Entrepreneur | Does Anyone Want What You Are Selling + Creating A System To Produce Products and Services + Determine The Customer Acquisition Cost

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 hear what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. We are back and today we are talking about business startup 101. Phase 1. Determine if anyone wants what you are selling. You know the goal of this training Clay is to teach our thrivers what the first steps are if you would they need to take In order to turn their idea or their wish into an actual product profitable starting and start a business Yeah, well here’s the deal the good news is we don’t have a lot. It’s not complex right and I think I don’t think I know that college Business college business schools, I know that people get really excited about making this complicated, but I want to keep it simple. Okay, so I want you to look up this quote. We’ll put this on the screen here. But a quote, Bill, that Steve Jobs was famous for saying was, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. So make sure that you kind of resonate. I’m going to give you a knowledge bomb. Let me crank that up here. Again, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, okay? So if this system is very complicated and you can’t get it, then I’m doing a poor job as a teacher. So this is going to be a very short, powerful training for you, okay? Boom. So there’s a four-step process, okay? One is you define what you think is going to work. Define the business idea that you think is going to work. Just write it down. Define it. Step two, you act. You want to actually do it. Like just do it. Go do it. Get rejected. Get feedback. Go do it. Third, measure it. Measure what’s working, what’s not. Fourth, you refine it. You just say, well, this didn’t work as well as I thought it would. I refine. So many people want to define, define, define, define, define, define. I want to define it. I just want to define it. I don’t want to do it. I just want to define it. And you go, well, you need to eventually start your business. Well, at business school, they taught me I needed to figure out all the potential threats, all the potential strengths, all the potential weaknesses, all the potential. I need to get my legal paperwork just right. I need to get all my documents. I need to get my insurance. Check it out. If nobody wants to buy it, it doesn’t matter. So specifically, you can define an idea, you can build a beautiful brand, step one. Two, build a beautiful website. Step three, build a beautiful online ad campaign. Step four, just do it. And then when you launch it, if somebody actually wants to buy it from you, then you go, okay, if I did actually have a product people would want to buy, okay, that’s good to know. That’s how I’ve tested every business I’ve ever been a part of. That’s how you do it. That’s amazing. So you just define, you act, you measure, refine. Now Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel, the guys who wrote the book Scale, they have this awesome notable quote. I’m going to read it to you. They said, your focus as a level one, at level one, so as like a level one business owner, they call it level one in their book Scale. Awesome. They said, your focus at level one is to plan your new business and get immediate feedback to learn if your concept and model is economically viable. That’s what we just said. You have to try to see if the market wants it. So an example, I worked with a lady who had a music school, and this was a music school that was up north. It was kind of near the Minnesota area. And she had this musical school, neat, neat musical school, and she believed that people might want to buy a membership where they could bring their kids back for unlimited music training. They pay a flat fee, they can come two days a week, five days a week, whatever. Interesting. Well, how did she know if it would work? She didn’t. She thought. Customers said, yeah, I mean, I love your idea. People are telling you right now, I love your idea. You’re telling yourself, I love my idea, my idea is perfect. We all, we love the idea. Yeah. Oh, the idea, I got this great idea. How many of us have heard that? I got this great idea, right? Yeah. Then after you hear that I got this great idea, now everyone’s like, I would totally buy it if you had it. I mean, if you had that product, I’d buy it. And then a lot of entrepreneurs build the product and no one wants to buy it. That’s not very fun. But with online ads now, you can track to see whether people even want it before you even have a product. How many people do you recommend you talk to? I would talk to at least 100. Okay. I mean, I’ve said in different trainings, I’ve said between 50 and 100, I just think it’s very, very important that you talk to real people and say, I have this product, will you be willing to buy it? Not just your family members. I had one lady who’s a friend of mine who started a very successful conference chain. She did business conferences. She calls me, she says, Clay, check it out. I’ve got this workshop coming up. I heard about it, it’s awesome. I heard about this workshop, and at the workshop, they teach X, Y, and Z, and I’m telling you, it’s going to be awesome. Do you want to go? And I said, well, yeah. And she goes, it’s $100 a ticket. Can I get your credit card and we’ll book it? And I go, yeah, let me get my card. And she goes, gotcha. I don’t have it yet, but I know you would be willing to pay. That’s great. Thank you. And she just kept doing that until you find out whether people actually would be willing to do it or not. You have to try it, okay? Now, the next notable quote we’ll hear is, your early focus while launching a business isn’t on the product, the perfect product or service, but rather on figuring out how you can get people to buy it. Too many entrepreneurs get caught in the trap of making the perfect widget, but never actually sell enough of the widget to ensure a profit. Drivers, this is huge. We have to make sure. So another example, with our haircut business. We started it, we spent as little money as possible building the facility, and we went out to see if the world wanted what the elephant in the room, aka EITRLounge.com, delivered. That’s our business elephant in the room that we’re franchising. Not yet, but we will in the future. And we have two locations, we’re working on the third one right now. We had to go ahead and get it off the ground. We had to get the marketing materials ready, and we had to just get it out and show people our membership based haircut business for men and to see if they wanted it. And you know what, Jose, a lot of people didn’t want it. Amazing. But they told us what they didn’t want. So we went back to our four step process and we defined, we acted and we measured the results. We realized people didn’t want it. And why? Because they didn’t get it. They didn’t understand. They didn’t get what we were talking about. I see. So we kept refining the way we described to people. We refined our print pieces. We refined our mailers. We refined our website. We refined everything. And what’s called an elevator pitch, how you succinctly explain your business to someone else, we kept refining, we kept refining, and eventually we realized, man, every time that we run an ad, every time we spend $8 on ads, we’re getting one customer. We should probably keep doing that. And we crank it up and crank it up and now it’s a very successful multi-million dollar business. So you kept refining it, it wasn’t perfect the first time through. Yeah, and so if you’re somebody, just ask yourself this, are you the kind of person who wants to just define, you want to read every business book, watch every Thrive episode but you never want to act? Or are you the person who loves to act and never think first? You’re just like, let’s just do it, let’s do it, let’s buy a boat, you know? Or are you the person who loves to measure? You’re like, let’s look at analytics. Let’s look at the analytics. What does the data say? But you’re never actually acting, you know, or are you the person who loves refining? You’re constantly wanting to fix things, but never actually do anything. Yeah, you need all four. All four, baby. That’s how it works. That’s it. We are on Business Startup 101, phase two. Determine your cost per customer acquisition and proof of that concept. The goal of this training, you guys, is to teach you how to determine the real cost of acquiring each customer for your new startup business. Clay, this is a great series for those of us that are starting a business, starting up a business. What are we talking here as we’re diving in? Well, we have a lot of thrivers who want to know, just what is the brass tacks? How do I get started? And we’re walking you through all the steps, okay, this is phase two, okay? And what you’re going to want to do here is you’re going to want to determine how much money does it cost you to get a customer? So you would basically, like in the example of the elephant in the room business that I shared, we ran ads. And we ran those ads, we did mailers with a company called ValPak. We also did online ads. ValPak, by the way, those are the blue envelopes that you get in the mail with a bunch of coupons in them. How do you get in that? Do you go to their website? Yeah, you just Google ValPak, you’ll find a local vendor in your community and you can sign up for about $350 a month. You can mail to about 30,000 people. Amazing. Ish, you know? So you want to try three different marketing things at the same time, three different marketing avenues at the same time, three different marketing strategies. Why three? Because you have to fail fast. You have to fail quickly so you can figure out what doesn’t work. And so what you’ll do is you’ll do, we did ValPak, we mailed ValPak to what we believe to be our ideal and likely buyers, men with enough disposable income to afford a $40 haircut. Then we did online ads targeted at men within that demographic. And the third thing we did is we did physical drop-offs, where we dropped off gift cards at physical businesses to men. So we would go into the doctor’s office and knock on the door and they say, no soliciting. And we say, hey, we’re here to drop off a gift card for the doctor. You know, it’s a gift card for an exclusive premium men’s grooming lounge. We want to give a free gift card to the doctor. And a lot of front desk ladies shut us down, but a lot of them said yes. A lot of front desk guys shut us down, but a lot of them said yes. So we do all three, and we’re just trying to figure out what does it cost per customer. So the guy who’s out dropping off stuff, we’re paying him about $80 a day to drop off gift cards. So he was getting about two people a day. So we’re like, man, that’s $40 per customer. That’s pretty expensive. Then we did our online ads and we realized we’re down to about $8 per customer. That’s not too bad. We’re spending $8 on ads for every one customer that converts. And on the ValPak, we’re going, you know, we’re getting, we’re spending $350 and we’re getting like 40 customers. Wow. That’s, you know, about $8, $9 as well. So we figured out what the cost was to acquire each customer. I’m going to read this notable quotable to you, okay? Get initial market feedback to see if it’s viable. What am I talking about? He’s saying you have to get initial market feedback to see if it’s viable. This is Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel. What am I saying? I’m saying is it like you have to find out if it’s viable. What does viable mean? If it costs you $1,000 per customer to get a customer, that’s not going to work unless you’re selling a product that has a huge markup. So a friend of mine, he has a mortgage business and his profit per mortgage is about $3,000 and he will literally spend, Jose, about $500 per customer to get a customer on ads, but it’s worth it for him. Wow. Now, if you’re selling haircuts, there’s not enough profit margin there to make it work. So you’ve got to determine the viability of your actual business model. What does it cost to acquire each customer? And you have to determine your step-by-step system for acquiring customers in a systematic way. That is your action step. You have to figure out, you have to determine your step-by-step system for acquiring customers in a scalable way. What is the system? So we were defining what businesses for the drop-offs. What kinds of businesses do we go in? What time of day do we go? Was that with you that you have a team around you that you guys, you know Brainstormed well for elephant in the room The co-founder the guy who’s it’s his idea Justin. He was the one who went Okay, he actually went door-to-door himself and dropped off stuff himself to find out what worked and then he found out These are the there’s a certain times the day that work better. There are certain times of the day that don’t work well. There are certain kinds of businesses that work well and certain kinds of businesses that don’t work well. Now, in the online ads, we ran so many different varieties of ads. We found out this ad doesn’t work, that ad doesn’t work, but this one does. And we found out, and we just looked at it. And so, one way you can leapfrog is if you are in an industry that already exists, which I recommend you are in, you would look at who are the big dogs in the industry, who are the goats, the greatest of all time, who are the best in your industry, and how are they getting customers? And so we looked at our competitors and how are they doing it, and we were able to reverse engineer or look at what they did that works and apply it to our business model. And that’s how we were able to quickly refine that model. I say quickly. It took us about six months to get traction where we were getting customers. It took us about a year to get to break even. It took us about a year and a half to get to profit. And now four years in, we are rocking and rolling. So you’re telling me what you’re actually saying is that it takes time, sacrifice, grinding, working, and checking out. Yeah, if you want to start a business. If you want to start a business, it’s going to take that kind of time. A successful business. Yeah, now if you want to just have an unsuccessful business, you don’t need to worry about these things. But if you want to have a successful business, you need to. And I’ll tell you, having a business requires a lot more work than people think it does. And so that’s why I encourage people, if you’re going to get into the world of entrepreneurship, you really, really, really need to be passionate about knowing why you’re getting into the business because that should keep you motivated the entire time that you’re getting all this rejection. Then you should come to a workshop here. If you come to a Thrive15.com workshop. It’s neat because you can meet people like Thrive mentors like Arthur Greeno, the guy who was one of the most successful Chick-fil-A store owners on the planet. You can meet Dr. Zellner, top optometrist, top banker, all these top business people are all here. They’ve been there. They’ve been there, done that. Yeah. And just when you guys, listen, this is how you do it. This is phase two. So you’ve got to go out there and you’ve got to determine the cost per customer acquisition. Track that stuff on a spreadsheet and that’s what’s going to help you to figure out whether your business model is in fact viable. There we go. For any questions, comments, you’re not sure about certain things that we’ve talked about, feel free to email us at info at thrive15.com or if you’d rather not email, you can always call us at 1-800-594-4457. We are here, Clay, to see you succeed. Hello, we are back with Business Startup 101, Phase 3. We’re talking about creating a system to produce your products and services. And the goal of this training is to teach you how to build a step-by-step system and repeatable process for producing and delivering the products and services that you and your company produce. Clay, that’s awesome. Yeah, well, this is the deal. Once you figure out that people actually want to buy your product and service, and that you figure out how much it costs to get a customer, now you need to figure out what is the step-by-step process for mass producing the products and services that your company provides. So going back to the haircut business, we were just excited that people came in. That’s why my brother-in-law, he’s out there actually cutting hair. So he’s marketing and he’s like, holy crap, I’m going to have to cut hair myself. So he’s in there cutting hair himself. And then we realized, man, eventually you can’t cut any more hair. So you eventually have to build a system. And we didn’t have a step-by-step system for going out there and delivering our products in a scalable way. And mass production. Yeah. So we had to ask ourselves, well, what are all the steps? And at first we start to say lazy ideas like it’s common sense. Oh, it’s common sense. But it’s literally when a customer walks in, what do you say? What music is playing overhead? How do you greet them? Where do you seat them? What questions do you ask to figure out what kind of haircut they want? What flip chart do you have so they can point to the picture of the hairstyle they like. What packages do you have available? How long should it take? What do you include in the haircut? Is it a consultation? Is it a cut? Is it a shampoo? Is it a paraffin hand dip? How long should each of those things take? And you go through the whole process, and now we have an iron-clad, bulletproof, unbelievably detailed, systematic, futuristic… I mean, this thing is absolutely… The system now is so it’s so good It sounds like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious this current system. I’m just telling it is so tight we have got the checklists when you walk in the door We’ve got a checklist for to clean the place. We have a checklist for the answer the phone somebody We have a checklist for how to you know follow up on social media a checklist for how to get reviews We have a checklist for doing accounting. Check it out with this clay Ah we have a checklist for every single aspect of the business. I see somebody running down the aisle right there. Oh, what? We have no part of the business where there’s not a system for it. We have a checklist for how to answer the phone, a checklist for how to use social media, a checklist for upselling, a checklist for updating the inventory. Because we have thousands of customers that come in all the time, and we need to be able to duplicate that system. So, the first thing is just figure out what’s going to sell. Don’t worry if it’s duplicatable. Once you figure out what works, then you need to make a duplicatable step-by-step system. I’m going to read you this notable quotable. He says, because every extraordinary business knows that when you intentionally build your business around the skills of ordinary people, you will be forced to ask the difficult questions about how to produce a result without the extraordinary ones. Let’s time out right there. Wow. You don’t want to build a system that’s dependent upon geniuses. You want to build a system that’s dependent upon solid people with good morals, but you don’t want to focus on geniuses. You want to hire for character and then train the skill. Say that again. You want to hire for character and then train the skill. Have you had experience in the past? Oh yeah. I mean, with the DJ business, I used to have it. I built it poorly at first, but I built it where the only people who could possibly execute the system had to be really knowledgeable of music, of sound, of lights, and they had to have a deep desire to have DJed for a long time. So I used to hire radio personalities and people who already had experience DJing. Over time I built the system so tight that we hired people with no DJ experience and it was super easy. It was super easy to recruit people. It was super easy to train people. It was super easy to pay people. It was just duplicatable. So that’s how it works. Now the next part of this quote I want to read to you because this is important says you’ll be forced to find a system that leverages your ordinary people To the point where they can produce extraordinary extraordinary results over and over again You’ll be forced to invent innovative system solutions to the people problems that have plagued small businesses and big businesses as well Since the beginning of time you’ll be forced to build a system that works. You will be forced to do the work of business development not as a replacement for people development, but as it’s necessary correlate. What are we talking about? We’re talking about is you’re gonna have to, that’s by Michael Gerber, the author of the E-Myth. You’re gonna have to break down every aspect of your system into the most finite step by step. Step one, step two, step three. So for Elephant in the Room, we have a checklist where it’s like, step one, turn on the light. Well, actually, it’s step one, unlock the door. Step two, it’s clock in. Step three, turn on the light. You have to be that specific. Yes. And then someone has to follow up on each task where it won’t get done. And that’s how you build a successful business. Is it sexy? I mean, I feel like it. Maybe somebody, there’s somebody out there right now, if you’re making a checklist, this is what you think of every time you’re like, I love making checklists. I just, something every time I think about making a checklist, I get this weird, um, I almost hear this… I love making checklists! It’s awesome! Guys, come on over! Come on over! We can make checklists together, you know? Hey guys, we can hop on a three-way call and make checklists while we’re on the three-way call! We can do checklists on a three-way call while we’re on Google Chats. We can have an Xbox set up. We can have beer! We can have music! It’s so fun! We could even bring a pinata. Yeah, exactly. So I’m saying, most people though when they think about a checklist, this is what they immediately do. They go… You didn’t get the big deal on door number three. You mean I have to sit down and do work? For a long period of time? Yes, Thrivers, and this just in. Making a checklist is terrible. It is not fun. There is no easy shortcut. It takes time. But we have templates. We have downloadables. And how do we get them? Email info at thrive15.com, we’ll send them to you. But it’s going to be unfun. It is going to be time consuming. It is going to be a mind-blowing exercise in futility if you are not intense about making sure that you understand why you’re doing it. If you understand why you’re building a duplicatable system and you will go through the Hades needed to make the system. If you don’t understand why, it’s not worth it. Essential, you’re literally building the foundation for that scalable successful business that would actually allow you to produce that system and service for your clients and check it out financial freedom absolutely that’s what we’re all about here teaching you the specific systems on how to do it if you need any help at all guys get out to a workshop right or email us we’ll give you the templates will show you face to face I don’t care what business you have if you have a bakery we have a thriver I just talked to has a bakery we have another thriver I talked to who has an appliance business I just talked to one the other day, who is a home installation person. They do cabinets and stuff. I talked to a Thriver who is a software guy. I talked to a Thriver who is a photographer. I talked to a lady, wonderful, wonderful lady, neat, neat lady. She does mass mailers. Every system can be duplicatable, but you have to take the time to do it, and it’s going to be tough. There you go. Excellent. Thanks, Clay. 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 business, but you have $15 million 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, 10 minutes or less and see if you could save $3,000 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 10 minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least $3,000 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. That’s clear. Okay, so that can be true. I’m sure everybody 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 getting there, I’m ready! There’s probably some, someone out there. Okay. They would think that. Well, I’ll just tell you folks, if you’re out there today, and you’re making less than $3,000 per 10 minutes, I would highly recommend that you go to thronetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard. 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. Hmm? Stop looking at me swan. Let me tell you a good story here real quick. Here, I actually years ago compared rates with this company here. It’s called IPS. It’s Integrated Payment Services. And I, I scheduled a consultation. I, 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 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 going to be easy, so I need you to be brave, alright? What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia, alright. 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 a business is to create time, freedom and financial freedom. And in order to do 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. Okay. 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 non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has. By being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, you know, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pessimon company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay, so 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85 percent, 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 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 that when everything Gets done and it gets done, right? We it creates accountability We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly both out in the field and also in our office And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really really contributed to our success. But that, like is it the diligence and consistency and doing those 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… The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year. But we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut. Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action, and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline. But that’s what it’s 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% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing the use of services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985 Hello, my name is Charles Kola with Kola 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 and 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 Crockrell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. Think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. 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 start-ups go from start-up to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with, so amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that 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 the most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you and Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. I was really 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, and he told me, he’s like, I’m not gonna touch it, I’m gonna turn it down, because he knew it was gonna 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. He’s impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I got nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house, right? This is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing. And this is our new team. We went from four to 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. When 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 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 system 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. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from five clients to 20 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 30 and you go to 100, 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 a hundred percent growth every year I’ve worked with you. 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, yeah, I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We plan 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 they 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 100 calls. We make two to three hundred calls a day per rep. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there is 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 you bought 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. When you and I reconnected, 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 had five years removed from the 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 remeet 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 it 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, 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 almost 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 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. 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 wanna 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 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 challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.