Pt 2 – From Home-Based Startup to $147,000,000 | The Matt Watson Story

Audio Transcription

All right, thrive nation. Welcome back to the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. Now on today’s business conferences show, this is a part of our exclusive interview with Matt Watson. You might be saying to yourself who Steve Curtis, who is Mike Watson? Watson is the man who started a home based business at the age of 22. He then hired his father seven years later. He made it profitable. He just sold the company for $147,000,000 to autotrader. Fourteen million, 700,000, a 140 $747,000,000.

So he’s on today’s show. And if you, if you missed yesterday’s show, you want to go to thrive time show.com and check out our exclusive interview with Matt Watson. But this is part two. And during this particular portion of the interview, I’m asking Matt about how to manage people. I Steve, when you built total lending concepts or you’ve been in the mortgage industry for a long time. Yeah. I think the first challenge when you become self employed is learning to manage yourself, holding yourself accountable, getting yourself to make the calls, waking up, waking up on time, getting your stuff in Missouri. So when you’re self employed, the first challenge is probably managing yourself and once you manage that you have to start managing other people. Can you talk to the listeners out there about why as a small business owner it is so hard to manage people or what some of the challenges are with managing a team?

Yeah, I mean I come to work everyday. That’s great and I think when you find an employee that just can come to work everyday and you count on them to be there, then that obviously that’s a great thing. Can cry when that happens. Yes, I know because like today I had a conversation with someone who misses a lot of work yesterday, looked like they came in and they must have woke up two seconds where they got there today. They’re, they’re sick of course. Oh yeah, we’re recovering from alcohol. Right, exactly. Thank you. That’s what I told them. I was like, it’s obvious you partied it up on Sunday night, which is the reason why you’re getting punished on Monday and now you’re going to call in sick on Tuesday. So I think that’s part of the dip because just because I can’t find my pants and I just

look like I’ve been sleeping in the pocket, not doesn’t mean that I’ve been intoxicated. To me, that would be appealing. Liberated, fill, written mortgages. I think people probably especially clay and you’ve experienced this younger people.

I think of my 19 year old or 20 year old self and how big of a knucklehead I must’ve been in thinking that you’re pulling one over on the boss when you’re like, oh no, I just woke up a little late. No, you’re still drunk. I mean I can still see it in your eyes. You’ve got bags under her eyes, so I think that’s a tough part for me is a no one like how to motivate that person to do their job when they’re otherwise not motivated. Weird. I didn’t ask you about it, but I went ahead and put a mic on your phone. I was able to mind when you do this, the employee called you and basically had said, hey, I can’t be at work today. I am feeling sick and this is what you sent.

Surely you can’t be serious. I am serious. I’m done.

This is what they sent. Like I picked it wrong. We quit smoking. Quit drinking like I picked the wrong week when I’m funimation and this is what you said. You know what they say. See Abroad to get that booty activity down at a certain point where you heard every excuse possible. If I ever published an excuse Bible, it’d be a real page turner. I’ve heard so many. Steve, what are some of the best excuses? The. I’m going to tell you my favorite two or three excuses I’ve ever heard. I’ve got a really good one from the same employee I’m talking about. Okay. One is I, one of my top sales guys at DJ connection Dot Com who called in with a sunburn. He said, dude, I cannot come in. I have a complete and total sunburn to which I said, did you fall asleep drunk and shirtless? And he says, no. And I said, come on. And he goes, how did you know who else? He called him shirtless. He was shirtless. He fell asleep with the Illinois river or something on the fake. Completely got burned. My was my second favorite excuses is when a guy called me and he says, clay, it happened so fast and I’m like, what happened? My mom, she died and he had already said that before.

Hold both your mom’s died. No, I’m not kidding. He literally claimed his own mother had died twice. Now, my favorite excuse of all time because you laugh or you cry. You laugh or you cry. I’d employ who called these starts calling his back before text messaging. He calls me my singular phone rings better out. Who did it? Who Do you do as a josh? What’s going on? He says, clay, I cannot find the Moose Lodge over there at 11th and Garnett. I can’t find it. And the wedding starts here in like an hour. I can’t fight them and drove around for hour. Meanwhile, getting her call of duty to do duty mystique. The bride to be says, Hey, your Dj was supposed to be here. I’m walking down the aisle here soon. Where’s your guy? Dude? Who did it? Who Do you do? He calls back. I can’t find it. I’m driving. I’m like, dude, it’s definitely at 11th garnette on the north.

It’s just a little bit north and it’s west or there’s nothing else there, and he’s like, dude, we’re going back and forth playing phone tag. Then I. He goes to me. Yeah. Years later he tells me he drove around for five or six hours. It could never find it. What? Then when his baby was born, true story, his illegitimate child was born and I went to the, you know where you give the baby gifts and you celebrate the new mother and you. He tried to figure out are they going to get married? Are they not? Should we celebrate this? Should we not what we do? And he says, I want you to tell this baby was conceived when I said I was trying to find that wedding that I got sued for. Oh, true story. I had to settle out of court on that one. She was like, it’s. Yeah, true story. The guy just skipped someone’s wedding to conceive a baby. Those are my favorite. Probably my favorite three. I’m sure it have more. If I spent more time focused, I try to. I should have blocked it out as a psychological way of healing. But what’s your favorite excuse? Fifth of July, which is after the fourth of July. So it’s that morning and it’s like, Hey boss, I’m sick.

Oh, okay, sure you are. So then it’s like, oh, doesn’t even call in by the way. His friend calls him. Oh yeah. Your friend is calling a friend. Your friend has to call on your behalf as, hey, that’s so and so come in. And he dropped his phone and his phone isn’t working. Bubble. I said, well, how does a leader? Yeah. Did He tell you this? I went to his house on foot. I walked back to my house on foot and I am now calling using a different tone to buy. I’m like, it’s free. Gets 2018. There’s a million ways that you can. There’s different ways that you do. Anyway. So then it’s like, you know, I think that it was on a Wednesday was fourth of July, so now it’s Thursday, now he has strep throat and. Okay. So then he’s like, I had to go to the doctor.

So then I ever know which doctor is a knitter, deborah disclosure of what doctor I went to has a convertible. By the way, I went to a doctor although I wanted to go to our business conferences. Yeah, he went to a doctor. The doctor’s note. The doctor’s flew out of the top of the. Oh yeah, yeah, because he was driving his convertible. Absolutely. Just the wind. So when he gets in I said, listen dude, um, I know you think you’re tricking everybody, but we all know that you definitely didn’t have stripped out. The only thing I wish you would have done is when you woke up on Thursday after drinking on a fourth of July, hammered right. And I’d lost your phone in the lake or whatever happened, if you would’ve just come to work on Friday and just apologize and say, I’m so sorry I totally messed up. Right. You wouldn’t have had to keep up the lie that you had strep throat and then missed Friday, Monday and Tuesday. Now that you’ve got this good life going, what other, what other, um, abnormal non-logical nonsensical and half baked details would you like to share to tie the web of deceit together? It’s so for a second. He was like, no, no, no, no man. I probably. And I’m like, come on, come on. And he’s like, oh, like, come

on. So anyway, no surprise that here we are, a month later after him having been arrested and missing work and the, you know, there’s all these gun into the weeds of how to manage people. Let’s listen to Mr. Matt Watson, a guy who started the company the age of 22 when, who sold it to auto trader for $147,000,000. By the way, it took him seven years to make a profit. Without any further ado, back to our interview with Mr Matt. I forgot. I didn’t know there was a miscommunication. How do you deal with people that intentionally don’t do their job?

I free up their future.

And when you say free up their future for the people just now tuning in to this portion of the radio show, can you explain what freeing up their future means?

You know, when you’re a small company, you just don’t have time, uh, to carry around bad employees with you and they can be like a cancer, especially really negative people and they just got to go.

My name is Kevin and I am a dysfunctional coder who hasn’t been set free by you yet. Okay. And you come in and we’ll kind of role play this. I definitely didn’t qc my code before pushing it live and I say, man, I just forgot there was a miscommunication. You know, there’s always something. What are the words that you would say to me before you sent me?

Well, I don’t think after the first time you would be getting fired, you know, Donald Trump style or anything, but I think, you know, it just comes down to understanding why and trying to make you smarter and better at your job. But yeah, eventually I think he, you just got to go Donald Trump style on how many times would you have this conversation before you move on? Um, you know, maybe two or three times. Four Times. I mean, I’ve got an employee that works for me now that we’ve had a few conversations with that. Um, I don’t know if they’ve got any more times left.

Well, you know, I was watching a documentary about Phil Jackson, which didn’t cause me to read a book about Phil Jackson, which then caused me to read a documentary about or have a book written by Dennis Rodman about Phil Jackson. And one thing that blew my mind was that Michael Jordan won six NBA championships when his head coach was Phil Jackson and coby. One five. But neither one of those two guys ever won a championship when Phil wasn’t there, coach. And they spent the majority of their career not having him as a coach and all the players said it was Phil Jackson, I just can’t win without Phil Jackson. And whether it was interesting is that Phil Jackson, he didn’t call it this exact phrase, but I’m paraphrasing, but he’s talking about Kinda like having like the 27 strike rule, which is essentially like you get one strike, two, three are gone unless you’re Dennis Rodman because we want to win another championship.

So it was like the trade offs of having a superstar, like Dennis Rodman made him treat dennis differently. So like when Dennis was late, they find them like everybody else, but Dennis didn’t care so he would just find him. But there was no, like if you do it again, you’re off the team. But a guy at the end of the bench, he was terrible. You’d give him three strikes. So there’s kind of like, you manage everyone differently, you know. And I’ve heard so much, Jack Welch talks about that a lot. How do you do? Do you ever keep a superstar around that? Maybe has awesome performance, but just has one or two serious vices are not usually. I mean, it seems like that usually happens for really great salespeople. Usually where those exceptions get made, it seems like. Right? So this, hey, by the way, we have not talked about this ahead of time.

Super salespeople almost always have the pirate gene. You’ll say you’ll talk to them and you’ll say, hey, so did you tell that client that we could get that pushed by the first? Are you ready for this matt? But it’s a big deal, and then they’ll make the whole fulfillment team just pull all nighters to keep to honor that promise. It’s just crazy how salespeople usually also are working on some sort of narrative that is 80 percent true with sprinkles of not truth needed to close deals. That’s what they’re there. So I’ve seen that with salespeople now. So now that you’re, you’re, you’re financially free, you’ve got the time freedom. How do you organize your day? Like what time are you waking up now? Are you waking up like at noon and you know, having a Margarita and get the office around to look around pants until five and then what time did you get up now? Oh, my little kids wake up at 5:30 or six every morning, man. Really? Yeah. Waking me up. So they wake you up. And then when do you first start working? Thrive nation? When we return, we’re going to break down the schedule of a man who built a company that he sold successfully for $147,000,000. What is your schedule need to look like? If you want to build a massively successful organization, how do you schedule your day? How do you organize your day? What time do you wake up? We’re getting into the details of the life and times of Mr. Matt Watson. Stay tuned.

We’re now entering the Dojo of Mojo and the thrive time show.

Alright, today’s guest, Mr Watson has successfully started the company at the age of 22 when he sold the company for $147,000,000, but on a, on a very detailed, very specific level. How does he organize his day? What time does he wake up? What is his schedule look like? Without any further ado, back to our interview with Mr. Matt Watson. So now that you’re, you’re, you’re financially free, you’ve got the time freedom. How do you organize your, like what time are you waking up now? Are you waking up like at noon and you know, having a Margarita and get the office around to look around pants until five. And then what time do you get up now?

Oh, my little kids wake up at 5:30 or six every morning, man. Really? Yeah. Waking me up. So they wake you up and then when do you first start working? About five minutes later. And do you work out of your house? Where do you work at that point? Yeah, I mean I gotta drink some coffee and then I got to take the kids at school and then go to the office. So what time do you get to the office? A little after eight. And then do you work in a. you’re, you’re in Kansas, correct? That’s right. Do you have a big office building? You have a small office building. You work in a bunker? We live, we work kind of in the bunker. It’s the basement of a bigger building. Yeah, we were on the basement and I’m just working away. And how do you decorate your office? What does, what do you, what kind of Patina, what kind of swag, what kind of decor do you put in your office? Well actually weirdly enough, our office, we don’t have cubicles are like desks and everything are made out of giant Legos. Really Nice. I’m not even joking. Can we find these pictures somewhere to prove what you’re saying? I mean, I, I believe you, but can we, can we put it on the show notes? I mean, is it possible to find those pictures? Yeah. Yeah. We have actually a blog post all about it.

Oh, you do? Okay. What do we need to look for to find that? So our listeners out there, we have hundreds of thousands of people who download these podcasts. I want to send them somewhere. How can we, what do we need to type in to find it?

Well, so I’m going to google it and double check, but there’s these blocks called ever blocks, which is what we used to put a link on the notes here. Yeah. They’re called every block and so they’re designed to build anything. Like if you want to build your kids like their own bed, you know you can build it like the bed frame out of the Legos or whatever, or build like a temporary wall. So it’s called every block. But if you Google I’m stackify build office. Literally it comes up, number one, there’s a blog post and I can give you guys the link down in the show notes. Got It. But if you go, if you go check it out, there’s some really cool photos on there. And

do you get. Do you get into star wars? Are you into star wars? Absolutely. Well, let me tell you a little story. If you know the story, you gone. We already know that man. I already know that. Well, apparently our good friend George Lucas wanted to make a star wars, but before he wanted to make star wars, he wanted to buy the rights to Flash Gordon and just make Flash Gordon. So he got rejected and so he thought, you know what I’m to do, I’m going to one up it and make my own version of like an intergalactic, a cowboy movie, you know, intergalactic western and a. So feel Jack or so a George Lucas goes out there trying to get this movie made. He does American graffiti. It does. Well, he can’t get funding for star wars. He finally gets funding from Star Wars. We the to write this massive business conferences style script and he made his desk out of three doors like he made his desky work from was made at a three doors and there’s so much history to how he, he, he’s really into like decorating his office to kind of inspire himself.

So when they got to a place where they almost didn’t have any funding, he painted a wall mount. Have you heard about this mural? Mural? He painted a mural of them. If you watched the movie, the making of Star Wars that you can find it on youtube or something, but it’s a, the making of Star Wars. If you buy the, the three pack of the first three movies, you can actually, it comes with it, the making of Star Wars. But it explains that our main man, George Lucas had a heart attack while making the film. He was so stressed out after finishing the movie, uh, his best friend, uh, Steven Spielberg told them that the movie sucked. He had to totally re edit the whole movie. He had to change the voice of Darth vader. Then he had to encourage himself. He made a mural that is the actual size that the Millennium Falcon would be in real life.

But he painted it and that’s how he raised money was he would, he would show it to investors and go, this is what it’s gonna look like, because no one got it. You know, I mean he’s, he’s the guy who had visions for like wookies. What the heck was a wookie? I mean, trying to imagine adult comes to you for funding and says, here’s the deal. This is before any of these other movies that ever come out. Like that’s what most startup pitches sound like. Actually, I know I want to ask you this. Have you ever found yourself where you are conceptualizing the Millennium Falcon, figuratively speaking or a Wiki and nobody understands what you’re talking about and it’s super frustrating because they think you’re crazy and you are just trying to explain to them you want to make a seven foot tall dog like character called a wookie and they think you’re netsuite had that moment where you feel like you’re that George Lucas and they, you go, people don’t get me.

Have you ever had that moment? All the time. All the time. Yes. So the more money you have, each tricked me. If you, if you’ve taken people, correct me on this, if you think I’m wrong here, I have discovered the more money I make, the less I care about what people think about my sanity or lack thereof of my idea. Absolutely. And then attracts more people that actually like you because of your inns ecentric, Miss, have you noticed this? Well, people, people like being around other people that are creative and that are leaders and that have big ideas. Right? So yeah, I agree. So our office, um, if you google thrive 15 and then the word jinx, you can see images of our office. I have no walls, the whole office is just open so there’s no dividers and I didn’t have cameras everywhere too.

So like literally if I were talking to you and I said I think Madsen, adient, everyone would know because everything’s recorded all the time. So it cuts down on the whole gossip. Nis, you know, there’s no, there’s no walls, just the whole thing is completely open and there’s motivational quotes everywhere because I believe on a spiritual level that you don’t spell words, but words cast a spell on people, so there’s motivational quotes everywhere and there’s like images and it’s just quite a unique spot and people travel all over the world to our workshops every couple months. Then a lot of it, they’ll check you, they’ll take pictures all the time, all the breaks. They’re constantly taking pictures and posing by things and getting everywhere and I see the whole time. I’m just curious what made you want to do the Lego office move? Because when people see my office without walls, I mean Paul Paul, the first time you saw it, you’re like, what in the world? And I always wear a boom hat. I never dress up anymore ever. I always wear a boom hat and always wear a jersey of some kind. You know, I’m just. When people mean when did you get the idea to do the Legos? And if people think it’s crazy.

Well, I was wanting to do something different than boring cubicle walls and just started thinking of different ideas. There’s something we could build the walls out of and since the name of the company is stackify, you know, was like, you know, we can stack some blocks up or something. Um, and luckily I found those ever block things online. And then next thing you know, we had a 40 foot trailer unloading blocks that are building.

Can I, I’m now at begin to ask you super weird questions in a row. Just weird. Okay. So here’s, let’s go first. Weird question. What is something you believe? And you can, if you want to go politics, religion, that’s fine. I will not argue or debate. This is not a trend to ask you a weird question to page into a corner. I’m just asking, is there something that you believe like an alien life or something that you believe where it’s just everyone else thinks you’re crazy but you 100 percent are convinced and convicted that what you believe is real. Is there something that you believe you have that everyone else thinks is crazy?

Oh Man. Um, I don’t know, I mean, I definitely believe there’s no way we are alone in this universe. That’s for sure. You believe that we’re not sick.

All right. So again, the, uh, the thrive nation, that’s, we, we, we’re on the record here. Matt Watson and Clay Clark believe in alien life. And I’m not just saying that because you’ve said it. Chuck noses, every occasionally I’ll kind of, uh, you know, passively aggressively bring up aliens, man, built a company and sold it for $147,000,000 book recommendation. Does he have for you? Stay tuned. You are now entering the Dojo of Mojo and the thrive time show. All right. Thrive nation on today’s show, man Watson is our Super Gasta sky started a company at the age of 22 when he sold the company for $147,000,000 to a company called auto trader dot Com. That company was called Vin solutions and along the way to building his fortune and his success, uh, he learned a lot of principals. And so on today’s show, during this particular segment, I’m asking Mr Matt Watson, what is a book or books that you’d recommend that all of our listeners check out? What are, what are some books, what are some words of wisdom that all of our listeners definitely need to check out thrive nation? Without any further ado, back to our exclusive interview with Mr Matt Watson of the Vin solutions fame. Now he started a company called stackify. Now is there a book or a couple books that you’ve read where you go, no one reads this book? No one, no one reads us. This is not a best seller maybe, but it’s the best or a book where you say that idea or maybe that philosophy that, that, that, that idea is just, I mean, you gotta read that book or you got to read that poem or you got to watch that movie. Is there a piece of media that you think everyone should devour? And then how has it impacted you?

Well, so one thing know about me is I actually hate books. Um, and that’s because I don’t have the attention span for them. I have add or something, I don’t know what it is, but I have read a couple books and there is one that I do really like that I recommend for the right people called rocket fuel. You ever heard of that one?

Rocket fuel. I have not heard of who wrote, who do you know who wrote rocket fuel or are you aware of the, you’re going to put them on the cameras. We can see it there on your shelf there in the bedroom to find it, but uh, it’s all about the dynamic of having like a founder who is kind of the visionary person and then having an operations person that is more organized and detail oriented and the balance of those two people and how they work together to really grow the business.

Is rocket fuel by Gino Wickman? I’m not sure. I think it’s Gino Wickman. If it is Gino Wickman, I can tell you I absolutely endorse Gino Wickman’s books. It says rocket fuel, the one essential combination that will get. That’s it. Okay. Yeah. Gino Wickman is phenomenal. And by the way, that’s how the system that Dr Zellner and Sean Copeland used to run regent bank and all of the companies, they use the system called traction that Gino Wickman writes about in his book, traction. So yes, that’s a great book too. So you. So can we get traction is a good one rocket. Is there a favorite movie you’re into where you go, man, that’s, that thing fires me up. And that thing is just. Oh, that is a good one.

Well, I’m a big fan of westworld. Westworld on HBO. Okay. West. What’s the West world about? A, it’s about the robots they make that are like human, human, like, and you go there and you do whatever you want to him. Really? Okay. Remember, you never seen the old, uh, the old movie or that show on Hbo?

No, I actually, I’m never, uh, I’m am aware of what’s going on. I just do podcast seven days a week and run our companies and I have no clue what’s going on. But I appreciate you educating me and I probably have to check it out here. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll take the recommendation now. A couple more questions. I got here for now. Now Paul has a hot and fresh question ready in just a moment. Here’s the more weird questions for you. Is there a pet peeve in business that just makes you crazy? Like, I call it Jack Ass Surrey, but where you see somebody doing something that is so obviously killing their business and most businesses like it’s, it’s an observation you’ve seen because I’m sure you know, people that have had failing business conferences or companies in the, the uh, the issue is so blatant for you. You’re going, this is what’s causing your failure and it’s so obvious to you, but no one else in the world seems to it. Is there something that you, like, a wealth destruction habit that you, that you notice? I call it Jack Ass, sorry. When I see Jack Jackass rates a wealth repulsion, real wealth repulsion system called Jackass, right? What’s something that you’ve seen?

Well, there’s a couple of things. One is people who work with or family of some form and they have a lot of problems because of that. So like one business that is a customer of mine, the owner and his wife were together and it, it’s like a terrible dynamic. That business would be 100 times better if they didn’t work together. I’m just. Or another guy. No, he worked with his brother and it was just a terrible dynamic. But those are, those are awful. The other one is just in more general is just people that don’t follow up. So many times people just don’t follow up on anything and I think that’s. You got to follow up if you want to get something done,

so don’t follow up. That’s one that’s just just not. You’re just saying, hey, let’s launch this idea, but you don’t put in the calendar to follow up to make sure it got done. Or Hey, let’s push this code, but you didn’t follow up and make sure it gets done. Or Hey, let’s sales.

Any kind of sales lead, anything. You got to follow up on those leads.

You got to follow up. Thrive means you got to follow up. They don’t want us working with family. Now this is the dynamic that my wife and I have the other, we do work together and I’ll tell you, you tell me if this is weird. My wife is really, really good at accounting and I’m really good at most of the aspects of running a company, but I dislike accounting. It’s my least favorite activity and I can trust her and she’s really good at it. So we’ve worked together now for 18 years, but I don’t know that I could work together with any other. I mean if I was married anybody else, I don’t think I can do it, but I can’t work with almost any other family, you know. So there are, there are some members of your family that you’re saying over the years for anybody just down tuning in, you, you’ve worked well with your dad, right? Yeah, I did. Yes. But your dad wasn’t dysfunctional. No. You, that’s very functional. In fact, he’s still with the company is sold. So, uh, I think that the teaching moment for all the listeners out there don’t work with dysfunctional people and for all of that is holy don’t work with dysfunctional family members. I mean, is it, am I missing something there that’s even. Yeah, I mean that makes it even profoundly worse. And it’s one thing to work with terrible employees. It’s 100 times worse if they’re family. It’s, I mean, I’ve, I’ve had family work is like a babysitter or nanny, stuff like that too. That didn’t work out. I mean it’s, it’s so hard to hire and work with family man.

And then what happens is it creates this tension and everybody else sees you either a giving him a hall pass or be tolerating, you know, something that’s crazy. And the attention is weird. It’s just weird. Paul, we have time for two more questions. One from you and one from Eric Chop for Mr. Matt Watson, the founder of Vin Solutions, one of the founders of vin solutions. So Paul, what’s your next question for Mr. Matt? Matt, this is serious. This is serious. This has to do with our future. Oh boy. Artificial intelligence, are we going to be take, is the world going to be taken over by artificial intelligence?

I don’t think so. No.

Okay, well hot take hot tub. This just in hot take. Matt Watson says the world will not be overtaken by artificial intelligence breathing a sigh of relief. Um, that, that helps. I was, which is good because I have artificial intelligence. I’m actually quite dumb. Jokes back to you. Okay. Earlier in the interview, Matt, you had talked about how it’s super important to have the people around you that you can trust. So when you’re hiring or looking within to promote for those people that you can then delegate to and manage, what are a couple of things that you specifically are looking for in those people?

You know, we interviewed somebody recently here and um, you know, one thing I always think about and I think about this and everything life about light about in life now is do I like it or do I love it? Like when I interview somebody, do I like this person or do I love this person? And I actually learned this from my interior decorator who was helping me, like, do you like the couch or love the couch because she was like, you can find lots of things that you like, that you rarely find something that you love. And I, I think about that now when I hire employees too, it’s like, do I really love this person? Am I willing to go to war with this person and be in the foxhole with them?

You just never know. You know, Dr Zellner my partner, he says all the time, he says either it’s either hell yes or no. Like the default is no for him on everything. So it’s like, Hey, do you want to go with me to go watch it? A Dallas cowboys game? And he’s always, you’ll think about it and you’ll notice he’s thinking but as default is always going to be no. And it’s interesting because then if he ever says yes, he’s like all in for me, I always wanted, um, I stuttered as a kid. I wanted to be liked as a kid. I struggled with being liked as a young kid when I built my business. I wanted people to appreciate my company, which took years to become profitable, so I became very good at being a yes man. You’re just saying yes to everything, you know. Oh yeah. That’d be a good fit. That’s a good employee. That’s going to be a good opportunity. That’s good. If you say yes to too many things, then your life gets kind of crazy. So can you kind of educate us on what? What kind of things you say? No. To get ready to enter the thrive time. Show on talk radio. 11 70.

All right. Thrive nation. On today’s show we’re interviewing Mr Matt Watson about his company called Vin solutions. Vin solutions is a company he started at the young age of 22 years old. His first, his first employee was his father and he actually sold the company for $147,000,000 to auto trader. And on today’s show he’s breaking down the life and times of vin solutions and what he’s working on now. But as we get back to this particular portion of the interview, Steve Currington, what he’s doing is he’s talking about the kinds of things he says no to, right? Um, when you first start in business or in the world of Steve, you have to say yes to pretty much everything, right? Which is the opposite of what you have to do as you start to scale a company. Right? When you first started a company, it’s like anybody at all who wants a mortgage, if they have like a 410 a credit score and you’re like, well, we can work with that.

You’re trying to help through credit repair. You’re trying to meet them, you’re trying to live coaching, you’re trying to get them off drugs, find them a job. I mean, you’re just trying to like. But as you grow the company now, total lending concepts, you still work with people, but now you have to be more selective on when you first are hiring your first employee, you, you don’t really know what you’re doing kinda like you do not know what to expect when you go to the first business conferences. So you have to say yet it’s almost like you know one person and you hire that person. Yeah. Sort of like, can I come in late all week this week? Sure. Because you have no other options. Right? But as you begin to scale and grow a company, you have to become very, very good at saying no. Steve, can you talk to me about some of the things that you’ve had to learn to say no to either personally or professionally to grow your career and your company?

Total lending concepts, networking, lunches and breakfast. Lunch with anyone in general. Ever. I’ve had to say no to a have done that in the last couple of years. This part of my, I’m embracing that has been due to my coaching with you clay. But um, yeah. Previously you’d gone on some serious. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you like it’s a half day because you, it takes you 30 minutes to get there to play lunch real quick. Oh yeah. This is what happens at lunch. Typically you go to a lunch. It’d be Kinda weird if this music was playing, but we’ll just kind of work with me on this. You go to them,

this restaurant or Michael and they say guys, table for two or a table for you. Oh actually it’s for three or waiting on the third time. The lunch meetings. Twelve you left drops at 1130, 12, 10. Some guy goes, guys, I’m sorry. There was some traffic guys. I mean I, I had to drive from cheeks. You hear a soul say though I didn’t prepare, but then so about 12, 10. They sit in and you guys will look at some menus or can I get you started with the beverage and you’re going to probably shouldn’t have a beer, have a ticket. And the other person says, let’s take a water too stickler for following your queue. And then they look at. You look around and go, guys, so what’s going on? What’s happening? They start talking about their kids. It was their first day of school I was in when they were in Clinton is one of the things this happened that happened, but now it’s like 1230 or 12:00 meeting guys can get you started with an appetite music. Well, well yeah. Kind of on a diet I shouldn’t, but let’s go ahead and get what do you got to chose?

Get the NACHOS and no one wants to be the first one to dive into. The digest will say set out checks out. Really? No one’s having the nonsense, but you’re the first one you reach over and they’re like, well, the dam has been broken by salt water. It’s usually because I’m the one paying. Right? So now I’ll say, have you chose. Did they come back? This is like round three guys. You ready a place that order you say, absolutely. Let’s get the fish tacos. What do you want Greg? While I’d have to look at it some more. I really been in this compensation, so now it’s like 12, 12:00 meeting. Now it’s like all of a sudden you get the food, you get the food, eating some food, and about the last what, two minutes of the meeting somebody brings up, so guys, guys really alone trying to do is I’m trying to get you guys to refer us some more real estate list. I’d like to get some more referrals. Now. The ethics laws as they may be state that you cannot directly refer me exclusively, but I would like if your mortgage company being very successful as it is, I’d love it if you’d refer me potential deals inside is want to know what kind of support can we plan on Nigga?

Sorry guys. Like I guess I’m sorry, I gotta take this call. So all of a sudden third party disappears to tell you to call. The waitress says, so you guys and it was all the or on or yeah, we’re together but we’re not together. We’re, you know. And so there’s that kind of confusion where Greg says, I’ll paste it and use it in an album. I got it. But secretly you’re. If your soul was talking to your soul would say,

I hope because at no point they pay attention during this meeting and then the waitress has this car, sorry, who’s going to pay? And you’re like, I have to go to the bathroom so you can go to the bathroom. Right? The other guy’s like, well, I guess bullpen. Then you leave and that there’s no out happened, happened and it’s a full hour of your time today. You gotta drive back to your office. So it’s 1:30 now. Cheap. Lost two hours of your day. Steve. How many times have you had that? Walk me through how many times you’ve had that kind of interaction play. I can’t. I’ll get to pr. I mean, I honestly just like that you say you my thing. I used to take a lot of people to lunch, so it was like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of you read a day where you took two people to lunch at the same.

In the same day I’ve had. Yes, but I’ve also had it where I’ve gone to lunch thinking I was going with one person. Oh, and the realtor that I was buying lunch for got there early and drinking on my tab and invited two friends who also start doing on my end, so I think I’m having like a one on one lunch with this realtor and then I get a $250 bill from my country club because they drank for two hours beforehand after. And I wish I could say that what you just said was abnormal. No, but that’s what it is and I’m just telling Ya, you, if you’re a business owner, you’ve got to quit wasting your time. So as an action item, write down the things in your schedule right now that you need to do you need.

Do you need to start saying no to and take some notes as Mr Matt Watson breaks down how he built a $147 million dollar. And one way he did it is by saying no. What kind of things do you have to say no to, to build a $147,000,000 company that you sell to auto trader? Back to our interview with Mr Matt Watson. So can you kind of educate us on what, what kind of things you say no to different investment opportunities? For sure. Um, some friends, some spending time with family, like if it’s people that to your point, like you’re not really excited to do something. Um, the other thing that I feel like the more things you have in life, the more things you have to be stressed out about. Um, so I, I by default want fewer things. I want fewer things to be stressed out, reach that place, pre breached that, that’s powerful because some people think like, oh, I have all this money, like I want to go have all these vacation homes and all this stuff. And I’m like, no, I don’t want any of that crap. Because then I got to deal with paying bill sport and figuring out if it’s got broken into and maintenance of it and all this crap. I don’t wanna deal with any of it.

There’s an author by the name of Gretchen Rubin who did a project called the happiness project and it’s done in a case study format. Name’s Gretchen Rubin. She’s been on the Tim Ferriss podcast. I’m eventually gonna get her on our podcast. It’s going to happen. And Gretchen Rubin, I will book you on our business conferences podcast, but she has a, um, a book that she wrote, a book called the happiness project where she surveys and interviews just thousands of people and the happiest people, Matt too, just to pile on what you’re saying are the ones who own the least amount of things they have to maintain or have the least amount of obligations. Now there are people that like to travel, but they just don’t have 400 rental homes. They’re trying to manage her. And so to your point, she talks about how it’s okay to have a great house, but you have to maintain the house.

It’s okay to have a great boat, but you have to maintain the boat. So she would argue that it’s been proven. If you leased the vote for the week, that’s a better movie even though it costs more, but you don’t have to maintain it or think about it. And so that’s a, a powerful nugget of knowledge. My friend. I’m going to let you have the final word here. Is there a word of encouragement you have for all the listeners or an action step that you would encourage all of our business owners, the hundreds of thousands of folks who download this. Do you have any word of encouragement or advice? One final tip that you want to give to our listeners?

I guess just anybody who’s an entrepreneur or just a. it’s a lot of hard work, but it’s worth it if you’ve got the entrepreneurial spirit just gets keep chipping away and find the right partners and people to help you.

Matt, I appreciate you for being on the show and I promise your day your day will get better. This was the worst part of your day. Don’t get better from a hint. Henceforth here. So thank you again for investing your time and for being on today’s show.

Absolutely. Thanks much. Take care.

Steve Currington. Do think it’s a wise move to be proactive about your accounting? Uh, yeah, definitely. So let’s just say hypothetically, you’re out there listening and you’re saying, I’m behind on my taxes. I’m behind. Uh, well I would recommend that you would reach out to an accountant who is as proactive as you are in the only accountant that I up close and personal. Lily, lily accountants. I’ve known up close and personal over the years, uh, over the years are two accountants. I’ve known a guy by the name of Frank Biscuit, who’s my accountant for years. And Mr Paul Hood. Now, Paul Hood is a proud show sponsor. He’s a great guy and he’s going to give you a free copy of Warren Buffett’s only authorized biography. So the only authorized, it’s the only authorized book is going to give you a free copy of the book called snowball. If you simply reach out to them and hood Cpas Dot com today and you schedule a free consultation with our good, our good friends at Hood Cpas Dot Com. So again, if you’re looking for a free copy of Warren Buffett’s only authorized biography and you’re looking to find an accountant who is as proactive as you are, you can get both by going to hood CPAS DOT com. Do you know the average American business, Steve has less than the average American person has less than $400 saved. That’s pretty sad, but true. Yeah. Nine out of 10 businesses fail according to Forbes. Yeah. Nine point eight. Well, let’s. Let’s stop the bleeding. Let’s go to [inaudible] dot com. Let’s get proactive.

You have about our accounting 10, 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 us proof that you did it, and your contact information to [email protected]. All right, thrive nation. Welcome back to the mat in

mat edition of the thrive time show on your radio on segment number one. We interviewed Mr Matt Watson, who started a company at the young age of 22 and whose first employee was his father, and then he sold the company for $147 million dollars. Stephen took him seven years to make a profit, not seven months. He didn’t give up after seven months, seven years, Steve, to make a profit. And then when he did, boy, did he make a profit seven years to make a profit. Um, I think if you’re out there listening and you say, Gosh, I would like to make a profit, and maybe six months or maybe a year. Yeah, not in seven years, you’re probably better suited to buy a franchise. Right? And a franchise is awesome because you get all the proven systems, uh, as part of what you’re paying for the proven systems. You’re sort of paying for your time. [inaudible] they already did the seven years of no profit. Right? And so on today’s show, we’re interviewing Mr Matt Klein. Now, Matt Klein is a wonderful guy. He’s actually the franchise development director for oxy fresh, which means that if you want to buy an Oxi fresh franchise, uh, first off, you have to about 50 to $60,000 available and you have to be awarded a franchise. They have to have a lot of confidence that you will run the company successfully. But if they, uh, uh, decide that it’s maybe a good fit for them and a good fit for you, the next step is you book a trip called a discovery day where you fly out to Denver, Colorado after looking at your franchise disclosure document to, to actually see the call center and operation. You can see the p, the technicians cleaning the carpet. You can see the entire operations, how Oxi fresh runs, and you can decide whether it’s worth investing your money and your time into buying a franchise. But oxi fresh has been the solution of choice for over 400 locations throughout the country. As of the time of today’s recording, there’s over 137,000 favorable google reviews about oxy fresh. And so now, ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, back to our exclusive interview with Mr Matt Klein from oxyfresh.

All right, thrive nation. Welcome back to the Mat Mat edition of the thrive time show on your radio. For those of you just now tuning in on the first half of today’s program, we interviewed a guy by the name of Matt Watson who started a home based business at the age of 22 years old as a coder and he sold his company for a whopping $147,000,000 to auto trader. Thank you. Thank you. So now we want to do is we want to one up him and we want to have Matt Klein, the franchise director here. Batting cleanup from oxy fresh. Matt Klein, how are you? My friend Matt. He’s so fine. They named him Klein. Oh, there he is.

No, no. I’m, I’m excited about today’s podcast. And what kind of questions you guys go.

Yes. I have eight questions today, but before I tee up the first question, uh, it really, we like to do wins of the week here, man. We’d like to, whenever possible, we like to celebrate the successful entrepreneurs and I think the whole Oxi fresh. If I had to describe the Oxi fresh Franchisees, I would call you guys diligent doers. That’s what we call the franchisees. I mean, the people who buy an Oxi fresh, some of the hardest working folks out there, there are people that have wanted to own their own business. They’ve wanted to have time freedom. So I’m going to let you think about it for a second here. Kind of get, get yourself mentally prepared to deliver the win of the week chunk because you know what time it is. It’s time for.

Give him the.

All right, Mr Matt Klein. What does an Oxi fresh big Franchisee win of the week?

Um, we have a very unique opportunity with an individual in Canada this week. Um, his name is William. He’s just outside of Ottawa. Canada is a pretty tough thing for us just because the exchange rate right now, what he believes and occupies so much and we’ve been able to work it out with him so he’s to have some multiple territories out there in, in Canada. We’re really looking to grow that market as it’s very similar to the United States and how we operate. We can operate the same way as we do our franchisees here in the states. So for that piece of it, we’re very excited and when we can add the Canadian franchise to grow that brand there is, we’re still kind of small there. Um, we have about 15 units out there, so every year we add a few obviously, so we’re very excited about that.

But also we have a new franchisee coming in, um, in the Iowa market, um, this week as well. So two good wins. It’s always nice to have new people coming out to Oxford is going through training, coming on board. The guy in Iowa, he used to travel three hours a day to go to work and back. So for him to talk about time freedom, that’s a pretty big one, right? Traveling all over in a car, spending most of his time in a car. He’s got a wife and kids. So for him this has been a very delightful change for him to be able to take control of his life and get some time back.

Was he a nascar driver? Was that why he was in the car so much?

Boy, you are the oil field. I wouldn’t have three hours drive if he was

jump, you know, the top five most dangerous aspects of opening a franchise in Canada, one of those, uh, one, it’s the exchange rate. That’s one, that’s one there. That’s the one that’s going to make it tough. The second that’s obvious stuff. The second is, is dd dangerous? Raptors are everywhere. The mounties, think about the mounties and then Justin Bieber. There’s believers everywhere trying to block your business. Alana’s Morrissette. Her songs are kind of dark. Isn’t it ironic in any song that Bryan Adams ever produced? I mean, that’s that, but that’s what makes it dangerous. But besides that, it’s a great economy for doing business. Congratulations to our potential oxi fresh franchisee in Canada. Just moving through the adversity, fighting through the dangerous raptors. We move on to question number two. Hey Matt, according to Forbes, 67 percent of people out there want to own their own business. Again, according to Forbes, 67 percent of Americans want to own their business. According to research. I haven’t done 67 point eight, four or five percent of Canadians want to own their own business. That’s just research, I haven’t done that. Just American 67 percent. So from your experience as the director of the franchise development for oxy fresh, why do most franchisees want to buy an Oxi fresh business to begin with? Why do people want to do it?

Do you want to own their business? They just don’t know what they want to own or how they want to own it or what time they can commit to that business, but when there’s a few things that specifically come up, one is the ability to get with a brand that understands marketing so that they don’t have to do that. I mean marketing is evolving daily. We’re seeing things change. Um, you know, certainly quarterly in a manner where it can shift your focus of what you need to be concentrating on. So having our team put that on their back and figure those things out and have the, the resources available. So our franchise, you can take advantage of those changing patterns. That’s a big one mostly as a franchisee. Yeah.

I want to pile on that real quick. With the skype, there’s a little bit of a delay sometimes. I did not mean to cut you off. Is it okay. This is a good time for me to insert a little anecdotal evidence inserted. When I first met Jonathan Barnett, um, she was, uh, running a firework stand and I first met him before that at oral Roberts University. So I met him at university. Then he had a firework stand, the founder of Oxi fresh, and he was using that money to eventually start Oxi fresh when he started oxi fresh. My man, Jonathan Barnett, the founder of Oxi fresh, was going door to door. So here’s what the marketing technology used to sound like when you guys first started, hey, are you looking to a cleaner carpet? That was the technology. Then he moved into mailers, mailers, remember Matt Mailers, the world of mailers, everything was mailers.

There was still a little bit of yellow page ads going out there. Then the internet, the search engine optimization. But what happened is John has been a visionary and he’s decided to stay ahead of the curve. And so the Oxi fresh franchisees don’t have to. And I think you guys have really, really done a good job of navigating the constantly changing technology. I just want to ask you, as a Franchisee, how does that get, because you aren’t. You sell franchises. Yes, but you actually own a franchise. You owned franchises. How does that give you confidence knowing that Jonathan Barnett and the business conferences leadership team is constantly staying on the forefront of that ever changing marketing technology?

I’m hearing new things that are coming into my office either from Jonathan or from our team or from our vendors that are out there saying this is the next phase. Right? So we’re working on things currently right now that we will be launching in the next few months. It allows our franchisees to do the next level of marketing. Right? That’s coming out that I haven’t heard anyone else thinking about talking about when I go online right now to my areas where I serve as my customers. I am the number one carpet cleaner on search engines and I literally run this business from 45 minutes away and in the Oxi fresh home headquarters. So talking about where I am and how I’m running my business and I have guys out there fully, you know, doing jobs everyday while I’m talking to individuals about, about being an ACO franchise. That’s pretty powerful to me to be able to do both things. That only happens because we are ahead of the curve for marketing. We’re not trying to catch up.

That’s pretty important too. I want to impress this. I call this mat the Oxi fresh super marketing tests. Kim Kim, will you participate with me in the Oxi fresh super marketing test? Here’s what I’m going to do. Chip, I want all the listeners to do this here. I want all the listeners, Matt, Matt, you’re a listener to so once you to pull up your computer and you type in carpet cleaning quotes now, now you do the same thing chopped down because here we are typing it in and for accountability, I’m typing it in shop. You’re, you’re tapping on pulling up on the big screen. Matt’s them on his screen. There’s so many thoughts wrong. Come on. Who’s coming up top in the world for the phrase oxy? Fred, for the phrase, carpet cleaning quotes, it’s Oxi fresh. Not only that, but the top three, top three listing on pay. Now, Matt, uh, is that ethical? I mean, you guys have 137,000 reviews. I mean, is that fair for the other guys? I mean, what about the other guys? You guys are dominate, deserves some time. It’s impressive.

What are we doing?

Cleaning system works, right? I mean, you, you’re not getting there first and foremost if the actual clinic, because it was work because because this is being driven by website traffic and our consumer or our customers being able to give us reviews. It’s two sided, right? We’re going to do the marketing, but you also have to do a good job say to the system, understand the value that we have over our competition. We put all those things together. That’s why we show up and that’s why I will continue to show up. So yeah, I mean there’s all sorts of other marketing avenues out there, but this one right here who will sustain your business for the, for the longterm.

And you just. I was just talking to Jonathan today about this, but you guys do retargeting ads. Your franchisees can do add builders that can log onto a portal. I mean, there’s so many marketing, turnkey marketing tools that all your franchisees have at their fingertips all available through a single sign on. You just go up to the website, you log in, boom. If you’re a franchise that you have access to a, a goldmine of tools and resources. Um, obviously there are hundreds of oxy fresh franchisees this point. Um, but what do, what do the most Oxi fresh franchisees love about owning an Oxi fresh? I know there’s, there’s hundreds of them, a lot of different opinions out there, but you have your finger on the pulse. You meet the people at the annual conferences. What is the word in the street? What do people love the most about owning an Oxi fresh franchisee? Once a owning oxi fresh franchise, once they get it up in orbit and it’s actually working and profitable, what do they love most about their business?

And you are going to get some different answers, but I hear the most is man, that call center is really helpful to my business, right? Our national call center is so great because from day one you have a professional staff that’s versed in the language of carpet cleaning and that sounds weird, but I mean when you first own this business, you’re not going to know exactly how to speak about it, right? So from day one you have people answering the phones for you, giving quotes, explaining oxi fresh and our cleaning system and putting jobs in your schedule. She can go do that. That is such a powerful tool because it doesn’t matter if you have one or 10 your time commitment on that piece in the back office admin and hiring staff. You don’t have to do that.

When we returned back to our exclusive interview with Matt Klein, the franchise development director of Oxy, oxy fresh

attended the world’s best business workshop, led by America’s number one business conferences leader for free by subscribing on itunes and leaving us an objective review. Claim your tickets by emailing us proof that you did and your contact information to [email protected]. All right, thrive nation. Welcome back to the business conferences style conversation. It is the thrive time show on your radio. And on today’s show we’re talking, uh, it’s, it’s the Matton Mat edition, the m and m edition. On the first segment of today’s show, we were doing part two of our interview with Mr Matt Watson, who started a company and then sold it for $147 million dollars to auto trader. That company was called Vin Solutions Dot com. If you’re looking at on your, you’re looking that up on your Internet machine. That’s vin solutions. If you’re looking at a looking at up on your Internet machine. Now on part two of the show, we’re interviewing Mr Matt Klein, the franchise development director with oxy fresh, a franchise brand that offers both time freedom and financial freedom to the, uh, potential time freedom and financial freedom to the potential owners of oxy fresh. Essentially, if you buy the Oxi fresh franchise, they offer you turn key marketing, cutting edge carpet cleaning technology that uses a 10th of the water of their nearest competitor and a call center to answer your phone and to schedule your appointments on your behalf so you don’t have to staff the people, hire the people, train the people you can just focus on cleaning carpets in, training people to clean carpets.

Steve Currington, why is it such a big value to buy an Oxi fresh and have a call center answering your phones for you?

Well, I think the big point and when I visited the Oxi fresh Carl Center, uh, uh, twice in Denver to as we were building out our call center, the interesting thing for me is what you just said to answer your phone, because that’s the big difference in the brand that they built is I was going there thinking, okay, well what systems are using and tracking and all that, but you know, we make a lot of outbound calls on our call center, right? Take a lot of incoming calls and their call center. That’s because, as of right now, 130, 7,799 reviews,

unbelievable. Almost 138,000 Google reviews, which means Oxi fresh now comes up top in Google search results when you type in the phrase carpet

cleaning quotes. Yeah. And I’ve been tracking this since I became a thrive client a few years ago and learn this and just watching them grow. And so as we build our google reviews and we think we’re hot because we have, you know, however many we have as a company, you always closer to 700, I believe it’s a company. So. Exactly. And so, but when you compare to them, I literally looked last week clay, I looked because I was using as a point where one of my realtors I work with that had done a pretty good job. He’s got about 40 and I said, let’s compare you this week to oxy fresh. And uh, I looked at it today and I think they’ve had 286 reviews since we looked like five days ago. Five days and five days of that. So I think the call center is a huge value because they’ve already built all the systems and already probably already have people calling in and whatever market that you’re in for carpet cleaning and they don’t have a location there yet.

So that’s what was really cool to see that all the processes and systems and the call recording and and they did say that they will make some outbound calls unlike when their call volume gets high and if they’re, you know, if there’s some need to call back or it’s an online quote where someone didn’t finish the online quote and they need to be called a finalized. But that’s a really great place to be as a company when you’re presence is that great online that you’re no longer have a call center to make outbound calls to acquire customers, but they’re actually calling in to hire you.

And I would just say if you’re buying an Oxi fresh franchise, I mean it’s at $60,000 or less that. That includes the working capital. That’s, that’s less money than to buy a really low quality condominium. And Tulsa, Oklahoma. You could be buying a business that will provide both time freedom and financial freedom for your family if you work the business, but you’ve got to supply the effort. The systems work. Yeah, the system works, but you’ve got to supply the efforts. Now that he further ado back to our exclusive interview with Mr Matt Klein from oxy fresh and beautiful Denver, Colorado,

we have that already set up for you. It’s always going to be, you know, ranking repeat with that. So we track everything from customer satisfaction or actual information so you can utilize that to freely market to them from that point forward. That’s, that’s, that’s pretty great for all of our franchisees. That’s one. The other is just the cleaning system. Um, you know, because everyone’s working on their marketing with our team all the time. It does get lost in the shuffle because you just keep growing. Although it’s so, so important. But really what we’re seeing is when you own your own business, you’re never going to have more pride than you know, other than maybe your family and friends and things like that. But when you can actually deliver on the promise of what your consumers are seeing online and and other people’s, you know, peer to peer reviews, when you can get those people say, you know what, I got this company, I used them for a reason and they delivered. That makes you feel good about your business and what you bought and going back out to other customers as well.

One thing that that blew my mind, it makes it so easy to refer people to oxy fresh without reservation at all is when you look at the size of the vehicle you have to be to be a professional carpet cleaner versus to be a professional oxi fresh cleaner. The technology you have and any. Correct me if I’m wrong, it uses like a 10th of the water to an eighth of the water of most competitors and the vehicles are significantly smaller so you don’t have to go out there and buy a massive vehicle. The carpets aren’t wet after you cleaned the carpet for like days. I mean the Oxi fresh technology. It’s truly remarkable technology. I think sometimes we lose matt sometimes. The so I mean you, you are in it every day, but I think from the outside I almost lose how impressive that was the first time I saw the difference between what kind of vehicle you needed to buy to be a franchisee of other carpet cleaning companies and then how much water you guys don’t use. I mean you guys are seriously reducing the amount of water comes. Are you using like a 10th of the water at this point or an eighth of the water? I mean it’s impressive how green Oxi fresh truly is.

Yeah, that’s a good point. We don’t talk about it enough because there’s a few things to know when people get their carpets cleaned or if they’ve never used oxy fresh battened down the hatches. They’re getting ready and prepared for this person to come in where they’re a huge vehicle. Multiple people coming in dragging hoses to your home on average using anywhere between 40 to 50 gallons of water on your, on your carpets, right? I mean, if you didn’t know anything about carpet cleaning, you’d probably want to use a restoration company when they left a lot of water and that’s why it takes so long for that, for it to dry. Well, when Oxi fresh comes in, we come in with a small fuel efficient vehicle, no hoses whatsoever, so that keeps your scaling costs down because you only need one person per vehicle. We’re going to use one to two gallons on a typical five room home because of that.

And because of our unique cleaning products that are EPA certified green, safe for kids and pets, we can go in, get it done, be out of there and your kids and your pets can literally be on the carpet immediately after and you can feel comfortable being safe. Right? That’s a, that’s a pretty powerful thing because people now can get their jobs on anytime, no matter if their family’s home or not. Right? So we have more flexibility with our consumers, our customers residentially and commercially and when we can do it, um, throughout the week. So. So it is very, very powerful for us.

That’s amazing. That’s cool. Matt, Eric here, I’ve got a question for you and I’ve been talking to clay about this and the cool thing in my mind about a franchise is that you’re literally buying your time back. You’re skipping the first three, four, five years off of building a business. It’s already taken care of. You don’t have to design a website or coded out. You don’t have to. You’d have to figure out your no brainer. You don’t have to write a script or build a sales system. That talked to us a little bit of how about how awesome as a franchise owner it is to hit the fast forward button by buying an Oxi fresh franchise.

Yep. It is pretty awesome. And go out there and say, you know, from day one you have millions of dollars worth of technology at your fingertips. I’m the sign on platform that clay mentioned a little earlier ago that is unique.

We’re had to create both time freedom and financial freedom

with Matt Klein from oxy return. So take your talk about me. I can take that. The forced back, I wasn’t going to. Nation building systems is very challenging to talk to.

Great. All of the technology of a business. As an example, if you were to buy an Oxi fresh franchise today, say you were to reach out and buy an Oxi fresh franchise, let’s take about all the things you have to keep updated that relate to technology. You’ve got to keep your yelp account Steve updated. Yup. You’ve got to keep your Google Account Review updated. Yup. You gotta. Keep your facebook account updated. You’ve got to keep your twitter account updated. You’ve got to keep your mass emailing system updated your website. You’ve got to keep your website updated. You’ve got to keep your youtube update all these passwords so it can. It can overwhelm you. Oh yeah. Instagram. There’s a lot of things, so oxi fresh. The franchise takes care of that for you. If you buy an Oxi fresh franchise and for less than $60,000, you have access to the turnkey marketing, to the systems and entire support staff needed to help you grow your company.

And now with 400 successful locations up and operation and 137,000 plus reviews, it is now conclusive that the system works. It’s proven, the system works. So what are all the different aspects of an Oxi fresh franchise? How does the technology all worked together? Well, on today’s show, on part two of today’s show, we’re interviewing Mr Matt Klein, who is a franchise developer. What he does is if you’re looking to buy an Oxi fresh franchise, you simply go to thrive time show.com, forward slash oxi fresh. That’s thrive time show.com forward slash oxi fresh. You fill out the form and Matt and Mike and a member of their team will call you and they’re going to see if you’re a good fit to buy an Oxi fresh that go over all the numbers with you, that governor, all the systems, and they’re going to provide you with a thing called a franchise disclosure document.

FDD, which the federal government requires you to have in your possession for two weeks previous to you being allowed to buy a franchise. They care so much about the integrity of buying a franchise that the federal government is involved there. I mean that’s how it works with the federal government cares so much about people not being manipulated or scammed and they’re really, they’re involved and making sure that franchises are. It’s a heavily regulated industry, so I would encourage you today to go to thrive time show.com forward slash oxi fresh to request some more information and a Mac client or a member of his team at oxy fresh and did rick, Colorado will call you. So now that any further into back into our discussion about the technology and the systems needed to run a successful oxi fresh franchise.

The single sign on platform that clay mentioned a little earlier that is unique to us out of the box platform. We built it from scratch to be tailored to our specific business and how we operate day to day. You’re not gonna have to jump from platform to platform. We’re going to have everything sitting right there for you from your tracking, your customer satisfaction scores, your marketing Roi, ordering product, creating marketing collateral, having complete flexibility of your daily schedule, weekly scheduled monthly schedule, all right there, and it’s mobile friendly, right? That’s one piece of it. When you extend it, extend it further, and then you realize that you don’t have to worry about building your website, hiring a technology person to keep it up to date, staying up to date on Google and their trends and understanding exactly what the difference between a subway is an oxi fresh and being able to take advantage of those differences because your competition is not right. Understanding yelp and the changing behaviors of yelled customers, understanding the next phase, which is Alexa, and being able to talk into a lesson saying, who’s car, who’s the best car cleaner around me? How do you get a response back that your company, we know how to do that. All those things you know out of the box.

No, here is here. I’m going to get into the negative questions now that we’ve talked about the positive aspects of owning the Oxi fresh and there are many, but from your perspective, what’s the most challenging aspect of owning an Oxi fresh franchise for most firms? You know when people first by the franchise and they say, Oh, this is because I think you do a very good job setting the expectations for how hard it’s going to be or how easy it’s going to be, but what is the most challenging aspect of owning an Oxi fresh franchise?

Yup. There’s two of them and I hear them all the time. One is your initial first three months. Everyone wants to grow faster than they are going to grow. It’s just natural, right? So just understanding the patient. Every business is gonna have a ramp up here. Ours is very similar. Ours is very small in terms of a ramp up period, but there still will be one. Okay, so just follow the systems. It will happen. It will grow and you’ll take off. But most people specifically on our investment level have never hired or managed people before and if they have, that’s a bonus, but really engaging with that employee, finding the right person for the job as well as who will work for good with you as an owner. I think people miss that. They just say, oh, this is a great candidate, but you really hadn’t gotten to know them enough to see if they’re gonna be able to work great with you. So hiring is always a challenge for any company, any business, even fortune $500 to replace the eels all the time. We’re no different. You got to find the right people that understand the expectations. They’re are going to be able to work with you to a common goal of growing your growing your franchise and you will find those people to work with you. So I have to say hiring is always a big challenge for any business. And we’re no different.

You know, I want to hammer home the concept you just spoke about. Whenever you grow a business and you start an Oxi fresh, let’s say you open up an Oxi fresh today in your city, by the way, you need to go to thrive time show.com, forward slash Oxi, fresh to fill out the form to see if they even have a territory available for you. If they’ve already, they’ve already sold one in your area, then you’re not. It’s not even an option, so see if they have one available for you. But what happens is when you buy a business, what happens is you don’t have any word of mouth to start, so yeah, you’re top in Google and yeah, you’re getting leads, but once you tell a customer, there’s a thing called the net promoter score that Harvard has written about in great detail, but basically mad if you will, a customer.

They typically tell a friend. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to go run around going, man, this carpet cleaning system is awesome. You guys see fresh, fresh on my head. I was telling Brad got embroid it on my skull. It’s awesome. Very few people. I mean run around a speaking prophetically about oxy fresh, but people who, if they are wowed on average, they’ll tell one to two people so you didn’t. They, they tell people so year to have an Oxi. Fresh is awesome because now you’re getting the word of mouth. It’s really exciting. Now, hiring people, a chap, I want you to put this on the show notes so that people understand that Matt knows what he’s talking about. According to the United States Chamber of Commerce and a study that they did with CBS News, I’ll put this on the show notes. Seventy five percent of American employees that were videotaped and surveyed admitted to stealing from the workplace.

Seventy five percent and 80 percent of people according to ink magazine totally made up their resume. So I say that to say what Matt said is correct and if you’re not used to managing people, you got to understand there are some really great people, but you have to sift through a lot of resumes. Interview a lot of candidates, do a lot of on the job training. It’s just not boom, throw up an ad, hire the first guy that applies, boom, I’m done. So managing people’s more difficult than people think, and the second year of an Oxi fresh or any franchise you buy is always awesome because now you’re getting that word of mouth. That law of reciprocity is beginning. People are talking about it. It really is a neat time. Then that second year, really the second year is where the fun begins. Now, what makes oxi fresh different from other franchises or carpet cleaning companies? Man,

piggybacking off of just what you said about hiring the right people is even even when you do that, you’re not starting on your own trying to figure it out. We have very, very good hiring platform.

Hiring people can be hiring good vendors, can be even more tough. I encourage you to check out onyx imaging.com today. That’s onyx imaging.com. If you want to hire a vendor that will help you save both time and money with your office and printer supplies and for limited

time, they’re going to send you a free copy printer with your order. Stay tuned. Want to attend the legendary thrive time show business workshop for free. Subscribe on Itunes, leave an objective review and send this confirmation at Info at thrive time. Show.com to claim your tickets. I want to live in a van down by the river. Come by and see us in our river walk offices and we’ll be able to make your dreams come true. Right. Looking

back to the conversation, my name is Clay Clark. I’m joined today with Steve Currington of total lending concepts. And we’re talking today, uh, we’re interviewing today, Mr Matt Klein with oxy fresh, the franchise development director for oxy fresh franchise systems based in Denver, Colorado. And uh, Steve, I would like for you to share your experience before we get back into this next segment of today’s podcast, why it can be so hard to find and hire good people because Oxi fresh offers a turnkey business conferences system for even hiring people, right? Why is it so hard today to find and hire good people? Not, not impossible, but hard. Well, I think from a business owner standpoint, you just have to be consistent. And the reason why it’s hard to find good people is because people only look when they are in the need for good people. So whenever a key person leaves or when they think of key persons leave or maybe they move on for good reason, there’s no problem.

They just take another job, move out of the state, whatever happens. Then you come into that need and then you’re like, crap, I really need to hire someone. And when you’ve got a system and a process that’s in place where you’re constantly looking at new talent and you’re constantly interviewing people. You. This reminds me the other day, we had a listener. This is probably what, five months ago, six months ago, we had a listener who had heard us talking about Williams contracting on the show and this is one of our clients that our show sponsor and they build commercial buildings. So if you want to add onto your office or building, I mean, I don’t know how often you want to do that. Probably once every 10 years you want to add onto your building or office. Right? But they were listening and they heard someone mentioned, hey, will dash [inaudible] dot com?

Write that down. Well then they’re, they’re meeting with their team and somebody brought up, hey, we’re looking to hire someone to add on, do we know anybody that’s really built big buildings, you know, substantial buildings. And the listener had written it down, put it in her wallet and said, yeah, we’ll dash con that. That’s the company Williams contract. And you should call these guys out here. I’m on the radio all the time. Yeah, I’ve heard of one is I’ve heard them on before. I’ve heard of them share their story. I’ve been to their site. So advertising and recruiting are the kind of the same thing. You, you just can’t ever stop. Right. And I think it’s pretty awesome that Oxi fresh actually the time and the money to invest in creating a turnkey system for their franchisees to help them recruit good people. Because Steve, writing the ad copy could be a difficult thing.

Knowing where to post, how to post, when to post, how much to spend, how often to run it. It can be overwhelming. So if you’re out there and you’re saying, gosh, I, you know what, I just want time freedom and financial freedom and I want a proven turnkey system to help me do it. I would humbly submit that. One great option for you to check out today is Oxi fresh.com. It’s [inaudible] dot com. Read the reviews, do your research, and if you want to request for more information, go to thrive time, show.com forward slash oxi fresh, or if you want to make it difficult to track and just go to oxy fresh.com and request some franchising and probation and uh, we, a member of our team will get in touch with you as soon as possible. Now, without any further ado, back to our exclusive interview with Matt Klein from oxy fresh as he explains the technology and the systems they use to help you hire good people. If you decide to become a member of the Oxi fresh Franchisee t,

very, very good job postings. I mean, when you think about, you go out there on like indeed and you put certain industries in there, I’m, you’ll have 50 different, you know, jobs you can look for, there’s no description. Do you have no idea what you’re actually signing up for, what you’re putting your resume to, you know, people want to be very, um, they’re passionate about their jobs and what they’re doing specifically. They’re looking for one. So give them something to be excited for, right? Explain the job title, the expectations, what the growth is for them, where they can be in two years. Right? You really do that and I think that has really allowed us to have very, very qualified people out in the field, thus giving us very good reviews at the end of the day. Right? It’s all those things. The details are what really shines through when you’re doing things like that and hiring people. So that will help you as well. Um, so I don’t know if the answer, I answer your question specifically, but I just wanted to piggyback off that piece of it too, where you’re not on an island trying to figure out how to hire someone. We will teach you all of those things.

I will say this, having a very intimate knowledge of oxy fresh. I can say there’s very few businesses you can buy for $60,000 or less. That’s like the price of us on a small condo and middle America. I mean a really small condo for a few businesses you can buy for 60,000 that provide an opportunity for time freedom, financial freedom, turnkey marketing. It’s awesome man. I’ve got three final questions. You have 30 seconds per question. Here we go. What does it cost to buy an Oxi fresh and what’s included?

A franchise is 37,900. That includes your protected territory. All the equipment that you need to serve as carpet and upholstery. So you actually out doing jobs about three months worth of product plus the training where if we get to a point where it makes I will fly you and your significant other out to Denver, Colorado or a business partner to go through a four day training that you’re going to need to start this business going.

It’s all included working in additional working capital there to Kinda, you know. So you’re saying 60,000.

Yeah. So the working capital is an important piece because you know, depending on how you own this business, if you start the business and you do the job yourself, do you want to have about $20,000 operating capital somewhere that stays with you. It can be a line of credit, cash, whatever credit card, but that’s going to be for things like insurance and local marketing and vehicle and employee costs if you’re not doing the jobs. Okay. You want to have about $25,000. So to cover that first few months of employee cost,

no question.

Sticky. Very good. Excellent.

So 37,000, 900 by the franchise. Twenty $5,000 to cover the cost, those first few months. Final question for you. What if I’m interested in buying an Oxi fresh franchise? What is the process? What should I do right now?

You need to go onto a thrive time, show last Oxi fresh, and you need to fill out a form and you need to speak with myself or Mike Burton, who’s on my team here and we just need to figure out specifically what you want to do, what your goals are, and we want to get you all the information so that you can make a very informed decision for you and your future on whether or not occupy is going to be a good fit, but we can get through that doesn’t cost you a penny to go through that process and that’s why we’re here. That’s why I have a job

thrive. Listen to this. Go to thrive time show.com forward slash oxi fresh. This thrive time show.com forward slash Oxi fresh requesting information. Meet Matt and Mike. See if it’s a good fit for you. I’m telling you, it is an absolutely wonderful system with hundreds of franchises throughout the world. They have over a hundred 37,000 google reviews. It’s worth at least checking out for you, for you and your family. And, uh, Matt, we got to go because we’re going to interview the guy who wants managed Walt Disney world resorts. Mr Lee Cockerel my friend. Thank you again for being on the show and have an awesome day.

Thank you. I appreciate so much. I look forward to hearing from anyone out there wants to know about occupation.

Take Care of Boston

Thrive nation. Here’s the deal. You only have one life to live a steve. Would you agree with that? That, that hard, that stone cold lead pipe locked guarantee that we’ll only have one life to live on the planet earth. Yeah. Unless you figured out a way to reincarnate yourself, which I don’t think this, Justin. So the question I have for you is why are you choosing to work at a job that you hate? Yeah. Where you have zero opportunity to create time, freedom and financial freedom for you and your family. Why don’t you escape the soul sucking reality that you’re facing right now? There’s somebody I’m talking to right now. I’m not sure who you are, but you know what you. You know who I’m talking to you I’m talking to. You’re talking to me. That whole and I was, oh, there’s somebody out there that really, really doesn’t like their job. Yeah, and it’s because your boss doesn’t have a vision for the company. It’s soul sucking. You’re stuck is like a bureaucrat. No one dreamed as a kid growing up to be a bureaucrat, no one thought to themselves, you know, hey, bobby, bobby,

when you get older, what do you want to be? I want to be a bureaucrat. I envision a world where I could work at a soul sucking cubicle for hours and hours and maybe someday I can be a mid level manager and never be appreciated. I want to do is I want to work in an office where they have a mission statement that no one gives a crap about. To have a dish on the. No one knows because I love companies where there’s no vision and mission statement. While bobby, you’ve thought this out, absolutely he’d, because 70 percent of people, according to Gallup, quit their jobs. Well over half of people don’t have $400 saved regardless of their age and maturity of people are very upset. Another statistic, obvious sounds disturbing and you need to know, I just want to be the average American so I don’t live a life of mediocrity. This podcast about having success and I for me, that creates the cognitive dissonance, quite need to talk like that. You can just feel bad all the time and no, there’s no hope for me to hear that. The winds and other people,

Dear God, bobby, bobby, bobby, bobby, you got to go to [inaudible] dot com, forward slash oxi fresh or find a new job, a new business. I just want to be depressed and listen to other people having success. This isn’t a great body. You don’t want to go to the thrive time show conference then, but if you do want to take your life to the next level, book your tickets to the thrive time show conference [email protected]. And as always, three, two, one boom.