Entrepreneur | Part 2 – Coaching Clients Questions and Wins of The Week

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to hear what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now 3, 2, 1, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we’re about to do. Welcome back to the Privetime Show on your radio. This is the show all about how to make your wallet grow, how to grow that business. And I’m going to tell you what, we are so excited. That’s Dr. Z, Dr. Zellner, myself, I’m Clay Clark, SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. He’s the optometrist turned tycoon. We’re so excited to help you grow your business that we would take time out of our schedule to teach you how to grow a business. And we thank you for taking time out of your schedule to learn how to grow your business. So it’s kind of a symbiotic relationship because we love helping you grow your business and we love hearing feedback from you and the specific questions that you have. So today we are going to be inside the box that rocks broadcasting to you answering your questions that you’ve emailed us to info at thrive 15 dot com. Inside the box that rocks today we are joined with my incredible wife of 15 years. She’s wearing an incredible white coat if you’re on Facebook live right now. Apparently the office temperatures have gotten too cold for her. Vanessa, how are you? I’m great. Doing great. Loving the coat. Loving the warmth in here. You don’t like the 60 degree weather that’s designed to keep everybody awake all the time? I felt a way. This is how I deal with it. I just wear coats all the time. Okay. All right. She’s kind of almost, you see, she’s kind of in defiance of our cold culture. I think she’s still on a chocolate high. I mean, Valentine’s Day was yesterday. I think she still has a little chocolate around her mouth. I mean, she’s probably just pounded chocolate all night long. Got it in my pocket. Got it in her pocket. It’s just a little sweet, little sweet sweets, you know. Because I know, Clay, you probably just flood her with chocolates and candy and you probably want a little outfit you were talking about. He’s got it, babe. Cupid outfit right around the house with your bow and arrow. My wife understands moderation and I don’t get it. I’m serious. This is one of the things she can do. She can get like a bunch of chocolates and just kind of put them around the house and just have a couple at a time. For me, it’s like I just want a bag at a time. I want no chocolate or all of it. When I grew up, I’d go over to a friend’s house and have these little bowls of candy and I’m like, what in the world is going on? I’d put it all in my pockets as fast as I could. What are they thinking? It’s either all in or all out. I think it’s an entrepreneur trait. It’s like either I’m not going to have any chocolates or I’m having all of your chocolates. Yeah, exactly. So around our house, we had a lot of kids that, I mean, if you put out a bowl of candy, I mean, you better watch your hands because it’s… Well, my things are hidden, I will say that. I don’t just leave them lying around because they would all be gone. Now here’s the deal, Thrivers. We have some great questions today in our stack of stuff. We have four incredible questions. But before we do that, I want to start, Z, with another win of the week. Are you excited for the win of the week here? This is our win of the week. It’s actually the win of the day, I guess. Hey, listen, I’ll tell you what. You know, we had a whole list of questions to get to yesterday. We only got to about half of them, but those questions were awesome, by the way, that we deep-dived into. So if you missed yesterday’s show, get on thrivetimeshow.com and you can listen to the podcast as much as you want to. You can just kind of just read and listen to that thing all day long if you like. Well, today we have four questions, and I’ll get into our big win of the day here. So four questions, okay? We have thrivers that want to know about how do you find time to optimize your website? That’s question number one. Question number two is pricing. How do you price something? How do you actually go out there and price a product? The next is how do you stay in touch with leads? Former leads, former customers, people that maybe said not now but maybe later. How do you do that? And the fourth question is how do you determine your biggest limiting factor? If your business won’t grow, how do you know what you need to do to grow? We’re going to get into all of those, but here’s the win of the week. Z, are you excited about the win of the week? I love winning. Winning is just the best, and that’s why we’re on this show, is to coach people up to win, right? Here we go. It is the Thrive win of the day and the week. This just in, Fish Flicks. If you go to fishflicks.com, they’re now number four in Google. So if you type in Christian movies in the whole world in Google, he’s been working on this. He’s been plugging away with help of the Thrive15.com coaching team for over a year and a half, and he just now hit page one, baby. I’m going to tell you what. If you are on page two, it’s like your website doesn’t exist, but when you’re on page one, everybody’s buying his DVDs. Money cometh. Oh, money cometh. Wow. You’ll grow back there. That can be a seven-figure move easily. Just going from page two to page one is a huge move. You’re on page seven, and you’re like, why are people not finding my website? And you’re like, well, it’s… I don’t know the last time you flipped through seven pages of Google searches to get to the site. Not even your mom will do seven pages. I’ll say this. Now that I know how Google searches work, I’m the one person who will go and go deep dive because I’m like, well, they could still be legit and just not know how to optimize. Let me see if I can find them. They could. If I’m really looking for something. That could be the case. You’re so sweet. I’ve got to tell you something that Vanessa and I did this past weekend. It was a time of love. Build it up. Build it up. This is good. A lot of people say, what do you guys do on the weekends? What’s your move? I’ll tell you what we did this weekend. We said, you know what, we’ve got a spare 24 hours. So what we’re going to do is we want to get Thrive Time. Now, if you just get out your computers, Thrivers, type it in here, Z. If you type in America’s number one business coach, guess who is now page one and the top of page one in the Google? Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, And the answer is, do you see it? Do you see it, Z? It’s a… Clogged Clorid! Oh! And then if you scroll down two more spots, what do you see there? Do you see the Thrive Time Show, Z? Do you see it? Oh, yeah. This makes my heart so happy. So, Vanessa and I, I’m just telling you, what we did is we optimized. And the reason why we didn’t delegate that is it requires a certain amount of strategic thinking and so many people are typing in Thrive 15 reviews, and we have so many of you who have been kind enough to shoot a video testimonial or send us a text about how it’s helping your business. We optimized all that. I’m not kidding. I think we spent about 24 man hours. We had a strategy, too. There are a couple of different ways we do it. We can either get out laptops and lay side by side, I’m not joking, and go through and do this. Or Clay will be in super hyper-focused mode and he goes into the man cave and he’s doing it and then I’m bringing him like the food and stuff so we’re kind of switching and then later at night we’re hanging out with the kids we’re back on the laptops side by side and we’re telling them guys 30 more minutes then we’re all gonna watch this epic movie we watched the jungle book which is really really really good the new one yes we’ve never seen it we’re entranced by all these animals oh I did the jungle book has a special place in my heart when when my daughter was young, we’d always play it and I always got to play the part of… Mowgli? No, no, she was Mowgli. She’d strip down her underwear. Whoa! If you’re listening, Dr. Anderson, I’m sorry. I hope you’re Baloo. I hope you’re Baloo. I was Baloo. Yes! I was Baloo and she was Mowgli and we would reenact the entire Jungle Book, not on a daily basis but on a pretty much every other day basis. As soon as that movie would start, bam, she’d be down in her underwear, jump around the house being Mowgli. And I’d be Balut. And we performed Jungle Book many, many times, by the way. I love it. Now here’s the deal, Thrivers. I’m just telling you this. We’re going to answer a question now from a Thriver. This is a very great question. It ties right in here to this whole search engine game. This is from a Thriver in Toronto by the name of Sonia. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. And Z, I went ahead and got the Canadian national anthem queued up here because I know that you’re a big Canadian national anthem fan. Let me get that going here. Let me kind of get that moving here. Let me get it. Oh, we got to get there we go. He’s getting emotionally ready. This guy is singing it here. This is the from Ottawa. Here we go. Oh wow. That’s the national anthem. Why are we not getting the Canadian? We’ll have to come back. There’s too much hype. And I got I got to come back and get more accurate Canadian national anthems. Oh my gosh, that’s just such a… The song goes like this. Oh Canada, my home and native land. Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee. That’s the deal. You know it. I do. I’ve watched a lot of Montreal Expos versus Chicago Cubs games back in the day. But here’s the deal, this is the question. She says, how do I find time to render videos and do search engine optimization? Well, Sonia, we have the specific answers for you. I’m going to walk you through this. If you’re gainfully employed, and according to Forbes, 57% of people want to start a business, but they currently have a job. And they should keep their job, start your business, and that’s the thing people do all the time, is they say, well, how do I fund it? How do I get the money? Because I want to start this business and then I want to just quit everything else. And we’re like, don’t quit everything else. Start your business small and then build it. We’re going to help you do that. But this is a great question. You guys kind of pre-answered it. You guys gave like a teaser. Well, a live demonstration. Yes, you did. You guys, you kind of pre-answered this question before you even asked it by your little story. Well, this is what Clifton Talbert told me. Back in the day, I told him, I’m having a hard time finding time to think strategically about my business. This is about 15 years ago. I was like, man, I know what to do. I just don’t have the time to do it. Which is where I think the majority of people are in most cases, right? Time management is so big. We could spend years talking about this subject because it’s so important. Once you get it right, life changes. He said, check it out. Are your kids typically up at 3am?” And I’m like, no. He said, what about 4am? I go, no, he said, 5, no, 6, no, 7, no, 8. I’m like, sometimes. He goes, why don’t you just between 3 and 8, those 5 hours uninterrupted, that’s when you think strategically. Or, you can do it after they go to bed. After they go to bed. Whatever you need to do. He said, you only need to sleep about 6 to 8 hours. So maybe you hang out with your wife and then you go to bed around 9 o’clock and you get up at 2 or 3. Either way, just set your alarm, get 5 or 6 hours of sleep and you’ll be fine. And I’m like, huh? Well, he’s the guy who’s in the military. And in the military, that’s normal. If you’re in the military, you just, you know, you go to bed and a dude wakes you up with something kind and courteous and nice by like, sweet, wake up private, you know, you’re like, oh, you know, so the thing is, is that you just have to block out time. So what I do with the kids and the weekends and I’m doing these big SEO projects, these deep dives is I’ll just set the alarm for 3am and between three and eight, they don’t even know I’m gone because I’m uploading at the house. I’m doing the rendering. I’m doing the SEO. That’s a move. The other thing is you can do it where you’re working on it with your spouse. So Vanessa, can you talk about how we kind of work on some projects together sometimes? Yeah, you know, especially when we have a really big project daunting thing going on, we think, okay, you know, why don’t you tackle this part of it and I’ll tackle that part. So we kind of divide out, I guess, our different roles. Or sometimes if it’s big enough, we’ll both do the same thing. You’ll teach me, hey, this is what I’m working on. And we both have laptops, so we’ll go side by side and hang out. And then we’ll take a break and we’ll go to the gym and get in the sauna. I mean, just kind of like silly stuff, but your mind needs a break if you’ve been doing something straight for three hours. And I do take you to Oklahoma Joe’s with me. That’s true, right? You do take me to Oklahoma Joe’s. You love it. You take Aubrey. She won’t eat it. She won’t eat any barbecue. I don’t want to say that. I feel like this is like I can’t I know you gotta be real real okay my real self I am the pickiest person in the world. I know it is so good I just can’t bring myself to try it, but cuz meat cuz you don’t eat meat It’s meat or near me you won’t touch it, but the thing is I’ll sit there You know go there, and I’ll make her hang out with me, and I’ll eat it it while she’s just watching me Do you chew it? He’s like putting me through some sort of like torture test. I’m like go ahead You’re like you don’t do the what about Bob kind of movie thing where these guys sit there and slow chew. He loves that. Oh, so good. Now, Vanessa, when I’ve shown you how to do the SEO, because you’ve never done search engine before. That’s correct. But how long did it take you to learn the process of how to upload content to a website, which by the way, we just showed today, is now made Fish Flix top in Google and has made Thrive top in Google. How long did it take me to teach you how to do that? Oh, I mean it’s so quick. It’s just you showing me a couple times and me knowing what… How many hours? No hours to learn how to do it. So you’re saying, Z, she’s claiming people could learn how to make a seven-figure bump in income by coming to a Thrive 15 workshop and you’re saying when I taught you, I taught you how to do it in like what, 30 minutes? Yes, but I will say this. The number one thing you have to do is you have to have someone who actually cares who is doing it. That is why Clay and I do it ourselves. Because if you delegate this out, that’s fine to do, but you have got to make sure the person cares because I want to say the majority of videos that you and I were doing in the beginning, we were correcting mistakes that people made who’d uploaded this and didn’t care. And the videos were just named numbers. They were named random stuff. Everything was all smooshed together into one word with no spaces. I was like, what is this? Who could ever write? The thing about SEO is it requires a lot of care. You have to care. You have to have logical thinking skills. So I would just say, for me, no matter how many times you try to teach me how to fix a car, it’s not happening. I don’t get tools. I don’t understand tools. But I do understand how to write well. So I’d say the key skills, you have to be able to write and spell correctly, and you’ve got to want to do it. And there’s some people that want to do it, they just can’t spell correctly. And it’s sort of a… And you have some hacks that I believe our listeners can use. You want to share those that really, really help? Now Z, when we get back, we’re going to get into a few more specifics about search engine optimization. And then we’re going to move into pricing. So many people want to know how do I price my product? How do I do it? And you appear to be kind of like the Zen master of pricing. Cause I’m just sitting over here. I just want his ninja outfit on. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the Inspiration Conversation. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, in your ear, sent here to teach you how to start and grow a successful business. And as always, I am joined inside the box that rocks, which is located on the left coast of the Arkansas River by the man with the plan and the co-host with the Mo-O’s. This is Dr. Robert Zellner. Sir, how are you? I’m a little intimidated today. We had the holiday, Valentine’s Day. I get a little weirded out when I think about you and your Cupid outfit running around the house chasing Vanessa. But that’s a whole, that’s kind of old news. That’s what’s led to the majority of my arrests. That’s what’s led to the majority of your children. Oh wow. But here on my desk, you and I are big fans of the wood by the name of pinion wood. Oh, I love pinion wood. And so we have random pinion wood scattered around the box of rocks, and our producer, I affectionately refer to him as a lumberjack. He is a lumberjack. He is a lumberjack. And the other day, he opens up his briefcase, and he literally pulls a hatchet out of his briefcase. I’m like he carries it around. Like I’m going to carry around a pen. Yeah, I mean it’s kind of a little weird, you know. And so today the hatchet is buried into a piece of binyon wood on my desk and it’s a little intimidating. It’s a sign of that he has now aired to. He’s there. Get over there on Facebook. Look at that. There you go. That’s that’s just impressive. It’s a way for him to show that he has aired all of his grievances. All grievances have been solved. He’s buried the hatchet. But if for some reason people think there’s a lingering issue, he might have a spare hatchet. Well, to me it’s a sign of love because it’s like when you have a cat that loves you, it’ll leave a dead rat or a dead mouse or some dead animal on the front porch. And you open the door and you’re a little freaked out at first, and then you smile and say, oh, look at that. Roscoe, my one-eyed cat, really loves me. I used to think it was weird when you’d find the legs of frogs scattered around the parking lot, but now I understand. Sam’s just showing us love. Thank you, Sam. He’s just showing us love. Now Thrivers, we have a very special guest on the show today. We have Mr. Roger Bruin on the show. He is sort of a big deal, and he’s a guy that does something that I think is very, very interesting if you’ve never heard of this kind of thing. What he does is there’ll be a business out there that maybe is bankrupt or it’s distressed and it’s struggling in some capacity. That could be like in health care, aviation, real estate, finance, a myriad of industries. And what he does is he helps them actually, you know, he actually helps buy these businesses and fix them and turn them around. And the idea is when you buy a distressed business, you don’t want to crash and burn that thing into the ground. You want to buy it, fix it, get the right. So he’s kind of like a business fixer. How would you describe yourself to the average third grader who might have tuned in while their parents went into Oklahoma Joe’s to get some baked beans or something? How would you describe yourself? Well, you guys know that movie Michael Clayton. He was the fixer in that show. And yeah, I think of myself as a bit of a fixer. First of all, we have to finance him and get him out of bankruptcy. And then we send in some good management and ultimately the goal is to force a distressed company into a healthy place. Okay, force a distressed company into a healthy place. So we have the Thrivers out there who many of them are in sort of a distressed place where they’re going, hey I want to start a business or maybe I did start a business but it’s just not working. I don’t know how to make it grow. And we have a lot of questions from these Thrivers and Zee specifically one of the Thrivers in Canada, Sonia, she’s in Toronto, she asks, how do I find time to render videos and do my search engine? And Vanessa and I talked about the technical aspects of it, and bottom line here, Sonia, you’re going to have to block out time to get it done. And I’m telling you, at our workshops, our next one is on February 24th and 25th, that’s the Friday and Saturday, we will teach you from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. a myriad of things, time management, marketing, sales, search engine optimization, those kind of things. And you can learn in about an hour of what to do. But then finding the time to do it is the big challenge people have. So I’m saying, yes, you need to block out time. But Z, I’d like for you to get into the specifics of where the average listener, and you talked about it yesterday a little bit, where the average listener is just not doing the right thing as it comes to time management and here like some specific steps that you might recommend here Well, there’s there’s there’s two moves you can do one you can reassign Time that what you’re doing now until you can create new time Reassigning time means you know study came out and the average adult is watching five hours of TV a day. Oh That’s nice five hours of TV a day and if you think about it, okay, so let’s reappoint that and just say, okay, just give me two and a half of them. Give me three of them. Give me, take your, you get one show, you can DVR it and watch it, and all the rest that’s on that DVR, we’re going to push that to the back burner, okay? Prime video rendering time, really. That’s how I see it. Prime video rendering time. So here’s, you can reassign what you’re doing. The other move is you can do like Clay said earlier in the first segment, and that is you can take some time that normally you’re sleeping. In other words, you can just recapture some time. So you say, my move was always kind of stay up late. I was a night owl. Clay’s the morning lark. What we would do is when you would stay up all night, I would be getting up. So you were going to bed at 2 a.m. I’m getting up at 2 a.m. We just high five. High five. It’s like that. I don’t know if you remember this, but there’s a donut commercial. The guy was passing himself in the middle of the night coming to make the donuts and getting the donuts and all that. So you and I are like that. You know, the donut machine never stops. Soon as I’m done, go to sleep, and I just, okay, great, now, Roger, I want to ask you, I want to ask you about this because Lee Cockrell, who used to manage Walt Disney World Resorts, he says this, he says, with self-discipline, almost anything can be achieved in every aspect of life. But he also goes on to say that one way to get your priorities accomplished is to schedule them into your calendar. When you see a business that’s failing, talk to me about if you see an executive or a manager that’s failing to get the right things done, they’re failing to manage their time well, what are some tips that you would have or what are some ways you go in there and help somebody fix their time management? Well, I totally agree with Dr. Z. If you’re not using Outlook or some sort of a calendaring tool. If you don’t have daily disciplines, if you don’t understand what’s an essential priority from a non-priority, you’ve got to get those fixed. So get online, get to the library, read good material, and there’s a lot of free stuff out there where folks can fix what’s broken. Look it up on YouTube and figure out how to get yourself into a daily discipline, a daily rhythm and understand what is essential from what’s non-essential. What are some things where you see businesses that are failing, where you see, wow, they’re focusing on the wrong thing? What’s the kind of thing where you see somebody spending, maybe a team of people, spending massive amounts of time doing the wrong things? What are some of the things you see very commonly? Well, let me turn that around and say what they need to be doing. So you’ve got to get the money right. Any business has to understand what the essence of their cash flow is. They’ve got to have good analysts working on their stuff. So if we’re talking about a real small micro-business, then once again, what tools are available through YouTube to understand how to deal with the finances of a small business. If you’re dealing with a medium-sized or a large company, you’ve got to be hiring out some really good skilled people in the finance arena. If you never get the finances right, it just can never work. Now, here’s the deal, Thrivers. If you’re going, man, I need some help making my proforma. I don’t even know what the word proforma means, but I want to make one. I got to get my finances right. I got to learn about sales and profits and loss, and I got to learn all that. And I just want to learn this in like two days. I need to learn this all now. We had a Thriver at last month’s workshop who came up to me nicely, Vanessa and I met her, and I won’t divulge her name on the air, but she came up to me and she goes, I have learned more in these 15 hours than I learned in all four years of business college, and it was because the theory is so much different than the application. So Zee and I would caution you, whoever you learn from, make sure you’re learning from experts. And we would encourage you, we would challenge you, we would push you, we would encourage you. Get out to our two-day in-person workshop on, if you go to Thrivetimeshow.com, you can get all the details, Thrivetimeshow.com. It is February 24th through the 25th. It’s two days from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Book your ticket. Book your ticket for someone that you love. And if you forgot to get them a Valentine’s gift the other day, this is your chance to kind of, you know, get some redemption. Buy them a late Valentine’s gift. Send them to thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Thrive Nation, Keytown, Green Country, Oklahomies, people who share the planet with us. Welcome to the thrive15.com show, known as the Thrive Time Show. Aliens who are tuning in from other planets, we appreciate you for adjusting your frequencies, getting to the AM dial, adjusting your spaceships so you can get through the solar flares to hear our show. It’s impressive when you see other alien planets adjusting their concept of space and time. They’re actually putting it into the schedule. Aliens to tune in. We have Klingons, Romulans, we’ve got Wookiees. The cast of characters are now listening to the show. It’s unverifiable, but I believe it to be true. Well, it is unverifiable, but we do know for a fact that you actually hail from another planet So I think that that probably all your friends and your you’ve some of your family members still back there I mean whatever whatever that looks like you know we know that we’re being there’s other planets that are actually You know listening in to the show and we think it’s contributed to because they’re big fans of you being an alien that you know that You are you know after a Valentine’s there’s so many things I just Tulsa’s expressed love the Thrive Nation has shown us love. And Zee, you and I aren’t out there asking for a bunch of free stuff, but we are asking for five free things. Just five. Not a bunch of things. Not a bunch. That’s not excessive. I’ve said to many of you on the podcast and radio show, one, send me any Patriots gear you have. I don’t care if it’s like old Drew Bledsoe, Tom Brady, whatever you’ve got, you just send it. And you guys are doing it. People have been sending it, yeah. Super Bowl towels, jerseys, hats. Second is anything pro-America. If you just send us anything like red, white, and blue, America. Three send us things with a Z. Send us a letter Z. If you’ve got a letter Z, a spare letter Z, or some spare American swag, send it to us. We’ve been getting so many things and we’re grateful. I told Clay, I said, you need to start asking, like tell people you like diamonds or something. I registered at Moody’s. Bugs of cash. Yeah, yeah. People are loving this. I love it. Sending all these things. I thought, we’ve got to really think about the things we’re asking for. Now, fourth, we’ve asked you to send in your questions to info at thrive15.com. We’ve asked you to do that. Send in your questions because we want to answer them and check it out. It’s free. For free? Yeah, we answer your questions for free. Did he just say free? I did just say free three times in a row. Go to thrivetimeshow.com. You can subscribe to the podcast or you can email us info at thrive15.com. We’ll answer all your questions. And the final ask we’ve said is, hey, share the Thrive Time show with a friend. Share it with them. Go on social media. Share it with them. It’s a game changer. Now here’s a question that comes in from a Thrive. This comes in hot from a company down in Dallas, Texas. And they said, Z, what is your process for evaluating pricing? I guess, how do you determine pricing, Z? This can be one of the most important things when you start up your business. Because now what you’ve done is you’ve had this little dream, we’ve been fanning the flame, it’s now burst into a little campfire. And now you’ve got your product or your service and you’ve said, okay, now I think the world wants this. I think I’m solving a problem with this. And so now you’ve gone to your friends or your family, Uncle Billy signed off on it. Uncle Billy signed off? Wow. Aunt Miranda’s just, she’s excited and she made, he wants to invest. I love your idea, Z. I love your idea. Your idea is amazing. It’s so great. Look at you. You remind me of your uncle. Look at you. See, and she’s maybe, she’s like, you know, I even wanted to invest. And she opens up her little purse and pulls out a few dollars and says, you know, I’d like a piece of the action. I have seven dollars. You can have all seven of them. All of them. I’ll go all in with you. And now comes the crunch time, the moment that falls on, and that is pricing. What? Now, here’s the deal. When someone says, what I should price them, what price tag should I put on this? There’s a deeper question I ask them. I say, well, what is your concept of your business? In other words, are you wanting to be a Walmart? Are you wanting to be a Nordstrom’s? Are you a little boutiquey boutiquey? Are you trying to you really made something special? You’re really wowing I mean, let’s deep dive a little bit into what you what you’re selling. Okay, okay for me for example I wanted to go the value route value. What do you value? Well because I decided this I’d rather sell to the masses instead of the The other the classes Wow, that’s what I meant the classes No, I wanted to do I want to do a lot of business and I wanted to be valuable. Part of that was just my upbringing. I was born into a big family without a lot of resources and so I remember I was like to have one pair of glasses for years and the tape and the stuff on them. You wanted to make it affordable for people. I wanted to make it affordable for people because I didn’t want to see another young man out there with a bunch of tape on his glasses. He knew he couldn’t get a pair of glasses for another year of his life. So anyway, it left some scars on my, but I’m doing better. You’re looking beautiful though. Thank you. So I said, listen, I’m going to go value. So for me, it was all about where’s my profit. I mean, where’s, where’s my cost on the goods. And now I went and researched my competition. Yes, I did that. I called them. I went into their stores. I pho shop them, you know, I found out what they were charging and guess what? I under priced them. I don’t know if that’s ethical Z. I mean, I was over here at the Summit Club reading a book on business ethics that I downloaded. I read it. It was a reading. And one thing you don’t want to do is mystery shop. That’s not ethical. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. All those companies out there did that. And then I advertised at a lower price, and that got me a lot of fun responses from my competitors. When you say fun, do you mean fun in sort of a way that being attacked by a bunch of Vikings is fun? Yeah, exactly. Like a pack of wolves around you, just snarling at you. That’s why you’ve got that hatchet. You’re ready for them now. I want to distill your wisdom. So step number one, you determined all your costs. Two, you went out and shopped your competition. Oh, yes. And I even wrote them. I had a board when you come in the door and I had their prices and then my price when you came in. I did the shopping for you. In your face. In your face. It was fun. Unethical. Unbelievable. And the third is that you then put in some profit in there. How much profit would you recommend we put into our pro forma before we go out there and sell it to the masses? Well, I mean, I’ll tell you what. I mean, 50 is probably on the high end. 25% is on the low end. I think somewhere around a third is a good place for you to end up on your bottom line, your profit line. And so there’s a lot of costs that you have that people forget about. I mean, you’ve got electricity, you’ve got rent, you’ve got Oklahoma Joes. Beans. Yeah, it’s $8.49 a meal. So, I mean, you’ve got to factor that in. I mean, you’ve got to factor that in. I mean, it’s a big cost. I’ll put that down right now. It’s a cost. Oklahoma Joes. Meat candy. Meat candy. Now, I want to ask you this here, Vanessa, because you’ve been married to me for 15 years. We go out there with this DJ connection idea. We’ve got a van filled with equipment. We’re super excited to start a business out of an apartment. We currently cannot afford air conditioning. We’re spending the money. We would spend on air conditioning, on advertisement. What did we charge and how did we end up getting to the price we charged? Well I think in the beginning our biggest expense was advertising because the route we took is you were all in construction saving this big lump sum of money so we bought all the equipment cash so we were lucky in that sense and now it was just let’s try to build up a clientele. So really in the beginning you would do shows for whatever anyone would pay you. If it is like hey, you know, 200 bucks or… Jeff Ramsey, I’m not mad at you, but you remember how you got that deal for $200 from the DJ? You got a heck of a show, let me tell you. Jeff Ramsey, you got a heck of a show. Now, for some of you who booked me first, those first bookings, I apologize for the… You overpaid, even paying me $100, you overpaid, because I butchered your event. But the thing is, we didn’t have any other employees, it was just you, so it was basically, hey, I’m wanting to go out there and prove myself and get this following. We didn’t have the business expense, but we had the ads you were paying. So you tried to book anyone from those ads. You just thought, I don’t care what I get. I want to get something from them. And then we started to fall into, okay, what do we actually need to charge now? We knew we had a viable product. We knew you were delivering well. And that’s where we said, okay, and just have someone else come out. We’re going to give them a third of the show. We’re going to give them a bonus if they get 10 out of 10 or 9 out of 10. And then we did the same thing, 30% for profit. Now, Thrivers, here’s the deal. I want to run over and distill these action items for you. When we come back, I’m going to have Roger Broon really break down pricing because he’s helped six companies turn them around, and he’s got some specific moves for this. But one, you have to know the cost of delivering the product or service. Add up all the costs associated with delivering the product or service. You have to know that. Add those up. Two, then you’ve got to make sure you shop your competition. You’ve got to know what the competition is charging. And the third, you’ve got to make sure you pack in a profit. And we recommend about 25 to 30 percent profit margin. Minimum is healthy for you. And so many of you are asking, what does the Thrive Time Workshop cost? What does it cost? Well, let me tell you what, when we come back, I’m going to tell you exactly what it costs and how we determine the pricing for it, but not before Jeff unpacks his pricing super secret. Stay tuned to the Thrive Time Show. When I said Jeff, I meant Roger. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the conversation. I’m going to tell you what, we’re talking about pricing, and I got so excited about pricing that my synaptic gaps were just, were firing, my synapses were just going, and for some reason I did the un I did the unpardonable sin of referring to our guest. Mr. Roger Broon as Jeff I mean it just a lack of respect that I have for America and Tulsa I told I owe you an apology, but I’m not the kind of man with enough class to do that So I’m just gonna say I made a mistake and hopefully you’ll forgive me. I can’t apologize on the air for that It just it’s really it’s beyond apologies. You’re so confident in it too, just Jeff. You can’t accept an apology when it comes to getting your name wrong. So I have an audio clip that I’ve cued up here. And Z, this is an audio recording because Roger actually used to be in aviation. His business does turnarounds for businesses. Yeah. In all different kinds, health care, aviation, different kinds of companies. And so I have audio of Roger when he was boarding a plane from one of the companies he recently helped to turnaround. So here we go. Oh, very good. Very good play up for us. Rog, hopefully it wasn’t unethical that I mic’d you without your permission. So here we go. Flight 209, you are cleared for takeoff. Roger. You’re hot. Huh? LA departure frequency 123.9. Roger. All right. Request vector. Over. What? Flight 209, you are clear for vector 324. We have clearance, Clarence. Roger, Roger. What’s our vector, Victor? That’s from Airplane, an incredible movie that I make my wife suffer through once a year. We just did it the other night. So, Roger, for anybody who’s listening right now who doesn’t know what you do for a living, how would you explain what you do to the average listener who goes, I frankly don’t exactly know what Roger Broone does? U.S. trustees, bankruptcy judges, and we assist bankrupt companies or failing companies or distressed companies by funding purchases of the companies or their assets. Ultimately, it’s up to the process of bankruptcy to pay attention to the little guy, the creditor who didn’t get paid, the employee who didn’t get paid because the business failed. So they leverage our money and are able to assist a trickle down to send the send cash down to creditors and employees that didn’t get paid and things like that our job then is to turn the company around and to Make lemonade from lemons. No Z. We’re gonna play a round of name that tune before I ask Roger Bruin about pricing Okay, just name that tune. Okay, I’m gonna play an audio clip And you tell me which one a or B sounds more like it describes what Roger does? Okay? So he’s helping, you know, fix distressed companies. Here’s audio clip number one. Tell me if this sounds like what Roger does for a living. Here we go. Okay. Okay, you got enough of that right there? No, no, give me a little bit more. Can’t get enough James Bond themes. This is Roger Broon. Is this Roger Broon’s theme song? Is it or is it not? Okay, moving on to the next one. That’s A. That’s A. Now here’s B. This is the one that I personally am a big fan of. I believe this song represents everything about what I just heard that he does for a living. So here we go. Oh, so you… Baby, don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me. No more. Glowsticks going out on the town, talking to bankruptcy attorneys and judges. It’s not money for people. I kind of people would stay out till 2am on a Tuesday night in the Blue Dome District? Judges? Bankruptcy attorneys? Roger? I mean, which one of you would choose A or B? Which song best represents Roger Broon? I’m going to go with C. Both of them. I think it’s a combination. He’s like a James Bond that shows the love. I could marinate on that for an hour, but for the sake of time I’m just going to have to move on there. All right. But I choose C, both. Whoa. I’m going to try to handle the profundity of that. So Roger, if you’re dealing with a company right now that has their pricing all wrong, you’re sitting down with an entrepreneur, and he goes, Roger, how do I fix my pricing? What would you say? Well, I thought Dr. Z nailed it earlier. His focus in the early days was on what the competition is doing, and that’s going to be unique to each market, unique to each client coming out to the workshop that you guys are holding for that two-day workshop. I’m sure they’ll be able to sidebar with some really good, excellent professionals here, helping them with those types of questions. But if you haven’t done your research on the market, and key to what you said at the end of the last segment, Clay, if you haven’t built in the proper profit margin and still have a viable product or service, then you might want to think twice about the venture that you’re moving into. Well, okay. That was, I think if you’re listening, Thrivers, one of the advantages of this show is you can go back to thrivetimeshow.com and listen to it again because pricing is something you’ve just got to get right. But we love to also give you notable quotables from people who’ve built big billion dollar businesses that you would know. And so the guy who built Dropbox.com, a big file storage, a cloud storage company, also built Airbnb, also built Reddit, he’s the guy who started the Y Combinator incubator that basically teaches these companies how to grow. His name is Paul Graham. And you should probably Google search Paul Graham, because he’s, you can go on a rabbit trail of awesome Paul Graham knowledge. He says, you found market price when buyers complain but still pay. Now this is an interesting thing. So here’s what he has found. He’s found with Airbnb, you had to be sort of a sick freak to want to use Airbnb if you’re one of the first hundred people. Because the idea of staying in someone else’s home with a website that’s full of bugs and errors and just the idea of staying in someone’s house alone is sort of mind-boggling. But then to be able to go, yeah, I’ve never met this person, I’m going to stay at their house and by the way, the email confirmation I got was wrong. It sort of confounds logic. For Reddit, the first people to use Reddit or to use Dropbox, to put all your files on a cloud, everything that matters to you, and by the way, the company’s a startup and hopefully they make it. I mean, that’s a little scary. So what he does is he comes out with that no-brainer. And then what he does is after he’s established himself in the market as being the no-brainer leader, he continues to raise prices until a few people complain. Not everybody, but he realizes out of 100 people, two or three are going to complain about the price. And then he realizes, I think I’ve found the price. So I’ll give you two very real examples. One is with Elephant in the Room, our men’s grooming lounge. Your first haircut is a dollar. And most people go, a dollar? How can you guys afford to do that? Well, we say, it’s like the country club of men’s hair. It’s high end. There’s a paraffin hand dip. There’s hot towel treatment. By the way, this Saturday we’re having our grand opening of our newest downtown location. It’s on 17th and Boston from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Come on in there for a dollar. It’s a dollar for your first haircut. But when they come in this week 83 that’s number 83 percent of the people came in for a $1 haircut Signed up for a membership because they’re like it’s totally worth it Yeah, don’t we were aware of what our competition is charging according to what you know It’s going with what Z had said to do we were aware of their pricing And so your haircut elf in the room for a membership on average is $37 a month. Yeah, there you go And that’s like you said 83 percent of people did it if you if a hundred percent did you probably weren’t charging enough. And there’s places in Tulsa we found that we’re charging $50 for men’s hair, and there’s places that we’re charging $10, and we looked at the value, we looked at the profit, we looked at what we wanted to pay our people. We wanted all of our stylists to be able to make $40,000 to $50,000 a year if they’re doing their job right. We did all the math, and we go, $37,000, that’s about what we need to charge. Now for the Thrive, our in-person workshops, I’m going to walk you through the playing field, Thrivers. Here we go, Zeke. All right. So, Tony Robbins. You ever been to a Tony Robbins conference? No, but I… Why? Well, because I don’t like walking on hot coals. I’m sorry. I don’t walk on hot coals as a general of thumb. Right off his website, he charges between $1,095 and $3,000. So between $1,000 and $3,000. Okay. And if you’ve never been to one, you need to go because you’re going to be upsold. And you’ve never seen sales like at a Tony Robbins con. What are you talking about? Did you say you need to go? No! You’re being facetious. If you’re trying to study high-pressure sales you need to go there and just watch yourself get sold. These are no jokes. He means the opposite of what he just said. That’s sarcasm. Now there’s a Rich Dad Poor Dad seminar out there and if you’re ever into that, that’s about $500. Okay. And Vanessa, you’ve been to that before. What’s the move after the workshop there? What’s the move? Well, first I get you to come back to another one and it is the most intense high pressure sales for tons of money. I think they wanted us to pull out our credit cards and they were going to get people credit increases for $20,000 and people were lining up to do it. Jason and Bailey, that’s who I was there with, we were sneaking out of there to get us out. Get us out? How did this happen? How did we end up here? There’s Timeshare, and then one level above Timeshare is the Robert Kiyosaki Seminar. Not safe. And then the third is the Maui Mastermind Seminars, workshops, and those are $30,000. Yeah, but they’re in Hawaii. Unless you know you’re paying the $30,000, you can get them and give you a credit increase and try to sell you in the back of the room. So you have $1,000 to $3,000. Okay. Or you have $500 plus upsells, or $30,000. In our workshops, they’re $500. And if you can’t afford it, we will scholarship you the difference. We had one lady last week who showed up, she’s paying $15 to come to the workshop. That’s all she has. She literally said, Clay, the stuff I’ve learned on Search Engine, it’s just sweat equity. I don’t even have to do it. I just have to do what you told me. It doesn’t cost any extra money. And so it got to the point at the workshop, people were riding on the whiteboard, how much do you guys charge for one-on-one coaching? Because we don’t talk about it, and we don’t upsell it and there’s no high pressure. There’s no jackassery. Yeah, in fact we did not bring that into our game plan day one. I mean we did thrive15.com which is I call it the Netflix of business coaching. You know, it’s a monthly feed and you can watch all the business coaching from great mentors and then that kind of developed into the radio show that we’re doing now. The Thrive Time show that you’re listening to right now and then that kind of led to in-person workshops because people are like, wow, are you guys real? Can we come in touch and ask questions and all that? And then some people out there are saying, hey, listen, the group thing is good, the workshops are great, I love the videos, I love your show, but I need a little, I know I want one-on-one. And so we said, okay, well, they want it, we’ll give it to them. If you want to attend Thrivers, you’ve got to go now to Thrivetimeshow.com, get your tickets. When we come back, we’re going to answer another question from a Thriver who wants to know, how do you follow up with leads? You talk to somebody, how do you follow up with prospects? How do you stay in touch? How do you close those deals? Stay tuned. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to our daily rendezvous with you, where we teach you how to grow a successful business so that you can achieve your life dreams and so that you can achieve financial and time freedom. The show’s all about you, but let me tell you what. There’s a time when you went to school, so many of us went to school, and the teacher would say, does anyone have any questions? And I remember I went to college at Oral Roberts University, had many great professors, but I had one professor who every time you’d ask him a question, I’m not kidding, he took pride in ridiculing you for asking. He would do it all the time. So you’d say, he goes, I remember this specifically, he goes, does anyone have any questions about the Monroe Doctrine? And so I legitimately did. And so I put my hand up. I remember this. I said, I have a question. I would like to know when they said that attacking any of the Americas is like attacking the United States. Does that mean like South America or does that just mean like Hawaii and different properties we have different, you know, different, you know, like the different Costa Rica, things that we’re somehow connected with. And he says Puerto Rico, that kind of thing, and he says, he goes, what? And I said, well, I mean, I don’t know, does that extend to Costa Rica, or is it Puerto Rico, or is it U.S. properties, or what does that mean? And he was like, if you had read, and he starts attacking me, I remember this, this is a big deal, because you had a showdown with this guy. I did, well, then the next young lady, she puts her hand up, and she asks a question, and he attacks her, too. So the third time, I just went for it, I just attacked him. And I was like, hey, I don’t know if it’s a prerequisite to be a jerk, to be a professor, but if it is, you definitely got the job. Ooh. And so, you know, that’s why I got kicked out of college. But anyway, these kind of things. But all I’m saying is many of you have stopped asking questions because you feel like you’re going to be made fun of, you’re going to be told that you’re stupid, that you don’t have what it takes. But Zee and I know what it’s like to start a business from the very bottom with no money, with no connections, and we know how hard it can be, but if you don’t ask us questions by emailing us info at thrive15.com, we can’t answer them. And I’m telling you what, these people who are bold enough to ask these questions, I love these people because I feel like if one person asks it, we get like 300 people to write back and say, I was thinking that too. Well, ask and you shall receive. They ask it and you’re giving it to them. So this is such an open door. Take this opportunity. And so we have a guy on the show today, Mr. Roger Broun. So his company manages a $10 million fund that buys bankrupt health care companies, companies that are in the aviation industry, basically companies that are struggling. They buy these companies, turn them around, get them to be successful. And this is a question, Roger, I think that you’re uniquely qualified to answer, because when you go in to fix a business, a lot of times they have a lot of potential deals they’re not closing. So here’s the question from The Thriver. They say, how do you stay in touch with former leads? And I think what they’re saying is maybe they talked to a prospect and now the prospect, they didn’t buy anything, but how do you stay in touch with that person? Or maybe after the point of sale, how do you stay in touch with a lead, my friend? Yeah, I like that question. Certainly in today’s day and age, you’ve got to be using good technologies, good CRM technologies in order to manage those leads. And just as importantly, much like you talked about the elephant in the room, how are you connecting with your top prospects and your top clients? And so doing some analysis as to what the opportunity is and doing some analysis as to what the cash flow is of existing clients that you have, man, you’ve got to be on top of that stuff. You talked about working at 2 a.m. or going home at 2 a.m. That’s the kind of stuff that entrepreneurs need to be doing at 2 a.m., drilling into the data so that they’re focusing their 24 hours on the best stuff that will really help them to grow their business. I want to brag on a Thriversie, and then I want to get into your methods and moves for this. We have a Thriver by the name of Randy, and he’s a guy I just talked to this morning. If you know Randy with Farmer’s Insurance, send him a text. They’re bragging on you on the air, bro. Here’s the deal. He has put into his schedule a set time to follow up with anybody who said they want to buy insurance for their home, their life, and their auto. He put it into his schedule, a set time every day. It doesn’t matter how long ago he talked to you. He has it mapped into his schedule, blocked out in his schedule. And what’s happening is, is that he is actually doing it. So Chet Holmes, the guy who’s the bestselling author of the book called The Ultimate Sales Machine, and the former partner of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet, he says this, he says, the missing ingredient for nearly all of the 1,000 plus clients that he’s worked with to directly improve their businesses is pig-headed discipline and determination. He says, we all get good ideas at seminars and from books, radio talk shows, and business building gurus. The problem is that most companies do not know how to identify and adapt the best ideas to their businesses. Implementation, not the ideas, is the real key to success. And so Randy with Farmers Insurance, great job implementing and being pig-headed enough to actually block it out in the schedule, which requires saying no to all those distractions. And today in the meeting, he’s like the all-star of the Farmer’s Crew this morning because he is actually staying in touch with all of his leads. And many people will say, hey, thank you so much. I didn’t recognize the phone number when you had called. And or, hey, I didn’t get that email. Thank you for following up. I do need the auto insurance. I just have been really busy. I didn’t recognize the number or I don’t normally check that email or whatever the reason was. His persistence led to the deals beyond just the low-hanging fruit Z. So what advice Z would you have for somebody who’s listening right now who goes, I’m so busy, I don’t have time to follow up with all my leads. So people are saying that man, they’re going, I don’t have time, I’m so busy. Well, you don’t have time to make money because leads and those hot sauce leads are that’s where you make your sales. And I tell you what, we’ve all been the guy on the other side of the table buying, right? And we’re all like, none of us really, none of us go through the day going, I wonder what I can buy. I just want to spend my money. I want to spend my hard earned money on something. First person comes up and asks me for it, I’m just going to give it to them and buy whatever they have. No, we’re all very cautious with our money. And for the most part, we don’t want to, we don’t want to spend it. And so the idea that we go, we become a lead and then we push them off to delay the deal to get him to Just squirm out of it to not do it right. We’ve all been there Oh, yeah, I know Rogers been there. I know clay you’ve been there And so then what happens is is that then you think oh, okay? I missed that bullet It’s like matrix dodged a true dodge that sale whoo. Yeah, and they circle back around and they’re persistent I take with the person you’re kind of going wow I guess I do you know I guess I better dodge. So here’s the deal. You’ve got to make time to work on your lead because Most people drop it at the very end. In other words, they’re carrying the ball down. They’ve intercepted it They’re running and when they get to the five-yard line, they drop you see those guys that drop the ball before they get in The end zone. That’s what not following up on your leads is doing So you’re playing a game of football and you’re running into the end zone and you drop the ball before Billy Billy, the last 5 to 10% of that deal is following up on those leads. You’ve got to do it. The fish that jump in your boat, that’s no effort. It’s the ones that just nibble on your hook. We have a caller here. We have a caller that just called in real quick here. His last name is Belichick. I’m sorry. I should have brought up football. I’m sorry. Go ahead, caller. Go ahead, caller. This one’s on me. Just do your job. Don’t try to make too much out of it. Just do your job. Hey, thanks a lot there, Mr. Milachek. That was very nice. But what I’d like to… Clay, if I could, I’d like to bring up four super moves from Warren Buffett and have you break them down. Yeah, now… Can we do that on closing the deal? I think so. Now, Vanessa had a question for you. I think… Oh, go right ahead. I want to just jump in there and say, Z is spot on, because I have been that person who is trying to dodge, trying to dodge. Hey, you know, I’m too busy now. Maybe you can call me back. Hoping they never call back. Oh, yeah. But you know what? The ones who do call back. I mean, my kids, they know, it’s a testament, even if I don’t want it, I will fricken buy the thing because I feel guilt trip like, ugh, I did tell them. I gave them that hoop to jump through. Yeah, I know, they actually somehow got me on the phone again. I mean, I’ll try to make sure, you know, I don’t want to answer if I don’t know the number, but you know, I think, oh, is this a client? I better get it. So you are spot on. I have a weird deal. We had a thriver call in and say, I don’t have time to call my leads and so I was trying to choose there They were trying to transfer the phone call directly onto our show They hit the wrong button and apparently they ended up talking to Belichick Okay, sorry, so let’s break down your moves, let’s break it down. This is Warren Buffett’s top four moves to close the deal He’s had some success. I would say so he’s what top three richest top five guys I would I would I would say that he would be you know by he’s kind of like qualified to be Gronkowski’s backup you know yeah so this is how to close a deal like Warren Buffett because here the deal is is that following up on those leads is great but then you got to close the deal close the deal I’m going yeah totally I’d call you back Vanessa and I’m just I’m just doing it so okay bye click here we go you got it you got to close the deal all right tell me now this is Warren Buffett he’s a smart guy and that’s what we do. We find good mentors. We find smart guys. We find successful business people just like having Roger on the show. So we find local guys, bring them on the show. But we also like to teach you things from the best out there in the world, the GOATs. They’re greatest of all times, right? Tom Brady. That reminds me of Tom Brady basically overall. I should have said that. Okay, his number one move is you’ve got to know the other guy pretty well. You’ve got to know the other guy’s money. Clay, break that down. Why is that important to know the financial, the guy you’re doing negotiations with? Okay, well here would be the situation. A lot of times, like in business, the person who has the most options wins. So as an example, if you’re trying to buy a house, and the person you’re trying to buy the house from desperately needs to sell it. And I’m telling you, if you’re trying to sell your house, I’ve coached real estate agents on this. I’ve coached many, many successful multi-million dollar real estate agents. The key, if you’re a successful real estate agent, is to act as though you have many leads and you’re not worried in the least bit if the buyer goes somewhere else. That’s the key. So how that sounds is, thank you for calling such and such a realty. Yeah, I had a question about that house on Harvard. Okay, yeah, well, what questions do you have? Well, I wanted to know this and that and my buyer’s looking for this and that. And you go, well I’ll tell you what, we are super busy with showing. Since they’ve done the renovations, the house is just getting a lot of traffic. When would you like to schedule a time? I want to make sure you get a chance to see it. And so you inferred that you have a lot of options. And so you want to, and then when you meet with the person, you want to know, does this person have the capacity to afford it? So you might ask questions like, so guys, when are you looking to move? And you ask these timing questions, and if you have a good idea for their financial situation, then you can decide whether it’s worth doing another showing, whether it’s worth taking it off the market, whether it’s worth negotiating, those kind of things. So you just want to know where the buyer is at. Absolutely. And his number two move segues beautifully into that, and that is so you don’t waste your time. You start discussing money from the beginning. Break that down, Clay. Why is that important? Well, I think what happens is, and I think Roger’s probably very qualified to look at this too, because you’ve helped companies that are distressed, but if you put off talking about the financial aspects of a deal, what happens is you get kind of in that romantic deal where you’ve spent so much time looking at the deal, looking at the business, looking at the idea, talking about the possibilities, that now you’re sort of like, well, I’ve already spent so much time. I’ve already spent so much time looking at this deal. We’ve gone on many dates together. We’ve gone to mahogany’s. I’ve broken bread. I’ve actually ordered more bread when they went to the restroom. I ordered as much bread as I wanted, frankly. And he ordered, he was buying the wine. And so when he went to the bathroom, I ordered another bottle. And so we are now in this to win it. And I really don’t even care what the deal is. I just want to get it closed to get some satisfaction. I mean, going out to dinner with this person more than my wife. This was close to a freaking deal. I mean, that’s kind of what happens. Roger, talk to me about why you’ve got to get into money from the very beginning. Well, I like where you’re going with that, Clay, because I’ve got this poster up in my office. It’s actually Conor McGregor, the MMA fighter. And the poster is all about this issue of obsession. And we don’t hear that enough in sort of this weird, bifurcated society that we live in with multiple inputs from a zillion different networks. The question to the business owner is, what are you obsessed about? And then focus there until you break through. And certainly if you’ve got the ball, don’t drop it at the one yard line. So the bottom line is you’ve got to ask those hard questions on the front end. And like I said earlier, if you don’t know what the money is about, then you’re really in over your head. Oh, wow. He’s like a knowledge bomb. Boom, right there. That was a good one. Okay, back to you, Zach. Okay, step three in Warren Buffett’s four-step secret moves to closing the deal. Because if you listen, when you’re following up on these hot leads, you’ve got to then close the deal. Hot leads. Hot leads. Oh, sorry. Okay. And it segues nicely into exactly what you guys were just talking about, and that is that he uses ranges to qualify and disqualify. So you’re talking about money, and then you can go to the range move of between here and here, and why is that important, Clay? Well, I like to use hyperbole for this. So a lot of times when you’re talking to a customer and you talk about the price of your product, you might say, our prices range from here to here. And you can watch their face when they go from here, they’re like, oh, I can afford that. When you go here, they go, oh, I can’t afford that. Sometimes they’re just not phased. You can figure that out. But also when you’re buying a business, when you’re buying anything, you want to figure out where the seller’s at, where the buyer’s at. You want to understand the range of what somebody can put into the deal so you’re not wasting your time. Stay tuned. Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. Today we’re answering questions from Thrivers just like you. And how can you get your questions answered? Email us, info at thrive15.com. We’re still celebrating that afterglow of Valentine’s Day, which really hasn’t even begun to cloud the afterglow of the Patriots’ Super Bowl victory. But you know, we had a very special gift that was delivered to us from our good friends at Regent Bank for Valentine’s. They dropped off Z some chicken in a heart-shaped container. How thoughtful was that Z? It’s very thoughtful. It’s hard to find actually chickens that are shaped like hearts, so they did it in a container, which is good. And I don’t want to belittle a gift. I’m not the kind of guy who would get on a radio show and say, that gift wasn’t that good. I wouldn’t do that. But if I was that kind of person, I would say, well guys, are you writing a song for us? You and I have gotten together with Jason Bailey and a bunch of random people and we’ve written probably the best song. For all the things you’ve done for them. In the history of radio, you have sponsors. A lot of times on radio shows you want to mention your sponsors and encourage people to visit Regent Bank, bankregent.com. We could do that, but instead, Z and I got together with various musicians and we recorded a song and it might remind you of a song you’ve heard before. It might. It has top 40 potential. So Zee, I’m going to get it queued up here. Are you ready? Oh, absolutely. It’s always embarrassing when you play a song we’ve worked so hard on together. We think Bank Region is going to love it and pick it up as their theme song. All I will say is just to give the Thrivers a visual, I had a purple shirt with sort of that French sort of, what do you call that, the French collar? Mace. And you had… Puffy shirt. You kind of looked like a pirate Yeah, I did kind of a kind of a puffy pirate. You know and you had you had the platform shoes I was amazing you found those I was just impressed so here’s the so we put together Oh region bank Oh, yeah, come on. I get for friendly service all the time, 24-7. It’s seven times faster than the average bank. Region Bank. Region Bank. If you’re looking for a bank that will give you chicken in a heart-shaped container delivered to you if they sponsor your show. Region Bank. Region Bank. If you want a fake president who looks oddly like Joel Osteen, who talks like Joel Osteen, who might just be Joel Osteen, I’m gonna tell you what, drivers, you’ve got to get yourself over to the bank that we all know as a little place called Regent Bank. That’s what we worked on this weekend. A lot of people say, what do you guys do? I think that’s got a really shot of something special. I don’t think that was a… I mean, Roger, you’ve helped turn major companies around. Would you say that’s a great investment of time to get together with some of the leading members of your team and record a song about a bank? Is that a good use of time? Anytime you can leverage Prince, you’re on your spot, obviously. Who’s Prince? I’ve never… You’ve been found out. No! No! You told me it was original! I’m sorry, I thought it was. I must have tripped it. Okay, so we’re getting back into staying in touch with former leads. It’s getting awkward here. I’ll just kind of change the topic. So getting back to former leads. Well, what we’ve been working on here of late is a very, what we like to do is find very smart people that have been very successful and pick their brains. And in this case, we’re picking Warren Buffett’s brain. Who’s Warren Buffett? It hurts when you pick. Just read my quote how it hurts. He’s one of the wealthiest guys in the world. This is kind of no big deal. Just a leading business mind, great guy. So we’re going over his four little secret moves to closing the deal because we’re talking about staying in touch with the leads and then whenever you’re doing that last five to ten percent of the process you’ve got to be able to close the deal. So his super moves that we already broke down the first three but just to recap they would know the other guy’s money, start discussing money from the beginning, use ranges to qualify and disqualify and now step four which Clay and Roger are going to break down for us are don’t negotiate until it’s time. What does he mean by that, Clay? Well, once you know what you want and what they want and you have most of the details hammered out, now you go into negotiation. Now negotiation to me, this is what negotiation means. Let’s not try to irritate each other, but let’s poke each other in the eye. And I see this a lot of times where you have a great relationship with both parties, and when you finally get into the negotiation, when you start being very candid, sometimes it’s very alarming. Let’s say you want to buy someone’s house, and you’ve been talking about ranges, and I’ll buy your house for $270 to $300-ish. And then they go, okay, and you’ve gone over the details, so I’m going to get the hot tub, and you’re going to include this and that, and you’ll fix that and this. And then you show up at the final offer and you say, so we’re going to go ahead and put an offer in today for $270. And they’re like 300 I thought what about the 300 break no 270 not a dollar more That’s what I valued it at they cut all of a sudden rapport is lost You’re making some big withdrawals from the love bank things begin to get awkward Z You bought land and you know what it’s like to negotiate with a tough negotiator Yeah, I tell you what when I bought my ranch outside of Tulsa It wasn’t for sale like a lot of great things you buy in life and then everything for sale nothing for sale, right? So I contacted the gentleman that owned the ranch and I said, hey, I want to buy your ranch. He’s like, well, this is not for sale. I said, I don’t care. I want to buy it. So he’s like, well, let’s do lunch. Who are you? Okay, let’s do lunch. So we sat down and we literally once a month we would sit for lunch and he would tell me the price and I’d slap him and say, get out of here. Wait, wait, finish lunch first. Then get out of here. And every month we’d meet, the price would come down, price would come down, price would come down. And finally, after six months, he finally said the price, and I stood up, I shook his hand, I said, sold. Sold American, sold. This is how it actually went down. This is what happened is, he, Z comes in and tries to negotiate the deal down by $100, and then the guy orders more food, $100 more food, and then he has Z pay. This just keeps happening until eventually Z’s like, okay, we’re done. Till I own the ranch, yeah. And then we had a lot of pancakes. All right, Roger, I want to ask you, why is it so important to really not start wrestling and negotiating? Why is Warren Buffett correct in not really getting into that intense negotiation until you pretty much know what both parties want there? Well, we talked earlier about qualifying, and of course, you don’t want to be in that negotiation until you’ve qualified your capacity to close the deal. Now you’re back to his point number three, which is, what is the range that we’re going to work within and then focus on your best number. Obviously going back to an earlier segment where we talked about analysis, you’ve got to know what the numbers said before you step in and have that first pancake. And so certainly knowing what the numbers say, understanding margin are all absolutely essential before you even start that first moment of negotiation. Yeah, because what happens, it’s all fun and games up until negotiation. We’re having a great time, this is awesome! All fun and games, it’s your first date, it’s, oh yeah, don’t hurt me. Oh Roger, oh Z, you guys are great guys. You got your skating, you got your glow sticks, you got the skating rink. Couple skate, you look at them, they look at you. No martinis for Roger, but 18 for you Z. Alright, here we go, let’s do it. You’re out doing your couple skate and it’s all fun and games and then finally you get down to the number. Now it gets weird. Now it’s like, I thought you said 900,000. Did you say 900,000? Why are you penciling me on this deal? Why are you, wait a second, we had cheesecake together. We had coffee at Starbucks for 30 minutes and really got to like each other. And what’s really weird is as a DJ, what happens is the music is playing, you know, and you hear this, you’re having a good time, and this is the soundtrack you’re hearing in your head, you’re hearing that, what is love, and then next thing you know, you look across the table, and all of a sudden… All of a sudden, yeah, I’m going to tell you what, I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse. You would disrespect the Sicilians. I’ll tell you what, sometimes you just got to get there and get it done. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse. You would disrespect the Sicilians. I’ll tell you what, sometimes you just got to get there and get it done. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse. You would disrespect the Sicilians. I’ll tell you what, sometimes you just got to get there and get it done. I’ll tell you what, sometimes you just got to get there and get it done. I’ll tell you what, sometimes you just got to get there and get it done. I feel like I have a lead pipe with your name on it. Listen, this is gonna be a win, win, trust me. I’ll crack your skull, I’ll crack his skull, it’s a win and a win. This is the theme music for all negotiations right now. Every negotiation needs this behind it. It’s not a person, it’s just business. It’s not a person at all, I just, I took the head off of one of your horses and it’s in your bed. That’s called negotiations. No, I just left it there for you. You can fight it. Yeah, you can do the thing. No, I left it. I didn’t take it. It’s still yours. I felt sort of bad when I killed your dog, but it had to happen. No, but seriously, that’s what happens. It gets kind of weird. So, Thrivers, do not rush that negotiation. Now, stay tuned. We’ve got more business tips for you at Thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. The Thrive Time Show is a show that’s all about you. But many of you are finding the show right now for the first time. And so you’re going, what is this show consistently about? Well, let me tell you what it’s about, okay? There’s a guy, he has a dream about starting a successful business. There’s a lady, she has a dream about starting a successful business. That guy or that gal, that’s you. And you represent 57% of the American population, according to Forbes, who wants to start a successful business. So you enroll in business college and you graduate and you’re still going, I don’t know what to do. And specifically we have a Thriver who’s located in LA. You’re like, are you guys on the air in LA? No we’re not, but our ThriveTimeShow.com podcast is downloaded every day by people in over 50 countries all over the world. It’s unbelievable. And we have a doctor. A doctor? I thought when you went to medical school, Z, they answered all of your business questions. I thought they taught you how to be a successful business person and a doctor. It doesn’t seem ethical to teach you just how to become a doctor, Z. Could a doctor possibly have a business question? Absolutely. In fact, they’re the guys out there that probably reach out to me the most personally because they say, hey, listen, I know how to do my skill set really well, but I don’t know how to run a business successfully. They didn’t teach me that in dental or medical or optometry school, and so there’s a lot of guys out there that have a profession, and you may be one of those guys listening right now, or ladies, and you say, listen, I’ve got a profession, I’ve got the skill set, I’ve got the diploma hanging on my wall, but I got no money in my bank account. So there’s a disconnect. So it’s to not make thrivers feel stupid, we never want to call anybody out. This is a tough question. Okay, this is from a doctor in LA. He says, how would I tell a coach or somebody what’s wrong with my business if I don’t know what’s wrong? And he goes on to write that he has no clue of how to make his business successful, but he’s working all the time and not making any profit. And so Z, let’s start with you, and then I want to get to Roger’s feedback. And I want to get Vanessa’s feedback, too, as an entrepreneur’s wife, and also as an entrepreneur, we do everything together. So I want to ask you, Z, where would you say, if you’re sitting with a friend of yours, a colleague who’s a doctor, and he’s like, man, I’m working all the time, I’m not making any money, what do I do? What advice would you have? Well, you’ve got to break it down. You’ve got to roll up your sleeves and go to work. I mean, there’s not a quick fix. It’s not a, oh, we’re going to wave the magic wand. We’re going to push this button. Oh, we’re going to change the color of this logo. I mean, there’s so many things. And so what you have to do is you have to just break it down, and you’ve got to roll up your sleeves and get to work. And that’s why I’m so excited about our in-person workshops, because you see, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so what you need to do is we broke it down into 13 steps, 13 stages of business. And so if you’re doing great in 10 of those and three are failing, guess what? Your business is failing. So you have to break down all of those. And so that’s why our in-person workshops, people have just responded unbelievable. I mean, the reviews that come in, the people say how life-changing it is. They go back and maybe they had six things wrong. Maybe they had three things wrong. Maybe they had two things wrong. Maybe one thing wrong. Maybe they just fixed one thing in their business and it explodes. We had a local fitness owner that came to Tulsa here. I say local, it’s not a national chain. They flew into Tulsa and this is a win that we just had emailed in to us. They said this is their second week of receiving over 45 viable leads in their inbox and they’re only spending $200 a week on ads. Unbelievable. The thing was they had no clue how to generate online leads. We would encourage everybody to come out to an in-person workshop, do the super in-depth self-evaluation, discover your biggest limiting factor, and then fix it. Exactly. And our next one just happens to be in less than two weeks. Right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma at our headquarters, Thrive 15 headquarters, right here in Jinx, America, on the left coast of the Arkansas River. 20,000 square feet. Boom! Of excellence. And it’s February the 24th and the 25th. What website is it? It’s Thrive. Thrivetimeshow.com Z, I’m sorry, I’ve never been on the internets before. I’ve never been on the internets. Is it plural form? How do I get there? What’s the website? It’s www. What is that? Well, thank you Al Gore, first of all, for the internet. What? No, you get on the internet. You go to Thrivetimeshow.com and it breaks down all the information about it. How much is it? It’s $500, but we have scholarships. What does that mean? 500 big ones? That means that there’s no excuse for you not showing up, okay? It’s two days, starts at 7 in the morning. That seems awful early for me. I don’t know. I’ve never been up before at that time ever. I usually am going to sleep. I’m watching Maury Povich revuns. I’ve got the whole thing. I’ve got the DT vote of Maury Povich. He’s great. And we go through. We have downloadables we have templates I tell you what you’re gonna have a room full not overcrowded But a room full of people just like you wanting to start their business wanting to grow their business And then you say to yourself well that seems awful kind of a tricky question to how do I fix my business? Well here’s the thing about it is without in-depth business analysis. We don’t know what needs to be fixed on your business But we can tell you this hey We will teach you all the things to do and then you can sit there at your little desk and we provide for you in the workshop and you say to yourself, oh, yeah, I’m not doing that. All right, I have two tough questions. I have two tough questions, one for you, Zee, and one for you, Roger. Roger, Mr. Business Expert. So question number one I have for you, Zee, is, and don’t beat around the bush here, get down to the specifics, I know you have a scholarship program, I know it’s affordable for everybody, but are you going to serve a buffet from Luby’s. No, there will not be a buffet from Luby’s. I’m done with it. That’s it. I’m going to take my Segway and go home. No, no, no. Which way is it? No, Mr. Oswald, your bagel company, we want to expand your bagel company. So please, please come attend. Ask questions. There’s no stupid questions. You can come interact with us, interact with other business owners, people right in the same shoes you’re in. I mean, not literally, but figuratively. And so it’s awesome. It’s life-changing. And no matter what you can afford, we’ll scholarship you the rest of the money. There’s no upselling. There’s no scam offering going on. I feel like there’s a catch coming. There’s no catches coming on. You know why we do this, Clay? Why? Because we have a heart to see people succeed in business. We want to see you get your time freedom and your financial freedom, because that’s just the kind of guys we are. And you don’t want to serve them lubies because you’re greedy. All right, now we’re moving on here. So I want to ask you, Roger, a question coming in hot here. If I am, my business is stuck and I have no idea how to fix it, what do I do? Give me the hot sauce and also give me some Lubies. Well, what I hear Clay and Dr. Z both saying is some derivative of life, being a lifelong educator. And so you’ve got to know where the sweet spot is in your industry, whether you’re the doctor in LA or the guy who’s got the bagel company, you’ve got to know where the best place is to go for best practices and you’ve got to commit yourself to lifelong education. Dr. Z quoted it earlier, five hours a day we’re spending in front of the television. Cut off four and a half of those and go read a book. You know, one thing that is profound to me is who listens to our show and one thing that that blows my mind is Jim Stovall who is the best-selling author? And he’s also a guy who’s written books with Steve Forbes. He sent us this book Z He sent us an early edition of his newest. Oh, yeah, so nice It’s called the art of productivity And he really talks about being guarded from about who you get your information and your mentorship from. Vanessa, what advice would you have for the Thrivers out there who are seeking mentorship? What advice would you have as an entrepreneur’s wife and an entrepreneur yourself? Well, I just think you need to be so careful in life, who you team up with, who you listen to, who you take your advice from, and that’s one thing that we’ve learned over the years. Most of the time we learn from mistakes and not mentors, but you went out of the way. You saw that Dr. Z was legit. You saw the businesses he had created. And from afar, you were trying to woo him, you know, for years and get in front of him because he knew he was someone that could help you. And I think it’s the same for Thrivers. We’re providing an environment where we have the mentors. You just need to come and attend. And we have everyone who can help you get to where you need to go. Thrivers, you’ve got some time to do it. You’ve got time to do the challenge here. One, get over to Oklahoma Joe’s. Get those baked beans. Get over there to Oklahoma Joe’s. There are three locations to serve you. And two, get to thrivetimeshow.com and sign up for the podcast. They’re free. You’ll get updated every day. There’s a new podcast. If you miss one, you’ll get updated. Go to thrivetimeshow.com and come back and see us in just a moment. We’re going to answer your final question. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the conversation where we’re talking about how to start and grow a successful business and we’re answering questions from Thrivers like you. And you may be asking yourself right now, well how do I get my question answered? How do I do that? I like their questions, but how do I get mine answered? Well you email info at thrive15.com. That’s info at thrive15.com. And a question we’re getting over and over and over and over and over and over and over is, what do I do if I am already sufficiently motivated? See, I love this question. I’m getting this all the time. People are emailing us, going, look, buddy, I’m motivated, okay, and I don’t want to go to another motivational conference. I’m already motivated, okay? My wife and I know what we want to do with our life. My husband and I know what we want to do. I’m a young entrepreneur. I know what I want to do. It’s clearly in my mind. How do I do it? So I’m gonna read you a notable quotable from one of our loyal listeners and a great guy Tulsa’s kind of a kind of a crown jewel of entrepreneurship in Tulsa Jim Stovall the best-selling author and he’s the guy who’s teamed up with Steve Forbes to write a couple of books You know Steve Forbes from Forbes magazine that guy Yeah And so he emailed us or he actually emailed he kind of emails and feedback to the show from time to time, he mailed us a physical copy of his newest book called The Art of Productivity. It’s an advanced copy, and I was reading through this thing, and it blew my mind. He says, I’m going to read this to you, and I want to get your feedback, and I want to get Roger’s feedback on this. This is kind of relating to the entrepreneur who’s asking, okay, I’m motivated now. What do I need to do? So here it is. He says, let’s assume that I wanted to be a champion golfer. I could have this firmly established in my mind as a goal, pursue it with passion, and exhibit the highest degree of determination. But without practical, realistic instruction, I would be doomed to failure, even if I sought the advice of the best golfer in the world. Z, talk to me about the importance of practical and realistic teaching and mentorship. Well what that person probably needs is just like maybe a pit of hot coals. And you just, if you can make it across there. If I can walk on a hot coal I can do, SEO. You can be a professional golfer. Well then that’s what it all breaks down to because it’s always the little technique, the little things, the little things you’re doing wrong. Just like Vanessa was saying in the very first segment of today’s show, if you missed the early part you need to get the podcast at thrive timeshow.com and what she’s saying is is that people that were uploading the videos before wouldn’t put Spaces between the words. Yeah, it’s a little bitty thing making me crazy. It was a little bit of things So I’m gonna be a golfer right and it’s a little bit My my angles off my my timings off the ball placements wrong. Just it’s a little thing And so it’s a practical application of the things that you’re taught. It’s that practical knowledge of saying Oh, no, no, that needs to go there. You can watch YouTube videos all day long go I think I’m doing it like he’s doing it. I’m not going to be like Tiger. I’m just going to keep watching Tiger videos all day long and I’ll be a golfer. No. You need to have the practical lessons taught to you and then practice them over and over and over again. It’s the attention to details, the little stuff that will get you in trouble. And someone to tell you if you’re starting to veer in the wrong direction. Hey, no, no, no, no. Course correct. Course correct. I’m going to give you an example, two examples. I want to get your feedback on this, Roger, because this is your two glaring examples. I took my kids to the mall recently. And you know at the mall, there’s like sort of a deal where you’re going to the restroom at the mall, and then you walk into this crowd of people going fast. I mean, you’ve got to get the holiday shopping, you’ve got to get your move on. You walk into that hallway at Woodland Hills Mall, and now all of a sudden you’re in the main corridor. You’ve got to move. They’re the holidays. You’ve got to go. Well, this lady has toilet paper stuck to her shoe. Like a lot. Like a copious amount of toilet paper that she’s just walking with down the mall. Well everyone is like going, oh my gosh, or looking or gawking and she doesn’t know what’s going on. And so I’m just sort of, my kids went to the restroom themselves and I watch and all these people are like, and they’re all looking at her like, do you see that? And the farther away they are from her, the more they’re being obnoxious about it. And you can see her getting progressively redder not knowing why everyone’s looking at her Yeah, and I just pulled her aside and I said hey check it. You’ve got some toilet paper on your shoes. Oh And she was like sort of embarrassed that I told her just thank you so much because it was about 30 seconds where she was Just going around blindly. Well, I see I saw an entrepreneur recently Who had a very aggressive? Search engine marketing campaign, okay, and he had a product and this is another win, another win. This is a thriver, a real thriver. And he’s selling this very aggressive search engine marketing campaign, very aggressive ads. And he has photos taken of his products that are awful. But he did them himself and he did the best he could with the tools he had. And recently, the month of February, he sent us an email and said, I tripled my sales during February after doing a Valentine’s Day promotion leading up to Valentine’s Day. Thank you guys. And all we did was just change the photo. We took his photos, yeah. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. So Roger, talk to us. When you go into a business that’s struggling, how often do you as an outsider see some glaring weakness that really if the people weren’t so busy working in it, they probably could see easily from the outside? I mean, how often do you see that glaring weakness or biggest limiting factor? What I tell a lot of people is you’ve got to stay in your lane. You can only be so good at so many things. I personally find that after 35 years I’ve been in my career, there’s like two or three things that I do really well and I’ve got to stay in that sweet spot. Let’s face it, everybody who’s listening right now, all of us sitting here in the studio, we don’t know anybody that’s a mile wide and a half inch deep that’s truly influencing the world. You’ve got to go deep if you want influence. Now I would 100% agree with what you just said, and I think it ties into a lot of what Jim Stovall talks about in his book, because his book is very powerful and very practical, this book called The Art of Productivity. But one thing that he talked about in his book was he’s saying when you’re going out there searching for a mentor, he says you want to make sure the person who is teaching you knows what they’re doing and has shown that they know what they’re doing. They’re an expert in that area. And so what Z and I did when we built Thrive15.com is we said, who are the top managers in the world? Honestly, who’s the top manager? And you might go, well, the guy at Atwoods is awesome. Or the guy, I know a guy over here at Quick Trip who’s great, and I wouldn’t argue with you, but I wrote down Jack Welch, that’s the CEO of GE. Oh, one of my favorites. I wrote down Lee Cockerell, who’s the manager of Walt Disney World Resorts. Okay, they have over 40,000 employees that show up to work every day. And I will tell you, I tried to call these people. And I will tell you that I did not get a return call from Mr. Jack Welch, and I respect him, and I was busy, but Mr. Cockerell, we were honored to have him call us back. And he’s the one who teaches our management courses. Now, he doesn’t teach search engine, he doesn’t teach sales, but he teaches management. And I would argue that if you have the world’s number one tourism attraction, known for being clean, detailed, accurate, and safe, you probably know something about managing people. So you should probably be qualified to teach management. Oh we can’t have, you know, you’ve got to choose either quality or quantity. You can’t do both. And that’s why we built Thrive15.com is that we captured people who believe you can do quantity and quality and they’re actually doing it. Yes. And for less money than most people spend on coffee per month, it’s literally $19 a month. $19 a month, you have access to the world’s best business school, like the Netflix of business. You know what I absolutely love about the website? I just want to throw this out there. It is such a safety net. You know, $19 a month, we have a lot of subscribers who, yes, they watch 15 minutes a day and it’s great and it gets them going and it gets them on track and it gets them focused. But we have probably just as many people who, you know what, they have the subscription and they might not use it for three weeks, but then they get stumped on something and they have a resource to go to. They have the template so they can download. They have the downloadables. They have, you know, they can email in their questions, but they’re able to go in that moment when they have a question, search on Thrive, and find someone who’s answering how to, you know, send in a press release or what they need to do. It’s all vetted and proven. So you’re not going to be taking advantage of it. There’s no charlatan out there selling you. But you can also do that for $19 a month where you have this basically on call and you can go to this resource. That’s what I love about it. It’s awesome. And what we did is we sat there and we listened to you, the listener, and we wrote down four things you kept asking for. And so we’re giving it to you. One is the online school. We realize that some people, unfortunately, can’t afford the $19 a month, and so we actually will have a feature where you can choose your own price if for some reason you can’t afford it. So that’s a real thing. Go to thrive15.com. You can choose your own price. Like a dollar a month? Yeah. Two is the podcast. So many of you listen to part of the show and then you miss it because you’re going back into the office. So if you go to thrivetimeshow.com, we now have the world’s best business podcast available for you and beautiful digital sound. The third is many of you asked for an in-person workshop and so now we built a facility. We have a facility. We’ve built it out. A 20,000 square foot facility built just for you. It’s like the Disneyland of entrepreneurship. The thrive15.com world headquarters. We have our next workshop on February 24th and 25th. Go on up there and see if we have any seats still available. We’d love to have you. That’s thrive15.com. Just check. See if we have any seats still available. If we can’t get you in, we’ll see if we can get you in next time. I’m telling you, that’s a game-changing event for some of you. You need to go check it out. ThriveTimeShow.com. The other thing we do is we now have one-on-one business coaching, Z. A lot of people, a lot of doctors, a lot of lawyers, a lot of optometrists are telling us, man, this one-on-one coaching is a game-changer. Absolutely. We didn’t start off with that. It’s kind of like we opened up an ice cream shop and we had vanilla and we know everyone wants ice cream. I love vanilla. And then they come in and they go, do you have chocolate? We’re like, OK, so we make chocolate. We’re not going to just eat all vanilla all the time. Deal with it. Now we have four flavors. And so, hey, you’ve got a wide choice. And some guys don’t want vanilla. They want butter pecan. Butter pecan? And that’s the thing. Are you into butter pecan? Well, no, mine’s more of a rocky road or… Roger, what’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? Rocky road. Vanessa, what’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? I like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. I like any flavor of ice cream. As long as it’s ice cream, I’m down. I’ve got to stay away from that stuff. Now, Thrivers, I’m telling you what, it’s been a great show today. We thank you for listening, and we’re excited to see you at the workshop. February 24th and 25th, Thrivetimeshow.com. And Zia, as always, 3-2-1, boom! Alright, JT, so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business? Um, to get you to your goals. So it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination. And would, uh, you need profits to get there? I mean, when you have a business that’s successful, in your mind, in your expert opinion, would you need profits to get you to your goals? Yeah, because if you have a $15 million business, but you have $15 million of expenses, it’s kind of pointless. Holy crap! Alright, so the question I would have here for you, if you could take like, I don’t know, 10 minutes or less and see if you could save $3,000 a year by reducing your credit card fees, would you do it? Yes, absolutely. Holy crap! Why would somebody out there who’s listening right now, who has a sane mind, why would they not go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card thrive timeshow.com Forward slash credit dash card to schedule a 10-minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least 3,000 bucks a year Why would they not do it? Yeah? Why would they not do it? Maybe because they understand how you said the website This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the grid wall family Christmas No, that’s clear. Okay, so that could be true. So I would encourage everybody to check out Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. What would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save $3,000 or more on credit card fees? Maybe they think it is a waste of time and that it won’t. It’s not possible. There’s somebody out there that’s making more than $3,000 every 10 minutes and they’re like nah that’s not worth my time we getting there we getting there there’s probably some someone out there ok that would think that well I’ll just tell you folks if you’re out there today and you’re making less than three thousand dollars per ten minutes I would highly recommend that you go to thrive timeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard it because you can compare rates, you can save money and you know the big goal in my opinion of building a business is to create time freedom and financial freedom and in order to do that you have to maximize your profits. Holy crap! Now one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue another way to do it is to decrease your expenses It’s a profit deal. It takes the pressure off. JT, is there any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save a total of $3,000 a year on average? I am at a loss and I cannot think of any other. Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair. Conditioner is better. I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool, really. Stop looking at me, swan. Well let me tell you a good story here real quick. I actually years ago compared rates with this company here called IPS. It’s integrated payment services. And I scheduled a consultation. I don’t know if I was skeptical. I just thought, whatever, I’ll take 10 minutes. I’ll compare rates. I can’t tell. You can tell me I’m a doctor. No, I mean, I’m just not sure. Or can’t you take a guess? Well, not for another two hours. You can’t take a guess for another two hours? And in my case, in my case, my particular case, I save over $20,000 a year. Holy crap! Wow. Which is like groceries when my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great. Okay. Oh God. Everything okay ma’am? Oh it’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items and it’s already 60 bucks. I’m so scared. Okay I’m a trained professional, ma’am. I’ve scanned a lot of groceries. I need you to stay with me. It’s just that my in-laws are in town and they want a charcuterie board. This isn’t going to be easy, so I need you to be brave, all right? What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia, all right. I need you to take a deep breath. We’re about to do the cheese. You know, that’s the difference between eating organic and not organic. So because my wife eats organic, I had to take the 10 minutes needed to compare rates to save the $20,000 a year on credit card fees just for one of my companies. One question, what’s the brand name of the clock? The brand name of the clock, Rod, do we have it? The brand name of the clock, it’s an elegant, from Ridgway, it’s from Ridgway. Let’s buy the clock and sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. You schedule a free consultation request information a member of our team will call you they’ll schedule a free consultation it should take you ten minutes or less and they’re going to compare rates and see if they can’t save you more than three thousand dollars a year off of your credit card processing you were hoping what I would know you money oh you don’t owe us money because the end of the day at the end of the day the goal of the business is to create time freedom and financial freedom. In order to do that, you need to create additional profits. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma And we have been working with thrive for business coaching for almost a year now Yeah, so 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 two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually nonexistent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, you know, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pescemon 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 our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. 91%, we actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year, from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists that when everything gets done and it gets done right, it creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really really contributed to our success but that like is of the diligence and consistency and doing those and that system has really really been a big blessing in our lives and also you know it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive we were basically stuck really no new growth with our business. We were in a rut. The last three years our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut, and if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it, do the action, and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So, we just want to give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing the use of services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983 and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crocker, the head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly he’s running 160 companies. Every 6-8 weeks he’s doing reawaken America tours. Every 6-8 weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. 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. 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 and the guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing, and this is our new team. We went from four to 14, and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrivetime Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business 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 gonna be the best business workshop ever, and we’re gonna 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. We go back eight years ago. Think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to our talk. Well, okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s up and down roller coaster. And so now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from five clients to twenty clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was thirty and you go to a hundred, as a percentage, what is that? I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. That’s 100% growth every year I’ve worked with you. So we’ve been good friends seven, eight years and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean, the first time you do it, that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, as I was going up and down and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and Down and so that’s when they needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down Specific steps that you’re going to take no matter how you feel no matter the results you lean into them and you do them Regardless of what’s happening you lean into them and it will give you X number of leads you follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. Well I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management, he said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. And so that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script, and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every 100 calls. We make 200 to 300 calls a day per rep. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there is having a hard time. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between 200 and 300 calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do, if someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say about a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe, or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems, and you’re like the computer, and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe further down the road, maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012, and at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met, how did we meet? What was the first interaction or some interaction where you and I first connected? I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah well we had that speaking thing. Oh there it was! So it’s Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redmond. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help, you know, direct my life to get some mentorship, but I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant. I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. The experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life-changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe, wherever I end up, will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn, I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then, again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence, and then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life. That standard of excellence that you want to implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall in the group interview talks about how the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal-oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory and we’re on our own trajectory. And the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship that as we pursue our goals and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that, I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. You know he’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s again unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people, in short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time, the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks, he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t wanna miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay, I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day, actually. I carried a notebook with me all around, and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.