’s a time and place to do that. So I’ll give you an example. My wife and I love raising chickens. We enjoy raising chickens. But I dated a girl during high school. Her name was Katie. And it’s called Forsman Farms. It’s still out there in Cocado, Minnesota. My wife actually got a chance to see this facility. He packs, and I’m not exaggerating, 20,000 chickens into a barn. If you get a chance to go on Google Earth and Google Forsman Farms, I don’t know how many farms Gary has now. He probably has 10, 12, 20. I don’t know. I’ll look over the break and I’ll tell you when we come back. He has 20,000 chickens in a barn. You know why he does it? Because he makes money. That’s his whole deal. Then he made enough money, so he did another one, and another one, and another one, and check it out. If my wife and I were wanting to monetize free-range chickens, we would have to be so good at that, that would have to be our focus, our focus area. And we’re just not willing to do that. So we make money in other areas, but we take the money we make over here, and we use it on our free-range chickens, and we put an electric fence in there, we’ve built a fence around it, we’ve had a guy, we’re talking to a guy right now, Sam, our producer, to see if he can hunt the bobcat. I mean, but the thing is, because we have dispendable income, we can spend our hard-earned money to pursue that passion, even though currently the price, do you want to guess the price per egg is right now for our free-range organic eggs? Let’s see, a dollar? It’s about ten bucks an egg, I’ve just kind of factored it in, roughly. I mean, when did you think about all the animals in the buy? Oh, gosh. I mean, all the animals. I’m just telling you, it’s been a very expensive venture. But the joy we experienced. But if we had to live off that, we would be poor. Driver, stay tuned. I appreciate the hustle on that. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark. I am the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. Sit here to help you grow a successful business. I’m the father of five kids, and I’m telling you what I promised before the break. I would do a Google search, and I would tell you how many barns that Forsman Farms now has. We have an incredible guest on the show today, and he asked the question here. This is Mr. Jesse Haynes, a Tulsa University student, who, by the way, he might not be paying this, but Tulsa University is. How much per year, my friend? About $56,000. $56,000? Did you say $56,000 a year? $56,000. Now, Z, if you go to thrive15.com and you sign up to try out the website, your first month is a dollar. Now, you studied math in college, did you not? Yes, I have a degree in math. So if you took $56,000, how much less than $56,000 is a dollar? I mean, is that… $55,999. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Gosh, that was quick. That was just… I was just rubbing and roughing. I was spitballing. I’m just saying, it seems to me like that’s a lot less than $56,000. And I’m just saying, that’s just me looking at the calculators and, you know, what do you think about that? Is it over… Is it safe to say? Would you go out on a limb and say it’s less money to spend a dollar a month on Thrive15.com than $56,000 over there at TU? Well, we’ve got to put it in perspective, though. $56,000 covers a year. Now, it’s $200 for Thrive15 for the year, roughly. I’m using what I hear about it. I knew there was a catch. I knew there was a catch. Yes, Betts, Twitch, I got you. I got you. But the experience at Thrive 15 is not the same. We don’t give any of the Thrivers brands, and there’s no sorority girls, and the whole thing is different. All right, so we move on. Well, the thing about it is, you’re right, Forbes calls us one of the best online business schools there is. Wow. Wow. That’s pretty cool. And the thing about it is it’s changing people’s lives because here’s the thing about it. When you get on, you can search things by category. You can search things by mentor, you can say, hey, just walk me down what I need to know, right, to start a business. And it’s practical business knowledge. It’s not, hey, you can do it, you know, just buckle, just pull up your boots. Just buckle down, just buckle down. Just buckle down. Pull up your boots. You can do it, just get her done. No, it’s the practical steps that you do step by step things you do and people loved it so much They wanted more and so that’s why now instead of just you know we thought well this this is all we need to do okay Drop the mic we’re done Be the money oh wow we’re out of there, but then people said oh no we want we want more we want more, baby Yeah, so scripts contacted us and said hey Can you guys take this thrive 15 platform this business platform all this excellent information and turn it into a radio show we’re like up can couldn’t could we sounds like an adventure well you know what why not try we would have to build a box that rocks we would have to build a book a we have steps we’d have to do we would have to gather a microphone we and two and three and then four and then we have guests like Tim Redmond on the show and Jesse Haynes and they could be asking his questions and then Jesse comes in hot he says listen I am a vlogger I’m an author I’m a podcaster, what are the steps to get to success? We said, one, find a goat, the greatest of all time. Two, got to find a niche. And I told you guys, Thrivers, listen, my wife and I have organic eggs, but we don’t have what it takes to have an organic egg business. And I told you this girl I dated in high school, her father’s name was Gary Forsman, and I said I would tell you how many barns he has. I’d look, because each one of his barns has, if I believe correctly, I know it might be even more than this, but 20,000 chickens per barn. That’s a lot of chickens. I’m on Google Earth right now and I’m looking up the address which is 6339 Mowry M-O-W-E-R-Y Avenue Howard Lake, Minnesota. Check it out. There’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. So he has at least 200,000 chickens that he is feeding. And by the way, do you know what you do to a chicken when the chicken is no longer producing enough eggs? When you have a large chicken factory like this, do you know what you do? I’m just, first, I meditate. I’m kind of sad. I mean, you could be the heir to a chicken kingdom. I’m telling you what you do. I mean, if you had just hung in there with Katie, I mean, you could have been the heir. You could have been like the chicken prince. I hate to say this, but what you do is you, they render their bodies and they turn it into baby food for Gerber. It’s an additive for Gerber baby food. True story. And all their poop is turned into manure. This is helping people grow their business right now. I’m just saying, they found a way to turn every part of the body of the chicken into a value add. I mean, there’s nothing that goes to waste because it’s a for-profit business. So you’ve got to find a niche and scratch it. So I want to ask you here, as you’re thinking about this, Jesse, what’s a niche that you could speak to that maybe you go, okay, there’s a lot of people that I know, my age or around my age, that would be looking for that. What’s something that you’re kind of thinking about? What’s something you could do? From a standpoint of a writer, I’m constantly targeting the middle grade audience, boys primarily, that are into the action and adventure books that I was into. So I need to seek out ways to connect with that audience on a global, national level. And three, I told you, you need to spend at least 10,000 hours devoted, obsessing to that concept. Tim, when you guys started Tax and Accounting Software, you started out of a condominium. So it’s you and the founder you guys working together you guys are cooking co-founders or founder you and the founder working together Tim and Tim and I mean we were going to a condo how many hours were you devoting to marketing at that place in time and knew that that point in time broadcasting live from the center of the universe you’re listening to the Thrive Time Show we we really poured heart and soul into that first year that I joined him we went from two hundred thousand dollars in sales to a million dollars in sales and there were just two of us. So we worked day and night. It was just get her done, Vern. That was our focus. That was our mindset. So we just got her done. Well, you know, Elon Musk, we have his quote painted on the wall there inside the Thrive15.com World Headquarters. He talks about this, but I think if I read it and you really embrace what it means, he says this. This is his notable quote. He says, Work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour work weeks every week. This improves your odds of success. I mean, okay, time out. 80 hours. So let’s say you work 10 hours a day for 7 days a week. He’s saying, no, no, you’ve got to do more. Twelve hours a day for seven days. He goes, they’re about there. He says, you said fifteen hours a day for seven days. Now you’re in Elon Musk territory. He says, if other people are putting in forty hour work weeks and you’re putting in a hundred hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve. I want to encourage you with this, Jesse. Are you married? I’m not. Are you dating somebody? I am. Okay, well you’re dating somebody so it’s going to be a little bit harder, but you still have the advantage here. When you’re a young person, you have the advantage. Because I remember I started in a DJ connection, no exaggeration, I worked seven days a week, probably 15 hours a week, and I just beat the heck out of my competition because I had nothing standing in my way. I had no commitments, no obligations, seven days a week. I literally, I remember telling my team, I remember looking at my guys, I said, listen guys, there’s five DJs, I said, you know why our competition can’t compete? And the guys are like, why? I said, because they need some sleep. And one of my guys came back with a t-shirt that said, they can’t compete because they need some sleep. And then he added a little thing, he said, DJC to the top of the heap. That was his little shirt he made. And I remember all the guys started wearing that shirt going, they can’t compete because they need some sleep. Now if you’re married, you gotta find boundaries and you gotta start turning off a lot of things and say, hey, I’m going to spend time with my wife or significant others so I’m going to get up early. I’m going to, but if you’re a single guy, dude, your entire day could be devoted to just total domination. I mean, this is a good, there’s no better place to be than starting a business as a young person. Absolutely. And you know, you say to yourself, well, why not? You know, you can Google this right now. Google the average number of hours a person watches TV. Five hours a day. Five hours a day. So why not take that time and build your business? Because then you know what? When you get that thing rolling and you’re kicking it and you’ve got financial freedom and time freedom, then you can watch all the TV you want to. You can listen to all the 80s songs that you want to. Stay tuned. More answers to questions from drivers like you. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. If you’re ready for your day to rock, if you’re wanting to take your day to the next level, well, let me tell you what, during this segment, we will rock you. Who is we? We is he. That’s Dr. Robert Z. Boom. Dr. Zeller, how are you, sir? Nice. You know, I love that about you. Not only are you the world’s best business coaching but for all the years that you DJed, now you’ve got that natural kind of just rhyming DJ aura about you. Yeah, the cadence. That DJ, you know. When I first saw you, you know your wife was working for me and you were coming to pick her up and I was like, who is that guy? Who is that guy? He looks like a poor version of Eminem and you’d come in there and he is I and I is him with a flat rim. And you were like, you know, just wait for someone to step on your shoes so you could fight them. And you’re like a little bit of an attitude. And the transformation from that, what year was that? My wife started working with you back in 1999, which I believe was nine years into you being at Memorial. How many years was that into you being at your Memorial? No, 1999 is when we just started. We just kicked open Memorial. Okay, so. Memorial was just opening up then. I just remember walking in going, oh my gosh, this place is unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. I mean, seriously, I’m not kidding. I remember when I saw you at your holiday party, you remember my wife wore a, if you did remember, I’d have to slap you. But no, the thing is, my wife, you know, my wife was there and I remember we got all dressed up and she bought a really nice dress and I bought some dress clothes and I remember going to your party and I remember saying to myself, man, I want to be someday where that guy, she wore a kind of an aqua colored dress, I want to be someday where that guy is. And I remember just stalking you and committing to learning your secrets. Well that’s what you do when you find the goat, when you find someone that you say, okay, this is my goat, this is the person I’m going to study. If it’s someone you can have access to, man, you want to show up on their doorstep. You may want to intern with them. You may want to try to get them to lunch. You may want to try to get some of that one-on-one time, that mentoring time with them. If you can get that in person, that’s large. But I do remember this. I don’t remember your wife’s dress, to be very honest with you. I appreciate that. I do remember you in your suit, and you did the DJ thing. When I came up and I tipped you, I don’t know, it was a couple hundred extra bucks that I gave you because you did such an excellent job at that Christmas party. And you really didn’t charge me that much to begin with, because come to find out, I think you were just starting out, right? But I tipped you, and I can remember vividly the look on your face. You were just like, oh my gosh. When you tipped me, that was a time where I actually, we didn’t have enough money to make it. And so when you tipped me, it was like almost, not to the dollar, but it was within a felt 50 bucks of what we needed to pay our bills and I remember just being like oh My gosh, I think you tipped me like $200 for like a $300 shower or something and I was just like Yes, because I knew you were a good guy But when I got tipped I was like the appreciation and just the whole way you handled everything I’m just telling you was a casino theme party And you had a company where they had like the people who did the casinos were somehow like models. They were models. Yeah, Curt Landigan has a company called Entertainment Specialties, Inc. And instead of getting like retired veterans to do your gaming, he actually went into the, he was very clever, he went into the modeling agency and he said, I would like to hire some models. And they said, okay, it’s, you know, for the two hours or three hours deal, it’s like 50 bucks a model. He’s like, okay, I’ll, and they said, here’s a book, pick out the ones you want and flip, flip, flip, flip, pick, pick, pick. And said, okay, I need to teach him how to deal cards. And so then he has all these like six foot tall, you know, models dealing cards. It’s a crazy scenario. I mean, but it’s great marketing. I mean, if you think about it, you know, I mean, I mean, I know you may want to, you know, have a retired veteran deal to you and they’re, you know, veterans are great. Don’t get me wrong, but you know, it’s kind of like he has all these models doing it. It’s kind of like, oh, that’s memorable. We have two more questions I want to get into today. The first one I, is from a thriver in New York and he says, why use a small bank? He says, I’m looking at going with Chase Bank. This is a Thriver in New Yorker. I’m kind of going off the Z, the outline here. This is from Michaela, who just emailed that in. He says, he’s in New York. He’s one of our Thrivers. He owns a company called American Hybrid Homes. He says, what’s the value of using a small bank versus a big bank? Well, first off, when you go to a small bank, you have an opportunity to build what I call the three C’s. And I’m gonna go through the three C’s, and Z, I’d like for you to kind of pontificate about those three C’s. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. See number one, capital. Every bank basically what? Rents you money. See, at the end of the day, whether you go to a small bank or a big bank, I mean, at the end of the day, you’ve served on the board of a bank. Ultimately, isn’t it just renting money at the end of the day? Oh, absolutely. They borrow money from the government at a rate, and then they loan it out at a different rate, and they make money on the spread. They make money on the difference. They may get it from the government, say, at one point or one percent. Big bank or small bank, it’s the same deal? Yeah. All the banks get the money from the feds at the same rate. Now, move number two, and I want to get your feedback on this, and move number three, Tim, I want to get your feedback. So move number two, there’s the three C’s of why to use a small bank. Move number two is connections. See, you go to a bank like Regent Bank, one of our loyal sponsors, you go to Regent Bank versus maybe like a Chase Bank or a Bank of America. Why is it so important to establish connections within your local bank? Well, if you go to a small bank and you’re going to get a loan, I promise you this, and this is just straight math, your loan is going to be a bigger deal to them. And so you’re going to be a bigger deal to them, and they’re going to make you feel like a bigger deal to them. And that’s just the reality of it. A small bank has less money being loaned out there, and so your loan, whatever the size is, you may say, well, mine’s just a small loan, or to you it’s a bigger loan, but you’re going to be a bigger deal to that small bank. And you know, if you’re looking for a small, local Tulsa bank that treats you like a big Big deal? You need to get yourself into the lobby of… Region Bank! Region Bank! Thrivers, you just have a very limited time. You’ve got to get yourself, get your body relocated into a Region Bank. Region Bank! Region Bank! Seven times the national average of a bank. Yeah, it’s Region Bank. And so Thrivers, we want to see you in the lobby of a local bank versus a big bank? One it’s the three C’s. So one, it’s capital. They all have capital. But two, it’s the connections. You want those connections, those relationships. Tim, C number three, counsel. When you team up with a small local bank, you have counsel, mentorship, guidance. Why is that valuable for young and aspiring entrepreneurs? Oh, it’s huge. Looking at the 80% failure rate, or actually up to 96% failure rate for startups, you want to have a friend that has been there before. And so when you go into this big bank, you’re a number. It’s a ratio. It’s a formula. When you go into somebody like Sean Copeland, who’s a good friend of mine, he actually runs a number of businesses himself. He’s going to speak from experience. You’re going to have a friend that’s knowledgeable that’s going to, whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t go there, slow down on this. They’re going to guide you along the way. It’s a huge advantage. Now, Jesse, you can ask us anything, my friend. The final 60 seconds of power. What questions do you have? Any question at all, my friend. Go for it. All right. As an experienced entrepreneur that all you guys are, what is one mistake that you have made in your past that I can learn from one is I did not seek out mentorship fast enough So whether you are looking for one-on-one, you know business coaching like thrive 15.com has Or I would recommend everybody does this I would highly recommend anybody that’s what we built it It’s a dollar for the first month But I would encourage everybody to go to thrive 15.com and begin learning from mentorship and not mistakes, because I don’t have enough time to get into the profundity of the stupidness that I did that is all easily preventable if I would have known that landmines were here, there, and there. Once you have a roadmap to success, it’s so much easier. Z, what are your thoughts? Mine would be probably not investing more into my business early on and growing it even faster. What happens is you kind of get, you know, you take a gamble, you start your business, and it starts to take off and then you kind of, you take a breath and you say, oh yeah, okay, now I should buy a boat. And now I can actually pay these bills. I better, you know, getting, and what happens is you kind of coast for a little bit. And then all of a sudden one day you wake up and go, why am I coasting? I don’t want to coast. You know, so I want to go, go, go. So it’s that, you know, at some point you’re going to have that financial and time freedom. And it’s how much, you know, you’re in game over here. You’ve got to really know what your end game is and then just work like heck to get there and to go fast. And to go fast means you just pour as much as you can and keep delaying your gratification. And I probably didn’t, my biggest, if I could go back and do it again, I would have invested quicker and grown faster even. Tim, what’s your biggest mistake? Well, I think a lot has to do with the concept of sowing and reaping. So getting an educational plan where what you sow into yourself you’re going to reap to really stay steady with an aggressive education plan because you know you’re going to face problems in the future they’re going to be a very different level a new level of requirement that requires of you and so you just got to rise up to that level plan your education so you can go on vacation now thrivers We have four ways that we can help you one if you’re listening right now this just in it just started today You’re a thrive 15 calm your first month is a dollar so get yourself to thrive 15 calm check it out It’s the world’s best business school. How much is to you my friend about? $56,000 and we’re about a dollar for the first month so check it out thrive 15 calm the world’s best business school $19 a month after that try it out. It’s a no-brainer. Move number two, we have Thrivetimeshow.com. Thrivetimeshow.com, the world’s best business podcast. Move number three, one-on-one business coaching. You’re looking for a business coach like Tim Redmond over here, a guy that knows the way, goes the way, shows the way. I’m telling you, what, you want to look like an Obi-Wan Kenobi of business? Really? Tim Redmond. I’m telling you, go to Thrive15.com, learn about one-on-one business coaching. And we have our in-person workshops. We now have the next six dates available. You can find the date that works best with your schedule. Z, go to thrivetimeshow.com. I tell you what, it’s a no-brainer, and our heart is to help you. And as always, we end the show. Three, two, one, boom! All right, JT, so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business? To get you to your goals so it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination. And would you need profits to get there? I mean when you have a business that’s successful in your expert opinion would you need profits to get you to your goals? Yeah because if you have a 15 million dollar business but you have 15 million dollars of expenses it’s kind of pointless. Holy crap. All right. So the question I would have here for you If you could take like, I don’t know 10 minutes or less and see if you could save 3,000 bucks a year by reducing your credit card fees. Would you do it? Yes, absolutely. Oh Why would somebody out there who’s listening right now who has a sane mind why would they not Go to thrive timeshare.com forward slash credit dash card Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card to schedule a ten minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least three thousand bucks a year. Why would they not do it? Yeah, why would they not do it? Maybe because they didn’t understand how you said the website. This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Griswold family Christmas. No, that’s clear. Okay, so that could be true. So I encourage everybody to check out Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. What would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save $3,000 or more on credit card fees? Maybe they think it is a waste of time and that it won’t. It’s not possible. There’s somebody out there that’s making more than $3,000 every 10 minutes and they’re like, nah, that’s not worth my time Hello! We gettin’ a ride money! We gettin’ a ride money! There’s probably some someone out there that would think that. Well I’ll just tell you folks if you’re out there today and you’re making less than three thousand dollars per ten minutes I would highly recommend that you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard because you can compare rates you can save money and you know the big the big goal in my opinion of building a business is to create time freedom and financial freedom, and in order to do that, you have to maximize your profits. Holy crap! Now, one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue. Another way to do it is to decrease your expenses. It’s a profit deal takes the pressure off. JT, is there any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save a total of $3,000 a year on average? I am at a loss and I cannot think of any other. Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair. Conditioner is better. I need a hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool, really. Stop looking at me swan. Let me tell you a good story here real quick. I actually years ago compared rates with this company here called IPS. It’s Integrated Payment Services. And I scheduled a consultation I don’t know that I was skeptical I just thought whatever I’ll take 10 minutes I’ll compare rates. I can’t tell you can tell me I’m a doctor no I mean I’m just not sure but can’t you take a guess well not for another two hours you can’t take a guess for another two hours and in my case in my in my case my particular case I save over $20,000 a year. Holy crap! Wow. Which is like groceries when my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great. OK. Oh, God. Everything OK, ma’am? It’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items, and it’s already $60. I’m so scared. OK, I’m a trained professional, ma’am. I’ve scanned a lot of groceries. I need you to stay with me. It’s just that my in-laws are in town and they want a charcuterie board. This isn’t gonna be easy, so I need you to be brave, all right? What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia, all right. I need you to take a deep breath. We’re about to do the cheese. You know, that’s the difference between eating organic and not organic. So because my wife eats organic, I had to take the 10 minutes needed to compare rates to save the $20,000 a year on credit card fees just for one of my companies. One question, what’s the brand name of the clock? The brand name of the clock, Rod, the brand name of the clock, it’s an elegant, from Ridgeway, it’s from Ridgeway. Let’s buy the clock and sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card, you schedule a free consultation, request information, a member of our team will call you, they’ll schedule a free consultation, it should take you 10 minutes or less, and they’re going to compare rates and see if they can’t save you more than $3,000 a year off of your credit card processing. You were hoping what? I wouldn’t owe you money at the end of the day. No, you don’t owe us money. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the goal of the business is to create time, freedom, and financial freedom, and in order to do that, you need to create additional profits. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now. 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 Pessamon company in the Tulsa area and that’s really helped with our conversion rate and the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411 percent over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411 percent. 11% were up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of the 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 that when everything gets done and it gets done right, it creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency and doing those in 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. Okay, 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 were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut, and if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s going to take in order to really succeed. So we just want to give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore, I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42 percent increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proven turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983 and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like 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 like Lee Crocker, 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. 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 6-8 weeks he’s doing reawaken America tours. Every 6-8 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. 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, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with, so amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go and that’s what I like him most about. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most 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. 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. He’s just an amazing man. He’s 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 wanna give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just wanna 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 fourteen. And I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show, two day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. 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. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, 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 going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. If we go back eight years ago, think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to their call. Well, okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s up and down roller coaster. And so now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, let’s say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100, as a percentage, what is that? I have grown, I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. It’s a hundred percent growth every year I’ve worked. Now so, so I’m looking, we’ve been good friends seven, eight years and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean the first time you do it, that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating new, some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, as I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. Well, I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management, he said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. And so that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script, and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every hundred calls. We make two to three hundred calls a day per rep. Right. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there’s having a hard time. On their script. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between two and three hundred calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do… If someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe, or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems, and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe even further down the road, maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012, and at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met, how did we meet? What was the first interaction? There was some interaction where you and I first connected. I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well we had that speaking thing. Oh there it was! It was Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redmond. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help, you know, direct my life to get some mentorship, but I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant. I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. The experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life-changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe, wherever I end up, will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn. I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then, again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. You know, working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence and then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life. That standard of excellence that you want to implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall, in the group interview, talks about how the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal-oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory, and we’re on our own trajectory. And the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship that as we pursue our goals and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I would say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that I don’t know if there’s anyone else’s that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know, he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. You know, he’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s again unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that are satisfied with mediocrity, people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by. People who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people, and in short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time, the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks, he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay, I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day, actually. I carried a notebook with me all around, and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him, and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.