Arguably the #1 podcaster of all-time, John Lee Dumas sits down for an interview with Clay Clark to discuss the grind work ethic needed to succeed, why he decided to move to Puerto Rico and what’s in the future for the EOFire.com Podcast. Matt and Alex with Oxi Fresh also call in for the weekly Oxi Fresh updates from Denver and San Francisco.
Backstory: John Lee Dumas is known as being one of the top-earning podcasters on the planet, who brought in $153,000 of income in May alone…but he had to start somewhere.
Upon leaving the U.S. Army, he enrolled at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island where he then dropped out after only one semester. Dumas then took a took a job working in corporate finance for John Hancock in Boston. He then went to New York City to work for a technology startup before leaving to move to San Diego in 2009.
In 2011 he moved back to Maine to start a career in commercial real estate. While getting started in this new career he found himself listening to podcasts and he noticed that none of his favorite podcasts provided content daily, and that’s when he had his “epiphany.”
He believed that if he could develop a daily podcast focused on interviewing successful entrepreneurs that would resonate with his target audience of entrepreneurs. He came up with the name, Entrepreneur On Fire and decided to call it EOFire for short.
Daily he continued to grind away after first launching the podcast on September 22, 2012. As a result of his passionate daily delivery of quality content, he began rising up the search engine ranks. He then launched a book called Podcast Launch in 2013, and his community for podcasters called Podcasters Paradise soon after.
All right. Thrive nation. Welcome back to the conversation. It’s the thrive time show on your radio and on today’s show, Eric Chupp. Mr. Business coach, we’re going to be interviewing the renowned podcaster, John Lee Dumas, of entrepreneurs on fire. Let me give you some fun stats. The the June, the entrepreneurs on fire podcast, eight reported in a gross income of $165,000. Gross expenses of $31,000 in a net profit of $134,285. You should call that a prof cast because he just making green. Check this out. Let me give you a background in delay into life and times of John Lee Dumas. Upon leaving the US army, he enrolled at Roger Williams, what? Roger Williams University School of law in Bristol, Rhode Island, where he then dropped out after only one semester. Dumas then took a job working in corporate finance for John Hancock in Boston. He then went to New York City to work for a technology startup before leaving to move to San Diego in 2009. In 2011, he moved to Maine to start. Seems like a lot of movement. He moved back to Maine to start a career in commercial real estate. While getting started in his new career, he found himself listening to podcasts while driving around and he noticed that none of his favorite podcasts provided content daily, and that’s when he had his epiphany,
thrive nation. When did you have your epiphany? When did you have your Aha moment? This guy had his Aha moment while driving around. He believed that if he could develop a daily podcast focused on interviewing successful entrepreneurs, then it would resonate with his target audience of entrepreneurs. So he came up with the name entrepreneurs on fire and decided to call it Eo fire for short. Daily. He continued to grind after launching in September 22nd of 2012 as a result of his passionate delivery. J L, D has gotten to the top of the itunes charts. He’s been the top downloaded podcast. The guys had millions of people downloading his podcast. He’s interviewed Seth Godin. He’s interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s interviewed Tony Robbins. He’s been downloaded over 140 countries and now that any further ado, our exclusive interview withj l dot, the founder of [inaudible] entrepreneurs on fire podcast over six years, over 2000 episodes, over $70 million downloads to date. Now I can. I continue to get consistent feedback from people who enjoy the show, who would get value from people like yourself, clay that had been past guests, and that just kind of keeps me going. That keeps my motivation. I,
I think that your story is so powerful because many people have the idea, hey, I’ll do a. I’ll do a five day week podcast. I’ll do a seven day week podcast, but you actually did it and if I can, I’d like to go back to that place in your mind where you were recording seven days a week and you had one subscriber and it was probably your mom or your neighbor or maybe yourself and then you had to subscribers and then three. Talk to me about what that felt like internally when you had so few subscribers those first few months, because I think I’ve used. There’s a lot of people that start a podcast and stop or start a business and stopped talking to me about how you fought that internal desire that most people have to quit.
Well, it felt like I was speaking to an empty room. It felt like I was putting in all this time, energy and effort and then putting it out into a void that nobody was consuming and it was. It was quite discouraging. And you know, for me, I just had to keep saying, listen, like you’re doing this for a reason. You’re, you create, you’re creating the show because you want it to. If you wanted it to exist and you know that other people do as well. And so for me, I was just looking at each interview that I would have with Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss with Seth Godin. Like yes, I may not have a huge listenership, but look at the relationships that I’m building, look at the connections that are making. Look at this one on one conversation that I just had with Tony Robbins. I mean this is an amazing and cool and just very unique opportunity that I have because now I have a quote unquote show, um, I’m able to get people to commit 15, 20, 30 minutes of their day to have a conversation with me.
Whereas before they just couldn’t do that would just any Tom, dick or Harry, because they’re busy people. So I just continued to look for the bright side of things is saying, you know what? Even though my listeners, my listenership isn’t massive. Even though my subscribership isn’t through the roof, you know, as long as I’m seeing a steady increase and as long as I know I’m getting value personally from these great conversations, I’m just going to keep the nose to the grindstone. I want to keep it happen. I’m going to. I’m going to keep making it happen. And you mentioned Seth Godin is one of my past guest. I read his book the Dip Multiple Times during that timeframe when I realized that this is what businesses go through. They go through this dep until they hit this inflection point where the momentum starts. And the beautiful thing about momentum is once it starts, it’s really hard to stop.
You know, I’ve heard you say that you wanted to create time freedom, that you wanted to create freedom. It was a big. That was a big. A Vision you had was to create freedom for yourself with the entrepreneurs on fire. Podcast up. What freedom mean to you? Now that you have the momentum and you have the subscribers and the audience and the platform, what does freedom mean to you? What? What does, what does it look like to you as you’re broadcasting from Porto Rico? Well, that will bring up one of my definitions of freedom, which is location independence. I love freedom because to me it means that I can be where I want to be. Um, time independence is huge for me and that’s a huge thing about freedom is that I can work what I want to work, how hard I want to work. Um, and just overall lifestyle freedom. Like to me that is freedom. Like knowing for a fact that when I woke up this morning, clay, everything on my calendar was put there by me. I wanted to have this conversation with you and I’m glad that we’re having it and everything else is on my calendar. Is there because I put it there not because it was handed down as a task or my boss said do this or do that. But to me freedom is the ability to choose what I do, where I do it and how I want to do it.
Now. Why did you, and you and kate decide to move to Puerto Rico? I think a lot of our listeners are not familiar with you and the entrepreneurs on fire podcast and I certainly want to introduce them to your podcast and many people are familiar with your podcast, but you guys were very intentional about moving to Puerto Rico and you could have moved anywhere. I mean, you guys were based previously and in San Diego if I’m correct. Um, what made you want to move to Puerto Rico? When did you decide to move to Puerto Rico? Talk to me about the Puerto Rico move. So we decided to move back in 2016, so we’ve been here for over two years now, which has been great. All answer your question first with the short answer and then when the little bit of a longer answer. So the short answer is taxes. We moved to Puerto Rico because of taxes and the longer answer to that is uh, we live in San Diego. We love living in San Diego is just beautiful. It’s meant for entrepreneurs specifically location and lifestyle independent entrepreneurs that attracts them. We had great friends, we had a great place. We loved it all. But we didn’t love giving half of our money every single year to either the federal or state government, um, but you know, there’s just nothing you can do about it. Everybody’s going to pay taxes is death and taxes is death and taxes, so be it. But then my cpa brought me the opportunity of a, this lovely little Caribbean island that’s actually an American territory called Porto Rico, which I’ve actually had visited before and I knew it was lovely.
And he said, listen, Paul Rico has this opportunity called act 20. Um, it’s been going on since 2012 and if you move your business to Puerto Rico, um, and you live in Puerto Rico for at least a hundred and 83 days of the year and you make it your primary residence, meaning that you have a closer connection to Puerto Rico than anywhere else in the world. Uh, you pay a flat four percent corporate tax rate, no federal, no state four percent. I went from paying 51 percent to four percent. I gave myself a 47 percent raise by moving to Puerto Rico. And, uh, it’s been a financial game changer.
So moving to Puerto Rico, thrive nation, think about that. You can reduce your taxes now for the thrivers out there like myself, I own businesses and in Tulsa, Oklahoma and in Dallas and different cities and um, you know, we don’t know if you’ve ever been in Oklahoma, but it’s called the center of the universe and I think we hype it up because really there’s not a lot to see. Can you walk us through what it looks like or feels like to live in a tropical paradise? Just give us a glimpse into what a typical day looks like for you now that you live and work in a tropical paradise of Puerto Rico.
So I wake up at what I call civil twilight, which is when the sun is still six degrees below the horizon. So it’s very light out and civil twilight just basically means that planes can legally fly, uh, without lights at that point. Um, so I wake up a civil twilight, I’d go down and I kind of begin my morning workout by my pool, which is a beautiful infinity pool that actually also overlooks the Caribbean Ocean. It’s pretty epic. And uh, I kind of watched the sunrise as that happens, like over the Caribbean because we face east, so super cool. Sunrise out of the ocean. It’s a great way to start the morning. Uh, it’s very warm and humid at this time of year for sure, even in the morning, um, which is totally fine for most of the work day because I am working inside and my office and sleeping at night and a very, a climate controlled air conditioned room.
So no worries with that. But you know, being outside you definitely get the heat, the humidity. And so I crushed my work out in the morning, get some nice morning sun lane by my pool, reading a good book typically on business to kind of get my mind rolling that I journal, do some meditation down there. And then I’m coming up and I’m kind of getting into my work day at that point. And then I’m sitting in my cool air conditioned office and every time I got to step outside for anything, um, I’m probably sweating pretty quickly after that because the humidity can get into the nineties this time of the year for sure. Typically we have a nice afternoon, uh, just absolute torrential downpour meeting that for 15 minutes at cloud passes over us and just, you know, pours water, but then it’s gone. And then this is sunny day again.
And like you almost, if you blink, you almost miss it. Of course that changes a little bit during the rainy season which is coming up and like September, October, November. But for this time we pretty much get like one solid shower a day. Um, and then in the evening is just perfect weather out. I think that’s the glory time for me and that’s when Kay and I love to go for a walk in our community and just kind of taken the fresh breeze. When I love about our place here in Puerto Rico is we live in the southeastern part of the islands so that the wind that hits us hasn’t, um, has been traveling thousands of miles over the Atlantic Ocean from the Africa, so it was like the cleanest crispest air has been over the ocean for like over a thousand miles. So it’s just a really cool experience down here. We were just actually in Colorado hanging out at 12,000, 200 feet at the base camp of one of those 14,000 footers. And just the difference in the humidity from there to here is just incredible and you grow to love it.
You know, you have talked a lot about our loving the grind, which allows you to go to places like Colorado and live in Puerto Rico and to do the things you do. You’ve talked a lot about loving the grind and I know we have a limited time, but can you share with listeners your grind from starting the, the eof podcast to where you are now? What was the toughest part of that grind for you? The toughest part of that grind for me was getting over the imposter syndrome, getting over the fear that I had of who am I to start a podcast, you know, I was an officer in the US army that I was in corporate finance and commercial real estate and I went to law school like I had no experience in broadcasting or interviewing people and that was a grind, you know, that was tough for me to get up and actually get over my fear and my doubts.
Steve Currington with total lending concepts. Did you ever have any fear when you first became a mortgage broker banker? Oh yeah, of course. I mean, you know, when I got in the business, I came right off of, uh, one of the biggest failures I ever had in my life. So, you know, obviously you don’t want to be there again. So I mean that’s the biggest fear. I think that’s what drives a lot of people though, is when you’ve been there, you don’t want to get back there. And so that kind of fear sometimes can drive you to not fail again or to not feel as bad. You know, one of the big fears I have, Jeff, is on spending too much time and money on my office, but you pulled me aside and he said, clay, you don’t have to fear to have a solution for you. What’s the solution? Solution is onyx imaging.com. What are your office and printer supplies? And get a free printer copier from these guys. Check him [email protected] for your free printer, copier. All you gotta do is enter his order office, a printer, scanner honest.
Make sure you never miss a broadcast by signing up for the thrive time show podcast, and back to a show that’s cooler than the other side of the pillow. It’s the thrive time business coach. Show
Dr They can sell. All right, thrive nation. Welcome back to the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. On today’s show, we’re interviewing arguably the one podcaster of all time. Let me just give you an example. Uh, during the month of June thrive nation, I want you to ask yourself, how much money did you make after taxes after you paid all the taxes? After the bills, after the expenses, after the how much money? Okay. How much money did you make before taxes? Well, this, this, this guest, John Lee Dumas, he started a podcast called entrepreneurs on fire, uh, about six years ago, almost seven years ago. And he started with nothing. He decided to grind every single day. Could you imagine what it’d be like to start a podcast with no experience in broadcasting? No audience, so to speak, and just to grind every single day, grinding, creating content, researching, grinding, interviewing guests.
Hello, is this thing on finding guests? Is this on finding guests, reaching out to guests, being rejected by guests over and over and over and over. Then you finally get some traction and a little more traction. Next thing you know, you’re the number one podcast on the planet. That, but that took six years or seven years. Well, John Lee Dumas, the host of entrepreneurs on fire, a chap he does reported in June of 2018. Let’s hear it, gross income of $165,000 and after expenses, a profit of 134,000, $285, and I’ll tell you why because he’s been consistent. He’s consistently reached out to big names. He’s interviewed Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Tony Robbins, but he’s going to tell us a little bit about overcoming fear and chip. You worked with a lot of entrepreneurs. Why is overcoming fear such an important topic? How to overcome fear? Why is that such an important topic?
I think it’s beat into us in our culture to not stick out, to not be that person that’s super proud and when you’re a business owner and you’re doing a good job, you need to be proud because that’s who you are and that’s how you feed your family. So you got to be proud and then be proud of the work that you do so you just have to kind of step out of that comfort zone and get used to being proud. A proud person. So thrive days without a. without any further ado, our exclusive interview with j l, d, the founder of entrepreneurs on fire and incredible podcast. He wants interviewed me and I wanted to return the favor. So here we go. You know, you have talked a lot about loving the grind, which allows you to go to places like Colorado and live in Puerto Rico and to do the things you do. You’ve talked a lot about loving the grind and I know we have limited time, but can you share with listeners your grind from starting the, the eof podcast to where you are now? What was the toughest part of that grind for you? The toughest part of that, the grind for me was getting over the imposter syndrome, getting over the fear that I had of who am I to start a podcast. You know, I was an officer in the US army that I was in corporate finance and commercial real estate and then I went to law school. I had no experience in broadcasting or interviewing people and that was a grind, you know, that was tough for me to get up and actually get over my fear and my doubts am I a second guessing of myself, uh, to, to actually do it. But then, you know, I continue to educate myself every single day and reading quotes and biographies and going down that path and just, and just recognizing over and over again that everybody who’s achieved something amazing in this world has achieved it by doing that thing, meaning Andre Agassi became great at tennis because he played tennis.
Um, you know, fill in the blank. Podcasts for, became great at podcasting because guess what, they podcast in and nobody starts good at something. We all start usually pretty darn bad, but if you’re just willing to put in the time putting the garage and put in the effort. And that’s why I love doing the daily show was because I was so bad at first. And then after 100 episodes, that was kind of bad. And then after $500 was kind of okay. Then after a thousand I was getting good and after 2000 I’m getting even better and it’s just one of those things where I’m getting up and I’m putting in the effort. I’m putting in the grind, getting just a little bit better everyday, which is why one of the biggest areas I should say, one of the most recommended books by me to others is the slight edge by Jeffrey Olsen because if you are just getting a tiny bit, one percent better every single day and something that adds up to massive exponential results over the long term, but a lot of people are just so short term thinking.
They don’t see the fact that eating healthy for a month, you know, it’s not having a huge impact on their waistline. Well guess what? Somebody it takes a year of clean eating and doing the right thing and that’s just the reality, but that can have a massive exponential result by doing the right things every single day by grinding every single day. I’m glad you mentioned the slight edge because it’s kind of funny. I read that book for the first time while I was getting prepared for a DJ show, the largest wedding entertainment company in the country. We’re doing 4,000 weddings a year and I’m reading slight edge before the show because I wanted to make every show better than the previous show. And someone said, Oh, you need to read that book. You need, you know, because it’s all, it’s all about mastery. And so I want to ask you, as you are now to a level of excellence that very few people ever achieve, what does the vision look like for you?
Where, where are we going to see entrepreneurs on fire, uh, take you and your family? Where are you going to steer the ship in the next 24 months, next three years? Where do you see it going? What’s, what’s your vision for the fire nation as you call them? What I love about the situation that I’ve been able to attain right now with entrepreneurs on fire is one of incredible financial stability, great brand recognition, you know, personal authority and influence. And so it’s given me this really cool opportunity to jump on new and next opportunities. So do I honestly know that next opportunity is no, but I know that if it clicks with me and it excites me that I can really go all in financially time wise bandwidth and make it happen. So, you know, 24 months from now, like maybe there’s like an entrepreneurs on fire, you know, augmented reality, maybe there’s a Hologram, you know, maybe there’s this. Maybe there’s that. I, you know, there’s just so many things that with technology just exponentially speeding up how it is. I’m just excited to know that I’m going to be a jump on an opportunity when it comes. I don’t know what that is right now, but I know that I’m going to be ready for when it comes because I can invest in a financially invest in at timewise and investing in emotionally. And those things are critical.
Well, I see you, and this is this, I see you probably buying a ton of oxy fresh franchises in elephant franchises. And that’s not just because I own them, but now I’m just kidding. But no, no, as far as, um, kind of, as a final thought here for you, final question for you, for the listeners out there, a lot of our listeners are diligent doers. They’re the kind of people that want to just know what to do. They say, clay, I really enjoyed this interview today with John Lee Dumas, but what do I need to do? Or where can I find where, what’s the action step I should take? So, John, if you’re talking to 100,000 folks that want to know what to do, uh, what does the jld tip of the day? What is the action step that you’d recommend for all of our listeners to take thrive nation? Do you want to know what the number one podcast in the world wants you to do? What’s, what’s, what’s the one action step that he recommends that you would take when we come back? He’s gonna tell it to you. But first I encourage you to go to hood CPAS DOT com. Chip, why would anybody want to go to Hood Cpas? If you’re looking at for a filling for proactive accountants and it’s going to help you turn those financials into somewhat of a dashboard to see where you’re going in your business, you want to reach out to them and schedule a free consultation. They’re actually going to give you a copy of Warren Buffett’s only authorized biography snowball, so check them out at Hood Cpas, Dotcom, hood CPAS.com.
Shut up. You’re blowing my mind, your paint me into a corner hood CPA.com. And now back to the business coach radio show devoted to making America boom again. Gifts the thrive time business coach radio show.
No complaining, no excuses. You’re the stoppage. Oh, the breakthrough. It’s a choice of dreams and other things. You without a doubt,
Mr. Clay stairs. Mr Steve Currington. Welcome back to the thrive time show on your radio and podcasts download and for all the thrive nation out there, uh, there won’t be very podcasts where I can say that our next guest is the number one podcast Travolta. Wow. Very true. Yes, there’s Tim Ferriss. There is John Lee Dumas, and then there’s everybody else. Uh, I would say Gary Vaynerchuk, maybe in that top 10 conversation you have a, you’d say Tony Robbins is up there. You’d say that a Dave Ramsey, but really, I mean you have John Lee Dumas sees is he stands with the crap out of the crop. And so this guy on his website, he reports on eofire.com on entrepreneurs on fire.com. He reports every month his gross income and his gross profit. It’s so sick, it’s gross. It is. So this. So this month he reported gross income of $165,000 and a profit of $134,285
clay stairs. This guy started his podcast. He, after getting out of the military, he decided to enroll in college and Roger Williams, University of law in Bristol, Rhode Island. He dropped out after a semester. They took a job working in corporate finance in Boston for John Hancock. Then he went to New York City to work for a technology startup before leaving to move to San Diego. And while while living in Maine in 2011 doing commercial real estate, he started listening to podcasts while driving and he thought to himself, I should start a podcast, you know, maybe I could do one that’s, that’s everyday because most people don’t have one everyday and I’m going to interviews celebrities. And so for six now going on seven consecutive years, he’s reached out to the biggest of the biggest celebrities faced con, countless read, read a rejection from where people just goes to them. They say no, they turned him down, but he continued to record with an audience of five subscribers every day.
Seven subscribers, couple more. 14. There they go. Wow. Twenty eight every day. Every day. Now think about this. Today, he’s making a profit of $134,000 a month. And recently he achieved his goal of moving to Puerto Rico. So he now broadcasts the entrepreneur on fire podcast out of his home in Puerto Rico. So I want to get your take on that clay stairs. Then I want to get to Steve Currington, his take on that clay stares. You are a vdd millionaire school teacher, you’re a guy that was once a school teacher probably watching life of entrepreneurial success, sort of looking at it from the outside going, okay, that’s something some somebody else does. So definitely. And how old were you when you finally jumped into the entrepreneurial game? Forty seven years old. So what encouragement would you have for the listeners out there that would say, gosh, I could never do it.
You do clay or I could never do it with John Lee Dumas does. Can you, can you encourage the listeners out there? Yeah, we’ll. It comes to a point where, uh, you’re, you’re, you’re going to make a decision. Are you just going to keep doing what you’re doing and not feeling fulfilled, feeling not being in the place where you are tapping into what you know is inside of you? Or are you going to make the leap? I remember clay talking with you early on and, uh, you bringing up this concept of you gotta jump. You got to make the jump so many times. I, you know, I just found myself wanting to get someplace, but my big thing personally, my big thing was I was unwilling to submit to anybody and follow anyone and that’s what helped me back. Can I, can I throw a crazy thought out?
Crazy thoughts. Do you guys remember the Indiana Jones scene with the invisible bridge? Oh yes. I use that. I use. That’s what that makes me think about. Because you needed a coach. The leap. Yeah, there, there were too scared to take the leap. You got to coach. He threw the sand on the invisible bridge and then you saw it and you took the lead. You take this Steve Currington for anybody out there that feels discouraged and says, you know, icu today, driving a Lamborghini icu today, going out there and having massive success at total lending concepts, Icu really close and a lot of mortgages, but you don’t understand. I mean, I, I’ve never done that before. I could never do what you do. Encourage the listeners out there because not everybody is where you’re at right now in life. A lot of people aren’t, uh, you know, in a place of financial freedom where they can go out and buy the things they need and have the time freedom to do what they want.
I mean, you, you, this weekend you went to California as an example. Why did you go to California this weekend? Drive fast cars. Why did you go to California last weekend? A had to work last weekend, so I didn’t. Last weekend was every other week. Weekend before. Why did you go to California? Where did you go? Uh, Los Angeles. Malibu to Huntington beach. And you went there and you are parking your car in a underground parking garage. Your car being a Lamborghini and you’re flying out to where? Where’d you fly to the fly into lax. So you’re flying from Tulsa to lax to drive a car and to hang out. The scenery is beautiful. Love Origami. So you’re doing that, you know you’re doing that because you enjoy it, right? Or the or the airplane tickets free? No, no. I had to pay to park your car. No, it was a free car though.
Was the Lamborghini free? No, no, the what it costs for my car to sit in La is more than my rent. Used to be for my car when I was first married, I think. I mean it’s like wow, that’s what we paid in rent back in. So here’s what a Condo, so you’re in a different place than most of our listeners and I just want you. But I would just say like, and not to cut you off, but what you should do is take your current age and then take clay stairs when he was 47 and subtract the two. So now what are you 35. Okay, well you have a 12 year headstart on someone like clay stairs and I would just say to people, you have no
excuse because people say, well I wasn’t given this opportunity, I wasn’t done this. It’s very difficult. I would say probably stairs is probably in the one percent of the one percent have 47 year old men that could reinvent themselves and become who he’s become today. After living being the person you are for 47 years. So if you are 35 or 30 or 41 or nine or however old you are, then you’ve got to have a huge head start on someone that did it and and he is a special person for having done that, but it really just took him taking that leap, like chuck just said, of just deciding that he didn’t want that life anymore. And you two can decide that.
Clay, what’s your take on that? Because you are the person that made the jump at age 47. What? I mean, there’s a lot of you that feels stuck. They just feel stuck. They say I’m 30. I can’t possibly switch to a new career doing this for 20 years. I have my degree in this and my degree in that. I’ve already been working five years in this career. What for anybody out there really fearful of making the jump, what advice would you have? I love this. It’s like turned into an age show here. Clay’s the old man in the. In the crowd today as an old person to. No, no, no. The mikes are there big time next over there? No, no, I, I think for me it’s always come down to a, a strong sense of identity and even when I was a school teacher for 15 years and loving it, they’re just.
There came a time where it’s like, I know there’s more in me than I’ve tapped into and I am unwilling to stay here. I want more. So I left the school teaching. I went and took over my family’s business and ran that for 10 years, but then again it hit me. There is more in me than I’ve tapped into. If you feel like there’s more in you than you’ve tapped into and you’re over 47, you’re probably having some back pain. Oh, thank you. So I encourage you to go to Dr. John Siblings, minimal shows monster Dr John Sibley, but coffee’s the chiropractor of choice for Wayne Gretzky, Nhl Hall of Famer. That’s Dr John Sibley Dot Com. Check them out and now back to the business coach radio show that has a diary call the Guinness Book of World Records.
On today’s show, we’re interviewing arguably the number one podcaster of all time. John Lee Dumas. This is a guy who had a vision to start a podcast that would be broadcasted seven days a week with no previous experience and now during the month of June, after almost seven years of podcasting, he reported a profit of $134,285 during the month of June. He actually achieved his goal of moving to Puerto Rico where he now broadcast the show while looking out over the Caribbean. Think about that. I mean this guy went from having the dream to actually realizing the dream, and so I’ve been asking him about how he got started and about the grind and now we’re going to talk to them about the vision for the next two years. What is the entrepreneur on fire podcast going to be doing two years from now? What’s he going to be doing with Eo fire.com two years from now? So now that any further ado, our exclusive interview with j dot l dot, the founder of the entrepreneur on fire podcast. Where are you going to steer the ship in the next 24 months, next three years? Where do you see it going? What’s, what’s your vision for the, the fire nation as you call them? What I love about this year
situation that I’ve been able to attain right now with entrepreneurs on fire is one of incredible financial stability. Um, great brand recognition, um, you know, personal authority and influence. And so it’s given me this really cool opportunity to jump on new and next opportunities. So do I honestly know that next opportunity is no, but I know that if it clicks with me and it excites me that I can really go all in a financially timewise bandwidth and make it happen. So, you know, 24 months from now, like maybe there’s like an entrepreneurs on fire, you know, augmented reality, maybe there’s a Hologram, you know, maybe there’s this. Maybe there’s that. I, you know, there’s just so many things that with technology just exponentially speeding up how it is, I’m just excited to know that I’m going to be the jump on an opportunity when it comes. I don’t know what that is right now, but I know that I’m going to be ready for when it comes because I can invest in a financially invest in a time wise and invest in an emotionally and those things are critical.
Well, I see, I see you and this, I see you probably buying a ton of oxy fresh franchises in elephant franchises and that’s not just because I own them, but I’m just kidding. But no. Now as far as, um, kind of, as a final thought here for you, final question for you, for the listeners out there, a lot of our listeners are diligent doers. They’re the kind of people that want to just know what to do. They say, clay, I really enjoyed this interview today with John Lee Dumas, but what do I need to do? Or where can I find? What’s the action step I should take? So John, if you’re talking to 100,000 folks that want to know what to do, uh, what does the jld tip of the day, what is the action step that you’d recommend for all of our listeners to take? Well, honestly,
that is one of the biggest struggles that I see with entrepreneurs today is they don’t know what their next step is, which I get because it is really hard to find your next step. In fact, like ca, like clay, I’ve interviewed over 2000 entrepreneurs like I’ve identified why entrepreneurs when I’ve seen it over and over and over again is because they have one big idea and they go all in one big idea and they go all in and they dominate and they simply win. And that’s actually why I’ve been busting my butt for the last couple of months. Creating a completely free training that solves that problem. It’s called three hours to your big idea. I say, you give me three hours, I give you your big idea because if you don’t have your big idea, you don’t have that North Star. You don’t know where you’re going to get there, so I created that free training in response to that and that is my biggest piece of advice to everybody out there is you have to know what your north star is.
You have to know what’s your big idea is you had to have something that you’re going to go all in on and be best in show and what is the thing that you are best in show, and if you don’t have that thing right now, you’re never going to achieve the level of success that you want, and if you’re afraid that you’re niching yourself too far down, well, guess what? You need to to start that momentum then like me and like clay. As you achieve more success, you can broaden out into other areas and dominate the world, but you’ll never get that initial momentum first if you don’t, so get your big idea. It’s gonna only take three hours. Your big idea.io. It’s free. Get over there, do it. Make it happen.
Jld, I appreciate you taking your time from your beautiful view out there in Puerto Rico and from your podcast. You’ve been an inspiration to so many people and I appreciate you doing that one thing so well over and over. You’re inspiring so many people, and again, thank you so much for, for agreeing to be on today’s podcast. Thanks clay was a blast. Take care. Have a great day. Bye now. Thrive nation. When we return from the break, we’re going to be interviewing a very diligent doer, a man by the name of Alex who owns an Oxi fresh franchise in San Francisco, California. Well, why are we interviewing, real entrepreneurs? Why are we interviewing? I mean, clay stares, you coach business owners. Why in the world would we take the time out of our schedule to interview real entrepreneurs and not just talk to authors and theorists? Why would we actually take the time to interview people that have actually done it, who’ve lived it? Why would we want to take the time to interview a firefighter turned Oxi fresh franchise owner? What, what, what can we possibly learn from someone like this? Because you got to learn from the people that have actually walked down the path. People that have actually taken the steps, not only have they taken the practical steps, but they’ve walked down the emotional path and navigated that emotional path, which I know that you know, and chuck, you know as well being a coach, that it’s the stinken emotions that just trips everybody up.
So how do we navigate that? If you just. What do you want to do? You want to find the person that’s been to the top of the mountain, that’s your tour guide. That’s the person you know. What I’m going to do, I’ve never asked you to do, is on the shelf. I’m going to cue up the music and I’m going to let you go off on a little bit of a tangent about the importance of managing your emotions because you do such a good job with this, with your clients in the one on one. When you’re coaching clients, clay stares. You do such a good job at helping your clients stay focused on the thing that matters and so
it doesn’t have to ride, but if it did, it would be convenient. Do not put that pressure on me. Ryman here, but. But you’ve got to know who you are. If you don’t know who you are, you will not go far. You have got to raise the bar, my friend, because the thing is is that your identity, you have been designed to step into a new identity. You have been designed to create a footprint here on earth breach. So often we do not understand who we are and who we’ve been created to be, and we just allow the situations and the circumstances in our daily life to knock us around. That was me. I get it. I get it. Fight back. Yes. It’s time for you to step into your true identity. I promise you, you have been designed. You have been created to create your honor. I want to ask you this. Can you. You
Brag on one of your clients that is a diligent doer, just like Alex from San Francisco with oxy fresh, one of your clients, clay stares that you’ve worked with where you go. Then this client has really been coachable, approachable. They’ve just been a diligent doer. They, they’ve, uh, they’ve implemented everything I’ve asked them to do. These guys are a shining light of this right here. This is how it should be done. Could you. I’m Jean breeze comes to mind. There’s a lot of clients, but can you, can you share a story of one of your clients that’s really implemented the proven systems? Yeah. Gene breeze is a great example, but, but let me dive into Jeff Pell. Oh, of Sky House company out in North Carolina. Just fantastic. He’s a home builder. Does the bills like second and third homes for people there in North Carolina. And Jeff and I started out with just talking about how he could find better workers, but that thing led into so much more of a relationship in a coaching relationship.
I’ve just so appreciated Jeff. Every single week he says, got it done. Got It done. Got It done. Every one of his actions, action items, he is accomplishing. You know, I talk a lot about the path that we walked down the yellow brick road and and we’ve all been, we’ve all seen the movie enough. We know what to do with a yellow brick road. Right? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You follow the yellow brick road. Well, I don’t feel really good. You follow the yellow brick road? Well, you know, clay, I just don’t know if I totally agree. Follow the yellow brick road. Follow the yellow brick road and jeff has been wonderful at doing that. Just got off the phone with him earlier today and he has done a fantastic job. What he is finding all of a sudden is the time freedom that he is designing is actually come about. He was telling me just today with his schedule, he’s saying clay, I’m following it at about a six on a scale from one to 10, but when I started I was a zero and I’m finding that I’m getting set free from all of the trash that happens every single day. So I’ll give a shout out to him, just fantastic. Eric, chuck, can you tell us about one of our incredible show sponsors Williams contract again, why our listeners should all go to will-conn.com.
Well, if you are looking for a contractor that’s going to give you a realistic budget within three days and a copy of clay’s book, thrive on top of that, you’ve got to get a hold of these guys at Williams contract and you can check them out at nine. One, eight, six, eight, two, five, five, one, one. Again, that’s nine. One eight, six, eight, two, five, five, one, one, or go online. Submit a form to these guys. They’ll get ahold of you. WWW will dash [inaudible] dot com. That’s [inaudible] dot com.
Thrive nation, once again, he’s painted me into a corner, so I must say will dash conduct come
attend the world’s best business workshop led by America’s number one business coach for free by subscribing on itunes and leaving us an objective review. Claim your tickets by emailing is proof that you did it and your contact information to [email protected]. All right, thrive nation. Welcome back to the company versation. It is the thrive time show on your radio and on today’s podcast and radio broadcast. What we’re doing is we first, the first hour, we interviewed John Lee Dumas to number one podcaster of all time sick and now we’re interviewing an entrepreneur who on his grind. This is Alex with oxy fresh in, in, in San Francisco. Now, why is it so rare that you find you find somebody like Alex who’s willing to put in the effort and the grind needed to become successful? I think it gets hard for a lot of people, right? We don’t grow up in a society that teaches those values necessarily teach you how to memorize things and sit still and a guy like this, he’s going to get into it, but he’s a full time firefighter.
He started his business as an owner operator. Grew it from there. Now he manages it wall. Pfizer says to the American dream right there, it’s awesome, and I would say if you’re buying a franchise, what you’re doing is you’re buying a proven business system. You’re buying a car or a vehicle, but you have to supply the effort and that effort could be viewed as the fuel, right? You’re buying the vehicle, but you have to supply the fuel. If you go to a car dealership and you buy a vehicle, you have to supply the fuel on an ongoing basis. You have to do the maintenance, but you are buying a vehicle that has been proven to work. Not only that, you’re buying that vehicle and they’re placing it halfway down the track for you. Your starting line is halfway down from where you would be if you’re starting your own business.
So if you have, if you have access to a $60,000 small business loan or less, you have an ability to round up $60,000. Um, I would encourage you to go to thrive time show forward slash Oxi fresh.com. That’s thrive time show.com. Forward Slash Oxi fresh. I’m sorry. It’s thrive time show.com. I’ve got a ton of dayquil today day. I’ve had a ton. I mean literally, I’ve had a ton of data dump truck full and the readings are tough today. If you go to the thrive time show.com forward slash oxi fresh, you can learn more about an oxi fresh franchise, but whether you buy an Oxi fresh franchise or you reach out to us for business coaching, nothing works unless you do so once you to listen in here to Alex, because this is a diligent doer now clay stairs, you’ve had hundreds of people over the years reaching out to you for business coaching and how rare is it because there’s a lot of clients you turned down, you say, you know what?
This client is probably not going to be a good fit. Just how rare is it to have somebody like Alex who is a diligent doer who’s just going to implement the proven systems? How? How rare is that? Well, unfortunately it’s very rare. I mean, extremely rare. One percent, two percent is just very rare people that will do the grind over time. Oh, that’s a big over time. That’s, that’s consistency. The consistency. You heard it here from a business coach, a clay stares. You heard it from a business coach, Eric Chop. Now. Then he further ado our exclusive interview with Matt Klein, the brand developers with, with, with oxy fresh based in Denver, Colorado. Andy Franchisee. Mr Alex based out there in San Francisco, California. How’s it possible to have so many different states on the shot? One time, Oklahoma, Colorado, California, where we have to put the rico stay, two, three. My name is Clay Clark. I am the father of five human kids and my entire quest is focused on helping you to create both time, freedom and financial freedom for you and your family, which is why during the last few weeks we have had a a, a guy. We’ve harassed on a a pretty much a weekly basis here the last three weeks and that is Mr Matt Klein with oxy fresh. Matt Klein. How are you my friend?
I’m doing great. It’s another beautiful, beautiful week. Beautiful Day out here in Colorado. So we’re ready to rock and roll.
Well, for anybody just tuning in and maybe somebody who hasn’t heard your previous interviews, can you explain what Oxi fresh is and what your role with oxy fresh is?
Absolutely. So first and foremost, I’ll switch it up on you. I’ve worked for rocky fresh corporate. We’re a floor cleaning franchising company. We specialize in carpet, upholstery, tile and grout and Harvard floor cleaning services. Uh, what we’ve just been able to really enter the market and a very different way. So my role here is specifically to bring on qualified growth-driven Franchisees to take our franchise to the next level. We currently are approaching about four territories in the United States and Canada. Um, and that’s my main role. So I just speak to people that are interested, engaged, getting to the point to come out and become a franchisee eventually. And that’s what we do. So, you know, from not only bringing a very unique cleaning system to, um, to the United States and Canada, but low moisture, EPA certified green, safe for kids and pets. Um, smaller fuel efficient vehicle. So just a better process and what you’re typically used to seeing, but also accompanied by a very automated infrastructure, national call centers, answering the phones for you online scheduling capabilities, a lot of the online marketing done so you know, we try to get you a business in a box to where, you know, for those that aren’t comfortable just starting something from scratch, we’re a really great option in that space.
And I just want to pile on for a second here, thrive nation there. According to Forbes, nine out of 10 businesses fail, but of the 10 businesses that do make it very, very, very few business owners ever create time freedom or financial freedom. And so what I love about oxy fresh is you guys have worked to create turnkey systems so that a diligent people who are willing to put in the effort can succeed. And so on today’s show, Matt, you brought on a guest today, a guy from the bay area San Francisco. Uh, Alex. is that right? You, you, you brought a bay area Oxi fresh owner on the show.
I did, yeah. Now he’s very unique. He’s a, if you want to pat about somebody, not only is our most influential franchisees and the country, he’s on our advisory board, he does things the right way. He’s a full time firefighter world, world class, salsa dancer. So talk about time freedom and flexibility is doing a lot.
So Alex, I want, uh, I want, we have hundreds of thousands of people that download our podcast and I want, I want our listeners to get a chance to know you and your story. So how did you first, uh, come about? How did you first discover Oxi fresh? How did you get introduced to the brand and what made you want to buy a franchise?
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, you’re so welcome.
Yeah, I’m from the bay area 21 years as a fire captain and I’m still currently a actively a firefighter with San Jose. I’ve owned Oxi fresh franchise for about five years right now. And um, what got me interested was I needed to find a business that I could run while I was still being a full time firefighter. Now as firefighters, we do have a bit of a different schedule. However, it’s not consistent, it’s not like I just worked Mondays and Thursdays or something like that. My schedule is very dynamic and it changes. So I needed something that could change with it. So owning a carpet cleaning franchise was one of the things I came across and looked like a great option. It’s a, it’s a need business, not a want business. And I wanted to, you know, get into that type of business where people need you.
And so that’s how Kim pond carpet cleaning, but with oxy fresh, what I really liked, there were several different things about it that I liked when I looked into it. I found them on, on just on web search like everyone else has these days. And um, the thing that turned me on helped with Oxi fresh was that it was all green, nontoxic type of cleaning and I thought that was really cool. Number two was that you don’t need a big giant truck to run your business. So you didn’t need to buy what is basically anywhere between 30 and $50,000 piece of equipment to, uh, to actually clean your carpets. And, and do, do your jobs. So I had already had a truck. All firemen own trucks. It’s just a fireman thing, already had a truck. So I was like, okay, I’m halfway there with that. And they were all green, nontoxic option and um, yeah, it just looked good so I got to talk to them. And here we are.
So when you bought the Oxi fresh, there was probably a lot of things that happened between the time that you thought about buying an Oxi fresh and the time that you bought an Oxi fresh. I mean, you’re a firefighter, that’s another, that’s not something you can do overnight. It requires thoughtfulness training. Preparation requires a certain level of diligence to become a firefighter. So when you decided, you know, hey, I’m interested in, in looking into an Oxi fresh, what was the process like for you from the time that you reached out to oxy? Fresh to the time that you decided to actually sign on the line, uh, to, to actually purchase an Oxi fresh territory right there in the San Francisco area.
So the process was, was actually very positive. It included a whole lot of phone calls and questions, um, and a lot of contact with the front office. They’re over in Denver. And my point of contact was a gentleman named Chris and told him, and he was on the phone with me a lot because I had a lot of questions and you know, buying into a franchise or any business for that matter. It requires a heck of a commitment and a lot of money financially, you know, so it’s not something we can easily just jump into it. So the questions were, were often and frequent for Chris, so it was a lot of phone time. Um, a lot of online work, a lot of thinking, you know, how it’s gonna, how I would work my schedule with my fire department schedule. And um, yeah, so it just really was a lot of, a lot of soul searching and questioning and then talking to other Franchisees, they gave me a bunch of phone numbers and a contact list of who to call, um, to, to ask about, you know, what, what running oxi fresh was liking what kind of jobs that were getting in.
How, how busy they were and if they were making any money or not. So I was able to talk to several Franchisees, some were successful, some work and that was, that was interesting to get two views. So that’s what, that’s what it was like before I actually signed on the dotted line. We went out there for three day discovery days, what they call it and um, that, that was enlightening as well. That’s where they show you the process. That’s where you meet everybody over at the main office. And uh, it’s, it’s awesome. It’s a very, very, very positive experience.
What, what, uh, Matt, from your perspective, because you will never. Somebody who decides to buy an Oxi fresh franchised or buying the systems. They’re buying the technology to bind the research. They’re buying the history. What makes Alex successful? Why is he, why? What, what about his effort and his diligence allows because I feel like the person who buys a franchise has to supply the gasoline to the vehicle. You can buy the vehicle, but if you don’t put the effort in, there’s no gasoline there. So what about Alex makes him stand out in your mind as an all star Franchisee?
Yeah, that’s a really great question and I think, you know, most people don’t ask that enough of me, you know, why are they your successful franchisees successful? And on the other side, you know, what makes someone not successful? Because at the end of the day we can give you as many tools as possible and I guarantee you if you break down our business compared to who we’re competing with, there is no doubt you have more resources, support and automation, but if you don’t do anything with it and you get out of bed and you play golf at 9:00 AM every single morning before your business that much. That’s a pretty tough road. Right? And I like golf just as much as anybody else, but you’re not doing your business justice and, and you know, I guarantee you there’s people that have a heck of a lot more time than Alex that don’t utilize it correctly. Right? It’s the drive to be more successful than the next guy because that’s all it is, right? Somebody is gaining market share in your area, but what are you gonna do about it? Are you going to leverage the resources that you have to be successful or they’re going to say, you know what, it’s too hard to get google reviews for my business and ask my customers
clay stairs. You are a business coach. How rare is it that you find a client that is willing to ask for Google reviews with the frequency that Mr Alex is with oxy fresh in San Francisco, how rare is it to find somebody who implement the proven path? Well, it’s very rare, but you know the people that we work with, the people that are our are our clients. They’ve learned how to be diligent doers and so they’ve. They’ve been able to bust through that. Again, just throwing out a to a to both tammy and Jason Penberthy down in Houston. They’ve done a fantastic job of finally getting their google reviews. Exactly what we’re talking about here. They’ve just done a fantastic job and all of a sudden they’ve got more reviews than any home builder in Houston. Yes, my friends. You can absolutely do it. You can’t execute the proven path. Stay tuned. We’re going to share with you more about the oxygen fresh story from San Francisco,
Thrive nation, I have got to profound epiphany. Want to share with you today epiphany number one. In the world of business, nothing works unless you do just like buying a car and not putting gas in the vehicle, feeling to fuel up the vehicle. A vehicle will not run. If you don’t fuel it with gas, a business won’t run unless you put in effort. My second profound epiphany is that I have had so much dayquil today. I am now worried. Everything’s interdependent and so I can say this with no, I’ve, I’ve kept 21 year streak. I’ve been self employed since the age of 16. I have not missed a day. I don’t ever have a sick day ever. And so today I woke up and I thought to myself, Oh boy, oh man, I might have. I looked in the mirror and I’d like raccoon eyes. My eyes were barely open. The allergies in Oklahoma get me.
And so I thought, you know what, I’m going to do this. So I grabbed a bottle of dayquil and then another one. No, I’m here. I’m here. I’m here at the bottom of this bottle of dayquil and I’m looking at this warning label. I’m looking at it, I’m going, well, if pregnant or breastfeeding, ask a health professional microphone. You’re good there. You’re good there. Good there. But it says like, you know, don’t consume more than. And I’m like, oh well that’s probably not the uh, anyways. So um, one is nothing works unless you do and to don’t drink too much dayquil, but thrive nation. Here I am with a after having consumed much dayquil here to perform a show. You shouldn’t operate a large machinery after you’ve had too much day quill, but luckily a mixel podcast, mixer board and good to go. But clay stairs, I want, I want to ask you this because we’re interviewing Alex, a thriver from San Francisco.
He’s an owner of an Oxi fresh franchise and Matt Klein, uh, one of the members of the Oxi fresh team who actually awards franchises. So Matt works for corporate and Alex is a, and Matt is about ready to Brag on, on Alex here as we get back into the interview and bragging about the consistency and the diligence and the level of effort he brings into the business. You understand he bought the business while still being a full time firefighter and the work ethic needed to be a firefighter and a business owner. Can you talk to me about the grind of your successful clients, the mindset of your clients that have achieved big success? Clay? I mean, what, what, what kind of mindset does somebody have to have to achieve big success as an entrepreneur? Yeah. Well, it makes me think of a big Dan nap with.
Oh yeah, with affordable installation. He has done a fantastic job of really pulling out of the worker mindset, that technician mindset. I’ve been so proud of him over the past four months and how he has made a complete shift in the way that he is tracking everything. He comes in, he has done his homework assignments, he’s taken the steps down the down the path, and he is doing what needs to be done to be an entrepreneur, not just an installation guy. Chuck. Another mindset that I see is is you’ve got to have that burn the boats mentality. Jld was talking about it earlier about finding your big idea and going all in and he said that’s the common trait. He’s noticed doing over 2000 interviews with entrepreneurs. They find their big idea and they commit to it all in and not just dipping a toe in the cavalry’s not coming to save you. You’ve got to burn the boats and go all in. I didn’t go without any further ado. Back to our interview with Alex, the successful Oxi fresh franchisee. Based in San Francisco and Matt Klein with oxy fresh,
what Alex does is he makes sure that he doesn’t. Don’t go right that day. I mean the reason that he’s on our advisory board is because he’s is a. he’s a spark in our franchise. He’ll tell someone right to their face, hey, go buy this business if you’re lazy and it’s plain and simple because you can’t be a full time firefighter and own this business if you are lazy, you can’t be a full time firefighter at all if you’re lazy. So you know those sorts of things. What are you gonna do when you get out of bed? How are you going to make your business better that day or worse? And Alex absolutely pushes the ball forward. He’s one of our front runners in terms of getting commercial clients, commercial clients just don’t roll into your business. That has done from a relationship building, understanding the value that you give to your clients over the competition and being able to be persistent, right? And, and he’s been able to do that at a very high level with a lot less time than most people have in their day. And I always say like this, why would one person be more successful than the other with the same amount of time,
all effort? This is something that, uh, I’m matt, I’m a lot of listeners who listen to our podcast on the, on the daily, no, our podcast comes out eight days a week or seven days a week, but we released eight a week and at the time that I was approached by scripps radio scripts radio, they own the HGTV, they own the travel channel, that kind of thing. And they reached out to me and said, hey, would you be willing to do a live radio show every day? At the time that, that happened, a lot of listeners don’t know. But at the very time they reached out to me within the same week. That’s when I found out that my dad had als, Lou Gehrig’s disease. You know. So when you discover, it’s like you discover your dad is going to die and you also discover that you’re going to have a radio show that in Tulsa and in Portland to different cities.
Our show’s aired primetime. So it’s like, where am I going to find the time? So I set my alarm, you know, typically, you know that 3:00 AM everyday and I’m not saying that’s a life advice tip for everybody out there. I’m just saying I have five kids. I signed up for it. I have five kids, I do a radio show, I set my alarm for 3:00 AM, which means I go to bed at 9:00 AM, so I’m not tired all day. So I’m Oxi fresh though is a brand that allows people to really create as much time freedom and financial freedom is they want some people want to push, you know, put the, put the foot on the gas more than others. And I want to tap into Alex into your church, into your schedule out there. What does the schedule look like you, what does it look like?
What does it feel like to run and Oxi fresh? Because I couldn’t say, if you’re going to have a podcast, it’s in the top 10 of all podcasts in the world. You’re going to wake up at three and you’re going to prep and do show notes and then you are going to book your guests and then you’re going to interview a great person like Matt Klein and Mr Alex, and then you’re going to edit that thing and then you’re going to host that thing is there’s a lot, a lot of moving parts there. What does it look like in your daily schedule to own an Oxi fresh?
There’s going be two answers to that. There’s going to be the one where the gentleman or the Lady of the gentleman who owns that is an owner or operator where they’re working the business on their own and then there’s another one where you’re running the business and you’re not actually working in the business. I’ve done both. In the beginning. I was an owner operator. I was the only one doing the jobs that was busy, so I’d get off out of the fire station, say 8:00 in the morning I would get home. I put on my Oxi fresh shirt, I get in my red truck and I would start running jobs. I’d probably run jobs, so about five or six at night, get home, clean up my equipment, and then I’d have to close out all my invoices and do all my accounting and things of that nature, so that was a very. That was a very busy night. That means, sorry, that was a very busy schedule and I would do that for four days straight and then go and then go work 48 hours straight at the fire station. Now it’s different because now I’m. I’m, I’m an owner. I’m sorry I’m more of a business owner and what I’m doing is I, I just, I have four employees and basically I am just supporting them all day and that’s even the firehouse and a lot of it is by phone.
Stay tuned and the Alex Oxi fresh story live from San Francisco. When we return,
thrive nation. Welcome back to the conversation. It is the thrive time show on your radio and on today’s show we’re interviewing Matt Klein, one of the brand developers with oxy fresh carpet cleaning franchises, and Alex, one of the top Oxi fresh franchisees based in San Francisco, California, and Eric Trump is talking about the importance of managing your team. That’s right. In communicating with your team in. Aleks is explaining that when his team everyday now he has a team of people that work with him. He bought an Oxi fresh franchise. Yes, but he also is. It started as the owner operator right now. He grew it to have a team right now he a team and so he says he has to respond to his team right away. Yep. And denier responds to the customer. Yep. Can you explain, chuck, because you’ve been a business owner, what does it like to manage a team of more than five people?
It gets really stressful because now all the sudden all of their problems are your problem and throughout the business day, things happen. Crazy things happen and when you’ve got five, six, seven, eight people that you’re managing and they’re bringing their crazy from home, they’re bringing the crazy from work and they’re all coming to you. If you don’t have time, block and restrictions and you have your day planned out, it’s just going to get way out of control. So I want to say a big shout outs to Alex over there with oxy fresh in San Francisco, and if you feel like you can manage people and can supply some effort, I would encourage you to reach out to oxy fresh. Don’t be. Don’t be an oxymoron. Don’t be an oxymoron. You want time and financial freedom. You’ve got to go to thrive time. Show.com forward slash oxi fresh, yes, because you can, under under $60,000, you can buy a proven business model that has the capacity to create both time freedom and financial freedom for you and your family. Learned more today at thrive time. Show.com forward slash oxi fresh. Now back to our interview with Alex, the Franchisee with oxy fresh in San Francisco and Matt Klein, the brand developer with oxy fresh in Denver, Colorado, and what I’m doing is I, I just, I have four employees and basically I am just supporting them all day and that’s even from the firehouse and a lot of it is by phone, so I support whatever they need, whatever questions they have, and then I’ll get to my customers and I’ll get to my customers to yelp through email and through phone calls and then I’ll talk to my commercial, like commercial people and that that happens almost every day of every business day.
Anyway, Monday to Friday I will have some contact with my commercial clients as well. So it’s, it’s still very busy. It’s just busy in a different way. When you’re the owner and you’re not actually doing the jobs, you know, a good gathering today. So many people, according to Forbes, I’ll put this on the show notes, but according to Forbes magazine, 80 eight percent of consumers read Google reviews before making a purchase. 80 eight percent. That means just 12 percent of people don’t, and it Oxi fresh right now as of the time of today’s recording, the brand has 135,547 reviews. That’s a lot of reviews. A Matt Elephant in the room, our men’s grooming lounge, we always incentivize our managers to ask for reviews. One young lady, Melissa got 127 reviews this week. It’s crazy. Yeah. But some people don’t ever get reviews, you know. And so I want to talk about. I want to get into that. Why our Google reviews so important, Matt, and how has oxi fresh been able to receive or earn 135,547 objective reviews, verified reviews on Google. How do you do it? Why is it so important? Just walk us through Google reviews one. Oh one.
Well, like Alex, I mean I, you know, it’s kind of confusing from my job. My full time job, like clay mentioned, is to bring qualified people, but I also own my own franchises. So this piece of my business is imperative for me to grow because I don’t have the opportunity to go out and have conversations with property managers, building managers. I really rely heavily on oxy fresh has knowledge on marketing and my effort on getting those reviews. Because if you think about it, just think about your own daily activities. When you look for something, what are you doing? You’re going typically on your cell phone and that’s important too, right? You’re doing searches for companies never more than right now are people more concerned with the companies that are operating in their backyard, not national brands, right? They want to know who’s in the backyard, who’s doing a good job, which one of their peers has given them a good or bad review and they pick off of that.
So first and foremost is, you know, for us at oxy fresh, those reviews are very important because not only does it validate that you’re cleaning system first and foremost works, but also that the people behind the business are real and that they’re going to show up on time and that they’re going to take care of your home and they’re going to leave you in a better position than when they got there. Right? So that’s what the reviews do for your business. Not only that, but also where you rank. If you have no reviews for your business and someone googles carpet cleaning, you’re not showing up. If you show, if you don’t show up, you’re not gonna. Get that market share. So get the market share and that’s where rocky fresh shows up for you because they build those pages for you. They manage those pages for you.
As Google changes their algorithm, they change with it as opposed to your competition. Seeing that as a roadblock. Now you just have a little bit of a hurdle to jump over, right? So those very, very easy for us to do that. But just asking the biggest problem with, I think most people, if they’re not confident enough in their service to ask for review because they might get a bad one. So first and foremost, if you deliver a service that’s warranting a review, they will be happy to give you one because that’s one of the biggest misconceptions is that people don’t want to give your views. So you know, having the confidence in your business and your service. I’m just like Alex says, when he’s in the firehouse and he’s got technicians doing jobs and he knows that if something comes through, we proactively reach out to our customer database. Even if you ask for a Google review, we’re still going to reach out at that customer and ask them for review as a corporate company because we want to know how your business is operating and if there’s business at risk. Alex, how quick are you to call a technician if you get a bad review within about five minutes, right? Because there’s no reason for you to get a bad review because it’s just being lazy or cutting corners because there’s. If you can get a good review, you should always get a good review. Now there’s some people out there that are, that are tough on companies, but that’s okay. Fight fire with fire and go do a good job. Again, if you need to.
I want to ask Alex this question here as we kinda wrap up today’s interview. Alex, I’ve heard great things about you. Matt Brags on you. Jonathan Barnett, the founder of Oxi fresh has nothing but great things to say about you. Uh, Chris has nothing but great things to say about you is you’re sort of a Oxi, fresh allstar. And so I wanna I want to ask you what you would, if anybody out there who’s thinking about buying an Oxi fresh thinking about [inaudible], you have to be awarded and Oxi fresh. I mean you’ve got to go through a process for oxy. Fresh has to decide whether you’re a good fit and you have to decide whether the oxi fresh is a good fit for you. For anybody out there who’s trying to decide whether they should start the conversation, what is Oxi fresh done for you and your family? And what is that the experience of owning an Oxi fresh franchise meant to you?
I’ll put it like this. The dream is free. The hustle costs extra. No, don’t buy an Oxi fresh. If you think that the Home Office is going to make your business profitable and work for you, this is going to have to come from you. This is going to. You’ve got to. You’ve got to. You’ve got to go hard at this and you can’t come up with excuses. That’s the other thing is if I’m talking to somebody who’s looking into buying a business like this, you can come up with all the excuses you want for a failure, for something that goes wrong, but at the end of the day, you are going to be sitting there and you’re going to be less with your excuses and that’s all you’re going to have. Yeah.
If you are tired of the excuses and you just want to get your Ford automobile repaired, go to RCC auto specialists.com. That’s RC auto specialists.com. If you’re living in Tulsa, Oklahoma and you have a Ford automobile that needs to be repaired, go to RC auto specialists.com,
thrive nation. If you’re out there looking for a business opportunity, I’m a franchise to concerts you financially free. I would encourage you to look into oxy fresh, go to thrive time, show.com, forward slash Oxi, fresh to learn more and up, but don’t. Don’t take my word for it. I mean just google, Google, search the phrase carpet cleaning quotes. Fight 135,000 people out there just like you who’ve written these guys and objective review and Oxi fresh has been around for a long time and it really does provide financial freedom for the franchise owners and a great service for the customers. But if you’re out there and you say, Gosh, I need help with my actual business, the one that I have right now, I, I’m not interested in buying a new business, then I would encourage you to go to thrive time, show.com, and schedule your one on one, 13 point assessments so we can figure it out where you’re stuck, why you’re stuck.
We can help you. We can design for you a proven path, a plan, a map to help you get unstuck and all. All of this is available for free. All you gotta do is go to thrive time, show.com and schedule your free 13 point assessment with one of our thrive business coaches. And if it’s a good fit, we might work with you on a one on one level. We can help you get unstuck and help you to have tremendous success in the game of business. Now, without any further ado, back to our interview with an Oxi fresh franchise owner, a great American out there just like you, Alex in San Francisco as he shares with you about what the Oxi fresh franchise has done for both he and his family.
I’m going to tell you something. I mean, the American dream. Let’s talk about the American dream in general is to be a business owner. We’re, we’re, we’re, you know, we’re a free enterprise out here in the USA and that is the dream for many, many millions of Americans. And that’s what it’s done for me. It’s like, look at this, man, I, I’ve actually owning and running a business. It’s not a very big one, you know, but it’s a good one and it’s successful and there’s a lot of people who like it. That’s cool. I like that. Financially, it’s done some great things, you know, I use oxy fresh money often to, to, to just, you know, silly things like I bought an rv with oxy fresh money, so me and my family enjoy these amazing rv trip and I used my oxi fresh money just to do that.
And other people to it for their living though, so it’s not just a fun, fun money thing for them, but um, you know, financially it’s, it’s finally, you know, it’s taken a few years but it’s finally starting to show some green and, and it’s, it’s definitely given us some flexibility. So obstetricians done a lot for my life, done a lot for the way I look at my life in terms of when I look back on it, I’ve been a firefighter, I’ve been a professional salsa dancer and now I’m a business owner. I think it can bring some, some, uh, satisfaction in some, some good self image and some good, uh, accomplishments to your life, you know, and it has for me. So it’s going to lie. I really appreciate the brand and the people over there. It’s been great.
Now thrive nation, I know there are hundreds of thousands of you that are saying to yourself, I don’t know if this is real or not. I would encourage you to do the old Ronald Reagan move and trust, but verify. I would encourage you to just google search, Oxi fresh, check them out. Research the brand, the brand’s been around for a long time. They have over 135,000 reviews. The brand believes in what they do. So much. They’re willing to have a franchisee on a top 10 itunes podcast. Um, I can’t speak highly enough about the brand and if you go to thrive time show.com forward slash oxi fresh. That’s thrive time show.com forward slash oxi fresh. And you request information. We’ll give you a free ebook copy of my Amazon bestselling book. Start here. We’ll give you a free copy of that book. And you can also begin a conversation with great folks like Matt Klein.
Um, but, but this is a show that’s about entrepreneurship and mentorship and teaching you what you need to do to be successful. So my final question that I have for Matt and for Alex and in Matt, you can one up. You can one up Alex here. So Alex, I’m going to ask you first. Okay. And then Matt, you can one up and because I’m going to go, I’m going to go to Alex first here. Why? Because Forbes says that nine out of 10 businesses fail. What’s the one thing? The one, the one tip Alex, with the one thing that you do on a daily basis, the one thing in your routine that you’re doing on a daily basis that most people are not doing. You know, the, the one thing that you’re doing that you feel like most people, if they would just do this, they would become more successful. What’s one thing on your schedule that you’re doing every day on your calendar that you’re doing that most people probably are not doing, but is the game changing move for you, Alex?
That’s a good one. I would say. I would say the one thing that I do is I pay attention every day, every single day, so I know it’s kind of abroad. That’s kind of a broad statement, but I pay attention and I pay attention to everything. When things go well, when things don’t go so well, I paid attention to my employees and to all my texts and whenever there’s an issue I fix it and if my. If my customers have a problem, I fix it. If my employees have a problem, I fix it. I always, always, always treat employees at the highest level and that is because they know when I treat them well that I expect them to perform at the highest level and if they don’t, they know I will let them go and find somebody else who wants to work for a great boss and that way I can kind of move on without filling kind of guilt whatsoever. So that being said, I pay attention to everything about my business and every detail. That’s what I do differently.
And a guy from your part of the world, Andy Grove with Intel, the guy who’s the co founder of Intel, the former CEO of Intel, he says, only the paranoid survive, and I’m quoting Andy Grove, only the paranoid survive. I really do believe you have to care and pay attention to the details. I 100 percent agree with what Alex just said. Matt, you have a chance to one up Alex here. What’s the one difference maker? What’s the one degree that makes it boil? What’s the one degree that makes it frees? What’s the one thing that separates the winners from the whiners?
I used to sell a large waste and recycling accounts. It was a time in my life where I was the trying to figure out what the heck was going on is a great, great thing. But every Friday afternoon at 4:30 at the drive back to this office and we’d have our company sales meeting and um, we used to. I don’t know if anyone’s ever heard of Tom Hopkins used to be like the number one real estate, a realtor in the country. And these are like the most corny videos you could ever think of in your entire life. But the one thing I got, which I still use today is the three foot rule. Very important to my business. I try to have other people do it. Some people do, some people don’t, but every single day I go by the three foot rule. Anybody that I don’t know that within three feet of me, if they don’t know what I do, by the time they leave, I failed.
And that has allowed me to gain a lot of interest in my business. I probably put 50 jobs a year on the schedule just by the three foot rule, right? It also brings up other conversations. You never know who you’re going to run into and how they can be a value to you or you have value to them if they don’t know what they do. So that’s hard for me. I’m, you know, I’m an outgoing guy, but the people I don’t know, maybe not. Um, so that just helped me personally. It’s helped me business wise. Um, and it really does help because out of 10 people, if you get one person is. I actually, um, I own a real estate company around a property management company. I’m actually having issues right now. Boom. You just closed the deal by the three foot rule.
I appreciate you listening in, in every time we have an update with Matt, it feels like it’s nothing but positivity. It feels like it’s just mad. It’s almost too good. We keep talking about the Oxi fresh winds and people having great success. You got to do is you’ve got to find somebody out there who’s lazy, who’s not doing anything and bring them on the show soon because I mean 910 businesses are failing, but oxi fresh franchisees are winning. You got great guys like Alex out there that are winning. We got to balance it out. I mean find some real. I mean, I don’t want it to be too much. Awesome. I think people’s, their head might explode if there’s too much awesomeness. I appreciate you for having Alex on the show. I appreciate you for being on the show and if you to learn more about oxy fresh and potentially seeing if you can be awarded your own territory, go to thrive time show.com forward slash oxi fresh. That’s thrive time show forward slash oxi fresh and we’ll also give you a free copy of our Amazon best selling book. Start here, Alex. thank you so much for being on the show. Matt, thank you so much for being on the show. And Alex, there’s a big final question for you. Here we go. Here we go. San Francisco giants or Oakland athletics.
I’m a giants guy.
Yes. Real Clark. Nineteen, nine, 1980 $9. Unbelievable. We’ll Clark. Yes. The only reason we didn’t win I think. I think the earthquake freaked out. Will the thrill because otherwise we would have one. Kevin Mitchell will the thrill Kevin over. Oh, overfeld. We have unbelievable. Maybe we had met Williams. Great team. Or are you. Are you a current giants fan or just kind of an old school giants fan?
I am a current school. Oh
my boss at a call center back in the day. His name was Steve. Steve. Heck. And he was a backup shortstop for the San Francisco giants during the early nineties. Right there. I love the San Francisco giants. Awesome. Thrive nation. We always want to end the show with the boom. So Alex will try to time this via skype. Matt will try to time this via skype. We always say three, two, one, and then boom. So we’ll, we’ll go out and give it a whirl here. Here we go. Three, two, one.
Hello.
Now Chuck, it appears that we’ve had an early boom. Oh, oh, sure. I was going to say, is there a doctor we could talk to? We need some medication. I don’t encourage you to reach out to one of my clients revolution health.org. If you have a premature boom issue. Revolution Health Dot Org. Jump on me if you’ve ever been. Have you ever gone to see Dr Dr Edwards? I have and he’ll take care of everything that you need. Yeah. If you have a premature boom, he’s the go to revolution health.