Harley-Davidson | Former Director of Communications for Harley-Davidson Ken Schmidt Shares How He Helped to Turn Around Harley By Creating a WOWing Customer Experience + Tebow Joins June 27-28 Business Conference!!!!!

Audio Transcription

On today’s show, we interview Ken Schmidt, the man responsible for helping to turn around Harley-Davidson. How in the world did he fix a company stereotyped as being the product of choice for thugs and criminals? How did he change people’s perception about Harley-Davidson only building junk bikes? How did he convince the dealerships to take their quality to the next level? On today’s show, Ken Schmidt explains why businesses that live by products will die by their products. He explains why most people don’t fill out surveys, but will tell you how to improve your product or service if you are physically standing next to them and asking them sincere questions. He explains why the vast majority of social media marketing is a complete and utter waste of time. He explains why meeting people’s expectations is a direct path to extinction. He explains why people are not loyal to products, people are loyal to people. He explains why Harley-Davidson does almost everything differently than everybody else. All of this and much, much more during this one hour of power interview with Ken Schmidt, the man who successfully turned around the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. What this show does, two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow. Now, four, two, one, here we go. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get there. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get there. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get there. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Thrive Nation, ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, good natured people of importance, on today’s show we are interviewing one of the most outspoken and proactive thought leaders on the planet. As the former director of communications for Harley-Davidson Motor Company, this man played a very active and critical role in one of the most celebrated turnarounds in American corporate history. And now he’s made a big mistake by agreeing to join us on the Thrive Time Show. Mr. Ken Schmidt, how are you, sir? I am way, way, way above average, thank you. Well, hey, your history is all online for everybody to see. So you’re kind of a guy not in need of an introduction. But hopefully, I introduced you to the non-Harley enthusiasts out there. But I’d like to kind of start by starting at the beginning. When you first joined Harley-Davidson Motor Group, could you describe the culture and the state of the company when you first got there? I sure can. It was probably, you know, it’s kind of a strange paradox because the company was at its absolute bottom. Actually, it wasn’t at its bottom. It was near bottom and about to go lower. But at the same time, the culture there was the most fired up, energetic, passionate, passionate and just genuinely fun group of people to be around that I’d ever met in my life. Once we got the ball rolling, once things kind of bottomed out and we were on the way up, there was an energy and a life there that if I could bottle that, I’d be speaking to you from my own island somewhere. It was just that amazing to see and be around. What year was that, Ken? That was 85. 85, OK. How many people worked at Harley-Davidson Motor Company at the time when you joined? Was there thousands? Just to give the listeners some context, how many people were working there? Oh, gosh. I really have to scratch my noggin on that. But let’s just say that was probably around 1,500 or 2,000. And that’s including all the manufacturing people who were the majority of employees. Okay. And for the listeners out there that aren’t really as aware of your background as I have as I prep for this interview, could you share what your role was like as the director of communications at Harley? What exactly did you do? What were you responsible for? It was a blast. I was hired to do two things, both somewhat similar and both incredibly different from each other. The first challenge was to, as it was written on my job description, improve the company’s image. Way easier said than done. And then the second part of my challenge was to attract investors to the company. So if you know anything about trying to attract money to a business, you know that it’s really hard to do when the overwhelming percentage of the American populace kind of loathe you, don’t like you. That was us. It was a failing, seen as a failing business that catered to stereotypics, outlaws, thugs, drug runners. I mean, that was the public perception of the company. So to change the image of the company and turn that around while at the same time getting people to invest millions and millions of dollars in it was kind of a unique challenge. People would look at you and say well Ken so you’re saying that your company’s known for working with thugs and drug runners and it’s failing I think I’ll invest. I mean go down to the cartel you’re obviously bad because there are people so go get your millions from the drug lords in Mexico City. There’s a very profitable little market niche, as I might add. I’m not kidding. So, I mean, I just think about it. One of our show sponsors, Paul Hood, he’ll be on the show here in a little bit, he actually owns a Harley. A lot of our clients own Harleys. A lot of successful people own Harleys. Obviously now we look at it and go, okay, now we can see your success, but when you’re starting there at the bottom, what were some of the biggest challenges that you were facing when you first started working at Harley? What were like the absolute biggest burning fires? There’s a lot of fires, someone out there listening right now can relate to this. There’s a ton of fires. What was the biggest fire that you had to put out right away? The biggest problems, I think I could summarize three ways. The first was what I alluded to just a minute ago, the fact that people saw us and painted us with the absolute worst possible light, none of which was true. So that was just all based on stereotypes and Hollywood hangover going all the way back to the 1950s, where they were portraying motorcycle people as thugs and criminals. And of course, the media loved that. So two generations of kids grew up being told by their moms to stay away from the Harley people. They’re bad news. The second major hurdle was the fact that if you asked anybody who owned any kind of motorcycle built by anyone in the world about Harleys, they would tell you that every bike Harley built was a colossal piece of junk. Again, this is hugely exaggerated. There’s a little truth in there, but so here you have the most potent voices in the marketplace, being people who are in the market, motorcycle enthusiasts, selling would-be enthusiasts, to not buy Harleys because they were unreliable pieces of junk. And then the third problem we had was that the places where we did business, Harley dealerships around the country and around the world, were not the kind of places that people would be comfortable entering. The belief was that people wouldn’t be comfortable entering. They tended to be on the outskirts of town, dimly lit, gravel parking lots, so you have this feeling that the people inside the building are somehow engaged in criminal activities and from the outside it doesn’t look like a nice store at the mall, we had kind of had the deck stacked against us. And a lot of that, frankly, was our own fault. Yeah. I mean, when the name of the company says Hell’s Angels Harley-Davidson, you’re probably like, yeah, it’s, you know, it’s a… You might want to go in there. Yeah. So Ken, so you joined in 85. When did Harley hit rock bottom? Was it before you joined or after you joined? It was after I joined, so I’ll take full credit for that. Led the charge to the bottom. 86 was actually the worst year. Just to put something in perspective for you, in 1984 and then coming into 1985, after investing just a pile of money, whatever money was left at the company, into re-engineering and redesigning new products. In 1985 and 1986, we really lit the world on fire from a product perspective. Motorcycle mags around the world were saying that these are the best bikes, not just the best bikes that Harley ever built, but the best bikes that anybody ever built. So you would have assumed that that would have been enough to bring hearts, minds, and dollars back our way. We certainly did. We find to our horror that just having a really great product essentially just got us back in the game. It did not make people fall in love with us or want to do business with us. Hence, 1986 was the worst year ever. A lot of people out there have adversity. We’ve done a lot of shows on adversity and how to overcome it, how to keep yourself positive and how to fight through the valleys. When everything’s going great, it’s easy. It’s easy to want to go to work, right? It’s easy to want to know you made the right choice. I mean did you ever look at me and go what? What am I doing here? I mean did you ever have those moments, and if you did how did you fight through them? I? Think everybody that was there had those kind of moments of time to time like wow I mean this could This could go under. And part of that, frankly, served as a strong motivator. A lot of people say, boy, what does it take to get a business that focused on turning itself around? And I say, well, I’ve got to tell you, failure is a hell of a motivator. Fear of losing your job tomorrow. Remember I said how people are so energetic and literally running from meeting to meeting. A lot of that was, hey, our days can be numbered here. We got to do this and we got to do it quickly and we got to do it together. So that was kind of the cool part of the motivating factor. But again, were people nervous? Yes, they were. But I would say, especially the older people, people who have already worked there for 30 some years and they were reaching the end of their careers, they had a lot more to lose, frankly, than us young guys. I’ll say this, Z. I’ve never been a big motorcycle guy. I do remember that the movie was a naked… It was a police academy, I think it was, and the naked gun. They played to those stereotypes where biker bars were the worst place to go, and it seemed like everyone was driving a motorcycle that kind of looked like a Harley. I remember as a kid growing up, my parents telling me, hey, stick away from those, stay away from those people. And now I can say motorcycle people are known as kind of like lovable people that are dedicated to their craft. It’s like a lovable thing now, where before they were known as like a scary thing. So I want to ask you about the action steps that you took during those first couple of years at Harley to lead this epic turnaround. I know you took hundreds of action steps, thousands of them, but if you can remember a few of some of the biggest or most, the ones that made the biggest impact, what kind of action steps did you take? Uh, impact-wise, going back again to this thought and to the comment that you just made about this sort of that fear that people had for who represented Charlie Riders and what we are about. Our earliest mission to get over that was to essentially show the world who we really are. Let people see us for who we really are. And I need to tell you that that was an abysmal failure. And I’ll tell you why. Because one of the earliest and greatest lessons I had going through this process came the compliments of a woman at the New York Times. And I called her up and I was inviting her to come to a dealership so that, you know, she could talk to some writers and, you know, let’s see just what wonderful people we are. And she had nothing to fear. And she just cut me off at the knees. And she goes, I know what you’re saying and I know what you’re trying to do. And I just want to tell you, it’s not going to work. And I said, well, why not? And she goes, all I know is what I see. And what I see are scary looking, rough people and rough looking women on the back. So no matter how you spin it, that’s not what I’m seeing and therefore it’s not real. And that just kind of hit me a lot of other people like a smack upside the head because it’s so obvious and so true what she was saying. That’s not what people were seeing. Because we, those of us who in the writing community who don’t look scary, however you define that, who didn’t have that stereotypic look, we never pinged on anybody’s radar. We were totally invisible. The overwhelming majority of the Harley riding community was invisible to the non-riding community because we didn’t look like, you know, the people that we’d all been accustomed to being afraid of, because we didn’t match that image, so therefore people didn’t notice us. Makes sense. So we then basically said, hey, look, instead of trying to make these big heroic blasts, like a New York Times cover story, which is what I was kind of seeing happening here, I determined we’d be way better served to kind of go with a rolling thunder approach. Let’s get some small success stories of getting out and getting involved in the communities where we do business. Get some local elected officials out there. Let’s get some folks in the media out there. So just did a small kind of test level to see how people react to what we’re doing. Again, rolling thunder. Let’s just get some small bangs and start building momentum and learning from our mistakes along the way. That served us a lot better because now you could have people that, you know, the dentist from your town standing next to a pipe fitter who’s been a biker for 30 years in the same space under the same roof talking about the thing they love motorcycles and basically dispelling any myths that hovered over the business. When the guy with the dirt under his fingernails turns, you know, and you talk to him, you find out he’s a dentist, well, that kind of kills whatever preconceived notion you might have about what the guy does. We kept doing more and more and more of that and realizing that the more social we made the business, the brand, getting people together, the more rewards we received for doing that. Because anytime we did anything that had a lot of bikes and bike people together in the same place, it just made for a massive billboard. You couldn’t not see what we were doing. And hopefully, be curious enough to see what we were doing and pull in and have a look. I have a small issue. Is there a scarier man out there in the world than a dentist? I mean, think about it. Think about it. Think about scary. Come on, man. Here’s what I would say to that, though. I have been at a lot of motorcycle rallies over my life. Basically, in a motorcycle rally environment, it’s adult freedom. It’s people doing anything they want with no fear of being judged by their neighbors. Right, so people let their hair down. People smoke and stuff at bike rallies. They don’t do it at home. But you know, your dentist is in the middle of that. Your dentist, when he’s in that environment, is the skankiest dude you ever met in your life. And then a week later, his hands are in your kid’s mouth. I just thought that was funny that that was the one profession you did because a lot of people are like, well, I fear going to the dentist more than anything. So think about this. Think about this. Again, I was born in 1980s. I remember 87, 86, 88, those kind of years. I remember, it’s just, you stay away from bikers. You don’t want to be around the bikers. Harley Davidson was known for making crappy bikes. If you want to buy a crappy bike, buy a Harley Davidson. Now here we are, 2018, the company’s known for making the most high quality bikes you can buy. Bikers are known as lovable people. So you’re saying action item number one is you gathered some small, realistic local media wins. You’re getting local officials, people of credibility riding bikes, and that started getting some momentum going. And then what did you do? Once you got a little momentum, got some dentists, these scary people riding the bikes. What did you do next? The magical thing that was happening here is that we were discovering, again, as I mentioned earlier, that we were bringing people together. Really positive stuff starts to happen for us. So why don’t we make this part of our business? Why don’t we make socialization and bringing people together one of the pillars of the business? Early dealers around the country began sponsoring chapters of what we call the Harley Owners Group, a social club built entirely of Harley-Davidson owners, a social organization that would typically meet once a week, once a month over the winter months at the sponsoring dealership where they plan parties, events, fundraisers, things that social clubs do, but everything involving motorcycles. So the people had more excuses to come back to the dealership. We’d do these events at dealerships and bike shows and there’d be fashion shows and band playing and local restaurants out cooking food and serving everybody. And that, it just generated a tremendous amount of attention. And all the attention was incredibly positive because anytime somebody from the media or law enforcement community or something would come in and get plugged into this, virtually everyone would report. We saw exactly what we didn’t expect to see and that was just people from the neighborhood, you know, the folks next door, just a lot of adults having a really good time. And never once, and this is really important, never once in any write-ups, never once in any reports that people were doing about the company, as a result of these events, were they talking about the company’s products. That was all about the people that were involved. The people involved in the company side, the people involved in the dealer side, and then ultimately the customers or potential customers. And it was a human side of the equation, really, that drove everything forward. For all of our listeners out there, there’s a huge, just powerful teaching moment. There’s two that I just want to make sure we do. See, I don’t want to move on without distilling these. They’re powerful. One, he said it’s all about the people, not the product. That’s one. That’s big. The second thing is you mentioned earlier that here in 1985, and you joined Harley-Davidson, you’re leading it triumphantly to the bottom after winning the awards as the best motorcycles. 85, 86. You’re getting write-ups for having the best product in the world in your category, and yet people think, see, this product is so good it’s going to sell itself. And here you are, a guy who led the Harley Davidson turnaround, and you’re saying even with the best product in the world, the product will not sell itself. That is so powerful. Can you educate, preach to the listeners out there, Ken, who are saying, I have the best product in the world. It’s going to sell itself. And they’re just not willing to, they’re just kind of hung up on that idea and they’re not willing to embrace the people strategy that you did. I can say definitively, and I will shout this from the mountaintops, anybody or any business Any business that lives by its product is going to die by it. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, especially now. 2018, there’s nothing you can make that somebody else can’t make six weeks from now exactly the same, if not better, than what you just did. If you’re trying to build your business on your product and the virtues of your product and God forbid the quality of your product you’ll never be a dominant competitor you’ll always be an also-ran because some somebody’s going to do it better or cheaper and you’ll find me any industry where that’s not true. Live by product, die by product man. Drop the mic. Drop the mic. Throw the mic. No wait that’s an expensive mic. Don’t touch that. Just set it down nicely. Set it down slowly. Now, Ken, on the show here we have Paul Hood. Paul Hood owns a large accounting firm here in the Tulsa area. He’s one of our show sponsors. He helps make this podcast possible. Paul, you drive a Harley, am I correct? I do. I have a 2015 Sportster. So here you are with Ken Schmidt, the guy who led the Harley Davidson turnaround. What tough question do you have for Ken Schmidt before we get into his new book? Well, I don’t know if I have a tough question. I just want to say thank you. I’m a CPA. And you know, I don’t know how many CPAs you know, but we’re not really the coolest guy in town. But I jump on that Harley. And I am it. I am the man on that Harley. I will have to admit, I put a cup holder on my Harley. But so if that’s OK. I got one, too. I won’t own a bike that doesn’t have a cup holder on it. I got my cup holder from Harley though, so I think that’s okay. Oh, there you go! Alright. So, okay, so what’s your tough question for Ken here about Harley? Remember, he led the Harley turnaround. He started off, he joined there in 85, left the company in a great space, he’s launching a new book, he’s a unicorn, Paul. What question do you have for him? Well, I just, I was always curious about how Harley has, you know, how you decide which type of bike to make. Now I guess it’s a lot of the bigger bikes, the touring bikes, and they’re really cool. And a lot of my clients have to decide which product line to push and which ones to kind of let fall back. And so what kind of market research did you guys do to do that kind of stuff? Harley is very, very big on voice of customer. That basically listening to what customers are asking us to do, which was always kind of opposite of the rest of the world manufacturing products, especially when Harley first started doing this. Harley is so active with riders and so present on the street in the motorcycle world. It rallies events and shows looking at what people are doing themselves to customize their vehicles, customize their motorcycles, and blatantly looking at and being inspired by the best and the coolest of those ideas and saying, you know, hey, can we do this? And if we do this, is there going to be significant enough demand for that. And if you ask people, they’ll tell you, hey, that’s really cool. Or, yeah, that’s cool, but not cool enough for me to buy it. We just find that the more you ask questions of people and seek their opinion on stuff, the more they’ll tell you, rather than trying to outguess what the market will accept. There’s a book written by Sam Hill called Radical Marketing, and one of the case studies in the book is Harley. And that’s how I first heard about what you guys were doing. So I got interested, started looking up things. And there’s one interview I stumbled across that was on YouTube, where you were saying, and I’m quoting, and if I misquote you slightly, I apologize, but this is what I transcribed myself using some typing technology. Are you saying that you don’t memorize my quotes? Well, I stopped memorizing them as of last week. I hit my head on the toilet seat and I can’t remember anything. I apologize. But here’s the thing. You said, I was always a bit of a renegade and that I never liked to accept the status quo. That, to me, is kind of part and parcel of what the entire Harley Davidson lifestyle is all about. We don’t have to do things the way everybody else does. Why should we? I would love for you to break down what things that Harley-Davidson does much differently from everybody else. Oh, God. We can go all day on. Oh, do it. I’m ready. Let’s do it. Come on. If you want to look, let’s just look at the bike industry in general, because a lot of us, we can extrapolate to all businesses. If you were to go and buy 10 competitive motorcycles and put a big piece of tape over their names on the gas tank, push them out on the curb in front of the office there, and ask people to come up and tell you who built what, nobody would have any idea because bikes all look exactly the same. People copy each other’s products to the smallest detail. Despite that, despite the fact that the guy on the street can’t tell manufacturer products, manufacturers products apart, you know, we’re talking big companies, the Hondas, the Amahas, BMWs, Kawasaki’s, the Suzuki’s of the world, despite the fact that their products are almost impossible to differentiate, all of these companies go to business, go to market, trying to sell their product based on the features and benefits, the attributes of the product. They’re completely product driven. Because they’re completely product driven, they’re commoditized and have to compete on price. Gee, what’s the difference between the Honda and Yamaha? $4. Well, I’ll take the Yamaha because it’s $4 less. I mean, that’s patently absurd, but that’s how most business is done in the world today. Harley’s not about shoving the product down your throat and discussing the various features and benefits of the product. Harley puts its emphasis, its focus on you, the rider, the potential rider, because if we glorify the human instead of the product, we build tremendous loyalty. That’s a very attractive trait for a business. It’s a very attractive trait for anything or anybody. It’s we’re putting the spotlight on you. And if as a result of our doing that to you, you want to learn more about our products, well, then we’ll tell you all about them. But leading with product and promoting product at the sake of all else, simply doesn’t. It’s not sustainable and certainly doesn’t make you a dominant player in the industry, which Harley does. Secondly, Harley loves to, and Harley dealers around the world will tell you this too, we love to essentially go the opposite direction that everybody else goes. else is jumping headfirst into new technologies, new colors, new whatever. They’ll all do it in unison. They’ll all copy each other. Hardly a turn left when they’re going right. They’re going smaller. Harley comes out with a three-wheeler, a big honking thousand pound three-wheeler. You can’t not notice that. People will always ask the question, well, why did you do this? And there’s nothing better than people asking you questions because it means they’re curious, it’s that they noticed. What did you do this for? Now you have a chance to tell them your story, tell them everything about the business, you tell them everything about that particular bike, whatever that is, because people get curious, they notice things that are different. I have a hot take, but Z has a hotter take. Z, hot take. I had a quick question just to kind of, in my mind, I’m tracking all this. When did you know? When did you know? When was the moment that you thought, okay, this is this, we’re, we’re, we’re going to make it. And what year was that? And, and why did you think that? Well, I’ll tell you what, this will probably be a longer answer than you want, but I, but I have, No, no, go ahead. When we were frankly desperate to move product to generate revenue, to save jobs. What Harley did, and was the first company in the bike industry to do it, Harley allowed people to take test rides on motorcycles, a demo ride. And you have to put yourself in the seat of the lawyers and the risk management people, what we’re going to let people ride our products and somebody’s going to crash and we’re going to get sued. And it’s, you know, the whole house of cards is going to tumble down. You don’t worry quite so much about risk mitigation when you’re broke. So, yeah, I saw you joke about somebody crashed. Will you give them a drill press? That’s all we got. But what was happening as we were allowing people to take demos is we made a kind of amazing discovery that we hadn’t planned on making. And the discovery was if somebody would get off the bike after taking it out for a 10 or 15 mile ride, we’d ask everybody the same question. And the question is, what would we have to change on this motorcycle to make it perfect for you. And what we discovered was 100% of people, when they’re standing right next to you, when asked a question, will answer the damn question. If we’d have sent them surveys afterward, they wouldn’t have told us anything. If people said, Hey, you know what, I need the handlebars to be higher, they’d be lower, could they be wider? Could they be narrower? Could you bend it back this way? Could you curl them that way? There we began discovering that when enough people were asking us to do the same stuff that we could do, I mean, you know, Harley’s a metal bending company, they’re asking us to bend metal different ways. Let’s do that. And they reacted very, very positively to that. So now they have a say in what they are helping to be. They’re actually helping to create their own motorcycles. They’re involved in customization, they’re involved in the design process, if you will, of the motorcycle. And as that started to gain not just momentum in the marketplace, but tremendous awareness, all the bike magazines and the Forbes, and Forbes is in the fortunes and the business weeks of the world were writing about this because really nobody was doing this, certainly at the level that we were getting people involved in the process and the design process of the product. And at the same time, really humanize and put a human face on our business. It’s us standing out there toe to toe with riders. You could sense a tremendous momentum change starting to grow in the market. A lot more ink in bike magazines, a lot more people showing up on their imported motorcycles to take a demo ride on Harley’s. And then coming back two weeks later and buying one, we started connecting the dots and saying, like, holy cow, this stuff is actually working. We got to do more of this. Sales began ticking up, and then suddenly sales just shot straight up. People talk about like a hockey stick, well, this is just like straight up, it was explosive growth. And the same markets were two years prior, we couldn’t give stuff away. Yet another. This stuff is working. Yet another powerful teaching moment I want to make sure the listeners get because I read a case, I never, I mean, I’m so honored to have you on the show. I read this case study in 2000, and again, it’s called Radical Marketing. And it was a case study on Sam Adams beer, it was on Anheuser-Busch, it was on the Grateful Dead, and it was on Harley. And one of the things that talked about was that you crazy guys actually asked people to their face, how can we improve the motorcycle? And I ran a company called DJ Connection Kin and before I sold it, it was the largest wedding entertainment company in the country. And I would email bride surveys, mail them surveys. And I never got them back. And if I did, it would always be the good ones, like, oh, you guys are the best, something vague. But I started calling people as a result of reading this book and hearing what you guys were doing. So I’d call the bride and say, hey, you know, I’m just making up an example. But Karen, your wedding was this week, you know, two, two weeks ago. I want to make sure you’re happy. And I wanted to ask you, what could we have done better? And they go, OK, well, the one thing, I think your linens could have been a little nicer. Or I think your speaker could have been a little too loud. And I was asking, how can I improve? I wasn’t sending them on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank us? Thank you, Bob. I was asking, how can we get better? And I was amazed by the customer gave me all of my improvements, where my entire team, we would sit in the office and have just remarkably stupid ideas that I was coming up with because I wasn’t asking the customer. Could you educate somebody out there who has a business with a lot of listeners out there that have companies with more than 50 employees and they’re in there having these think tanks with their employees. They’re having their meetings and they’ve got a lot of employees chiming in, but they’re not asking customers. They’re sending out surveys via email. Could you encourage somebody out there, walk somebody through why it’s so important to ask physically as opposed to just sending out email surveys? Got it. The benefits are so huge. First of all, it shows that an effort is being made. Surveys, things like that, that you get in the mail or that you get emailed to you two days after you’ve done something with a business or you know, as a hotel or a flight or, you know, one of these net promoter score things or something. I mean, do you enjoy getting that? Nobody enjoys. No, they’re, they’re irritant. It’s like, what the hell are you doing bothering me today? Asking my input on something that’s not going to help me in any way. Right. Right. This is just going to help you. And why should I even think you’re going to listen and take action on what I’m saying anyway. But when I’m right there, standing next to you, I’m on your property or out in the field together, and I’m asking you the kind of questions you just mentioned, what could we have done better? What would you like to see us do? Or challenges. Give us a goal that you don’t think we can reach. Let’s see if we can do that for you. First of all, people always react positively to that because they’re just simply not used to being asked that. But secondly, and probably more important, is now you’re getting the absolute most sincere and honest feedback you could possibly get for people. You’re not rating me on a scale of one to five. You’re telling me what sucked. You’re telling me what was awesome. You’re telling me what was average but could have been made a little bit better. That to me is the highest compliment a person can give a business. It’s I’m telling you how to improve yourself. The reason I’m telling you is because you asked me. Ask me again and I’ll tell you more. I’ll tell you more, right. So I’m just curious now, what was the number one thing that you changed due to asking the question that helped drive the sales? Do you, can you think of that is there was there one thing that you want? This was the number this was the most talked about You know quite honestly I would say handlebars, okay Because handlebars are I mean if you look at a bike head of our it’s like a bent aluminum, too Just like you know on the front of your bicycle and you were sure Not easy to make easy to manufacture, easy to coat. And it would, you know, we had maybe 12 varieties of handlebars when we started doing this. And now there’s, I mean, God, there’s as many varieties of handlebars as there are, you know, people out there. Right, it was easy to do. Make a few phone calls, get a few engineers, design, start bending in different ways. And then it just seeing how rapid the response was to that. And people, and again, it wasn’t just, hey, now there’s more options and handlebars. It’s, hey, there’s more options and handlebars because Harley asked people how they wanted it bent or how they wanted it shaped and Harley did it. Paul, you have a hot question for Ken. Yeah, Ken Paulhood here again, CPA. The thing that I, the whole test drive thing to me is brilliant because of the type of product you have. To me, I have zero desire to own a motorcycle, but I have massive desire to have a Harley. And I think it’s because, you know, to me, a motorcycle, traditional motorcycle is, you know, okay, I’m gonna go from here to work. It’s just a means to get there. But a Harley, it’s about the journey. It’s about, I go out in my garage, literally when it’s cold and just start my bike, just to hear it. I have recordings on my phone right now of my bike running. And so it’s the emotional, it’s the sexiness, it’s American, it’s standing out, it’s flexing your muscles. And so my question is, was that a part of your thought process to get people to buy, to be able to test drive? Because once they climb on top of that bike versus, to me the rest of them are like mopeds. I mean, why own something like that? And so, you know, was that part of the process just to say, oh my gosh, there is no comparison? We like to think that there’s no comparison, but I think the bigger story here, Paul, is the overwhelming majority of people who own a Harley, buy one, own it because a friend or friends or people that they know essentially talk them into it. It’s, oh, you need to do this. You need to get a Harley. How come you don’t have a bike yet? You got to come out and ride with us. It’s so much of the ownership experience in the Harley world is based on the social side of the sport. It’s the activities, it’s the clubs, it’s the organized events. You know, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, Daytona Bike Week, events that a lot of people will never participate in, but they know they can. They know, I have access to that and that’s cool. That’s a huge part of it, but then the second part of it is just the overwhelming strength and notoriety and respect for the brand so that when you, you know, and I know you know what I’m talking about here, Paul, when you roll up to a stop sign and you rev the motor, you rev the engine and everybody looks at you, even if it’s just for a second, they’re giving you the quick eyeball. And that tells you, hey, you know what, I’m pretty damn cool. They’re checking me out. They’re checking my bike out. You know, I own other brands for years and people didn’t check me out on it. So, you know, I’m riding something that people respect and think is cool. Therefore, that makes me cool. You know, if you’re even cooler thrivers, what you got to do is you got to not only have a Harley maybe, but maybe you’re saying, you know what, I don’t have the money to buy a Harley right now, or maybe I already own a Harley. But if you want to be the coolest guy in the room, you got to pick up a copy of Ken’s new book, Make Some Noise, The Unconditional Road to Dominance. You’re reading that on an airplane, people go, oh wow, can I touch your body? You’re so cool. I just want to be in your aura. I love it. Can I get a selfie with you? Can I get a selfie? So this new book, Make Some Noise, The Unconditional Road to Dominance. Can you tell us what inspired you to write this book? Everyone’s going to go buy it right now on Amazon. What inspired you to write this thing? One is, I have witnessed as everybody has, the really sad movement of businesses backwards. What I mean by that is this commoditization of everything, where you can’t tell any businesses apart anymore, and the businesses that are out there, everybody’s trying to compete with their product or compete with price, and they look exactly the same this year as they did last year. What I’m saying is, why would anybody choose to, you know, be a drone, be stuck out on the freeway, go in the same direction that everybody else is, essentially, you know, stuck in traffic when there’s a million side roads that you could pull out on that are a hell of a lot more interesting, a lot more fun to ride, and that will make you different and make you stand out and make you dominant. So I wanted to write a book to essentially show businesses and individuals how to improve their competitiveness using techniques that aren’t taught in colleges, aren’t typically thought of in businesses, but absolutely positively work. So I sat down and wrote a book to show people how to do this. You know what, it doesn’t involve social media in any way, shape or form. Social media is the devil, it is snake oil. Social media is the devil, it is snake oil. That right there was a hot take, I want to have you break it down. What do you mean by that? This feeds back into the comment I made a minute ago about businesses being drones. Everybody’s chasing what everybody else is chasing. Oh boy, you know, social media is going to be the next big thing for businesses. It’s going to allow you to sell more and attract more customers and build loyalty. And oh boy, everybody jumped in with, well, if your dry cleaner has a Facebook page, who gives a crap? And the answer is nobody. Nobody does give a crap. Nobody wants to, I’m just telling you this. There’s somebody out there. I sat down with a dentist there. Ken, you’re getting me all fired up here. I sat down with a dentist and he had a full-time guy whose entire job… Did he have to be on to Harley? No. I’m not kidding. His entire job… He had a person, a full-time job, and their job was to post pictures of something related to dental and then write this tip, like, in order to improve dental health, what you want to do is floss using the… And I’m going, how many hours a week are you devoting to this? And he says oh, we’re about 25 30. We got this full-time person They write these blogs and I said would you or anybody that you know ever read a blog? Related to dental care and he goes well, no, but I think well research has shown that it’s important to be active They have a person now commenting and liking and going back and forth and after about six months of tracking, he realized, Clay, I have had no business from this that I can track. And you’re right, my man, all of our business is coming from wowing our customers. So we set up a thing where a first time customer, when you sign up, when you come in as a first time customer, they give you one of those expensive Yeti mugs with the logo of the company on it. Yeah. With a big thank you. They say thank you so much to give that to them. And they give them as a freckles. It’s called Freddy’s or freckles, it’s a frozen custard gift certificate. They give them a $10 gift certificate. They say, I know Dennis encouraged you not to eat sugar, but we want you to live a little, so here we go. And here’s your Yeti cup. And people are telling everybody about it. And there’s no liking, there’s no tweeting, there’s no YouTubing. I think a lot of people are getting just stuck in social media. Help somebody out there, Ken. Someone has attached themselves to this dysfunction of social media jackassery. Help somebody out there, Ken. It’s all, it’s that copycat thing. Everyone else is doing it, so therefore I need to be doing it too, or I feel bad if I’m not doing it. Just one more comment on social media. It’s a great place to continue a conversation with somebody, a legitimate friend. It’s the next to impossible place to start a conversation with someone. And that’s how people are trying to, you’re trying to drum up business through our Facebook page. And no, sorry, that’s just ain’t gonna work. And furthermore, people talk about their social media strategy. And I say, you have a social media strategy, you don’t even have a social strategy. I mean, the basic pillar of learning how to compete is being able to answer three questions. Is what do the people who are most important to you say about you? Second, what do you want them to say about you? And then third, what are you doing to make them say it? So if you don’t have that defined language, those defined descriptors, how we want people talking about us, and what the hell are you doing on social media? You call that idea noise cubed. Don’t you call it noise cubed? Am I correct? I’m just looking at my cliff notes from the book. Can you talk about this noise cube and why we need to print it out and display it? That’s such a profound idea, noise cubed. Sure, let’s just talk first about the concept of noise. Noise is a metaphor that I use anytime that I’m working with or teaching or speaking. What I do is I say, if you were to imagine right now the sound of any motorcycle driving by your window, any motorcycle that’s not a Harley, you can hear that in your brain right now. You hear that sound and you know the second you hear that sound, that’s a motorcycle. But you have no idea who built it. A Harley goes by your window, you know Harley’s coming long before you see it. You don’t have to see it to know who it was. It’s that distinct, different noise. And see, and the metaphor I use is every business in the world makes noise. Every person in the world makes noise, and your noise is what the people who are most important to you, customer, potential customer, maybe your boss, what does people say about you when you’re not there and the noise is either distinct, unique to you, recognizable, meaningful, cool, memorable, all that great stuff that you would want to have, or you’re just making the same noise as everybody else, so you’re completely invisible and indistinguishable. Why would anybody choose to be indistinguishable? And that’s when businesses are out doing the social media thing, when businesses are out doing the couponing and the discounting to create sales, when businesses are talking about their quality and the customer satisfaction. They’re doing that because all their competitors are doing it. They’re making the same noise, saying the same things that their competitors are saying, therefore they’re just rendering themselves uncompetitive. It’s crazy. You, you, it’s just, it’s so, see I hope that our listeners, we have hundreds of thousands of people that listen to this, I hope everybody out there gets out a pen right now and you write down what are, what are we doing that’s different from everybody else? What noise are we creating? What is our purple cow in the field of brown cows? What can we do to stand out? In chapter three of your book, you titled this chapter, Truth and Packaging, Italian style, managing, positioning, and narrative to dominate. What’s this chapter all about? That’s really a discussion on positioning. I don’t look at positioning the way a lot of other businesses do, because most people, you say, how’s your business positioned? And they’ll say, Oh, you know, it’s all about, you know, great products and great people, and then you kind of, you know, you have to fight yawning in their face. When you hear that stuff, I say, you know, who understood positioning really well was Fonzie. Remember Fonzie on Happy Days? So what was Fonzie? What was Fonzie know for? Fonzie was cool. And how did you know Fonzie was cool? Because Fonzie said he was cool. Because everybody who knew Fonzie said he was cool. Because everything Fonzie did was cool. Nobody saw him ever doing stuff that wasn’t cool. So Fonzie is well-positioned. He’s defined the niche. He’s defined who he wants to be, how he wants to be described. That to me is good positioning. It’s how do we want people to describe us? What are the specific words we want people to use that are, again, that are ours, that are meaningfully and memorably different than our competitors? is what do we need to do as a business to ensure that the people that we serve, the people who report to us, are talking about us and using that specific language when they’re doing it. And it’s a lot easier than it sounds. Ken, each of us have one final hot question for you. I want to respect your time while also passively aggressively trying to steal as much of it as possible. So I want to- Take as much as you want, Ben. All right, so the notable quotable I want to break down from your book. This is the one that I heard you say in a talk and then there was a parallel quote in the book and so this is my, from the interview where I watched your interview on video. You said, meeting expectations is a direct path to an extinction as far as I’m concerned. Again, meeting expectations is a direct path to extinction as far as I’m concerned. I think a lot of people though feel like meeting expectations is the key to growing a company. You need to set expectations and meet it. Dr. Z has taught me this many years ago about exceeding people’s expectations. I’d love for you to break down, help all the listeners out there, talk to us about the dangers of just meeting expectations. Well the first thing is if you’re making it an objective of the business to meet objectives, I mean, you’re essentially writing your death warrant because how do you even know what the expectations are because expectations evolve constantly. If I’ve done something for you that was great and I did it in two days, well, tomorrow you’re going to expect that I do it in one day, right? I mean, expectations constantly change. Further to that point, the world has gotten so damn good at everything. There’s not a lot of really bad businesses out there. Everybody’s really, really good at what they do. Nobody’s building crappy stuff. Nobody’s not supporting what they sell. Nobody’s not customer-focused. They all say it. So we basically as buyers, as potential customers, our lowest rung of expectation is that our expectations are gonna be met, that we’re gonna get what we pay for and that it’s gonna be good and that the service is gonna be good and that the people are gonna be friendly and all that kind of wonderful stuff. And what does that gain you? It gains you absolutely nothing. You’ve essentially hit the first rung on the ladder. And that’s where you set your target, giving the people the easiest thing it is for you to give them. It’s not just a matter of meeting expectations, is we need to instead focus on how can we surprise people and surprise them in ways that delight them. You know, how can we do things for them that they didn’t expect? Because it’s the things that people don’t expect, it’s the surprises that they remember and that they talk about and that they come back for a second, third, or fourth, fifth time. Here’s your bumper sticker quote of the day. We’re not loyal to products. We’re loyal to people. What I mean by that, because we thought for years, oh, the loyalty is all built on the motorcycle. No, the loyalty is, it’s counter-human to be loyal to a piece of hardware, to a thing. We’re loyal to sources of joy and happiness and delight in our lives, people, organizations and cultures that delight us, make us feel good, give us a moment of joy or happiness, even if it’s just for a second. Because what we know about the human species is that if you do something for me that makes me feel good, I guarantee I’m coming back for more of that. I mean, that’s the real definition of loyalty is that I’m coming back to you for more joy, for more happiness, for more delight. And as long as you continue to give it to me, I will continue to come back. Amen, that’s right. That’s a powerful statement. I want to interview Ken for three consecutive years. We will. We will. Okay, we’ll work it out. Z, what’s your question? Well, first of all, I want to give a big shout out to Make Some Noise, the new book by Ken Schmitt. You’ve got to buy that book. You’ve seen the play on words, Clay? Did you get that? Shout out to Make Some Noise. That was good. I thought that. Let me say this, Z, for all the listeners out there. If you care about your loved ones this holiday season, what better way to say I love you than with a gift of a kid’s new book? Make some noise. Make some noise. Okay, back to you. I love the title, though, How to Dominate, because so many times, part of our job here is to give this, you know, the walkway or the practical steps for people to start and grow a business, and this idea that, you know, you want to dominate, that it is a fight, that they’re not the alter just handing it to you, is when the concepts are trying to try to beat into people. So this is a great resource and something to help encourage our listeners out there. So everybody go get, make some noise. But I want to get back. I’m going to spend just a little time as we’re finishing up here. Okay, I want to go back on, you kind of glossed over a little bit and I’m sure you’ve got some great stories about raising some capital, getting some money. And a lot of, we get a lot of emails, we get a lot of phone calls in our in-person workshops. We get a lot of people going, hey, I’ve got a great business. I need some capital. I need to go round up some money. How do I do that? And so you had to have the door slammed in your face a few times. Phones hung up a couple of times. I mean, walk us through a couple of the successes and a couple of the failures because trying to gather money, as you said earlier, for a company that’s not doing well is extremely challenging. So you may have had a secret move in there that you did, a little backdoor secret move or whatever, but kind of spend a little time talking about that process, please. Sure. Again, this is something that was born out of discovery. Myself, the CEO, we’re making rounds to the investment community. And as we were sitting in the lobby at one of the major investment firms, we saw teams just like ours from kind of a who’s who of American business. The FedExes of the world were in there, the GEs of the world were in there. And we went and sat down and I said, like, how many meetings like this do you folks do every day?” And they said, anywhere from 10 to as much as 15. I said, that sounds like torture. It is torture because essentially what people do is they come in and they show us their numbers and they discuss the numbers, which we’ve already seen and had access to, and then give us an opportunity to ask questions. And it gets kind of boring. And I thought, we’re not gonna do that. We can’t be like, instead of going in and telling people what they already know, our goal here should be is what do we want these people to remember and repeat about us? Which means we gotta show them some cool stuff. We gotta tell them some good stories. We’ve gotta get them engaged the same way that we would try to engage somebody at a demo ride. So would you wear like a bandana and leather and come in all, you know, Bum bum bum bum bum Run a Harley into the meeting, into the room. Pow, pow, pow. Yeah, that’s good music. I wish we could have, you know, dressed the part, but you know, in these days, our rule was when we’re on somebody else’s turf, we have to wear their uniform because these were all by those guys. We had the coolest, most kick-ass looking ties, though, all Harley ties. Which, of course, we would give away by the hundreds to these people who’d say they couldn’t accept gifts while they were shoving them into their briefcases. But what we find is, rather than giving them the same pitch that everybody else is going, let’s go with the goal of getting them to like us. Let’s tell them the stories, let’s entertain them, let’s give them some good stuff, let’s kind of blow their minds a little bit, get them fired up and excited because if they like us, they’re going to want to hear more of what we have to say. And if we’re having these kinds of discussions that are making us more likable, more kind of awesome, and the stories we’re telling them are, you know, delighting them, you know, they’re hearing stuff that they, you know, obviously weren’t hearing from any of the other businesses that were in there, our meetings tended to go longer. We got a lot more calls back. We got a lot more interest. We also got a lot more investment. So, you know, competing for investment is the same, really, as competing in, you know, a consumer products market. If people gotta like you first, if they like you first, they’ll spend more time with it. To spend more time with it, you have more time to show them all your awesomeness and to create the demand for what you’re doing. Well, I’m so curious. So what was like a story you would say? Like what was your mood? What would you do? You just come in. Oh, it was, well, hey, we show us a picture. Hey, we just got back from Germany and we were at the Fokkerstein bike rally there and we rode up. Watch your mouth. This is a family show. Exactly. Yeah, we did make big jokes about the, about the, you know, the t-shirts that say Mother Fokker on the front, you know, yuck, yuck, yuck. Isn’t that funny? And we rode up from France and we’re riding through the Alps and we’re telling me and power. It’s like guys were just completely absorbed by this. And then they said, you know, we said we pull up at a, you know, an acidic overpass somewhere up in the mountains and guys would recognize, you know, rich, truly the CEO of Harley and they come running up to get, to get his picture, you know, and Richard tell a few stories about, you know, how humbling that is and how awesome it is to be recognized and stuff. And all the while, I mean, this is all intentional. So you know, these people are going like, like, geez, these guys are a really big deal in the in the bike world. People actually love these guys. I mean, you I have no idea who the current CEO of Honda or Yamaha is, let alone what they look like. But everybody in the riding community knows what the CEO of Harley looks like. We’re out there and you know we’re visible we have those stories amazing stories to tell if they want to hear a Hell’s angel story will tell them a hell’s angel story if they want to hear about something that we’re doing out in Hollywood with a Here’s how we got bikes on the Terminator. You know Paul. They want to hear that stuff Yeah, so cool. Now there you go and I love the way that you guys are focusing on people you’re focusing on emotions. You’re not focusing on product and price and what so many other companies get caught up in the minutia of. So that’s, this is a powerful word. I hope folks out there listening, take it at heart and can apply it to their business because every business can benefit from this kind of sound teaching. Hey Ken, Paul Hood here again. Hey, and I know you guys won’t believe this since talking to me, you probably think I’m the coolest CPA on the planet. You guys have also mentioned dentists. I literally, up until about four years ago, I had multiple people. It was not uncommon for somebody to come into my office and say, I would rather go to the dentist than come see you. Oh, unbelievable. You know, so after I wiped away a little tear and everything, I had to regroup. And I met Clay Clark and he’s my business coach. And one of the first things he told me was a Thomas Edison quote, he said, vision without execution is hallucination. So my question with you, we went through the process of converting our practice from a product or service type just delivery to more of a proactive planning, let’s use your numbers, let’s create wealth, let’s help clients keep more, save more, and protect more. But the issue is I can have the vision and where my question comes in, I can have the vision but I have to have my staff do a lot of the execution. So did you run into issues when you came in and you said, all right, we’re going to make a change, we’re going to do some things. Did you have issues with the old school way of thought and how did you address those to get people to buy into the vision and move forward? Oh, of course, there were obstacles. Anytime we tried something new, there were going to be naysayers and said that won’t work and here’s why. What I would say to that is because the gentleman I mentioned earlier, Rich Terling, who was the CEO at that time, was a firm believer and disciple in this notion of every time we put people first, we get rewarded for this. He also understood that any employee at any level, in any business in the world, models the behavior of his or her superiors. We do what the bosses do. We do what they tell us to do only when they’re looking, right? Otherwise, we do what they do because we want what they have. So therefore, the people that drive the process, competing to dominate isn’t a marketing or sales initiative. It’s a business process. That’s the overriding objective of the businesses. What do we need to do specifically? What do we need to say? What do we need to do to be dominant and to be crushing our competition out there. And if I, as a leader, am not exhibiting this behavior, encouraging and demanding this behavior of everybody working with me, everybody that’s on this team, if I’m not living this passionately and encouraging others to do it every day, then I could fully expect that nobody else is going to do it. And we had a lot of that initially. We had pockets of resistance in the company. And the beauty of that is that they were very easy to spot. And the reason they were easy to spot is because they were the departments or the functions in the business that anytime an internal job was being posted, all the postings are coming, or all the applicants are coming out of these departments. Because they could see a lot of energy happening in other parts of the company where this stuff was being embraced and they wanted to be part of it. So then essentially it becomes incumbent on leadership to get together with those weaker leaders and say, look, this is what we’re doing here and you’re either going to play along and you’re going to be part of this or we’re going to find somebody who is. It’s a bit of tough love, but kind of an amazing discovery is that in businesses that are running to be dominant, accountability is seen as a positive thing instead of a negative like it is that most people are afraid of it. You want to see that accountability because you say look I’m doing all this extra stuff and it’s working I’m gonna make good damn sure everybody else is too because if not they’re hurting us let’s get somebody else in there that will do it. JT do you know what time it is? Um, 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Russia, baby! Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, but I’ve never had the two-time Heisman Award winning Tim Tebow come present. And a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Also this is the first Thrive Time Show event that we’ve had where we’re going to have a man who has built a $100 million net worth in some like real estate sort of things. But this is the first time we’ve had a guy who’s built a service business and he’s built over a hundred million dollar net worth in the service business. It’s the yacht driving, multi-state living guru of franchising. Peter Taunton will be in the house. This is the founder of Snap Fitness, the guy behind nine round boxing, he’s going to be here in Tulsa, Russel, Oklahoma June 27th and 28th. JT, why should everybody want to hear what Peter Taunton has to say? Oh, because he’s incredible. He’s just a fountain of knowledge. He is awesome. He has inspired me listening to him talk and not only that, he also has, he practices what he teaches, so he’s a real teacher. He’s not a fake teacher like business school teachers, so you’ve got to come learn from him. Also, let me tell you this folks, I don’t want to get this wrong, because if I get it wrong, someone’s going to say, you screwed that up, buddy. So Michael Levine, this is Michael Levine. He’s going to be coming. He said, who’s Michael Levine? I don’t get this wrong. This is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestselling authors he’s represented, including pretty much everybody you know who’s been a super celebrity. This is Michael Levine, a good friend of mine. He’s going to come and talk to you about personal branding and the mindset needed to be super successful. The lineup will continue to grow. We have hit Christian reporting artist Colton Dixon in the house. Now people say, Colton Dixon’s in the house? Yes, Colton Dixon’s in the house. So if you like top 40 Christian music, Colton Dixon’s going to be in the house performing. The lineup will continue to grow each and every day. We’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrivetimeshow.com. Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to thrivetimeshow.com, you click on the business conferences button, and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, when’s it going to be? June 27th and 28th. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa Ruslim, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office, and so it’s going to be packed. So when? June 27th to 28th. Who? You! You’re going to come! I’m talking to you. You can just get your tickets right now at ThriveTimeShow.com, and again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford, and we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented, over the last 35 years, 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies. And I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California, in the beautiful sunny weather of LA, come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation. Really life-changing. I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine. I’ll see you in Tulsa. James, did I tell you my good friend John Lee Dumas is also joining us at the in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. That Tim Tebow and that Michael Levine will be at the… have I told you this? You have not told me that. He’s coming all the way from Puerto Rico. This is John Lee Dumas, the host of the chart-topping EOFire.com podcast. He’s absolutely a living legend. This guy started a podcast after wrapping up his service in the United States military and he started recording this podcast daily in his home to the point where he started interviewing big-time folks like Gary Vaynerchuk, like Tony Robbins, and he just kept interviewing bigger and bigger names, putting up shows day after day, and now he is the legendary host of the EO Fire podcast, and he’s traveled all the way from Puerto Rico to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop. If you’re out there today, folks, you’ve ever wanted to grow a podcast, a broadcast, you want to improve your marketing, if you’ve ever wanted to improve your marketing, your branding, if you’ve ever wanted to increase your sales, you want to come to the two-day interactive June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop featuring Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, John Lee Dumas, and countless big-time super successful entrepreneurs. It’s going to be life-changing. Get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com. James, what website is that? Thrivetimeshow.com. James, one more time for the sports enthusiasts. Thrivetimeshow.com. Cause it get dangerous see these people I ride with this moment Thrive time show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops Because we teach you what you need to know to grow You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big, get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever. We’ll even give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop all you gotta do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets and if you can’t afford $250 we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York, octa non verba watch what a person does not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing, but I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say. Well, I have to, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, and he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books, and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor, and I owe a lot of that to you, and I just wanted to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, you know, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. You know, more than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there too, or bad influencers. Yeah. So anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business. And I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored, you’re awake, alive the whole time. It’s not pushy, it’ll try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively, they’re pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back, and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop, I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. The biggest takeaways are, you know, you want to take a step-by-step approach to your business. Whether it’s marketing, you know, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use, to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay, and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence. That businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort, and you’ve got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the road map out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do, and he gave me the road map out step by step. We’ve set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allow me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want, they guarantee it’ll be answered. This conference motivates me and also gives me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things. There’s stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for you. I can see the marketing working. It’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. Everyone’s super fun and super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivated me. Your competition’s going to come eventually or try to pick up these tag teams. So you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey, guys. I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See, it’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from 4 to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales which is awesome but Ryan is a really great salesman so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place we’ve gone from one to 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. So we really just want to thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. If you decide to not attend the Thrive Time workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The atmosphere of Clay’s office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door. And it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business, bottom line. I love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing, I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. ♪♪♪ The most valuable thing that I’ve learned, marketing is key, marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group In uses completely eliminates that because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands on how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business. It’s real critical if I’m going to grow and change. Play really teaches you how to navigate through those things and not only find freedom, but find your purpose in your business and find the purposes for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real. Hello, I’m Wes Carter. I’m one of the shareholders at Winters and King. My favorite thing that Thrive has helped me accomplish here in our firm is thinking a little bit outside the box. They do SEO, they do printing, they help us with a lot of things from the day to day marketing for the firm, but they also help us think of things that as attorneys we probably wouldn’t normally think of that help us market our services to our clients. One of the things I love about working with Thrive is that they make it enjoyable to actually do work with them. It’s not dry, it’s usually fun, but it’s always very enjoyable and practical. They give me things and ideas that I can put into place. It’s not just some theoretical spiel that they give me. We get practical steps that we work on together to do my job better. So me personally, I would easily recommend Thrive 15 services to my friends, my families, I recommend them to my clients. I think they do a good job, they’re passionate, they care about their clients, and I think it’s actually a valuable service they provide to people that are in the business world. My name is Jeff Thomas. I’m originally from Atlanta, Georgia. It’s all about getting to the grindstone. It is about putting the, it’s one thing to have a specific vision or a dream, but knowledge without application isn’t knowledge at all. That’s nothing. It’s really funny. The atmosphere is very lively. Everybody that is working for Clay is very upbeat and not tired, not sluggish, not complaining, not whining. They don’t have anything to do with those types of characteristics. It’s all about getting to the grind and having fun while you do it. I haven’t actually been to any conferences in the past, but what I will say from what I’ve seen on YouTube and what from other friends have told me is this isn’t like a motivational kind of thing, such as, you know, hoo-hoo, rah-rah, it gets you motivated, but it’s like practical steps that if you do take them, which most people aren’t willing to do, then you will grow and you’ll achieve the specific things that you want. Well, for one thing, I will say that this isn’t necessarily for everyone, so if you’re not willing to work, this isn’t for you. But I will say that if you are willing to work and you know you’re just getting started, but you have actually taken a step in that direction, then this will actually help you grow further exponentially than you could ever imagine. My name is Taylor Hall. I’m the general manager of the Tulsa Oilers professional hockey team. You know, our goal every night here at the BLK Center is to try to fill the seats with lots of people and create an exciting environment so when somebody comes to a game, they want to come back. Working with Clay and the staff at Thrive, they’ve really helped us in many, many ways. Website and graphic design and video production and a lot of things that go along and a lot of businesses including ours doesn’t have a staff or a full-time videographer or graphic designer, but the biggest thing that we noticed was the needle mover. More sales, more attendance, more successes in business. We had a record year last season working with Clay for the first time. Our average attendance is higher than it’s ever been. So there’s a lot of really cool things that we did and they worked. That’s the nice thing about working with Clay and the team over there. It’s just not one person, you get the entire team. If you need video design and editing and production, they’ve got that. If you need graphic design, if you need some coaching, you’re salespeople, and call scripts, PR, they offer all that. Clay was instrumental in helping guiding us and getting us on the right track so that we could really raise the bar and become ultra successful. So it’s been an amazing experience for us. My name is Caitlin. I own a tumbling gym called Justice Tumbling Company. Working with Clay is so helpful. He’s diligent with everything and making sure we execute our goals and really make things happen. It’s fun, it’s high, it really gets you energized and going. It makes you really want to work. To get the momentum going, to really get that buzz, to really give you the energy to get up and make it happen. I’m Bob Healy. I’m in the charcoal grilling industry and the name of my business is Grillblazer. How will I apply what I’ve learned so far into my business? I’m actually a client of the Tri15 and I’ve learned so much from what I’m learning at this conference and my regular weekly attendance that is helping me establish the business and get it off the ground. Clay’s presentation style is just Clayton disregard for what anybody wants. He just has fun, it’s him. Everything that you see is authentically Clay. It’s a great deal of fun. Everybody enjoys it. They know when you walk in, they think they’re coming in to a carnival, and frankly they are. It’s just great fun. There’s not another conference like it. You don’t go to a carnival atmosphere and learn what they do here at the drive-in. It’s great. The reason people should attend at least one of these conferences is because it’s common sense. And everybody’s said an entire line about the way you should run a business, but until you actually experience running a business, which is, candidly, what you learn here, how to run a business. You don’t know what you’re doing. My name is Tyler Hastings, and this is my wife, Rachel. And our company is Delricht Research out of New Orleans. During our time working with Thrive, we’ve had numerous successes. When we first started, we were working with one physician. We had one research site. And we were seeing, on average, between 10 and 15 patients a week. Since working with Thrive in the last 18 months, we now have four research sites. We work with over five physicians, and on average we’re now seeing over 60 patients per week. Recently we’ve been the top enroller worldwide in seven studies, which is just incredible considering where we were two years ago, 18 months ago. Thrive really differs from the other conferences that we’ve been to and the other kind of programs that we’ve been through because they actually really practice what they preach and they implement the same systems and the processes that they teach you about and they give you real life examples that really work for them and show you with the training how to implement that yourself. For example, Tyler and I actually got the opportunity to come out to Tulsa and we’re fortunate enough that the Thrive team took us out to some of the businesses that they own and we really got to see in real life, real time, some of the systems and processes and it was just incredible. A real life example of some of the businesses and the things that they’re implementing. Having a coach is important to us. They act as not only an accountability factor, but they’re someone we can talk to on a daily basis as we go through the problems of running a business that inevitably come up. They always understand what we’re going through and they’re always there to help us or guide us through the problems that we experience. The best part of our experience working with Thrive has just been seeing our relationship grow. So at each step as our business grows, we know that they have something else to provide us with. They’ve got the resources, whether it be marketing, graphic design, website development, or even in accounting practices, maybe we need a new insurance policy. If they have someone they can connect us with, or they have the direct resource we need to speak with for any of the problems we face. If someone’s thinking about signing up for the coaching program, I would highly recommend that they call in for a free 30-minute coaching session and see exactly what the team can do for you. Just speak with someone, let them know what you’re going through, and I think you’ll find that regardless of what you need, there’s someone there that can help you. Clay’s presentation style is very real and raw. It just gets real down to the bone of it and the real Purpose of it. There’s no like fluffy vagueness About it, you know So he really gets to the point. I’m always reminded about how important it is to be intentional and to really Really pay attention to how you schedule your time and really honor it Because whatever gets scheduled gets done. That’s what he said from the Lee Copperl. So Lee Copperill, so just constantly hearing that and getting reminded helps me to reinforce that in my own life. It always helps to get an outside perspective and especially from a guy that’s grown so many multi-billion dollar businesses, it doesn’t hurt. My name is Nick Guajardo. I heard about the Thrive Time Show workshop through Andy Mathren. He’s my, Andy Mathren and Larry Montgomery, they’re my bosses at Restore Home Health. So I work with a home health company called Restore Home Health and my role is pretty much to bring in business. So I was hoping to learn kind of the sales process on top of the responsibilities and help understand what it looks like on the SEO side and just kind of an all around what it looks like to own a business because that’s something I want to do in the future for sure. How I would describe the atmosphere here at Thrive is high energy, great professionalism, great people, it’s just a place you definitely want to visit and be at. Plays delivery style, humorous, professional, hilarious. Just, he does it, I haven’t seen someone do it better. So he does a great job. Most valuable thing I’ve learned so far? A lot of it has been extremely valuable, so, but one thing that’s always really stuck out to me is the SCL, learning the SCL stuff. I mean, that is, I think, things you don’t really even think about, and then you hear it, and you think you know it, but you don’t know it. So I feel like that was the most valuable. Well, they’re missing out on just coming down to just basic applications to be a business owner. I mean, I feel like it’s like an absolute necessity to come here and learn the ins and outs and maybe come here once or twice if they take good notes, that kind of thing. Why? So just, it’s the experience here and what you can learn, like absolutely. So marketing and SEO seemed like something that would be very scary, but then in the way that Clay and his team described it, became very clear and concise and something that’s very accessible to any business owner. I’ve learned a lot about marketing at this conference, and a lot about business management and HR. Really everything, the key components of anybody’s business, they’re going to give you the best tools to be successful in. So most workshops or conferences can be really boring, really one-note, or they just seem so theatrical that it’s a joke, and it’s not even giving you the tools that you need, or that you came there for. But here, it’s still high energy, it’s still fun. Everything’s to the point, but it’s very professional. And yeah, you’re missing out on easy steps to use in your business that are very accessible and very clear. My name is Abigail McCarter. The best thing I’ve learned so far is definitely like organization, schedule wise, always keeping a to-do list, keeping your calendar organized. I’m kind of all over the place so that’s always good to know. So Clay’s presentation style and the atmosphere is electric. It’s so energetic, it’s so fun, Clay’s hilarious but also knows a ton so it’s just really great all around. This conference is much different than any other conference I’ve gone to. Again, because it’s fun. A lot of other conferences, it’s really quiet, really cold, and you just kind of get bored. But this one, you’re always engaged. You’re always learning something. And the staff is amazing. They’re always super helpful. So it’s just been really great. My name’s Clint Mallard. We’re a personal training and fitness training facility. Oh, wow. I’m learning a ton. Like this morning so far, it’s been search engine optimization. So really just the importance of being at the top of Google, how Google works and why it’s so important to go out and get video reviews and testimonials and getting Google reviews. And so all those things we can take back and really apply that like immediately. So it’s really cool to see not only how to do it, but really the relevance and importance of it. So it’s really cool to see not only how to do it, but really the relevance and importance of it in the long-term strategy of your business. It’s amazing actually the way this morning and yesterday I was videoing as I was walking in the front entrance. And actually me, I go to a lot of seminars, I go to a lot of conferences, massive ones. I’ve been doing that since I was like 22 years old, so gosh I’m almost 20 years now. And this is by far the most entertaining, not only the content, the content is amazing, but Clay and you guys do a great job of mixing in entertainment where it’s fun, it’s fresh, it’s lively, you never get bored. And I heard a study one time that the reason that children learn so much quicker is because it’s fun, learning is fun. And so obviously Clay is nailed that, where it’s very fun to be here and keeps you awake, keeps you energized. So I’m having a blast. Yeah, I think any business owner or someone that wants to own a business or considering owning and starting a business should definitely come. I know that I was referred here by friends of mine and clients of mine and I’ve referred other people. Again, just to understand what it takes to make a business successful, to have a good time, obviously, you know, like I was just saying, have fun, and network. There’s a lot of people here you can learn from and there’s a lot of breaks you can talk to other people. So I think this is a must-see and free debate in all of the business, and everyone that wants to start this. My name is Jamie Fagel, I’m with Jameson Fine Cabinetry. I heard about the conference through Andrew, he’s the coach that I deal with here at The Thrive. The most valuable piece I found even working with Andrew, but it’s been solidified when it came here, was you’ve got to actually do the things that they’re telling you. With no action, you’re not going to get anything from it. I would highly recommend this to almost anybody in business today. I have recommended it to some of my other business partners. It’s phenomenal. It’s really something that if you want to start a business, the old way of doing things is gone. This is what you got to do. It’s the only way it’ll work. Hey, this is Charles and Amber Kola. We’re the owners of Kola Fitness. The way we’re able to do that is working with Clay for the last three years. He has really readjusted our thinking and taught us that our business is here to serve us and by doing that we’re able to live the lifestyle we want and take off on a random vacation last minute. We had totally planned on being at the conference so wish we could be there and meet all of you. We know you’re having a great time. Yes, Clay in the last three years has helped us build all the necessary systems, checklists, workflows, task lists, time blocks, audits that are always running and the right capable lieutenants to keep track of all that so that you too can get time freedom, financial freedom and that’s what we have done and Clay has helped us do. We’ve got multiple companies in multiple states and they’re all doing very well getting ready to go to more locations in this next year and Co-op Fitness has a really big future. We’re teaming up with a couple other groups and we should scale the company here shortly. Hopefully we’ll open like 50 locations in the next 10 years. So but yeah we’re on the way we’re gonna probably more than double our company, maybe triple our company in the next eight to nine months and it’s just awesome. God is working in our business and we’re making Jesus and changing lives. We’re a strong Christian company that focuses on making Jesus famous and changing lives in the fitness field. And this is Charles and Amber Cola. Thank you Thrive. Hit your action items. We love you guys. We wish you were there. You guys have a wonderful day. Bye-bye. I’ll be able to apply a lot of the things that I’ve learned in our business because this is not my first conference. And so a lot of the things that we learned we’ve put into place and now we’re doing the next level of refining the processes for just a different concept. And so it’s getting better and better. Things that were just big processes before, we have the foundation laid. And now we’re able to make it better and better at hearing different things now that we’ve implemented things. And so we can just make it even better, implementing it in our own business. Clay’s presentation and the atmosphere is very exciting and fun. It keeps you awake. It makes it interesting. You have a lot of information, but if it’s not going to be entertaining, your brain is going to tune it out. But Clay makes it just entertaining enough that you retain what you learn. Lots of rhyming and catchy things so that you remember stuff. What makes this conference different than other workshops or conferences that I’ve been to is that there’s a lot of people here in my same situation where most of us are pretty small businesses wanting to improve and we want real life information and something that will work and that’s attainable and not just some crazy magic formula but actual action items that we can implement in our business and actually see a difference. Everyone should attend a drive type business conference whether you’re a business owner or not. A, if you’re a business owner it has practical applications that you can apply to so many different parts of your business. And then you need to come back for more so that you can keep doing more of the wonderful things that you learn. But secondly, I am also a mom of three kids and a lot of the concepts can actually be applied to home, like getting routines and getting, setting systems at home has just seriously made a huge difference in my life at home. So I’ve been able to improve our business, but I’ve also been able to improve things at home. And so that’s why everyone should come, no matter what your station is in life. My name is Nolan Q. I’m originally from San Francisco, California. The industry that I’m in is financial services. I’ve learned a ton so far, but what I could best apply from this conference is the opportunity, that hunger to go out there and make a big difference in my district. Clay’s presentation style is amazing. He’s got an endless amount of energy. It’s contagious. And yeah, by being here, I really do want to go back and be able to face all the adversity that the industry has. Yeah, this conference, the thing that makes it different is that it’s special because it has a unique set of individuals that all share that same energy. I think he pegs it as dragon energy, but yeah, that’s me. Everyone should come to multiple, but their first would be very special. Yeah, you’re welcome with a lot of enthusiasm. That’ll last for a long time. My name is Gabriella Cruz. Our business is PCS Electric. My husband’s the owner, but I’m involved with that, so we’re an electrical company. Well, here at the conference, they talk a lot about consistency. And so just staying consistent with different things in the business. I feel like applying that to our business model will really help us grow. The atmosphere is very positive, uplifting, and it’s very fun and energetic. And so it gets you pumped and it gets you excited and it encourages you to do big things. I probably how real they are. They tell you up front what you need to do and what’s like a no-go. And so conferences are, they kind of sugarcoat things. So I like how real they are here. I think it’ll definitely, if you want your business to grow, I think this would be a great experience. And then not only that, it’ll encourage you and inform you on so many things you don’t think about on a daily basis. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey I’m originally from Tulsa born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us and getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place to the having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards it’s pretty awesome that’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating, the walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool, the people are nice, it’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which, you know, we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, and so the humor definitely helps, it breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts, and it’s very interactive, you can raise your hand, it’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. You’re definitely, it’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars. So you’re missing the thought process of someone that’s already started like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information but just getting in the thought process of Clay Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches getting in the thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses to me just that is priceless. That’s money. Well we’re definitely not getting upsold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where they up what was great information and then they upsold us like half the conference and I don’t want to like bang my head into a wall and she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like it’s good information but we’re like oh my gosh I want to strangle you shut up and go with the presentation that we paid for and that’s not here. There’s no upsells or anything so that’s awesome. I hate that. Oh it makes me angry. So glad that’s not happening. So the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school and I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. The information that you’re gonna get is just very, very beneficial. And the mindset that you’re gonna get, that you’re gonna leave with, is just absolutely worth the price of a little bit of money and a few days worth of your time. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just wanna give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house, right? This is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team and by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from 4 to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October, it’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you times a thousand. So we really just want to thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. 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 six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up, and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. 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 into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. And that’s what I like him most about 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 is when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. Anyways, just an amazing man. 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, because our clubs were all closed for three months and you have $350,000 of bills you’ve got to pay and we have no accounts receivable. He helped us navigate that. And of course we were conservative enough that we could afford to take that on for a period of time. But he was a great man. I’m very impressed with him. So Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing. And I encourage you, if you haven’t ever worked with Clay, work with Clay. He’s going to help magnify you. And there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps four, maybe six hours a day and literally the rest of time he’s working and he can outwork everybody in the room every single day and and he loves it. So anyways this is Charles Kola with Kola Fitness. Thank you Clay and anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay it’s a great great opportunity to ever work with him. So you guys have a blessed one. This is Charles Kola. We’ll see you guys. Bye bye. Hi I’m Aaron Antus with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate. I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing 800 million in sales over a 15 year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of sales people for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us and it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town and so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing and I think for a lot of people they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you if you’re thinking about working with Clay, I mean the thing is it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35 year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1800% increase in our internet leads. Going from 10 a month to 180 a month, that would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it, because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years, and my three kids started school, and they were in school full-time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide what what do I want to do my degree and my background is in education But after being a mom and staying home and all of that. I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did My husband suggested real estate He’s a homebuilder so real estate and home building go hand in hand and we just rolled with it. I love people. I love working with people. I love building relationships. But one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things. The processes and the advertising and marketing. I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time, and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago. And in that time, we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents, but I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer to insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic.