Entrepreneur | How to Develop the Success MINDSET Needed to Grow a Successful Business w/ Dr. Zoellner & Clay Clark + How to Create the Ultimate Sales Machine With Long-Time Clay Clark Client & Success Story WindowNinjas.com

Audio Transcription

When I think of adversity, I think of torrents of rain. I think of dark clouds. I think of things that you don’t have any control over, and yet they’re coming at you. And you have to make a decision, what do I do? Do I just stand here, or do I move? You know, going up in the Mississippi Delta as I did during the era of legal segregation, it was a time that adversity was surrounding one’s life. It was like torrents of rain that had been coming for generations. And sometimes it seems as if it would never stop. But somewhere along the way you ask yourself the question, how do I get out of this rain? What do I do? What can I do to make a difference and bring some sunshine into my life? Into every life, as the song says, some rain must fall. And rain is what people run away from, to get out of. But it is also the rain that waters and nurtures those incredible ideas that live within us. I think that adversity is challenging, no question about it, but it also becomes a great teacher as well. And now, all casting from the center of the universe and the thrive50.com world headquarters. Let’s go. Presenting the world’s only business school without the VS, with optometrist and entrepreneur Dr. Robert Selner. In the world of business, we have the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. And we’re going to be doing a lot of business with the world’s best business school. With optometrist and entrepreneur, Dr. Robert Zellner. And the Horace Hall Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year in your ear, Clay Clark. It’s The Thrive Time Show on Trump Radio 1170. 3, 2, 1, boom! Oh, yes, yes and yes. Welcome back to The Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark. You’re not so humble, but attempting to be humble host. And you’re really I’m excited today because I’m joined with a guy who when he’s every time that he’s inside the box that rocks, he just takes the show to another level here. We have got the man with the plan, the co-host with the most the optometrist turned tycoon. He is the Daniel Boone of entrepreneurship, exploring the vast city of Tulsa, looking for opportunities. I understand you’re now into the extermination business. Is this correct, Dr. Zellner? Well, I’ve helped my brother. I’ve mentored my brother up, so I feel like I am, but technically it’s his business. But Philip, one of my many brothers, they all come to me and shark tank me, and I’m like, well, hey, it’s about time you stepped out and did something solely on your own. So he did the moves, and now he’s got Zoner exterminating. We’re all very creative in naming stuff. We just put Zoner in the middle. My brother’s a chiropractor. He’s like, Zoner chiropractic. You know, I buy new buildings, so Zoner Center. I mean, it’s all very creative, I know. Did you, and I just wanted to make sure your brother’s aware, I saw you out front of the Thrive World Headquarters, the 20,000 square foot facility here by the left coast of the Arkansas River and the J.Fix Riverwalk. I saw you out there spraying for bucks, like really just spraying, like really passionate. I didn’t know if you were taking some of his business or if you were marketing or wasn’t sure of the relationship. It was me? You sure it was me? No, I’m not sure. I’m not sure. But I mean, I will spray, especially against mosquitoes. I mean, mosquitoes are probably, I mean, you can think about me, if you want to go camping and have a mosquito-free experience. You’re the guy who does it. You just bring me along. You invite me. You bring me along. Now we have Rich inside the Box That Rocks. Now Rich is an incredible member of the Thrive Team, a cold calling phenomenon. And from time to time, we like to bring him into the Box That Rocks because he has some knowledge that you don’t pick up in college. See, this guy’s learned through the hard knocks of cold calling and search engine writing. I’m excited to have Rich on the show. Well, he’s a wonderful man. He’s a beautiful man. And, you know, we were talking earlier and it was kind of like he’s kind of like that unicorn that you know is there, kind of like a Sasquatch. You know they exist. You very seldom see them. And then when you have the sighting of them, it’s always very kind of euphoric. I mean, you’re like, oh my gosh, I finally saw a Sasquatch. Now, Rich, how are you doing, my friend? Oh, I’m living the dream. How are you guys? Well, it’s ecstasy now that you’re next to wheat. Right now, Justin, how are you doing, my friend? Justin, founder of the Elephant in the Room Men’s Grooming Lounge. How are you, sir? I’m doing awesome. I’m just glad that you guys invite me back week to week. Your beard is looking thicker. It’s looking healthier. What products are you using? Yeah, so it takes dedication to have a beard, as probably some of our listeners know, but lots of combing, right? Moisturizing, oils, you know, oils, accoutrements, accoutrements. And to be honest, after a while, if you ask me how long I’ve been growing it for and if I’m ever shaved off and I don’t think so. I’m not gonna part ways with it. You know, it gets attention now. It’s kind of like Mardin. It’s like it’s kind of like it’s kind of like a dog in the park that you don’t have to feed. I mean, if you think about it. Oh, a dog in the park? A dude takes a dog in the park, I mean just face it, to get attention. Oh yeah. Is that your puppy? Is that your puppy? Is that a shih tzu? Can I pet it? Can I pet it? That’s a move, I’ve never thought about that move. Every single guy would probably do that move. I mean that’s the move. But seriously I was like, I own Elephant in the Room Men’s Grooming Lounge and I want to become a brand myself. You know, I talk about that a lot, branding yourself. But ultimately, so my hair and my beard is just that. And so it gets attention a lot of times. Well, and it should. It should. Now, Z, we’re talking today about a subject that’s near and dear to my heart. This is the dysfunctions of an entrepreneur, the dysfunctional mindsets of an entrepreneur. This is right in our wheelhouse. And I am going to make a confessional on this show. And I’m going to share the one that’s my problem or was my problem but every entrepreneur listening I want to encourage you to find the one that’s you so I’m going to start with the first one. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out, time out, time out. Whoa. Pump the brakes big guy. Pump the brakes. Pump it off. Pump it. The way you just said that implied that you only have one dysfunction. Well, I have many, many idiosyncrasies but there’s one primary dysfunction I used to have. Primary dysfunction, yes, of course. So here is the dysfunctional mindset. So this is the employee mindset entrepreneur. I’ll start with you, Justin, you can break this down for us. You want to be a successful entrepreneur, but you desperately want to be told that you can keep the same schedule that you had when you were a nine to five employee to find life balance. Just like when you work for someone else, anytime there is snow on the road, you want to call in and request off for safety reasons for your own business, you want to take the day off before every major holiday, the day after, the day before Columbus Day, you desperately want the law of suing and reaping not to apply to you because you are now self-employed. Justin, talk to me about the employee mindset entrepreneur. You’ve seen these guys. They want to work the same schedule they had when they were employees, but they haven’t built the business yet to be able to do it and so they’re kind of like, well I want to work, you know, 36 hours a week and take off 12 weeks a year, you know. Talk to me about it, my friend. Those are people that actually probably hate their job, you know. I love to work. I don’t work for the weekend. I don’t work for the holidays. But this is the thing, you need to work like no one else so you can live like no one else. Oh, preach it! Oh, okay. And I said you talked about this this morning, okay, so I handle all the training at Elf in the Room, and so I see hundreds and hundreds of people for training, and a lot of times, we’re training for the mindset. Will you do what’s required of you to get the result you want? That’s my definition of success. And so one of them is putting the work in, so if it’s a simple math equation, everyone’s taking holidays off, everyone’s taking weekends off, everyone takes nights off, I’m going to work those hours, make myself more valuable over a time period that will show dramatically. Okay, so now I’m going to go with Dr. Z for 5,000 mega points. I’m going to read this mystic statistic coming at you hot from Business Insider. It says, check out how much the average American works each year compared to the French, the Germans, and the Koreans. The average American is now working approximately 1,680 hours per year, which, if you’re dividing that by 40 hours per week, means that the average American only works 42 hours or 42 weeks per year. The average American only works 42 weeks per year. Z, if you haven’t got to the gold yet, why is it a problem if you’re taking all the time off and you’re being self-employed? Well, let me, can I, can I do a little preaching? Oh, come on, bring it. Am I allowed to preach a little bit? You are allowed to preach. Let me, let me, let me get myself emotionally motivated. You see here, Clay. Okay. Are you watching? I’m watching. Are you listening? Preaching? Are you paying attention? Go ahead. If you work a 9 to 5… What? …and you own the place… What?…then that’s what we call jive. What? Huh? What? You see, when you own the place… Own the place. …you get to work the 80 hours you choose. The 90 hours you need to. You said 80 hours? The 100 hours you have to. I don’t know if I can go there with you. I don’t know if I can go there with you. That seems like a lot of work. Well, I’ll tell you what! What? Or you could be like 8 out of 10 businesses and just, you know, shut down after you’ve opened it up, after you’ve spent your hard money, your time, your dreams, all your passions. Yeah, you could Google it. It’s Forbes. 8 out of 10 businesses fail. Because most people are trying to make a job for themselves and they want the same rules that apply when they have a job. Okay, now I’m going to read you a notable quote from Jerry West, the NBA Hall of Famer. The logo, the NBA logo was actually designed based upon his body. His silhouette is the NBA logo. He says, you can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good. Now, Rich, I’m going to read off the holidays that most people take off, or the pseudo holidays. And then I’m going to let you kind of, because you’ve learned the concept of rise and grind since you’ve been here. So here we go. You’ve got the day before New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, the day before New Year’s Day, the day before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the day before President’s Day, President’s Day, the day after President’s Day, the Thursday before Good Friday, Good Friday, the Saturday before Easter, Easter. Someone had a lot of time on their hands to make this list. I could go on and on and on, but I’m not going to. So, Rich, you’ve been here for a while. How has your work ethic changed since joining the Thrive team, you know, versus maybe previous occupations? I literally work three-quarters of these days off. Okay, so you work these days that most people take off now. Absolutely. You don’t take Black Friday off? Oh, no. You don’t? No. Oh, this year I did because my wife made me. Do you make more money now though than you used to? I make three times more now than I have ever in my lifetime. So if you could educate your former self, you know you’re talking to your former self, the self from let’s say how long have you been with the team here? A year and a half. Okay so a year and a half you could talk to the you to the version of yourself that applied for the job a year and a half ago, please preach to yourself. Stop filling your day with Jack Astry and get your stuff done. Oh, wow. Wow. See, that deserves a breakdown right there. I don’t know how you’re going to break that down, Z. Wow. Well, Jack Astry is defined as all the stuff that you do that doesn’t go toward your checklist of getting stuff done for the day. You know, I love Clay. He’s got his little, you know, he’s like me, right? I don’t know that he could get… What FOD do you use on your checklist? Because that’s small. Nine. Nine. Yeah. Yeah. It’s small. And so it’s so fun that when you say, okay, these are the things I need to get done in life, and if you’re doing something that is not working toward getting one of those things done, that’s called Jackassery. And Jackassery is a wealth repulsion system that all cultures have learned. Oh, and it’s very effective, by the way. It’s huge. It’s very effective. It’s amazing how it’s not a, it’s kind of an agnostic almost thing. It’s like any religion, any group of people, any culture has picked it up. It’s amazing how you see Jack Astor. I mean, if you travel around the world. So you’ve traveled around the world. Oh yes, and it exists in every culture. It exists in every country. It exists in every race. It’s out there. It has no biases. I mean, it doesn’t care who you are. It will affect you like a virus if you let it. So if you have the employee mindset, you might want to circle that. If you have the employee mindset, but you want to become an entrepreneur, not good. Dysfunctional mindset number two, the aggressive, critical, and demanding of immediately impossible results. Here’s an example. You don’t like the concept that over a 25-year period of time, one man, Dr. Selner, with diligence could build the state’s most successful auto auctioner. One of the state’s most profitable optometry clinics. The state’s most profitable… I’m going to list off the businesses you’re involved in. Durable Medical Equipment, Diagnostic Sleep Center, Online Business School, I’m Missing Something. What else are you involved in? The auto auction, Eye Care, Thoroughbred. But people are listening to you and they say, I don’t like that. Well, I just watched a Tony Robbins video and I got excited and I watched this Tai Lopez video and I want to get my success right now. I want it immediately because I want it to be right now because I want to get rich quick because I deserve it, I believe it, I’m going to name it, I’m going to claim it. And they’re mixing kind of religion with motivation. They walked on the hot coals. They want it now. They don’t like the idea. But how long did it take you to build the optometry clinic to where it is to where you could actually open the next successful business? Because you were fruitful before you multiply. Probably 10 years. 10 years? Yeah, probably a good, I would say, let’s see, 91 to, yeah, nine years, eight and a half to nine years. I’ve rounded it up to 10. There’s probably somebody listening who is not in the corner of an entrepreneur, but they are in the family of an entrepreneur. They’re going, oh my gosh, he works too much, she works too much. They work all the time. But how many hours, how many days a week did you work when you started the optometry clinic? And how long did you keep up that pace before it could finally scale without you? Well, I started, I was seven days a week, and then I peeled off a day every year, year and a half to two years, I peeled off a day. Then finally after, what, 10, 12 years, I’m not physically working in the practice anymore. How many years did you work seven days a week? Probably two, because I started peeling off a day about every couple of years, and so therefore I was six days a week, and then five days a week, and then four days a week. So you worked six days a week still after you’d been in business maybe four or five years? Yeah, well, I was probably transitioning to five at that point, but yeah. Did you have kids or did you live in a van down by the river? We don’t know. We’ll come back after the break. We’re going to talk about, did you have kids? Was that the van in the river? Did you live in a van down by the river during that time? Was shag carpet on the inside of it? Probably that’s probably the shag carpet thing. I’ve got some good stories about that. When we come back, we’re going to talk about the dysfunctional mindsets that could be preventing your success. It is the Thrive Time Business Coach Radio Show. Stay tuned, thrivetimeshow.com. I’m Ken P. Lott and I’m from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Professional painting by Ken. Quite a bit of stuff. A lot of stuff I know that I needed to do but didn’t know how to do it. Web page, how to hire people, sales, making a schedule, making programs, I mean just a lot of stuff. I mean it’s overwhelming but it’s good stuff that you can actually put to practice right away. It’s a lot different than I expected. I’ve been to different workshops and you’re just waiting for the sales punch, you know, and they give ideas and stuff but it’s always 10 years down the road when you can actually apply the stuff that they’re trying to promote and this is not like that at all it’s very ground level help you start a business and maintain and grow a bigger business. I like it a lot because he makes you feel comfortable, makes you laugh so it opens you up to receive and hear better. This is great. It’s a lot of interaction. You can ask him questions. You can help. He can, I mean if you don’t understand something, he can explain it more. So it’s very, very helpful. I mean, they’re missing a lot. A lot of businesses probably do some of the steps that he’s teaching, but there’s so much they can learn and they’re easy steps that they’ll grow the business even better. It’s not like any other workshop I’ve ever been to. It’s very laid-back and a lot of information and it’s a comfortable setting. It’s awesome. It’s a really good experience. It’s a really good experience. Dr. Z 18 years later, Brat 15, Radio Exec’s called to produce this show and now 3, 2, 1, here we go! And now more from the man whose face was made for radio. Such a mean, mean statement right there saying my face was made for radio but true, I mean mean but true Z, it’s very, it’s all about being self-aware my man, it’s all about being self-aware. I don’t know that it was made for radio, I think, I think you are such a handsome man. I mean, let’s break it down. I mean, you’ve got zero pigment. Yeah. So you could be, you know, just physically the whitest guy I know. Yeah, absolutely. I’m kind of like Keith Van Horn if he hadn’t ever gone outside. Right. I mean, if your family, if your mom and dad had named you Casper, I mean, we would understand why. Yeah. I mean, that’s a thing where a lot of thrivers are going, hey, listen, I’m trying to think about things that could help Clay. I’m trying to think about ways to give back in the community. One thing you could do is just shield me from light. As an albino, it’s tough. Any light at all. One thing I need to make sure you’re doing is taking some vitamin D supplements because you’re not getting it from the sun. I’ve been taking some vitamin Z. Well you need vitamin D. I’m assuming you’re planting your trees at three in the morning or something. The guy who was giving me the vitamin Z is kind of sketchy. I don’t really check the FDA label on that. It’s D. It rhymes with Z. It’s a little bit further up the alphabet. There was a time that Clay had a really, really nice tan. Maybe you can share that story one time. But there was a spray tanning. He got spray tanned one time. Maybe he can share that with you. We didn’t have this competition. He didn’t share that with you? He’s never told me about this. Don’t forget to share. Justin and I have done fitness competitions. We should do one again here. We really should. You should. It was Body for Life though. Body for Life. Was it a 60 day, 90 day challenge? 90 day challenge. And we got after it. It was intense. We got after it. And it worked. If you’re out there thinking about Body for Life, I don’t want to say they still do it, but we did it. You have to do before pictures and after. We need to do it again. We need to do it again. It’s intense. So anyways, I had this brilliant idea. So when guys are in bodybuilding, they spray tan to show their definition. I said, let’s get spray tan because it will show our definition and we want to win this competition. And you submit your photos, all that stuff. It’s nationwide. And so I taught Clayton to spray tanning. Well, the young lady sprays us. She, I guess her setting was for like ultra dark, you know, ultra dark, ultra dark. Nice. So yeah, we got pretty dark and it was pretty, pretty funny, but the tank has been dark. I would like to see those pictures. I’d like to. We had them, but they’re, they’re gone now. They’re on Dropbox. Are they? I saved everything, bro. I can definitely pull them up. We’ve got it. We got to get these in because it’s like Photoshop. Our heads were Photoshopped. They didn’t spray our face on things. It looks like the Tropic Thunder, you know, the Carnivorous Tropic Thunder. That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. Let’s make a rap song for EITR and that will be the cover right there. Okay, I’ll do an elf in the room. I accept that challenge. You have to text me an old school song you like. Okay. Any old school beat, I’m down. It’s got to be old school because the majority of our listeners are in their 40s and 50s. You don’t start a business until you have a kid or two, you know. And so the listeners, they love the old school hip hop. So that’s the move. So dysfunctional mindset number two. The aggressive, critical, and demanding of immediately impossible results. Now, Z, you worked seven days a week for two years, roughly, and then you worked about six days a week for two more years. What kind of trade-offs and sacrifices did you make, and did you have kids at the time, or did you live alone in a van down by the river? Actually, I had, I started the family about the year before I started my business. And so I had kids and I had all that going on. And the trade-off is that, you know, of course when your kids are real young, and they don’t, you know. I mean like when I was born, I know I was born in Dallas, but I don’t remember it, I was pretty young. What? Yeah, I know. I remember the exact moment I came out of my mother’s birth canal. You have a different kind of brain. I came out and I’m like, how do this is gross? This is gross, get me out of here. I’m cold. I remember the specific second. The lights are bright. The thing about it is this, is that you do make trade-offs, but you understand that you’re trading one thing for another thing. You’re trading now for then. You’re delaying gratification is basically what you’re doing. That’s one of the things that I try to teach, and if anybody listens, I will say it over and over again. Delay gratification, because then what happens is by delaying it, it’s much better and bigger down the road. When you said delay gratification, I heard you say, Nyeem peey, fneey, fneey, fneey, fneey, fneey, fneey, fneey, fneey, fneey, fneey, fneey, Can you repeat that again real quick? I just want to make sure. Well, it’s about delaying gratifications. It’s about you say, well, listen, I don’t want to work hard now because I know I’m going to work the rest of my life. Well, if you work hard now, you don’t have to work the rest of your life. There’s a Thriver listening who’s got some kind of ear blockage going on and all they heard was, and you said something and when you said it, it’s so counter-cultural, it’s hard to maybe hear what you just said. Just one more time, just in case the Thrivers are just cleaning out the earwax there. It’s delay gratification. Oh, it’s crazy, I know. But the thing about it is that our whole culture, especially here in the U.S., is that you go out there and you don’t delay it, but you actually get it before you deserve it. So you get credit card, you get out there. You got a job, you’re going to school, you get that debt, you get that car, you get that house, you borrow, you borrow, just borrow, borrow, borrow, borrow, and all of a sudden… I’m not opposed to borrowing, but I’m also opposed to people living outside their means, you know, living outside their means. And so that’s what makes it tough to delay their gratification. Now Geno Wickman, this is the guy who started a program called Traction, which full disclosure, is one of the competitors of Thrive15.com, but I quote him because his program is awesome, it’s just seven grand a month. See, seven grand, $7,000 a month, and there’s a contract, and he’s sort of like the golden boy of the coaching. You need to work with companies that already have $10 million of revenue. Our heart is more to help somebody find the path, establish the path, and grow the existing business. Well, he’s not just $7,000 a month, you’ve got to sign up for a year, and that’s an $84,000 commitment. It’s a deal. He says this, he says most people, make sure you’re not, we don’t want to do accurate math, we just want to be vague and wrong. But he says most people are sitting on their own diamond mines and the surest way to lose your diamond mind is to get bored, become overambitious, or to start thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. Find your core focus, stick to it, and devote your time and resources to excelling at it. Rich, you make cold calls for businesses. Yes. Today, how many calls did you make roughly outbound? How many cold calls did you make roughly, my man? About 250. And how many appointments did you set, bro? Wow. 10. 10. Sweet. Now, I’m just telling you, Rich, of all the cold callers I’ve ever had, I’m not exaggerating, he is the best cold caller I’ve ever had. Seriously, he’s the icebreaker. Now Rich, when you’re making 250 calls, your success rate, 125 Z, doing the math on that, that’s like what percent? I mean, 125? It feels like- He said he did 10 out of 250, right? So 10 out of 250. So what’s the percentage on that there? That’s- Out of 100, that would have been 10%, so just under five. Okay. I was going to say just under five, because 10% would have been 25, and he only said 10. So Rich, I mean, when you’re making those calls, how do you stay focused, bro? I smile and dial until they buy, cry, or die. I prefer buy or die. When you first started working here, though, how did your first day go? Because the first day you were working with Marshall, and he had like an interactive spiritual coming to Jesus connection with you there. How did the… because the first day, I don’t think you’d ever been in a place where it’s like you literally make calls until they cry, buy, or die. But explain to the Thrivers that interaction while you’re super hot and close to that microphone? It was bad. There was some colorful conversations between Marshall and I, and even John Kelly and I, and even Eric Herrman and I. It was kind of like the trifecta of awesome trying to teach me to get better. Now, here’s the deal, Thrivers, is that if you are an entrepreneur, though, and you don’t have a boss or a manager holding you accountable, you’ve got to find some way to hold yourself accountable. So maybe that’s your thing. Maybe your thing is you just want to get results immediately and you don’t want to be held accountable. And we come back, we’re going to talk about dysfunctional mindset number three, the chronically distracted entrepreneur. And we’re trying to figure out which one of these dysfunctions is the one that’s holding you back from the success that you deserve, Dr. Z. Which one? Absolutely. Well, we got to get to the end of the list and then we’ll uncover. We’ll uncover. Dr. Z, I’m so excited about you and your great Americanism. Stay tuned. Thrivetimeshow.com. My name is Nikki Warren and I’m from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The name of my business is the Mocha Butterfly and I’m a fashion designer. I heard about the Thrivetime Business Workshops through a dear friend of mine and I got a chance to meet with Clay and Dr. Z. As I talked to them a little bit more, I loved what they were doing and it just made me more intrigued because I really wanted to grow my business. Well, what I’ve learned is that for my business in particular, marketing is needing to be – I need to step it up a lot more and just focusing in on some key things to get that really going is going to really get me where I want to go with my goals. I think it’s fun, it’s a fun atmosphere which most business oriented, you know I’m an artistic, you know, artsy person and I tend to lose interest very quickly if I don’t have something to keep me engaged and you know the humor, the real-life experience and the casualness of it is just really engaging for me and it’s just very relatable. And so for me, I am having a ball. I was so excited to come yesterday. I had butterflies, literally, butterflies in my stomach and I’m just really excited to be here. Well, it’s an interesting place. It’s got a lot of words of affirmation and quotes and things like that, very positive environment. The people here are very nice and friendly and I love the way the room is set up. It’s very open space type of a model and like I said, it’s more of a casual environment. It’s not stuffy and professional. You know, like it’s professional but it’s not stuffy professional. There is a difference. And so it’s very warm and inviting here. Love the teaching style. Love the presentation. Very organized and easy to follow. And like I said, the real life experience and the humor just adds that much more to it. I know people who go to different workshops, and I’m not sure if they’re grasping all of what’s being presented there, but I am almost 100% sure that if they come to a workshop like this one, they will get some great golden information that’s going to help them meet their goals if they’re willing to apply what they hear. There’s no upselling here, which that wasn’t really a big concern for me, but if I were talking to someone who’s very concerned about upselling, I would tell them that they have no worries here and that, like I, you know, I think that this environment is very relaxed, inviting, warm, and engaging. And so even, it does actually, makes you wonder, like, what else, what else is there? I won’t lie about that. So it’s kind of more of an independent intrigue rather than someone pushing you into the intrigue of what else is offered. I recommend coming to this workshop because it is intimate, an intimate setting, great people. I’ve met some really cool people doing some cool businesses and the teaching style and the presentation is awesome. I made a mixtape in my dorm room, I can’t believe this, it doesn’t seem true, I won’t stop though, till everybody knows. It’s the Thrive Time Show. Started from the bottom, now we here. Now Z, what if you start at the bottom and end at the bottom? I mean, what if you’re 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs, according to Forbes, they start at the bottom and end at the bottom? Or they start at the top and end at the bottom. Either way, it’s like they’re not, you know, 8 out of 10 businesses are failing and we hate that number. But what would you say to the entrepreneur who has maybe gone from the top to the bottom or from the bottom to the bottom a couple times. Well, what I would suggest is this, is that maybe you might want a little help. You might want to find a mentor, i.e. a business coach. And we here at the Thrive Nation, we are asking to be your business coach. You know, we do it with excellence. We have a lot of success stories. You can get on Thrive Time Show reviews and you can see the people that have come to our in-person workshops and the life-changing information that we gladly, happily, i.e. joyously give you. Oh, wow, joyously. We have it. We would have what we would call an ardor, a fiery passion to give this to you. And as a wordsmith, we want, all we ask for you to have is an alacrity, which is a cheerful, joyful, joyfulness to learn. It’s a cheerful, it’s excitement and eagerness to learn. Alacrity, someone should write that down. Alacrity, that’s all we ask you have, is a willingness and eagerness to learn. Because if you are, if the student appears, you know, if the student is ready, then the teacher will appear, my friend. Yes, and we humbly suggest that you allow us to maybe help you down your journey of starting and growing a business. That’s what we’re about. That’s the journey we started. Clay’s been doing it. Clay is certified as the world’s best business coach, in case you didn’t know. I’m just here just to make sure he doesn’t run amok. That’d just go crazy. I’m the guardrails at the bowling alley. We’re now writing articles for Forbes. We’re doing some stuff, and there’s a very strong possibility our podcast is going to be… We’re in the process right now, but it looks like we may be endorsed soon by Forbes on the little, you know, Forbes.com, the little podcast, suggested podcast. Oh, fantastic. Well, they’ve already kind of endorsed Thrive 15. I mean, they, they think a lot of it and we are appreciative of that. And so it’s a thing. It’s a, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s a thing and we’re, we’re here, but our heart is to help you with the tough stuff in business because a lot of times you don’t know what the tough stuff is. Now, Z, I’m going to, I’m going to read some stuff right now that’s very offensive and I just want you to be reverent about it. I don’t want you to you know make fun of the thrivers out there because okay here we go um this is the minds dysfunctional mindset number three is the chronically distracted entrepreneur what what you say my phone just works sorry you want to focus and pay attention oh I’m sorry my wife just text me but you received a notification on your phone that you wanted to check real quick yeah I do want guacamole and you know do you know that you and you alone must create the thousand words of content that Google needs on Every single page of your website But you keep updating your Facebook status and you got into a 45-minute conversation with one of your employees about how you felt instead of Doing it you also recently discovered It’s hard to write while watching non-stop coverage of a recent hurricane on CNN you my friend are the chronically distracted entrepreneur and Daniel Goleman, a clinical psychologist, says this for you. He says, we need to recreate boundaries. When you create a digital gadget, when you carry a digital gadget that creates a virtual link to the office, you need to create a virtual boundary that didn’t exist before. So I’m going to start with you, Z, because this is huge. How do you manage your cell phone? Because people, they want to call you on your cell phone. Call me on my cell phone. Even when you’re out at a movie. How do you handle it? You’ve got a lot of businesses, a lot of employees. How do you specifically handle your cell phone? You know, here’s the thing, Clay, is that it’s so easy and people are spending billions. You’ve got to understand, companies are spending billions of dollars to get you addicted to that thing and to get you to check it every 32 seconds. You understand that? True. I mean, they’re spending billions. I mean, this is a fight for your brain. It’s a literal fight for your brain and your attention. And they are making copious amounts of money on getting your attention. And you have to be very purposeful in saying, you know what, my attention is going to be directed, focused on where it needs to be focused. And so you just have to be purposeful. I mean, you have to say to yourself, you know, I’m not, you know, I’m not, it used to be, I remember back when we were a kid and you just had the, you know, we didn’t have cell phones, you just had a phone in the house, right? And that phone would ring. I mean, it would be like a, like an Olympic sprint to the phone. I mean, it would be just like, Oh my gosh, somebody’s calling Santa. I mean, Christmas, something. Oh my gosh, it would be like an Olympic sprint of the kids trying to get to that phone. It could be something exciting. Pick up the phone. Hello, Zona Residence. How may I help you? Who’s calling? We had a little script that we had to use on the phone. And God forbid if someone called long distance, what you do is you shut down. Your Aunt Karen is calling long distance. Do you understand? Guys, she’s calling long distance. Everyone, shh. The world would stop as we know it. And you have a long phone with a cord. It’s a long cord. And you would take that long cord. Because you didn’t have the cord. You didn’t have wireless yet. No. And what you would do is you would say, shh. She is calling from Minnesota. Oh my goodness. And everyone’s like, oh my gosh, from Minnesota. That’s so far on one phone line. How is it possible? I mean, it’s just crazy you know so then so we we’ve all I mean I learned a Zing and Bow with that phone it’s almost like a Pavlov dog thing you ring the bell and you just salivate you know it’s kind of like oh my gosh it buzzes it bings it does whatever so well first of all turn off all your notifications you don’t want everything dinging and buzzing and beeping on your phone. Turn off all the notifications. Turn off all the notifications okay and then check it on a regular basis under your situation. Time out, time out. Because you said this and I saw you do this. You had a laptop up here at the office. Okay. And someone turned it on the jackass mode, which is the notification mode, where it would update you when there’s nothing. Turn that off. Turn that off. I mean, I watched you do it. Yeah, I’m just turn that off. Turn that off. There’s enough binging and buzzing and flipping and booning and bonging. Psychology Today did a study and it said the average American has over 70 interruptions a day. 70, 70, that’s between texts, voicemails, emails. How can you get anything done? So Justin, you’re an entrepreneur in the digital age, you know, potentially living in the digital cage. What advice would you have for the man there? Because he turns off the notifications and you’re out there running a very successful company, you know, getting closer and closer to 100 employees, an elephant in the room, things are growing. What questions do you have for the Zolhan? Yeah, so the cell phone is definitely a distraction. You’re reachable 24-7 and the best thing to do is, you know, maybe put a disconnect in that phone, turn it off at night, you know, it can wait till tomorrow. Some of my employees, what if the place is blowing down, what if the place is burning down? They asked me, I said, well call 901, you know, and call fire department, maybe they have insurance, things like that. So say you’ve done that move now. So now you’ve got a shop, and this is kind of where I’m at. So I walk into the shop and it’s, hey, you got a second, you got a minute? I got this idea, I need to run something by you. You know, and it’s that. So it’s almost like the person themselves, employees, is now that distraction instead of the phone. You know, and so it’s regulating that, you know, scheduling time. So, because I get bombarded as well, and we have some new staff members who are training in the call center. And so for me, it was, the move was, write down all your questions throughout the day on one sheet of paper, but I want you to try to solve them first on your own, and then we’ll schedule a time to sit down and go over these because I find myself not getting my to-do list done. You know? You’re gonna have the to-do list of your own, and then the day’s gonna throw you its own to-do list. See, I’ve got a fever, and the only cure is how do I deal with got a minute meetings? Hey, do you got a minute? Do you got a minute? How do you deal with it, my man? How do you deal with it? No, no, no. Write them down. Supervisor, supervisor, supervisor. Boom. What you do is you put layers in between you that people have to kind of maneuver to get through to you. That sounds mean. Like, oh my gosh, that sounds so mean. The thing about it is that you’re right. I mean, an employee with this idea in their mind can be as big a distraction as anything as you’re going through your day. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a good idea and you don’t need to talk to them. But as a general rule of thumb, you don’t do it every single time. You have a process that gets vetted, that they get to you. When we come back, we’re talking more about how to deal with the distractions that inevitably come up as an entrepreneur. Stay tuned, it’s the Thrive Time Business Coach radio show, baby, baby. My name’s O’Neal Bent, and I’m from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. I first heard about the business workshops through my wife, Sherita Bent, and I learned a lot more from her and also got follow-up calls from different members of the organization. Some of the things I’ve learned about starting my business through Thrive is making sure I’m spending my money on the things I need to spend it on. For instance, like my search engine optimization, my marketing, constantly reviewing the content that I have on my website, and that’s just a few of the things. The overall experience I’ve had from the Thrive Time Workshop has been wonderful. I love how everything that we learn is practical. It’s not based off of book knowledge, it’s not based off of someone else’s ideas, it’s based off things that have actually worked and have been tried and true. When you walk in, I mean, we came into a smell of wood burning. There’s a chimney outside, so we walked to the building. And when you get inside, you almost feel like there’s like a, I don’t know if it’s like a pub slash club slash work environment. It just feels really good. You have music blaring, friendly faces, people say hello. And then when you sit down in your seat, you have nice, comfortable chairs, a wooden desk to work on, and everything looks modern. So it’s a really refreshing feeling. Clay’s presentation and teaching style is very efficient, effective. It’s also endearing, though, because he’s very comical. He’ll talk about different things he’s been through, and they’re all very funny. But he also hits the exact points he needs to hit at the right time. You never feel like, man, is he ever going to stop talking? You always want to keep listening, and then when it’s bathroom break time, you’re surprised it’s already there. So I like how he talks about his practical experiences, and it’s very enjoyable. The interaction of the workshop is mostly Clay will give you information that you need to know, but then he also opens it up for questions, so there’s always this question and response type of situation. And then there’s certain things where he’ll direct you to do things and it’s because he knows that that’s the way to go. You might question it, but I highly encourage you just to listen and do. To jump into a business and think that you know everything is the most prideful arrogant thing you could ever do but to come here and to speak to someone who’s already done this many times has directed several businesses and can give you wisdom and information I think it’s it’s wonderful and I think you you can never do anything on your own you have to have other people around you to help you and he’s definitely helpful. The experience I’ve had coming to Thrive Time workshops is I was never upsold anything. I mean, I come in, they do exactly what they say they’re gonna do, and they leave it up to you to follow up and do the work. And I think that’s the way it should be. So it’s very straightforward and they do what they say. I recommend that everybody should check out Thrive Time Workshop because there’s so much knowledge and information there that you can use to help you run your business. And like I said before, I don’t think you can do anything completely on your own. And when you have so much resource and knowledge in one area, you can use all of that and get exactly what you need. Jesse Joey Danny Rebecca Here we go, Trevor sing along here we go See come on now Well, I did know that one. That’s the best song ever. Do you guys remember a time… Wait, wait, wait. Did you say the best song ever? Yeah, I mean… Ever. Of all times. Of all times. It’s probably in the top one. I mean… Are you a day quill again today? Yeah, seriously, I am. You look a little allergic. Okay, but I want to, I want to, this is, this is, you remember a time, Z, where the family would gather around the tube, the television, because that actually had a tube in the television. Yes. You would gather and the tube was thick, it was deep. Yes. You would gather around and you, what you do is you would, you’d watch the show, Full House or Different Strokes or Family Matters or Silver Spoons, Rick Schroeder. Oh yeah. Here we are face to face. A couple of the silver spoons. What was the one with Balki? What was the show? Perfect Strangers. Or Fresh Prince. Oh yeah, Fresh Prince of Bel Air. West Philadelphia, born and raised. And so the thing is the show only came on at one time. Yeah. You couldn’t just. Netflix it? You couldn’t be in a meeting and start Netflixing. So this is what I’m talking about. We’re talking about the dysfunctions of the modern entrepreneur. And this literally happened in my office. Now, Z, you like Game of Thrones. I like Game of Thrones. There are scenes in Game of Thrones, though, that we go, maybe we could do without, but they’re in Game of Thrones. Correct. And so I’m in a medium, just a true story, before I sold the photography company, one of our best photographers who I lobbied super hard to fire, but I could not fire him because I did not have the final decision-making power as we were transitioning during the selling of the business. I’m talking to him and then I noticed to my right I look, he has two monitors. One monitor he’s editing photos. On the second monitor he’s watching one of the adult scenes from Game of Thrones. Okay, okay, gotcha. And I said, why are you watching Game of Thrones and why is that scene on? And that’s got to offend the ladies who work here. There’s so many things are wrong with it, you know? And he goes, Oh, I didn’t know I couldn’t watch Game of Thrones while working. No, I didn’t know, bro. Hey, bro, you could not do that back in the day. You’d have to bring your big tube to the office. You have to have your cable subscription, cable subscription. There’s so many. You know, the ears, you’d have to know that you bring your the ears, the rabbit ears on your TV. So I told him he couldn’t watch it because I’m a meanie. And then I realized his productivity was at an all-time low. We fixed it. Z, but today in a world where everyone carries a digital gadget, these distractions and these got a minute meetings and just this, it’s almost like according to psychology today, it’s almost like the critical thinking skills of the average adult when they’re using a smartphone is now at that of an average third grader. It’s almost like people are getting dumber. And the article is called, Is Your Smartphone Making You Dumb? So what advice would you have for the entrepreneur who’s being constantly interrupted by digital gadgets? What do you say? Well, turn off the notification. Turn that thing off. Put it on silent. I like what Justin said. It’s definitely when you’re sleeping or when you’re home or at certain times you turn it on silent. And then you check it periodically. And the thing about it is, and then you don’t respond to every single thing that pops on there, every email, every text, every whatever. You don’t respond to the ones that you need to respond to. Because the other day I was getting into this text conversation with someone. I’m like, forget this. I called him on the phone. I’m like, I’m not going to sit here and text this back and forth with you. Can we talk? Then we talked for just a couple of minutes, got knocked it all out. Instead of sitting there texting all this. Just wearing your thumb out. Just wearing out your joints. I need a cast for my thumb now. It’s kind of like one of those deals where it’s kind of like you’re going to let those things… If you let them, they will distract you and keep you going all day. A Facebook Bing, a Facebook this, an Instagram this, a Snapchat this. I mean, social media aside, even the core business stuff can… I mean, I get hundreds of emails a day, and if you let it ding, ding, ding you, you will ding, ding, ding to death. Now dysfunctional mindset number four is the knowledgeable, skeptical, and complex one to be leader. Oh, you graduated from the University of whatever with a BS, Bachelor of Science, degree of whatever, and you’ve come to the realization that the marketplace does not pay you based upon your academic resume. You know just enough about everything to wow your friends and engage in an intelligent conversation with any random person you’ve ever met on a plane, but at the back of your mind you’re thinking, if this doesn’t work out, I might need to go back and get an MBA. You’re in love with the vision and goal setting part of the business, that 1% of the process, but you are not in love with the work ethic and the grind needed to get it done. You hate this quote. Jim Rohn gives you this quote. You hate it. You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour. You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value that you bring to the hour. But the thing about it is, Clay, you’ve got to understand that the concept of all your life leading up to that, you get paid by the hour. I mean, that’s the way, that’s the rule. That’s the move. That’s the thing. That’s the jam. I mean, that’s the play. You know, and so you’re going, I worked, you know, 10 hours today, I worked 8 hours today, I worked 40 hours this week, I get so much an hour and that’s what I get. But when you become the entrepreneur, it’s not the hours you work, it’s the value you bring. Now, Rich, you are a recovering jackass and I am too. So we are in that boat together where we’ve done jackassery, we’ve played that game. And when you started working here, it’s been like a night and day thing. Let’s just talk about search engine optimization and sales calls. So search engine optimization. When you were doing search engine optimization a couple months ago, what were you getting paid per article that you wrote? $3.65. How many of those things could you bang out per hour? 15. 15. So you’re just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And if you walked into his room, not that you would be mean about it, but you were just kind of like, get out of here. And you would just grind. Well, yeah, because the way I saw it was I’m going to make as much money as possible, and no one’s going to stop me from reaching my goal. Whether that’s, hey, I want to be able to take my kids out this weekend, so I’m going to go ahead, work 14 days to be able to do that, meet my deadline, and then go ahead and be able to do stuff that I want to do. Previous jobs you’ve had, though, is always paid per hour or flat rate or whatever. Talk to me the difference in your mindset that you had as an employee that I was entitled, whereas now I feel like I literally have to earn everything that I get, regardless of whether it’s articles or trying to set up appointments for our clients. And so now you set appointments for clients and you get paid per appointment. And so your mindset is like, I’m going to get as many appointments today as possible, not work as many hours as possible. Correct. Yeah. I want to set my personal goal is 50 appointments a week Now I want to ask you this Justin you work out you have you on your own business when you have a lot of we’ve Really really nice Grooming professionals that work at elephant in the room quality people. You know there’s really some really just awesome Dynamic ladies, so I’ve met there mostly ladies. There’s a couple guys that work there mostly ladies and Some of them are are focused on results They’re focused on the value they can bring to the hour. And I see these ladies and they say, hey, I’m trying to get my income per hour up to 25. One lady at the last meeting, she says, I’m trying to get to $30 an hour. What tips do you have? She’s trying to sell more products and cut the hair more accurately, get better reviews. She’s trying to sell more memberships. I mean, she’s and then somebody else is like, you know, can I get more per hour because the eight an hour thing is not, I mean there’s one mindset is just trying to get more minimum wage, and the other one’s trying to get, it’s commission. So someone’s making 30 bucks an hour. What’s going on in the mindset, and how do you as a manager try to incentivize people to be motivated there? Yeah, so we structured an incentive-based pay scale, and it really helps the people going from the hourly mindset into the productivity, into the entrepreneur mindset. So if you’re listening right now and you’re an entrepreneur and you want to launch your business, these are some things that I come across with just regular day people and helping their businesses and even some of my employees. What if it doesn’t work out? What if my plan doesn’t work out? Or this is a conversation I had today with a potential employee in training says, well, I’ll see how it works here out of the room. And I tell them, you either decide that it will work, you need to decide it right now, or you decide it’s not going to work. Because ultimately, let’s be honest, over the five years, I could have closed my business several times. That would have killed you. It would have killed you, buried your body. No one would have found it. Ultimately, I called my business coach, my partner, Clay Clark, and I said, hey, this is where I’m at. I had that talk with you, but I seriously could have given up. I could have. Now, we’re in an amazing position. It’s awesome and it’s a lot of fun. I’m sure Dr. Zeta’s probably at certain times where you could have looked and you could have, you know, but will you do what’s required if you get the result you want? We push through those things. So you just decide early on to make sure it will work. Justin, you just said a beautiful thing, and I hope the Thrivers out there, I hope the people listening to this radio show, podcast show, listen to it. And you said, listen, when I was at the depth of despair, what did you do? You know? When I was thinking about shutting her down, when I was thinking about giving up, I called a business coach. My old move used to be, what would Justin do? And I replaced those thoughts with people who had been where I wanted to go financially, with relationships, all that stuff. And my business coach, Clay Clark, is that guy. Well, Thrive Nation, Justin, I appreciate you saying that, very nice. But I will tell you, when I’m in a business, straight up, I don’t ever lose. I just won’t lose because I’m not gonna quit. And you have to be all in. You have to understand what that means to be all in. And we come back, we’re gonna talk about what it means to fully commit to your business. Your success is worth it. Stay tuned, it’s the Thrive Time Business Coach Radio Show. I’m Sam Parker. Okay, I’m Karina Parker. And we live here in town. We’re looking to be in, like, the food industry. Thrive Time Workshops, we’ve learned about advertising and what we need to do to get our name out there, what we need to do to get to the top of Google, you know, the necessary steps that we need to take right now to get to where we want to be. The Thrive Time Workshop experience is really encouraging, and it’s great hands-on information and stuff that we can relate to because we’re able to talk to people here that are going through the same stuff that we are. There’s motivation everywhere. If you don’t feel motivated, then something’s wrong with you. It’s very upbeat. It’s all over the walls. He’s very funny, like a comedian, but at the same time he wants you to learn, and so if you have any questions, he’s willing to help you and talk you through any questions that you have, but at the same time making it fun and encouraging for you. He’s also very candid. He doesn’t hold anything back that most people are like, ooh, maybe I shouldn’t say that because it’s offensive. Yeah, you can tell he’s being real. He doesn’t care about offending people. No, he just wants to help you. So I heard an advertisement that said to leave your wallet at home and, I mean, that’s what it’s been the whole time. It hasn’t been like, oh, make sure you stop by our table in the back and buy 10 books and sign up for a two-year subscription with us. It was just like, hey, you know, what we do offer, there wasn’t pressure and it’s a month-to-month thing. It’s not like you’re signing your life away. is better. Starting from zero, I got nothing to lose. Maybe I’ll make something. Me, myself, I got nothing to lose. Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show. On your radio, my name is Clay Clark. I’m the former USSBA Entrepreneur of the Year, and I am so honored to be here and we came into a little Justin Bieber remix of a song by Tracy Chapman and I, when I heard this song, I was probably 18 years old and it sort of ignited a fire for me. The original version by Tracy Chapman, it’s called Fast Car. I’m gonna read the lyrics to you and Z, I don’t know if you can relate to these lyrics, but I think we can all kind of some way relate to these if you’re an entrepreneur. But here are the lyrics. It says, you’ve got a fast car. I want a ticket to get anywhere. Maybe we can make a deal. Maybe together we can get somewhere. Any place is better. Starting from zero, we’ve got nothing to lose. Maybe we’ll make something. Me, myself, I’ve got nothing to prove. And I love that idea, that concept that I didn’t have anything to lose. So I was like, you know what? It’s me against the world. I’m going to start a business, and I freaking don’t care what has to happen. And so as an example of an, just an example that blew my mind was we were, I had the opportunity to do this radio show. We already had a fully booked out schedule, you and I, but both of us, we already had things we committed to. We already signed up for things, kids, relationships, businesses, whatever. And I remember just looking at you, talking to you. We actually had a meeting at the White Lion, right? Is it the White Lion? Yeah, fun little pub restaurant. Love that place. But I remember kind of looking across at you, going, he really wants to do this. I think you looked at me going, he really wants to do this, but doing a daily show. It’s a daily show. So it doesn’t mean you take a day off. There’s no days off. That, by the way, is the Patriots mantra. Every year he has a mantra, this year’s mantra is no days off. It’s on all their videos, all their sweatshirts, all their hats, no days off. He wants a seven-day commitment from anyone on the team where he wants to cut out. That’s not allowed. He’s telling the players that if you don’t want to be seven days, get out of here. So the thing is, you’ve got to have that mindset, though, that if you’re an entrepreneur, there’s no days off until you get to your financial freedom. And that commitment needed to be successful is just not common. And people say, I’m just so stressed. Well, I want to be successful, but I don’t want it to be stressful. Well, I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to push through that struggle zone with the get-rich-quick moves. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t have any advice to give the thrivers who say, I want to be successful, but I want to skip that part where it’s stressful. I don’t want to commit. Well, and that’s a problem with, you know, the social media and our culture right now, is that we make such a big deal out of when the duty is successful. We focus on the success and what that brings that person, and we make a big deal out of that. We, you know, we make parades and the parties, and we focus on the house and the crib, you know, and the cars and all the stuff, but all the grinding, all the back story, all the, you know, getting your hands dirty, all the sweat and tears and blood, sweat and all that we don’t talk about. And that’s one of the problems is that all we talk about is the end result and not all that went into it. Can I talk about it for a minute? Can I talk about the strength and the struggle? I would like, you know what, I’ve been wanting to talk about that now for quite a while. So, I mean, I’m going to pull it out of you. So, here we go. Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, no college degree. Homeboy, grinded, taught himself to become an attorney. A.P. Giannini, no degree, grinded to start Bank of America. Andrew Carnegie, no degree, working since age 13. Page 200 of our boom book here. Andrew Jackson, U.S. President, no formal education. I’m not impressed. Benjamin Franklin, no degree Why am I saying that because if you have a degree or you don’t have a degree it doesn’t matter You’ve got to grind you know what’s gonna hand it to you No one’s gonna care about your life the way that you care about your life So this functional mindset number six we have to fight through is I’m not going to do my action items guy I’m not gonna do my action items I know what I need to do but I’m not gonna do it because you believe that if you hop on a coaching call and Learn the proven system without actually investing your personal time to apply that eventually the things will get done by themselves You secretly believe that the science behind the shake weight and unicorns is plausible You believe that your product is so good It will sell itself and your product will magically build itself without involving you. You have subconsciously bought into the charlatan mindset. Now a charlatan is someone who falsely pretends to be something by telling semi-true tales. You’ve bought into this mindset. You hate this quote, by the way. This is a quote from Elon Musk, and this is the quote you hate if you’re not going to want to do your work. He says, this is Elon Musk. Tip. They ask him, what’s the tips to being successful, Elon Musk? You started PayPal. You know, you started SolarCity. You started Tesla. He says, work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. This improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that, you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve. Z, feel free to go off and as much of a tangent as you want there, but just grinding. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go the other direction. Really? I’m going to say what you need to do is go buy a lottery ticket. Oh yeah. Every week. Every week. And just, you know, pray about the numbers and you’ll get there. You got to buy big to win big, man. You got to put your money where your ticket is. I tell you what, you know Clay, it’s a founding tenant that when you reap and you take care of the land and you sow the seeds and you take care of the land, you water, you fertilize, you weed eat it, which is work, which is the grind, then you reap the harvest. And we always want to celebrate the reaping, but we don’t want to talk about the wheat eating, because that’s no fun. We don’t want to talk about the watering and the fertilizing, because there’s no fun in that. I’m going to share a story right now with the Thrivers that’s from my own personal life that I thought was an inspirational one I’m going to share with you today. Maybe you say, this is not a good story at all, but this is what happened. I remember making a list. I called it the Road to a Million. And Justin, you might have remembered the sign at the house at Lynn Lane. If you saw the Road to a Million, did you remember? It was a fold-up thing as my mantra for the year, the Road to the Million. And what I did is I made a list of the top 100 companies in Tulsa, and the top 100 wedding venues. And my goal was to get a yes or a no out of all of them. I wanted their business. And my move was, price would not stand in the way, time would not stand in the way so we called every major corporation in Tulsa you buy a list from the chamber of businesses that had more than a hundred employees and I called them and I said who are you currently using for entertainment and they said you know at the time the company was called infinity and I said on a scale of one to ten how happy are you with their services and if they said like an eight or a nine or whatever, I’d say, well, what does a 10 look like? And no matter what they said, I’d say, I’d love to meet with you. And, cause I think we can offer a better service and whatever you’re paying now, we’ll do it for 25% less. We’re not in it for the short-term profit. We’re in it for a long term deal. Relationship. I landed Houchin Electric, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, Boeing, UPS, American, Bama Pi, McDonald’s, QT, I landed O’Reilly Auto. I landed everybody. I got them all. It was all in one year. It was through the decision to do it, but it was the grinding. I remember telling the guys, because I had pulled an all-nighter, probably hadn’t slept, I told the guys, I want to get 10,000 no’s this year. That’s my goal, 10,000 no’s, because I never get 10,000 people telling us no. We’re going to get to my goal of a million, because the typical DJ show is about $600, and I had done the math, and I’m like, I want 10,000 no’s. And the guys were just, at first, like, this was supposed to be a motivational Monday, but you just said you want 10,000 no’s. And I divided it by the 50 weeks and the guys were like, I get it, so I said, you, Curtis, have to get this many no’s. You, Aaron, this many no’s. You, Thaddeus, this many no’s. And I’m like, if you’re not into the no’s, get out of here. And it was kind of a galvanizing moment for us. And we just grinded and we conquered. We took the flag, we won the game, it was awesome. But it was like, it was a grind, man. And it was just, and just, you remember that, it was like Viking culture at that point. Oh yeah, it was intense. But that, but seriously, you established your goal Where’d you want to go you broke it into your daily action your daily steps and ultimately it’s like a formula It’s like baking a cake. It’s like a recipe you follow a recipe. You know you know what you get out You know it’s the same with success, but doing over every day now rich There’s clients that we work with coaching clients that say you know what I’ve never made cold calls before if it’s okay I’d like to have Rich make the call. And I’m going to ride shotgun with him to see how my script goes.” So they actually write the script, give it to you. You’ve never made that call before, and then they are able to listen to you make the call. So you’re like jumping on the grenades where they’re assessing the battle damage, going, well, that was a pretty painful grenade. So, Rich, what does it feel like? How do you emotionally process getting those rejections? How do you do it? I don’t care. What? I just don’t care. How did you get to a place where you don’t care because it seems impossible? Well, I’ve done calls enough and I’ve been told the worst thing that they can say is no and it’s over a phone So it’s not like they can come and punch me in the mouth for it So I’m just gonna sit there and I’m gonna call him and if they hang up I call them back and say hey somehow The phone got disconnected. So can you meet at 1030 Z? Did you ever studied the life of 50 cent the rapper Curtis Jackson? I’ve studied a lot of things, but I I that’s not on my on my list, okay Let me tell you a little story about Curtis Jackson. He basically Was a guy grip for his mother sold drugs, and she got killed on a drug deal you know and So he decided you know I’m gonna sell drugs, too And I’m gonna try to sell enough drugs to get out of the drug game.” That was his idea. He ended up taking many, many shots. He got shot multiple times, one of which was to the face. He ended up coming back. He had just signed a record deal, and he came back with a new persona called 50 Cent. He came back, and people asked him now later on. He’s done a lot of interviews. He’s done a lot of things. They said, hey, man, because he sold vitamin water for like hundreds of millions of dollars. And they said, what was your mindset? And he goes, I’m going to get rich or die trying. And it was turned into a movie. Yeah. But his whole thing was like, I’ve been shot in the face. I fear, I don’t fear death. So I’ve already dealt with that process. And I think there’s just got to be a certainty. What would you say to the entrepreneur who, because it’s, I think it’s really hard. I honestly think it’s harder when you grow up middle or upper class. I think I honestly, I really do see that I think there’s a study that was done about players who play professional sports I remember reading this is amazing but usually the second child has a higher likelihood of playing professional sports because they saw the first child do well but not push and they thought you know what I’m looking for a place in the family pecking order I could outperform them but it’s a certain kind of mindsets but see what would what advice would you have for someone who’s maybe grown up middle class, upper class, maybe even someone in your family who’s done well now because you’ve done well, you know? And their floor is kind of your ceiling, you know? What advice would you have to develop that fearlessness and that grind? I mean, what would you say? That’s an excellent, excellent question, Clay. And I think what you do is you just say, hey, listen, you know, and it’s all dependent upon, you know, your life goals and what you want to do. You know, and you can’t instill that in somebody. And so there’s a certain component that if they say, hey, listen, I want to achieve, you know, uber excellence, all right, then you say, okay, let’s, you know, we can help you, we can help you get there. But there’s a certain drive that has to be, I think, inherent in a person. You know, an entrepreneur is kind of a funny duck. You know, you’re listening out there going, I want to start a business. And we’re saying, hey, gal, you could do it. We can help you. But there’s something about that that is just, it’s that little thing inside you that is planted there. I’m not sure exactly how it gets in there. And we’re here to help water it and grow it, put some sunshine on it. But, you know, if you, I can encourage you and I can rah, rah, rah you and I can do all that. But if you don’t have that self motivation down in your gut to be excellent, to outperform. I mean, if it’s a contest, if it’s something just personal, if you’re saying, hey, listen, I want to do better than, then it’s tough to put those kind of things in a person. I’ll be honest with you. If you want to move from where you are to where you want to be, you do not want to miss out the next segment because we’re breaking down the dysfunctional mindsets that are keeping many people, not you, but many people from achieving their success. We’re trying to push through the pain to get that gain. Right here on the Thrive Time Show, Business Coach Radio. My name is Sean Lohman and I’m from here in Tulsa, actually Owasso. I own a residential redevelopment company, so I buy properties and then I fix them up and then I sell them for a profit. Well, Thrive is very non-industry specific. So when we come here, there’s business owners from all different aspects of business. You know, they’re doing all different industries and he’s teaching us how to look at it from that angle because he owns nine businesses. Clay Clark owns nine businesses. So he knows what’s in common with all of them. So he’s teaching these big principles, things like just the backbone of how a sales conversation should look or specifically what your marketing campaign needs to look like in order to make it be sustainable. Those are some of the biggest things that I’m going to take away and implement immediately. It’s an intimate environment. You know, there’s less than 30 people here, business owners, so you get a chance to ask questions and it’s just really informative and inspiring. Oh, this place is cool. There’s a lot going on in here. There’s a lot to look at. There’s a lot of inspiring and motivational things on the walls and lots of accomplishments and just a very cool yet productive atmosphere. I’m coming in here yesterday and you know we’re there’s a sales team in here it was Friday so you know they’re ringing appointment bells and hitting gongs when they’re making sales and it’s just a really motivating environment to be in to see you know how this how business is done basically. Clay’s presentation style is really great. This is kind of a no BS, very direct sort of style, but he’ll also get non-specific with what he’s teaching, and then he’ll get very specific. And he’ll use stories throughout the process to really help it connect to you and make it implementable. Consistently, he’s offered an opportunity to ask questions at the end of each workshop. And so that’s really where the learning takes place, is asking those questions and getting those direct answers so that we can take those action items away from that. I don’t see enough questions being asked and sometimes that’s just natural, but if people are missing out on the opportunity to ask questions, they’re missing out on the opportunity to learn. And so if there’s anything that’s going to stop you from learning and growing, it’s you. If you’re here, you’re going to learn and grow as long as you’re motivated to do that. In these other seminars that I went to six actually in the last year so of these six at every single opportunity you know at the end they’re all there’s always a back of the room saying hey you can spend a little money here and get this or that or this and although those things are helpful that’s not always necessarily the best feeling we want to get so he wants us all to know and he’s very clear about the fact that he’s not trying to upsell us anything his motivations are different he’s not trying to sell us, he’s trying to help us. He’s trying to mentor us. And he’s very open about it, so I’d say it’s awesome, that aspect of it’s awesome. We need more people who are motivated in this world. We need more people who are willing to become entrepreneurs, who are willing to create jobs. We need more of that. There’s not enough of it. So that’s, to me, the message, that’s the goal, is mentor a million people is this company’s idea. And it’s a beautiful idea, and I’m behind it 100%. So I want to contribute in any way I can as I move forward. This is just awesome. [“BIG BOY”] I used to live with pants down, not giving a fuck. Big boy now I’m all grown up. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. It is always an honor, and I mean that always an honor. What does the word honor mean? I think it means that what if you had to describe honor thrivers, what would you describe it? I would say this It’s where you really really care You’re you’re reverent of the opportunity and I am all it’s always an honor to be with you because I know you could be doing Anything in the world right now, but you choose to be here on the radio show with as many of you I run into you guys at research. That’s Z. I don’t have a lot of data points. I don’t go to a lot of places I’ve run into lows I don’t think you can’t go home and trade orders and whatnot yeah that’s all the you know the allegations you know it’s a it’s not proven I mean you’re innocent until proven guilty that’s what I just because they have video footage of me repeatedly streaking at the same places over and over does not mean that I did it flesh-toned underwear does not constitute that’s right. Remember what the attorney said? I didn’t know. So the thing is, seriously, but Thrive Nation, it’s a thing. It’s an honor to be with you because you’ll tell me, you’ll say, you know what? What I learned last week, I actually applied it. We had one guy, he’s actually a plumber in Tulsa and I was at Oklahoma Joe’s and I’m getting there, getting my baked beans. And he goes, you actually come here. And I go, true. You actually come here too? Yeah. He goes, hey, I want you to know, the boom hat kind of hit me off. I applied what you said and it was just one little move. I said, what was the move? He goes, Oh, I’m doing the wolf where I call and text and email every lead and my sales are up by like double. And I just want to say thank you. And that kind of thing, it’s an honor to know that we’re impacting you. It’s also honored to be here with my hero, Dr. Z. It’s just that you look up and you, you, you, you, you say, look up. I use the word hero very rarely. I don’t say it very often, but is he perfect? No, but Dr. Z is a guy who has grinded. He went from negative to positive. You went from poor to not poor. Are you perfect? No, but you have three for three, your kids, I know them. And it’s amazing the kind of people they’ve become. And your son just got himself married there to a great lady. So really at this point, you can drop the mic and become a screw-up. I mean, you’ve been great up to this point. But you basically dropped the mic. Thanks for giving me permission for that. It’s good to know. So I’ve got another move I can do. If it works out that way, I can do it. Well, Clay said I could. But just to kind of come back to what we were talking about before, to be an entrepreneur, it’s such a difficult thing. And to do it successfully is not easy. And if we make it sound easy, I mean, it’s kind of those guys like in the Olympics or like Cirque du Soleil and stuff, you look at them going, man, they look, that looks so easy. And yet all the hours of training and the back, the backstory and they get there finally. But to be an entrepreneur is not easy. And if you don’t want it in your absolute gut, I mean, if you don’t want it like a burning white hot fire burning pinion wood in your backyard. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Bingo. And you don’t want to start it. Yeah, and so to sit there and try to encourage someone, I mean if my job is to try to encourage you to become one, we’ve already lost. My job is not to encourage you to become one, my job is to try to encourage you through practical business steps, that’s why we want to be your business coach, practical business steps and the steps to do that you can fulfill your dreams. Now Thrive Nation, we’re talking about the dysfunctional mindsets that could limit your success. So dysfunctional mindset number seven is the non-emotionally engaged guy. Did you skip five, by the way? Did I skip five? I think we didn’t do five. I’m going to go to seven and then back to five as this tradition. That makes sense because that’s math. Yeah, here we go. It’s mathematical. You don’t want to admit that you’re stuck and that you need help breaking through the biggest limiting factors, but you do recognize that you may need some coaching. You hesitantly enrolled in some kind of coaching platform, whether it be Thrive or something else, to try it out. You won’t engage in conversations with a coach or a therapist or anybody that can help you because you’re just seeing if it will work. This logic makes sense to you. I’m going to try out farming. I’m not going to do the hard work required of tilling the soil, sowing the seeds, or watering the seed. I just want to see if this farming thing really works. You want financial freedom. You want the corner office. You want the time freedom that you get, but you’re not. You want the result, but you’re not willing to put in the boatload of work needed to say, I’ll call on staff meeting the paperwork, the training, the checklist. You don’t want to do that part. You just want the success. So, uh, Justin, have you ever met these guys, related to these guys, who have been this guy? If you won’t stop when you’re with your wife and ask for directions, this might be, you might be that guy. You might be that guy. You might be that guy, okay. But seriously, I don’t know if it’s a guy thing, you know, sometimes our pride gets in the way. I don’t wanna ask for help, I’m good in this, I can figure it out on my own, okay. But seriously, when I had that pivotal point, so I say a lot of times, if you’re launching and you’re an entrepreneur, one thing that helped me, I was in a real uncomfortable situation. And if you’ve ever been in a real uncomfortable situation, you wanna get out of that situation quick and you don’t wanna go back there. And one thing my dad always talked about launching businesses and doing businesses, but he never took that leap of faith because I felt he was more of in a comfortable situation. So get as far away from comfortable as possible. But as far as asking for help, being that guy that can turn to someone, that mentor, I had to, at a point in my life, say, okay, all my actions, all my decisions, all my choices got to where I’m right now, and this is not where I wanna be. So where do I wanna go? What’s my goal? How am I gonna get there? And then surround myself with those people, and so asking those questions and asking people, so what would you do in this situation? How would you handle this? And that’s why I love this time with Dr. Z and with you, Clay, is because I gain knowledge from just these. I think our listeners can gain knowledge as well. And it can be helpful for them and their situation, their businesses, and wherever they’re at in their journey. I have to call a penalty flag on myself right here, because this right here was my deal. Oh, this was you. This is you. This is my issue. Want some expert help, directions? Yeah, for me, my default, I remember playing basketball in high school. I was playing junior varsity and I wasn’t very skilled, but I was a grinder. My coach pulled me aside and he looks at me and he says, I was a freshman and I was jacked. I worked out all the time. I was jacked. He pulls me aside and he says, here’s the deal Clay. You’re 6’1″. And jacked. And he goes, your hustle is awesome. Like Rocky 2 Jack, not like Rocky 1. More like Rocky 4. I mean honestly I was doing a lot of work. And he says, he goes, you’re really into fitness and really into basketball. And I want you to know, if you play, you’ve always been the fifth or sixth guy. But I don’t know if you’re going to play at the next level, like college. I’m just telling you as your coach, if you want to stay on this team, you can do that. But I see your entrepreneurship mindset. I see how you’ve done these school dances and the DJing. And I’m just saying as your coach, I really kind of view myself more as a mentor. I want you to be successful. And son, if everyone worked as hard as you, all of these guys would play Division I. But you don’t have that athleticism. And I’m just telling you, I would want you strongly to consider whether to come back. So I came back my sophomore year. And again, very aggressive, unbelievable, intense defense, a lot of rebounds. But I realized, I’m not going to go to the next level. And I appreciate him saying that to me, but that was like one of those moments where if he hadn’t have said that, I would have just stayed the course, head down, lifting weights, playing basketball. I would have played until I’m a senior. Probably would have been seventh, sixth guy off the bench, and would have played, but I would have never. But he had to ask me that tough question. And I know in business, I’ve struggled throughout my career a little bit of just being able to reach out to the mentor and say, hey, am I going the right direction? I think that’s a big thing right now. If you’re going fast, see, that’s a question you want to ask, am I going the right direction? I’m going fast, but am I getting where I want to go? Well, and that’s why it’s so important to come in and get a business coach. That’s why it’s so important to get a checkup. That’s why it’s so important to have someone run the 37 points on your website. That’s why it’s important to come to one of our in-person workshops and figure out what you don’t know. And that’s why I reached out to you, and that’s why I love having you in my life, because you my friend are the lanes and I am the bowling ball. I will go down that lane fast. I know. But I love just having the lanes up there. Everybody needs a coach. Stay tuned. It’s the Thrive on the radio, 1170, and then I got my dad into listening to the show. And then it actually turned into Clay gave us a call and we started actually working with Clay on a weekly basis. He’s helped us drastically when it comes to the sales and the employee side of things. It’s going to help our business drastically. Very intuitive, just pulling you in to break down each part of your business. employee process. If an employee is not working out, let them go. It’s a drastic experience. You just have to come and check it out. I mean there’s so many things that they can help you with. Clay’s a funny guy. He just wants to get into each and every person’s business and help you out. I know I’ve asked a couple of questions and he’s broken down that question and answered it in several different ways. There’s so many different things. The SEO, first and foremost, he will help you get the more business coming in. And then once that is coming in, then he helps you with the employee process of, do I need to hire more people? Do I need, what do I need to put in place? And he gets you there. You hear of all the other different type conferences and I myself have never been to one, but the walking on coals and all that stuff, that just seems like a bunch of hype that isn’t really needed. And I know of several people that have gone to those type conferences and yet they haven’t, Because there’s no actionable deals, you really don’t have any moving forward steps. It’s just hype. And it’s not needed. Well, just the cost in and of itself versus $6,000 for one conference and no actionable steps versus $1,500. And there is actionable steps. You can’t beat it. Squeezer, squeezer, squeezer, don’t tease her, you’ll never see her Face is made for radio and not TV, talking everything from clay to Z Auto options, bakes, haircuts and glasses, if you wanna sell it we’ve already sold it to the masses No classes or prerequisites, just business school as raw as it gets Practical skills, no student debt. Student Coins play when he’s not up in a jet. And now, more from the man who loves algebra so much, he took it three times. Hey, Zohan, Zohan, I want to ask, for anybody who’s listening who’s never been inside a private jet, talk to me about it. Just give us a little, you know, just waft the excellence, the experience, the… Don’t brag, you’re not a judge, you’re not a bragger, but just go tell us I mean when you’re on the jet and you’re feeding the dog lobster because you’re like you know what I just This is this lobster is not organic I’ll do this to Bruno. I’ll hold out for the organic lobster. What’s what’s that like being on that? Yeah, what’s it like being? It’s really the time savings you get on it because you don’t have to go through all this stuff. You don’t have layovers. When you live in a secondary market like we do in Tulsa, it’s nice to be able to get on the plane and land wherever you’re going to. That’s really the benefit of it. Most of them on the inside of them, they’re not that big. They are nice and you do have some creature comforts in there and just the time, not having to go through… I know how much we love TSA. Let’s call it. It’s awesome. You’ve got a crack squad of geniuses working there. I mean, they’re, you know, they’re the elite. You know, you don’t pat down each other. You don’t pat down. I have a story. I have a story. I was going to San Antonio and my wife always jokes because I always tell men they’re beautiful men. You know, I’m always like, you’re a beautiful man. You’re just just beautiful. I just as I say, it’s kind of a funny thing where your moves and when you hear it, you hear someone say and then anybody, if I don’t know what to say, I’m like, you’re a great American because that’s like a sort of an asexual positive. And if you’re with your wife and you have somebody you work with who’s a female, you want to say good job, but you don’t want to say like too good of a job because your wife’s right there. You don’t want to create an awkward deal. You want to be respectfully complimentary of the female race while still being, you know, it’s a thing. Yeah. So I said, yeah, you’re a great American. But if it’s a man, obviously you’re a beautiful man. You can’t say you’re a beautiful American to a lady. This is not a move. But anyway, so these are my moves I come up with. So anyway, I’m on, and my wife’s always like, you’re going to get a pat down. I’m like, I love, I love pat downs because I love pat downs for beautiful men. I love, that’s what I want. And my wife’s joking, you know, about it. Anyway, long story short, we go to the San Antonio airport and the guy apparently assumes that I have, you know, I am the cause of potential terrorist risk. I mean, look, when I come through pale male, you know, no criminal record, he’s probably going to blow something up. They’ve raised the threat. Sometimes you have a little crazy look in your eyes. You’ve been known to have a slight to moderate. Raised the threat level to a red plus, whatever that is, a red, ultra orange red. The guy, he’s doing the pat down, but he’s having a good time. What they do is they don’t pat down with the back side of the hand. He’s patting down and he’s like, okay. And then I saw him spreading the legs, he’s patting down. And then my wife looks at me and she makes eye contact like, you’re liking this. And I told the guy, I said, this is an incredible massage. How much do I owe you? And he’s like, doesn’t laugh at all. And he just keeps doing the, doing the shoulder massage. I’m like, if you could just work it out, I’ve got some joint pain here. Had some fun with the deal, but it was the longest, most awkward TSA fat down ever. They didn’t find anything, but they enjoyed searching. Shocking. Shocking. Well, and that’s what they’re paid to do, and we get it. But I’m just saying, as far as really what the benefits of that type of avionics travel is, you don’t have to… Well, I guess that’s a negative, you don’t get a pat down. Because for you, you want the pat down. I was playing an interactive game of Marco Polo with the guy. Marco Polo. Polo. Unbelievable. All right, now we’re talking about, because we went to dysfunctional mindset number seven, it makes sense logically to go back to number five. Yes, and that’s one of the keys of a bad entrepreneur or a guy that has a fun… He can’t keep things in order. Is that… That’s why you’re the guardrails and I’m the bowling ball. So here we go. The never on time guy. Your life is just so busy that nobody could possibly understand how busy you are. Although I have five kids and 40 chickens and nine businesses, I could never possibly understand how busy you are because, and this is uncomfortable, but I’m giving it to you because I care. You know, you might bother, Z, you remember that my dad passed away from ALS. Yes, yes, I do. And it was… Sorry, sorry for that, by the way. It was awful. But you know that the day, my dad said he wanted to live till nine five, because that was the day our show was supposed to come out. And do you know that my dad actually lived until the moment of the day our show came out? Yeah. I literally lived, and it was like, it was awful, but it was great knowing that my dad, where my dad was going, my dad knew his faith, he knew his family, he knew what he was about. But I couldn’t just call in for the year, or the month, Z, and say, hey Z, I know Thrive, we got a lot going on, but because I’m going through some stuff, but you were empathetic, you were compassionate, you looked me in the eye, I remember, and you said, hey, let’s man cave Sunday night. You me. You me. And it was the most kind conversations. It was exactly what I needed. I’ll never be able to pay you back. Well, I never will. And you don’t have to. We don’t keep score. That’s what that’s what good friends do. And that’s what good comrades do, is that you don’t keep score. You know, it’s not a score thing, but it also like, hey, just take the month off. Deal with life. Take the month off. It was it’s like you got to get it done if you’re an entrepreneur. If you’re self-employed, you’ve got to get it done and you’ve got to deal with the emotions. How do you manage it, Z? How do you personally do it? Well, it’s self-evident. I mean, you have to do it. I mean, the buck stops with you. I mean, that’s the thing about being the boss, you know. Not only do you make big obstacles seem small, bingo, but you also have to understand that the buck stops with you and that when the rubber meets the road, I mean, you’ve got to be there. You’ve got to make sure the show does go on, as they say. This is literally the show going on so I’m a guy who says I can never be on time because the weather oh yeah that weather will slow you down rich I don’t rich you’ve been on time you’re an on-time guy you’re always up so you’re on time but you’ve always been on time with me yes talk to me because you’ve had you’ve seen a lot of people come and go since you’ve been here oh yeah 22 to be precise it’s so funny that you keep track of that but I’m sure that you have okay so I want to ask you what is going on you’ve talked to me why can’t they be on time what’s going is the traffic bad where they are? Is it the weather? Is it the… What’s going on, Rich? The weather, relationship issues, car not starting. The list really goes on. And for me, I’ve slept in the back room, so that way I wouldn’t miss my appointments. I’ve seen you do this before. I’ll give you an example. We had one young lady. I’m not going to mention her name or any details, but she was the shining star. Shining star. Superstar. What I would call a great American. And she said, I really want to move up. And I said, you know what? The next workshop we have, you want to get, the thing starts at seven. So at 5am I want you to be there, get all set up to greet everybody. And she said, why? I said, because I believe in a stool. She goes, a stool? I said, a stool should be sturdy. If the stool, when you sit down, it gives out, you lose trust in it. And I need to know what you can do. She said, what do you mean? I said, you always come into work at nine. I just want to see what you’re like at five. She goes, what do you mean? I said, that would require you to go to sleep, plan, whatever. Man, she just totally missed it. And I thought, ooh. So then I gave her one more shot and no details, Rich, no details. But you saw it happen. You saw somebody with a lot of talent who had to go back now to the waitress game because she just couldn’t keep it together and it’s unfortunate But you’ve got to be on time Z preach the good news about being on time. Why do you got to be on time? You don’t have to be on time. That’s that’s a misnomer. You’ve got to be early. Oh You could be early and if you’re having a hard time being on time Redo your clocks. I mean what I mean, why would you even you know, the thing about it is I mean you have your clock and you’re kind of going and People that are like I got to be there and wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, and then they’re late, you know, because you can’t, you know, you can only drive so fast. You’re going to walk so fast. You can only get from point A to point B so quickly. So if you’re having a hard time getting, if you’re having a hard time being on time, set your clocks up an hour, set your clocks up 30 minutes. You know, you can have like, like Kim Jong-un did in North Korea. He just changed the national time of North Korea, like the 30 minutes different or something. Basically he’s encouraging everyone to become a semi-dictator. That’s the advice here. I’m telling you to start your own communist country and change the clock of your country. Become a dictator of your country, which is actually your life. And hire Dennis Rodman to be your business coach. That’s the key for North Korea right there. Now Thrive Nation, when we come back, we’re going to talk about dysfunctional mindset number eight, which always comes after five on the Thrive Time Show. Stay tuned. My name is Clay Clark, America’s most humble business coach. You’re listening to the Thrive Time Business Coach Radio. My wife Jensen Watts, she has a photography business that we’re trying to get up and growing. So I listen to talk radio. I drive a lot for work and got tired of listening to the radio all the time and I can’t plug my phone into my truck, it’s too old. And so, you know, one day the Thrive show was just in place of the talk show I normally listen to. And it was definitely more entertaining than most radio shows. And so that’s, you know, it took about a week or two before I actually looked more into it. I think it’s wonderful. It’s been great. It’s a great environment. I love the feel in here and I really love how entertaining I feel I can be as well. I am so grateful to be here and I’ve loved just learning everything. I’m learning a lot about branding and how to market my business because that’s kind of where I’ve had a hard time. I can take pictures, I’m good at it, I have my prices and everything, but it’s hard to get the clientele. So learning about the marketing has really helped me, and I can’t wait to implement it into my own business after this, because it’s been so great. We’re so grateful to be here. I think I can go home and, like, I have it written out, the steps that I need to take, and everything is very practical. Yeah, a big thing that’s helped me, you know, even without business stuff, is just, you It’s just a mental attitude aspect that I can apply to my current job and current life. I love it. I am laughing a lot of the time and it’s so entertaining and I just love being here. It’s awesome. I really like the smaller class group. So it is more of an interaction. Even if it isn’t, you know, a constant raise my hand, here’s the question, here’s the answer. It’s just that kind of feel, just a smaller, small part. They haven’t tried to upsell us anything. It has all just been very knowledgeable and they are just teaching you how to grow your business. Clay’s been very giving with his time, his knowledge, his talents. At work, you know what, when I was telling people about this, I was like, I hope you’re not joining some get rich game. But, you know, even if it is, he’s not gonna charge me for it. So, yeah, I’d recommend it. I mean, I would even love to come again. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show, and away we go. We’re talking about dysfunctional mindsets of an entrepreneur who’s stuck. Now, I’m sure this show’s not about you. It’s about other people, but we’re going to fly through the final dysfunctional mindset. So mindset number eight, I’m going to try to solve all my problems at one time. This is a mindset where you want to solve all your business problems right now. Although every successful entrepreneur on the planet will tell you that you must simplify and focus methodically on going through item by item. But you’re looking for the overnight move. Now, Steve Jobs says that people think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. That’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things. So Z, I’m going to tee it up to you. With your businesses, you’re so good. This is one thing you say all the time. You say, what is the biggest limiting membrane? What’s the biggest limiting factor? You’re able to focus on that and you say, everything else that you just mentioned Clay or team is a good idea but we need to icebox it and we need to focus on the biggest limiting membrane and I’m frustrated initially because I’m like I want to do all of it once and then you you kind of understand the power of focus. Can you explain what you mean by icebox and biggest limiting membrane? Well okay so we have it so there’s a problem there’s something not going the way you wanted to go let’s say it like that. And so then you break it down to what is the biggest problem that’s keeping that from happening. So limiting membrane. Limiting membrane is a membrane that limits or that keeps something from moving from one space to another, okay? And so we want to go into the space of success. We want to go into the space of fill in the blank, but it’s a victory, okay? And so when you recognize the thing that is the biggest limiting membrane, or the thing that’s the biggest problem, then you can pour all your focus onto that. Everything else doesn’t matter. That’s the problem, is that so many people want to focus on so many things. Five things. Five things, six things, ten things. Even two things. Even two things. Even two is one too many. You’ve got to focus on the one, put all your attention on, okay, now how do we tackle this problem? Iceboxing simply means that all those other problems, all those other issues, you just go put them in the refrigerator. You icebox them and you say, listen, I’m gonna store those in a cold container so that they’ll save, that they’ll keep, and I’ll get to them when they are the biggest limiting membrane then. They’re the biggest limiting factor. So you just go down, make your list, and you methodically go down it. And that’s the thing I think that just having to be able to have that focus and having your… and then if you don’t have the focus, your team won’t. You understand that, Clay? If you don’t have the focus, your team won’t. Now, focus stands for focus on your core task until success. And I’ll give you an example. Steve Jobs did a crazy deal because he got fired from a company. And then he got fired from Apple, the company he co-founded. And George Lucas calls him because George Lucas is going through a divorce and he doesn’t want to lose his baby, which is Pixar, the guys who produced Toy Story. So he says, Steve, could you take over the company? I’ll give you all the ownership. Later on, we can square up. But he says, yeah, sure. So he takes over Pixar. He’s running Pixar. The guys have never made a movie. He releases Toy Story. They have huge success. Meanwhile, he’s starting another company called Next. Well, the Next Technology, he basically convinces in a kind of a coup, Apple to buy the technology. He comes back, now he’s in charge. And they ask him to come back, and the company’s failing, and here’s what he did. This is a documented story you should research. It’s really funny. But he didn’t like Bill Gates. They don’t like each other, but they had a history, because Bill Gates built the operating system that Max used, and they had kind of this thing where they went back and forth accusing each other of stealing things. Well, Bill Gates, if you remember, was being investigated for a monopoly. He was being investigated by the federal government for forming a monopoly. And the one guy who could prove that he had the biggest monopoly was Steve Jobs. They needed Steve Jobs. Bill Gates needed Steve Jobs to testify that he was, in fact, not making a monopoly. When that, in fact, was what Bill Gates was doing. And so Steve Jobs said, here’s the deal. I’d be happy to testify. I just have like 100 million questions. I’ve got 100 million questions I need to talk to you about. And that was code for, I need you to invest. So here’s their biggest competitor. He focused on getting funding because if he didn’t get that funding, Apple’s done. So everyone’s like, are you kidding me? Your biggest arch rival? And he got the funding and saved the company. He gave a test, he didn’t lie, but he just basically would refuse to say anything that affirmed there was a monopoly being formed But he dropped everything when he came back. He said I want everyone to make a list of all the products They were working on over a hundred products. He says I want to make a list of the top five and Then everything else has to be stopped. I box all of them icebox and baby, and they’re going all of them Yep, and they came with the iMac remember that the purple iMacs the green iMacs the yellow ones that the see-through computers Oh, yeah, and that saved the company and then we did the iPod. Remember the iPod? Oh yeah. Oh man. But he just focused. And so if you’re listening right now and you’re struggling to have success, you cannot focus the sun’s rays on many given points at one time. You can only focus the sun’s rays on any one specific point at one time. If you focus the sun’s rays with a magnifying glass, it will set something on fire. If you spread it out with a magnifying glass, nothing happens. Think about that. Marinate on that. What do you need to focus on? Now, this functional mindset number nine is everything is a burning fire. You’re somebody who just can’t ever get a head Z because everything’s reactive. Oh my gosh. Oh, this is an emergency. That’s an emergency. Oh, emergency, emergency. Yeah. I, you see people like that. They’re just running around like a chicken with her head cut off and it’s really unfortunate because not everything is an emergency Not everything is Defcon 4 not everything is okay. We got a pad this guy down You know, we got a strip search this guy because he looks like he could be you know, Isis terrorists ie Clay Clark, but Here’s the thing about that is that you know you a boss makes and I said this a little bit ago It makes big obstacles seem small and that’s what you do when someone comes in goes. Oh my gosh The world is ending as we know it because that’s what someone will tell you all day almost every day And then you take a deep breath and you’re calm and you say okay. Well, that’s okay. Where’s that on our priority list? We’re okay is that okay? Let’s handle that. Well, let’s put that here. You might need to icebox it for a while You might need to address it But the thing about it is is that staying calm to those rough waters is what a leader does. And as you as the entrepreneur, as the boss, you’ve got to stay calm in those. And you can’t just react and just go, just hit DEF CON 4. And oh my gosh, call 911 every single time a problem happens. Now, Lee Cockrell, the guy who used to manage 40,000 employees, one of our Thrive15.com mentors, he says, one way to get your priorities accomplished is to schedule them into your calendar. Now, does functional mindset number 10, going fast, is the constantly calling, texting, emailing, urgent item. You just can’t stop getting off that phone. It goes back to a little bit we talked about, but you just can’t stop calling, texting, emailing, writing full-page emails. Justin, have you ever dealt with someone who sends full-page emails? Every time you get an email, you know it’s a full-page. Here it comes. Yeah, just cut to the meat. Just get to the point, action steps, and you always end with a call of action, okay? So you get to the point you need done, communicate that clearly, and then get to your action step. And just keep it simple in your communication. Now the next move, dysfunctional mindset number 11, the mad at the messenger guy. You’re mad that someone told you the truth, see? You’re mad that someone gave you the hard number and you didn’t like that number. Well, the thing about it is you can either be mad about it or you can, you know, fight through that. I mean, listen, if you let your circumstances surround, whether you’re mad or happy or joyful or sad, I mean, hey, you’re in for a rocky ride in life. You know, as a general rule of thumb, and an entrepreneur especially, because I promise you you’re going to get some bad reviews, you’re going to get a nasty email, you’re going to get a phone call, you’re going to get an upset client, it’s going to happen. I’ll just, I’ll shortcut you. For sure. It’s going to happen. And if you allow that to dictate how your attitude is, then you’re going to, I tell you what, you’re always going to be kind of steered, you’re going to be steered instead of steering. And that’s why mindset number 12, dysfunctional mindset number 12, we want to free you from it. It’s the I care about what everybody else thinks and so to avoid any confrontation ever, I never hold people accountable. I never take a stand for anything. I never fire anybody. I never create remarkable marketing. I never create compelling no-brainer offers needed to get the ideal and likely buyer to take action. I just want to make everybody happy. Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you. Albert Einstein says this, great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. My friend, you must eventually take a stand for something and see if you’re going to take a stand for your own life and your own success, we have four ways we can help you. Well tell us about them, Clay. One, you can go to ThriveTimeShow.com and subscribe to this podcast. You’ll never miss a radio show or an archived episode. Two, you can come to our in-person workshops, which are game changers, and they’re sold out for June. Book your tickets for July. Three, you can subscribe to Thrive15.com. Z, it’s the world’s most affordable business school. And it’s $1 for the first month, really, folks. What, you spend a dollar on, and it’s $19 thereafter. But you also understand, signing up for the podcast, it’s free. So the first one’s free. Free? Yeah, and the second one we have scholarships for. And the third one’s a dollar the first month. Oh! And a little bonus, got a little bonus. You can get your hair cut. The first time, Justin, elephant in the room. How much is it now? Just $1. First visit, $1. Oh my gosh. And see, if somebody needs some optometry, they need some glasses, man. It’s $99 for that. $99 package. Come in, get a pair of glasses, your eye exam, we take good care of you. It’s awesome. I’m a believer. My wife used to work for the man. That’s how I met him. Awesome. And the final challenge, the final call to action I encourage everyone to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com and sign up for the one-on-one, 30-minute, for free, business coach consultation. It is the number one business coach consultation on the planet. Hey, while you’re on the thrive timeshow.com, click on watch live. I dare you, just click on it. Watch live, you can see the team in action. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. And as always, 3, 2, 1, boom! All right, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we are joined here, we are joined here today by a long time, wonderful client here by the name of Gabe Salinas. Gabe Salinas is the founder of windowninjas.com. Gabe, welcome on to the show. How are you, sir? Hey, Clay, I’m doing well. I hope you are doing as fine and dandy as I am. Now, I got to ask you here, sir, with your company, window ninjas dot com, how long have you been in business? And how would you describe where you’re at right now with the company growth? Currently own own window ninjas dot com for right at six years. We started, gosh, it’s been almost exactly six years ago. And currently we’re operating in four states, about 10 different cities. And we are growing and thriving and we are now currently franchising the business out. That is phenomenal. That is phenomenal. And again, folks, if you’re out there today and you’re looking for a turnkey business model, if you’re looking for a business model that’s perfected the kinks and you’re looking for a way to earn both time freedom and financial freedom, I would encourage you to go to windowninjas.com to learn more. Now I want to point this out here, folks. If you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, you’ll be able to follow along with today’s broadcast. We’re going to go here to page 201 of my newest book, A Millionaire’s Guide How to Become Sustainably Rich. Now on page 201, we talk about the importance of setting up a sales machine. Now, if you go to windowninjas.com and you buy a Window Ninjas franchise, they will already have a sales machine set up for you. But I wanna go through each aspect of what a sales machine looks like and give your wisdom on this here. So first off, you have to have a website that is optimized to show up in the search results? Why is that critical there, Gabe? Well, it’s critical because you want people to find you. I mean, if you don’t have an optimized website, then you’re going to be kind of like, it’d be like being lost in the desert. When you’re, when your website is optimized, people can quickly search whatever business you’re related to, and instantaneously find your specific business. And if you have that website optimized well enough, then you should or will become first in the search listings. Now, we’ve had the opportunity to work with you as a client over these past three years or so. And so I could tell folks behind the scenes, windowninjas.com, you never stop optimizing the website. So that’s something that you’re a big, it’s a big aspect of what you do there. You never stop optimizing the website. Now the second thing is you have to gather objective reviews from actual clients. Why do you have to gather objective reviews from actual clients? Well, Google likes to give you credit for having the most reviews possible. Since most people are searching on Google anyways, that’s the number one search engine in America, if not the world. When you gather more objectionable reviews from your customers, it helps in your search rankings. Again, when you come up number one as far as the highest rated and the most reviewed company in your backyard, then more clients are going to be inclined to do business with you. So it’s one of the main reasons why we make it a goal to gather at least one, if not two, reviews per location each and every day. So again, step one, you have to optimize your website. Step number two, you have to gather objective reviews from clients that don’t hate you. Step number three, you’ve gotta have online ads work. Now, Gabe, if people go to windowninjas.com and they buy a franchise, you already have the ads that have been designed to convert, the ads that create leads, the ads that have been proven to work. Why are online advertisements important to never stop running even though you already have an optimized website? Well it’s just another it’s another step in the arsenal of marketing. I mean once you have your website optimized, you’ve gathered so many reviews that your competitors can’t keep up. Now you’re running ads that just everybody can see and you got to make them make them good enough so and and very beneficial to the client as well as the business so that people want to click on those ads and it wants you want that to go to some sort of a call to action page whether it’s a page where their their call to action is to call you or fill out a form and they send you a service request or whatever the case may be but all three of those those marketing tools are extremely important if you really wanna grow your business and scale your business as well, like what we’re doing here at Window Ninjas. Now, at windowninjas.com, I mean, you have hundreds of customers reaching out a week. Sometimes you might even have thousands in a given month. I mean, you guys are an established brand. You’re growing nonstop. But still, when someone fills out that form, when somebody goes to windowninjas.com because they saw your advertisements or they saw your Google reviews or they saw your website, you have to call those leads until they cry, buy or die. You can never stop calling, texting and emailing those leads. You never stop calling, texting and emailing those leads. And for people out there that buy a Window Ninjas franchise, they don’t have to staff the people that call, text and email those leads. That’s a big benefit that you offer to the Window Ninjas franchisees. Tell us more about that. Why do you have to call, text, and email every lead until they cry, buy, or die? Well, it’s super important. I mean, you always want to follow up with the people that are inclined to do business with you, or even, you know, looking to, maybe they’re just kicking the tires or whatever the case may be, but you gotta call the leads. You gotta, and everybody’s busy nowadays, so you either gotta call them on the phone, most of the time it’s their cell phone, or you need to text them. A lot of customers now, they won’t even take a phone call from somebody that they don’t recognize that number. So, it’s important to text that client as well so that they know who you are. And what we do is we set up appointments with these people who are texters and we find out a convenient time for them where we can actually connect with them one-on-one over the phone. And then there’s always the reminder, some people are still email driven. You know, you’d be amazed at how many people are actually just living their life by email. And so you’ve got to find out which form of communication that people want to utilize. They’re either going to want to call, talk face to face, ear to ear. They’re going to want to talk with their thumbs, which means you’ve got to text them and go down that road. Or you’ve got to play the email game, and you’ve got to go out there and type out a big email on your computer just so you can send it to them and they communicate that way. But you’ve got to have, you’ve got to follow those three forms of communication with people and then you just got to continue doing it over and over and over and over and over again. Now I want people to know this idea there. Again, step one, this is called the ultimate sales machine. Now if you buy a windowninjas.com franchise, these systems are already set up for you. But that’s the kind of thing that Gabe and I have been working on behind the scenes to build this. That’s the big benefit of buying a franchise. You already have a system in place that works. So step one, you optimize your website. Step number two, you gather objective reviews from your actual clients. Step number three, you run compelling online advertisements. Step number four, you call, text, and email every lead until they cry, buy, or die. Step number five, you got to measure what you treasure. You got to measure what you treasure. And then step number six, you must never stop hiring, inspiring, training, and retaining high quality people. So I want to get your thoughts on those final two aspects there. Why do you always have to measure what you treasure and why can you never stop hiring people? Well, a lot of people don’t understand that measuring what you treasure means, you know, the things that are important in the business. I mean, when you’re running a business, there’s a lot of moving parts. You need to know if your advertising is working. Hey, are the leads being run? Are they still on? Did you make sure that that bill to Google has been paid? Is your budget set properly? When you’re capturing those leads, you want to know how many leads that you’re capturing from or from all the advertisements that you’re putting out there. Now, once you’ve figured that out, okay, well, how many of those leads do you gain as an actual customer? Meaning, did you close the deal? Are you selling that customer? Are you convincing them to do business with you? And did you go out there and do business? And once you went out there and did business, did they, were they impressed? Were they not impressed? Did you wow them? And if you wowed them, did you get a Google review? And if you got a Google review, how many of those did you bring in in a single month, let alone a year? And then it comes back down to the last and the final step of that, which is all the accounting. You got to figure out, hey, how much money did that customer pay out of all of the customers that you generated from those leads? How many of them paid and what amount total did they pay so that you can figure out what your revenue is for the month, let alone the year, and you want to track every single one of those things. So every one of those items from marketing, marketing and advertising to following up with leads to running ads, all of those things have to be measured and treasured every single week so that you know if your ship is sailing in the right direction. Now, I think for a lot of people, the idea of nailing and scaling a business can be overwhelming. And so I want to give people three solutions today. Solution number one, you can come out to one of our in-person workshops. We certainly do that. We can teach you how to grow, how to start and grow a successful company. You can learn more about that on part two of today’s show. Also, ladies and gentlemen, we do one-on-one business coaching and mentoring to help you grow your business. But then you have this thing called franchise, where you’re paying for a proven system that has already been set up. Someone’s already thought through most of the details involved in scaling the company, and then you can tap into that business opportunity, and you pay a percentage of the gross revenue, you pay a percentage of the sales to the company for the privilege of using that proven system. Gabe, tell us about buying a Window Ninjas franchise here in the final 60 seconds or so. How much does it cost and what’s the first step people need to take? Well, the franchise fee is your $49,500 fee to join the franchise system that we have built and developed for all of our franchisees. Buy-in total cost, you’re looking somewhere between $150,000 and $190K with your trucks and you’re getting wraps and all your equipment and getting all of your equipment set up and purchased and training that goes involved with that. And then once you’re in the business, we offer a really awesome turnkey system that has been proven and really creates success. We have a call center that answers all of the phone calls coming in from all the leads that are being generated in each location’s backyard. That call center not only is facilitating the client’s needs, but they’re actually driven and paid as salespeople because they want to close those deals because we’re paying them incentive-based pay to close them and get additional services. And then we always follow up once those leads are turned into customers. We always follow up with those customers, what we call warm connects. We reach out to these customers over and over and over again, just to follow up with them, make sure they’re still alive, make sure they’re still good, make sure they want to have more services. And we take that off of the franchisees plate. All the franchisee has to do is manage the operations. They just need to manage the service technicians and you make sure that their equipment is in good shape, running properly, running smoothly, and following up with any, what do we call them, quotes and things like that with our customers. And we’re just a good partner for the franchisees themselves. We look at it like a partnership. We wanna be in business with people that really want to grow and be successful in business. And that’s one of the main things that we strive to get across to people that want to be members of our company is that we really care, we want everybody to do well, we want our company overall to do well, and we really really really want to see people succeed. So, Window Ninjas is unique just because we do have that call center. I’ve talked to many people and when I tell them about the call center and we go through the expense and the 8% fee for just the call center, they see such value in that because you really can’t go and employ anybody, put them in a building somewhere, pay for that building and pay for all the advertising and have them answer all the phone calls and do all the follow-ups for 8% man. It’s just a good, good deal. So anybody looking to buy a good competitive business that is scalable and duplicatable, man, call me. I’ll hook you up. We’ll talk. We’ll get you in business and we’ll get you making money. Gabe, thank you so much for carving out time for us there, sir. Hope you have a great rest of your weekend. And again, folks, that’s windowninjas.com. That’s windowninjas.com. Take care, and we’ll talk to you next week. All right. Thanks, Clay. We’ll see you next week. Bye. Well, Thrive Nation, we are the Thrive Time Show. What we do is we help businesses grow their business owners to grow their businesses. The purpose is to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And we’ve had a longtime client that we’ve worked with. And this is sort of like our exit interview because he’s actually exited the business. And so he’s at the other end of the rainbow or he got to the top of the mountain or he hit it or he hit his big goal. And I’m honored to call him a friend and a longtime client. Tim Whaley, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m doing outstanding, Clay. Thank you for having me on. Can you tell everybody, how did you first hear about what we do in terms of business coaching? I first heard of you through your podcast, actually. So I started listening, was very intrigued. Actually, you had built and sold businesses in the industry that I was in. So it seemed like a natural fit to inquire about coaching. Yeah. And, you know, once we connected and you did your, I’m not sure if it was an onboarding interview or it was more of a you were going to determine whether or not we were a good fit. I think that was it. But once we did that, I was hooked and was really hoping that you would take me on as a client, which you did. Now before I met you, I mean, you’d been in business for a long time and one would say you’re probably the dominant resource or one of the top providers in your industry before we even met. Could you tell the listeners how implementing the Dream 100 system impacted your business growth? Oh my gosh. So within just a few short years, it doubled our revenue, plain and simple. So Dream 100 was by far the secret sauce for our success and really the reason why I was able to exit my business ahead of schedule. So, just a brilliant program, makes total sense as a company. It’s one of the few marketing slash advertising outlets that you have total control over. It’s not like you’re on Facebook, which owns Facebook, or Google, which owns Google. But I mean, you own the system. You make it work, and great things happen. Now, with the Dream 100, you have to identify the vendors that you want to refer you or the prospects that you want to refer. You have to identify the ideal and likely buyers that you want to refer you. And then you have to reach out to them consistently. And you guys have done a phenomenal job at doing that. What were a couple of the challenges of persistently reaching out to people to get them to refer you guys a business? Well, a couple things. One, you just really have to find the right fit. You have to find the right employee or employees. Because really, when you’re going out there, you need somebody who’s obviously great at building relationships. And that’s a lot of different people. But what I found is you also just need a hunter killer. So, it’s not necessarily somebody who’s very personable and great with people but somebody with those qualities but also just has a, like I said, a hunter killer, just wants to, has a drive to bring business in. And you find that person and they just make it happen. And we were fortunate enough to find a couple great employees who were just very good at that. And now that you have sold the business, you’re gonna stay on as an advisor to make sure that the brand is successful and that sort of thing. What does it feel like to be on the other side of the rainbow or to be at the top of the mountain or to be on the other side of selling a business that you started so many years ago? Well, Clay, it’s only been six weeks. So obviously mixed feelings there But if I had to put it in a one word, I would have to say freedom Okay Yeah, so it feels pretty darn good and my wife and I are are very excited and obviously we’re still you know We’re still helping the new ownership transition and whatnot. So there’s there’s stuff we’re doing and stuff to be done, but Overall, it’s you know when you’ve been hitting it hard for 33 years, and then all of a sudden you don’t have to, it feels pretty darn good, not going to lie. Now Robert Kiyosaki, the bestselling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I recently interviewed him and he had me on his show. It’s been kind of fun to connect with this guy who wrote the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series. It’s just fun to connect with him. And he’s been talking borderline obsessively on his show recently about, it’s not what people say, it’s what they do. You need to watch people do, not what they say. And I think a big thing about having a business coach or a personal trainer if you’re into fitness is if you’re into fitness, you need to have a nutritional plan, you need to have a workout plan, and then you need someone to hold you accountable. And if you’re a business owner, you need to have a business plan, you need to have weekly actions that you need to implement, and then you need to have some accountability. How has having a business consultant or a coach to guide you down the path, how has that impacted you? Tremendously. So there’s a running joke between my wife and I. I will often say I’m the most consistently inconsistent person you want to meet. So, historically, I’ve been the guy who starts this, goes for a little while, and then, you know, sees a, you know, I’m like a squirrel, right? I see the next great thing and I’ll go after that for a while. So I’m an artist, right? I’m a photographer first and, you know, business guy second, I guess. So you have helped corral my artist brain. And having, you know, the weekly accountability calls and the action plan has definitely helped me stay focused on what needs to be focused on. So yeah, it’s been life changing. Nothing short of life changing. Now I want to pull up something real quick and get your thoughts on this, because you and I have worked together, I think for about three years or is it, how long did we work together there before you exited the business? Do you know? We started in 2019. So 2019, okay. So we’ve worked together for quite a while there. And so 2019, wow, so that’s almost five years, four and a half years or so. But if we do a search for carpet cleaning quotes, I’ve worked with one particular brand for 14 years, I think almost 15 now, and they have 271,000 Google reviews. So for 14 consecutive years, I’ve been talking to the same ownership about, you have to gather objective Google reviews from your ideal and likely buyers. You have to get reviews, after you clean the carpet, you have to gather video reviews and Google reviews. And we talk about it every week, and it’s just like bamboo. I keep coming back every week. I just, you can’t kill it. I come back every week talking about the reviews. And in a world now where people go online to look stuff up, this has been a powerful tool for oxyfresh.com. It’s grown from a handful of locations now to 500 plus locations. How has gathering objective Google reviews and video reviews impacted your sales process? Well, I feel like it’s a one-two punch, Clay. So Dream 100 and the reviews work hand-in-hand. So the majority of our business comes from the Dream 100. But that’s one referral source. So our couples will be referred by venues, but they want to check us out. So they’re going to go online and look for our reviews. So, you know, not only do you have to have a ton of reviews but you have to have a ton of five-star reviews. And so, the referrals plus the social proof on Google brings them in. Final questions I have for you, then I’ll be done harassing you here, is, you know, you now have got all the systems, the scripts, the website, the ads that work, the Dream 100 system going. And so to give people some clarity, you now have a turnkey marketing system in place. I mean you have a Dream 100 system that works. You now have an online advertising program that works. You now have a sales process that works. It’s all documented. It’s all systemized for the new owner. So what would you say for anybody out there that is maybe thinking about coming to one of our in-person workshops or scheduling a free 13-point assessment with myself or a member of our team? What would you, what would you say to somebody who’s kind of on the fence about maybe coming to a workshop or scheduling a free 13-point assessment? Get off this fence. Just get off the fence. Bottom line. You know, you’ve helped make my company sellable, right? So those systems is exactly what made our company attractive to the buyer. They were looking for a company that was highly successful that they could then take and scale. And our business qualified because of what we’ve done over the last five years. And so, yeah, I would never I would not hesitate. I’ve told anybody who’s ever, you know, asked me about my coaching relationship with you and your organization, I said I wouldn’t hesitate. Never in a million years. You have literally changed my life as a result of what you’ve taught me. You know, you have got to come to Tulsa one of these days here. So I know you guys are going to enjoy your retirement or whatever it is you’re doing. But at some point, if you ever get the bug and you ever start a new thing or you ever in the Tulsa area, I really want to see you guys. You have my cell phone number, we can talk whenever, but I just want to tell you, it’s been an honor working with you and it’s been so exciting to help you hit your goals. And I know you’ve worked 30 plus years to go on this dream vacation lifestyle that you’ve built. What would you say to anybody out there that has a business and they feel, my final question for you, they feel overwhelmed by all the systems they have to build and they’re not at the top of the mountain. They haven’t sold the business yet. It isn’t systemized and all they see is perpetual chaos. What would you say to that person? Take the next step. Every journey begins with the next step and that next step should definitely be contacting you guys. If they just do that, the rest will take care of itself. You make sure of that. Tim, it’s an honor serving you again. I appreciate you very much and don’t be a stranger there, sir. You got it Thank you. Take care chief. Bye The Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business Workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow a successful company. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days, you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems So now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve You’re gonna leave energized motivated, but you’re also gonna 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 & Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see you. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person, two-day, interactive business workshop, all you got to do is go to ThriveTimeShow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. 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, Terminix, 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 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%. So 411% we’re up with, with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one-and-done deal. It was a system that we that we followed with Thrive and in the refining process and that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals and more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, 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 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. You know, 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 to use services, you’re choosing to use a proof and turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. And Clay’s 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, 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 six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system of critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go and that’s what I like the most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you and Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. Anyways, just an amazing man. Anyways, 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 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 being 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 doggo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales which is awesome but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. Whoa! The Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s 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’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop, all you’ve got to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you.