Entrepreneur | Breaking Down Tasks Into Systems – Organizing Your Life – To-Do Lists, Calendars, Delegating Tasks and More…

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 three, two, one, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do. Clay, welcome back. We are here in the Thrive15.com studio at the headquarters in beautiful Tulsa, Oklahoma. Great weather today, actually. Really? It’s pretty phenomenal. Yeah, you got to check it out outside. I haven’t been outside this year. OK, you haven’t been outside this year. Now, we’re pretty excited to be with you guys today. We are actually answering a mailbag from a Thriver, Thriver up in Washington. So we have a Thriver. His name is Faiez. And he had a question about breaking down tasks into systems. And so we have a mailbag episode here where we’re actually going to provide some super detailed answers. And real quick just for Thrivers, just so you guys know this, we’ve been invested in this multi-million dollar studio, state-of-the-art facility so that we can answer mailbag questions from people like you fast, quickly, all the time. So if you have any questions at all, just click that ask the mentor button and we have thousands, I mean literally thousands of mailbag trainings kind of in route to you. So get ready. I’m ready. All right, so this Thriver, okay, he’s asking about getting organized and breaking down tasks into systems. And so I’m going to read his question that he sent in to us. I run a distribution business out of the Northwest catering to gas stations and convenience stores. My organization is horrible, especially when it comes to reorders, delegating tasks and making tasks more organized and simplified to save time. Okay? So this guy runs a distribution company for convenience stores, okay? Primarily mom and pop shops. And so let’s help this guy out, Clay. I mean, you’ve worked with a number of different businesses in a variety of different industries, and one of your kind of like super moves, one of your special sauces, if you will, I know is creating those workflow systems and checklists. So where would you suggest this guy beginning, you know, to begin, you know, start breaking down these tasks into systems? Okay, well first, and the name is Faiyaz, is that right? Yeah, yeah. All right, Faiyaz, I’m talking to you there, my friend. The first thing you’re gonna wanna do is you need to have one to-do list, one. So I brought this as an example to show you. This is my to-do list, and if we can kinda zoom in on it here. These are, this is my to-do list. This is one to-do list. So everything that needs to be done, you need to put it all into one central location. Are you talking about work and your personal life is a different one, or is it all the same or what? That’s great. Yeah, it’s work and personal life. So on my to-do list here, just as an example here for you, my son’s birthday party is on here. So my son’s birthday. So we’re planning my son’s birthday today, and that’s on my to-do list. There’s one to-do list. So anytime you have something that needs to be done, you need to put it on one to-do list. I highly recommend using a Google Doc, and Faiyaz, if you’d like a downloadable template of what this looks like, we’ll be happy to send you one. But you need one master to-do list so you put everything in there, okay? That’s step one. Step two is you need to have one master calendar. You can’t have a bunch of calendars. So, Faiyaz, if you’ve got two different calendars and two different to-do lists, and you’re writing some stuff on like a post-it note and some stuff you know you’re typing in you have it all on one to-do list and in one calendar. Now the third thing is that you’re going to need to make sure that when you delegate an item that you put on the to-do list the person’s name and all the items that that person needs to get done. Okay so step one is have one to-do list, step two is have one calendar, step three is for each person on your list each person so if I work for you if Marshall works for you and I work for you, you need to put Marshall’s name and Clay’s name, my name, and then you would put all the items that we need to do underneath that, our name on the to-do list. Step four is you need to schedule a daily follow-up time with all of your direct reports, a daily follow-up time with all of your people. And that is going to help you bring, kind of restore order to the universe. Very, very important. And the final step, final step here, is you’re gonna wanna schedule a weekly meeting with all your directory reports, or with all your directory reports, so you can hold them accountable and keep the morale high. So let’s kind of review again. Step one, we’ll have one to-do list. Step two, you wanna go ahead and have one master calendar. Step three, anytime you delegate an item to somebody, you wanna have their name, and then all the items they need to get done on a very linear line item, broken down, very specific detailed basis. Step four is you want to have a daily follow-up time. And step five is you want to have a weekly scheduled time to meet with your team to keep morale high and to follow up on expectations, communications, new policies, etc. So even before you begin building these checklists and systems, you have to be organized in order to execute those systems and checklists. You have to have the time to be able to follow up. Yeah, you’re meta time. You need to block off time where you get up every day and you basically are ordaining your destiny. You’re not being reactive for the day. On We The Thriver, I talked to the other day who said, hey, I’ve been doing what you’ve been saying. I’ve been getting up early and I have a very full schedule with my kids and I take them to school and I work, my wife works, but just that extra hour a day that I get up early and I choose to ordain my schedule and block out my, you know, respond to all my emails and block out my calendar and organize my day, organize my to-do list, it’s absolutely changed this person’s life. But specifically like for me, and everyone’s different, but my, if you look here, I don’t know if we can show this on the camera here, but mine today, you know, 4.15 is when I woke up today. 3.43 was yesterday. 2.44 the day before. 3.30 the day before that. 3.09 the day before that. 3 o’clock the day before that, 345 AM, 318 the day before that, 410 the day before that, 454 the day before that, 309. What does that mean? I try to sleep five to six hours, and then I get up at whatever time I need to to get my meta time. I’ve got to block out for my job. It’s a high thinking, a high strategy, a high – so I’m involved in so many different business ventures. I have to block out a lot of time to think, and you’re going to have to block off enough time to think. So I’m not sure how complex your life is, but you probably need at least an hour or two every day just to take all those to-do list items and put them on the master to-do list and delegate them to the people. I mean just every day. So before you get into delegating to other people for the things that you need to begin to scale, okay, so delegating those tasks, first you have to become a responsible executor of your own tasks. I would say this, and I’m not going to disagree with you, but I’m going to challenge the thinking here. Sure. Faiyaz, you’re currently, you own a business. If you’re not disciplined or you are disciplined, I don’t know. But whether you are or you are not, you are in the water right now, buddy. John Rockefeller says that the best way to teach somebody to manage is throw them in the water. See if they can swim. And if they can swim, they’ve learned to swim. And I know that doesn’t feel comfortable, but that’s probably where you’re at right now. I mean, somehow you’ve done something right because you run a distribution business out of the Northwest catering. I mean, to gas stations, you run a company, so you’ve done something right. But the problem is now a penalty of ambition is you have to be super organized. So your point. So I wouldn’t say first you have to be organized. I would just say get organized right now. It has to happen. We’ll be happy to record some very, very detailed trainings to show you some screenshots of how I do that. I want you to put that down real quick, Marshall. I want to make sure we do that. We’ll do a training next week where we’re going to actually show you on screen, screen capture how I go through my emails. It’ll be fun. You can see how I take those items and how I delegate them. I think it’ll be really healthy for you. Okay, so I had an opportunity to speak with Faiyaz a little bit before the training here. I spoke with him a couple days ago. What he was telling me is that where he’s at is he needs an organized way to plan his to-do list. He needs an organized way to go through his email, his calendar, everything. But how does he systemize what he’s doing on a regular basis. How does he begin to build that checklist for the routine things that he’s doing? You need to have a checklist for all the actionable items that you need to do. And then it takes the thinking out of it. You don’t have to worry about forgetting the small things. You can focus on the big things. So it might seem crazy, but Thrivers, I have a to-do list for things that have to get done. So I’ll just give an example of some things that have to get done. Every month I have to make our strategic search engine optimization plan for the companies that I own or am involved in. And I’m not exaggerating. That will literally take me about 12 hours, 12 to 13 hours a month. And how do I know that? Because I’ll usually start like at 3 a.m. and I’ll usually be done at like 5 p.m. So I mean that’s, and so if you had my job tomorrow and you’re like, I want to be the consultant guy and I want to work with all these dentists and doctors. Well be careful what you’re wishing for because I literally have to go through the granular process and so I’ll walk you through, I have a checklist for it. But step one is I run the SEM Rush report. It’s a company, SEM Rush. I run the report. Before SEM Rush, I used SEO Moz. That’s a great company too, moz.com. But I run the report. I find the problems. Step two, I assign the problems to be fixed. Step three, and I just go, it’s just check, by check. So you have to break down these issues you have into the most specific, specific, detailed, I mean, we’re talking like very detailed. So I’ll go through my to-do list, the kind of stuff I put on my checklist. But it’s like, call this person, find my computer at the office. I have no idea where my laptop is. Collect check from this person. Call this person. Now, if there are things that happen over and over and over, look here. Look at this. Can we look at this real quick? At the top, can you kind of zoom in on this maybe? Can we kind of cut to this? We can kind of zoom in or, I wanna see if we can do this real quick here. I actually have my address on my to-do list. Why? Because I don’t remember it. And I have a home address that I don’t remember my address. I have business addresses for the different companies. I don’t know what they are. People are like, where’s your office in Capelle? I don’t know. Where’s your house? I know how to get there, but I don’t know what my address is. I honestly don’t know a lot of things. I don’t know birthdays. I don’t know holidays. I don’t really care about those kind of things. But I have to-do lists that remind me of these things. That’s how I do it. These things, these checklists that really are meant and designed to assist us in the routine, regular things that we do on a consistent basis. What would you say is the main benefit of using a checklist in a business? You can’t do it without it. If you don’t have a checklist, you’re going to fail. The guys who are building nuclear submarines, recently the United States announced that they’ve built the newest addition to the naval fleet and they’re excited about all these systems and all these wonderful things that this new vessel can do for the U.S. Navy. And that’s great, but somebody had to have a blueprint, man. I mean, people aren’t going from memory. It’s a blueprint. It’s a system. It’s a step-by-step. This is how much concrete goes here. This is how much steel goes here. Why? Because they’re building a nuclear vessel. I mean, it’s a nuclear-powered, sea-going vessel. I mean, you can’t go off of memory. And so for some reason, we have people that just feel like, even though it’s a complex world and some of the trainings we have coming up here on how to optimize a website, I am not exaggerating. It’s like a 27-part system. One part of it’s like a 63-part system, there’s no way you’re going to remember. So the only way to do it is to have a checklist. We’ve got to get past that whole idea that checklists are too dumb for us. We’re so intelligent, we don’t need a checklist. And so I’m going to read you a quote here. This is a notable quotable from our good man Atul Gawande. He wrote a book called The Checklist Manifesto, which it just blows my mind. And why am I reading this checklist? Why am I reading this quote? Why am I not just trying to memorize it? Because that’s stupid! Memorizing, spending my whole day trying to memorize stuff is just stupid. I mean, that’s what school has always been for me. We went to school. Do you remember school? I do remember school. I remember school and they’re like, what we’re going to do is we’re going to memorize the periodic table and we’re going to memorize all the abbreviations for something so like Californium Magnesium Aluminum I remembered all that stuff. They were gonna remember eyes the capitals of every state It just clutters my mind. I can’t remember any of that crap now I mean, I don’t remember I think when we go to what was it is it? Maryland what’s the cat is Annapolis the capital of Maryland is that right? I mean who cares, but the point is I knew that crap at one point right? I know Des Moines I used to say Des Moines, and they’re like, no it’s not Des Moines, it’s Des Moines. Well, who cares? But that’s the kind of stuff you don’t want to clutter your mind with. Quit trying to memorize stuff. I’m going to read you this quote that I’m reading and I’m not memorizing. Here we go. We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist and embarrassment. I don’t need a checklist. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us, those we aspire to be, handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They’re impressive. They improvise. We do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating. Atul Gawande. The thing is, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you have to memorize stuff. In fact, I would say the smartest people memorize the least amount of stuff. They use checklists. Use a checklist, man. Use a checklist. Okay, so to support the use of a checklist and the need of it, I pulled this mystic statistic here for us, okay? Can we queue up our music for this? Because we’ve been working, a lot of people say, Thrive, what do you guys do when you’re not recording and talking to us and helping us? What are you doing? Are you guys just hanging out at a local watering hole, talking about Tom Brady? Yes, but in addition to that, we’re trying to make everything better. So we have some incredible sound clips. Freddie Marshall, go ahead and queue it up. I’m excited. So, just to give you some background, Atul Gawande, he’s a physician. He works in hospitals. And so he wrote this book about the implementation of checklists into hospitals and everything. And so, he, Huffington Post actually published this statistic from his book, Checklist Manifesto. So we have, I would like to read it if I can. Go for it. Here we go. Oh, that’s so… When the state of Michigan began using a checklist for central lines and its intensive care units, its infection rate plummeted 66% in just three months. Soon, its ICUs were outperforming 90% of all hospitals nationwide. Let me try one more time. When the state of what state? Michigan began… Michigan. Hi, I’m from Michigan, I’m a MIT, began using a checklist for central lines and intensive care units. Its infection rate plummeted by what? 66 percent! Now short of it being 666 percent, that’s like an end times number there, that’s huge, 66 percent in just three months. Soon its ICUs were outperforming 90 percent. I’m banging on the, I shouldn’t do it, the guys in the sound booth are saying, don’t bang on the desk, it makes it weird, but I’m doing it. 90% of all the hospitals nationwide. That’s huge. By using a checklist. Use a checklist. Use a checklist. We need to use a checklist. Look at the rally monkey. Look at him. He’s saying, use a checklist, everybody. Use a checklist. It’s kind of weird how when he talks, my mouth moves. But use a checklist, everybody. Use a checklist. It’s kind of weird how that connection we have, but I’m telling you, you’ve got to use a checklist. Get out your Wookiee notebook and write it in there. Henceforth, I will now use a checklist. I mean, use the checklist. Put a checklist in your coffee cup and drink a checklist. Write it in your book, put it on your phone, tattoo it to your face, write checklist. Put it here. C-L checklist. You have to make a checklist do it so we have some awesome trainings on the site with Dr.. Robert Zellner. Oh, yeah, he’s the CEO of thrive 15. He’s one of our mentors in his big Mojo is his optometry clinics run like a well-oiled machine because they have checklists Yeah, and if somebody’s watching this they might go well does he ever have a mistake of course? But the checklist saves you from the mistakes being the norm. I mean, the guy is seeing a hundred patients a day. I know optometrists that are on Thrive. I know doctors that are on Thrive. I know optometrists off Thrive. I know a lot of these guys. And some of them are seeing six patients a day, and they’re like, man, it’s keeping up with all the medical billing and all the deep paperwork. It’s so hard. We’re talking about a hundred patients a day. That guy’s on fire. Boom! I’m so excited about that. So it’s estimated in the Huffington Post article goes on to read that the implementation in just 18 months of these checklists saved about 1,500 lives. Now if you’re not excited about the statistics, that’s 1,500 people. And I want to get deep for a second, people. Your life matters. That’s why I’m here in the studio recording. I could be anywhere else in the world right now, but I’m here. Why? Well, part of it is because I don’t like traveling and I prefer to be here on camera with you in your living room at your computer on your phone. I prefer to do this than anything else in the world. But two is that I believe in you. I know your life matters. It matters so much that you need to revere the sanctity of the checklist. It’s like a holy document. It should be like a, ah, that’s what it should be like. I mean, this is like the holy grail. This is like the Magna Carta. This is the constitution. You have to use a checklist, and when you do use a checklist, your business will succeed. When you try to do stuff from memory, you’re going to bomb. You’ve got to get rid of these oral traditions, these verbal tribal knowledge things. Just dump. Stop paying the dumb tax and you’ve got to get serious about using a checklist every time. So Clay, just to wrap up, give us one more ample example from maybe from the DJ company when you created a checklist for the DJ company where you had inconsistency all over the place. What were the steps that you started with to begin creating that checklist. I mean, he doesn’t have anything. He does the same thing every week. But how does he get into this? Cue up Rapper’s Delight real quick, if you can do that. Okay. He’s gonna cue this up. Now I just wanna make sure, Rapper’s Delight was the first real hip hop song to have a breakthrough. Some people argue and they say, no, Curtis Blow and his song, These Are The Breaks. Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up. That was the first hit. That’s true, but Rapper’s Delight was like the first song to really take off, okay? So if you’re a DJ and you’ve never DJed before, every DJ that we had was a guy that I taught. So everybody who I hired had never DJed before. If you had ever DJed for someone else before, I wouldn’t hire you. So go ahead and crank it up a little bit. So this song, you let the song play. Now here’s the deal. You get this song playing, and you get a Soul Train line going, okay? So I put it on the script that what you want to do is you want to play this song, Rapper’s Delight, and you want to play Rapper’s Delight, and you want to get a Soul Train line going. Why? Because this is a song that white people, non-white people, everybody can groove out to. Can you crank it up one more here? I mean, this is a deal where like, if you’re white, if you’re not white, if you’re black, if you’re Caucasian, if you’re Samoan, if you’re Asian, there’s no complaining. This song works for you. You just form two lines. You get all the guys over here, all the ladies over here, all the guys over here, and then we’re gonna recycle like it’s Al Gore’s birthday. Recycle, right? And we would teach 80 DJs how to get the crowd going. And he would teach people how to do the Soul Train line. It’s like the movie Hitched, you know, you got two lines of people and then the person at the end, they dance together. The guy and the girl, they dance together, they kind of break it down, and then they get to the end, they recycle like it’s Al Gore’s birthday. So I had a checklist where it said, you want to play Rapper’s Delight, and after you play Rapper’s Delight, because we’re dealing with a lot of people that need rhythm therapy. And no disrespect to Caucasians, but we are the ethnicity with the worst sense of rhythm ever. So we would cue up a Billy Jean. And I don’t know if you can cue up Billy Jean next here. But Billy Jean, you hear this beat though? 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, 6, and 7, and 8. 1, 2, and 3, and 4, and 5, and 6, and 7, and 8. Now Billy Jean, can I get that Billy Jean? Now we could beat match it, so we can’t, Marshall in his defense can’t do that now. We’ll probably have to get to the console soon. Sure. I’m doing that. I’m buying you the console so you can mix it. I’m for sure doing that. But anyway, this song, though, beat matches in. If you notice, I could speed it up just a little bit. I could speed up Rapper’s Delight, and I could slow this down, and I could beat match them so the two beats would go on top of each other. So it goes hip, hop, a hippie, hippie to the hip, hip, hop, and you don’t stop. And this beat starts. And then these two songs fit together. And the great thing is that a new DJ who I just hired last weekend had no idea that Rapper’s Delight was even a song or that Billie Jean would beat match with it or that by saying these certain words you could get a Soul Train line going or they had no idea what a Soul Train line was. And I could teach you in a weekend how to literally go to a wedding and you get to the part of the dance where it’s time to get everybody out there, and you literally look down at your sheet of paper and it says, execute the group photo. So you hop on the mic and you say, alright ladies and gentlemen, this time the bride and the groom, they want to do a photo. It’s going to be a photo with you and the bride and the groom, and they’ve asked for everybody to be in this photo. Then once everybody’s out there, they look at their checklist and it says, play shout. So you know you make me want to shout, and everyone starts doing the shout because you’ve tricked them. You’ve taken a group photo, but now they’re all out there. They’re a captive audience. They’re doing the shout. Then you go into the next song, and you just follow the checklist. It’s like painting by numbers DJing. It allowed me to produce millions of dollars of revenue by having a duplicatable system. Instead of letting each DJ choose his own artistic merits and let him figure it out, it took me years to figure out that Billie Jean and Rapper’s Delight were perfectly fit together. It took me years to figure out that Brickhouse should always be played. DJ rule number two, Brickhouse shall always be played before Play That Funky Music. It took me years to figure out that whenever the party’s dying, there’s only certain songs that everyone knows, and so we created a party starter disc. On that disc, it’s whenever the party’s dying, you just grab it. There’s the cha-cha slide, and there’s the electric slide, and the Cupid shuffle, and there’s the wubba-baby wubba-baby. All those songs are all on one CD. And that’s how you do it, man. You make a checklist. It’s a system. It’s so good, because you can improve a checklist. Once it’s written down, you can go back to it and change it and improve it. But without a checklist, it’s just in your brain, and you’ll forget, and you can’t make any incremental improvements. So you would literally be failing kind of all over the place, and maybe fail 10 times, 20 times, 50 times, and then you’d finally strike gold with a song or a combo or something like that. And so you wrote it down. You wrote it down. Dude, this is what happened. I would be on the mic and I’d say, alright everybody, let’s play, you know, we’re going to do the Rapper’s Delight. So I’d play Rapper’s Delight, I’d do a Soul Train line, and then after I did the Soul Train line, the crowd would always fizzle. You know, everyone’s dancing, hip, hop, a hibby, and they’re all getting into it. And then I would change the beat, we have to think about it and go, this is our inner dialogue, I don’t know, this is a new beat, my body, I just got my body on this beat, and now there’s a new beat, I just got my body on the other beat, I don’t know, I’m going to go to the bathroom. So then we kind of fake it like we have to go to the restroom, we’re like… I’m like, I got it. And we run like an inner dialogue. I got the beat. I can now dance again. And we go back. And I was just doing that over and over. Like, getting the crowd built up, killing the crowd. Getting the crowd built up, killing the crowd. But a checklist saved me. Okay, so you found out what works. Yep. You wrote it down, specifics of what worked. So one, play the song, and two, this is how you have to intro the song. This is how we do it. Specifically say this. And then number three, cue up Billie Jean. Billie Jean. OK. Then begin beat matching and transitioning into that song. And that was something that after you, you found that it worked yourself. That’s when you documented it, and you had a specific checklist timeline. And to make it even better, over time other DJs had their own systems. The guys who would be trained, Josh used to do this. Josh would be out DJing, he’d be rocking and Josh goes, dude, you know those two songs that fit really well together? And I’m like, what? He goes, you remember Usher? Yeah, when that came out? You know, all the soccer moms were like, yeah, you know, he came and he says, Hey, that song goes perfectly after this song. And I’m like, Oh, you’re right. And so we, you know, add that to the checklist. That’s how you do it. Okay. So you take proven strategies, you document the specifics of those strategies, do this, say this, execute it at this time, at this specific, you know, time. And that’s how you begin implementing across an organization. But first you got to find out that it works yourself or else you’re gonna scale crap Oh, yeah, I mean you’re gonna scale the fail and that’s just how it is. You don’t want to scale the fail That’s not a healthy thing to do. You don’t want to and people when they come to work I mean, I’m just telling you my work at Target. I wasn’t wanting to like invent my own barcode system I didn’t want to I wasn’t excited about the complexities of customer service. I didn’t care about their mission statement I didn’t care about Target. I wanted a job. I wanted to exchange my time for money. And so I wanted to go there and do my job and know that I would get paid. So when they had a system for me, they could allow millions of people to be served every day and thousands of employees to serve them with a system. But without a system, I would have been running around just trying to figure out what to do all day. Sure. So the systems, Clayton Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma, he talks about three different things giving a business value. First is the core values at the foundation of the business. Core values. So we have a document that lists all of our core values for Thrive 15. And then the second thing is the workflows, the systems, the processes, because that’s what a business or an investor or a larger company, that’s what they’re going to buy when they buy your company. They invest you. And then the third is the resources. But we’re talking about the middle. We’re talking about the middle, those workflows, those systems, and so it’s so crucial that we have those checklists. And Thrivers, if you want to come out to one of our Thrive15 conferences, all you’ve got to do is just email us, info at thrive15.com. Hit up Marshall, ask him when the next one is. You can come out here and we will literally help you workflow out your entire business model. We do that. It’s all done, boom. So we’ve gotten into it. If you want more trainings, specifically for Faiez, if you want those more trainings on checklists, you can go to Checklist Checklist and Getting It Done Right with Dr. Robert Zellner. Also, Arthur Greeno talks about, he’s a multiple location franchise owner of Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A, one of the best systems and checklist driven companies that I know of. Yeah, Chick-fil-A is awesome, and they keep it simple. And people rip on the fast food industry going, yeah, if you don’t go to college, you know, you’re going to end up saying, do you want fries with that? Well, I don’t know about you, but if you say, do you want fries with that, you can make over $100,000 a year managing one. I’d be happy to say, do you want fries with that all day, every day for $100,000? Boom, done. I mean, systems, baby, systems. Systems. And so, Faiyaz, hopefully that gets you going. But, Clay, thanks for helping us out with this mailbag. We’re answering questions here all the time for these thrivers. Absolutely. Faiyaz, we appreciate you. We’re excited about you. We know this is your year to thrive. And I’m going to tell you this. There’s two things I’m serious about. It’s Star Wars, and it’s helping you succeed. All right? So we’ve accomplished both of those today. Clay, thank you so much. Boom. All right, JT, so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business? To get you to your goal, so it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination and would You need profits to get there. I mean is that when you have a business that’s successful and you’re in your mind your expert opinion Would you need profits to get your to your 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! Alright so the question I would have here for you, if you could take like, I don’t know, ten minutes or less and see if you could save three thousand bucks a year by reducing your credit card fees, would you do it? Yes, absolutely. Holy crap! Why would somebody out there who’s listening right now, who has a sane mind, why would they not go to thrivetimeshow.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 don’t understand how you set the website. This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Griswold family Christmas. Now that’s clear, okay, so that can 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 can save $3,000 or more on credit card fees? Maybe they think it is a waste of time and then it won’t, it’s not possible. There’s somebody out there that’s making more than three thousand dollars every ten minutes and they’re like nah that’s not worth my time we getting there we getting there there’s probably some someone out there okay 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 thronetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard it because you can compare rates, you can save money, and you know 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. It 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 leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool, really. Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh. Huh? 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 if 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. Why 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 case, my particular case, I save over $20,000 a year. Holy crap! Wow. Which is, you know, like groceries when my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great, okay. Oh God. Everything okay, ma’am? It’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items and it’s already 60 bucks. I’m so scared. Okay 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, do we have it? The brand name of the clock, it’s an elegant, from Ridgway, it’s from Ridgway. 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. We have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. 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 dollar 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 or ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, you know, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest and Lawn company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay, so 411% 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, our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned, that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the 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. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, 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 gonna 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 running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockrell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, 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. He teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups, go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with so amazing guy Elon Musk kinds kind of like smart guy He kind of comes off sometimes a socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant And he’s taught me so much when I say that like 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 it most about it He’s like a good coach a coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time, a coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing is when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run and the guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or, you know, 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, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive15. 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 4 to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrivetime 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. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re gonna teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re gonna 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. 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. We’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. 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 our 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 a hundred clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from five clients to twenty clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was thirty and you go to a hundred, as a percentage, what is that? I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. That’s 100% growth every year I’ve worked with you. So 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 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, is I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. 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. Right. 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 that 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 about 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. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and 2010, is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe 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 or 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 was, so it’s Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redman. 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 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, you know, 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 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 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 a 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 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. 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 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 and adjusting parts about you that Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.