Skills Pay the Bills, but Systems, Processes and Checklists Create Time Freedom | The Kevin Lewis Story

Audio Transcription

Welcome back to the conversation. It is the business coach thrive time show on your radio and podcast download and I am super excited about today’s show because on today’s show we’re going to be interviewing. We’re going to interview an actual thrive client for the vast majority of the show. A guy by the name of Kevin Lewis and I want everybody to take just a moment and to look up Louis Roofing Tulsa. So type in Louis Roofing Tulsa, you can find them or their actual domain is louis roofing.com. Louis roofing.com. Go to the website with me real quick. Okay, so I’m on the website. Hopefully you’re on the website. We’re all making our way to the website. Let me just give you a second when everyone to go to Lewis roofing.com. Let me give you just a second. Here we go. This is my, uh, patiently waiting for you to go there.

Music. Okay. So now that we’re at Lewis roofing.com, what if I told you that the average American business, according to CNBC, according to Fox, according to Forbes, the average American business right now is growing at a rate of approximately three percent. That’s three percent. What if I told you this man has grown his business from over $6,000,000 a year approximately to over $10,000,000 of revenue in one year and he’s working less than ever before. What if I told you that there was a guy who was doing $6,000,000 of business a year, which by the way, that’s a lot of money.

Hello

profit, that’s $6,000,000 of gross revenue, and he was able to grow his business to over $10,000,000 in a year of of, of doing something. Would you want to know what that something was? Of course you would. And my friends, Kevin Lewis has been a thrive time business coaching client for the last year and it’s just been an unbelievable, remarkable case study on what happens when a diligent doer executes the proven path. Now, let me give you a little the little backstory with, with Kevin. Lucy kind of know our history together. You see the year was 1999, which would have meant that, uh, Kevin was 18 years younger than he is today. So he’s probably early twenties. I was 18 and I get a cold call.

Hi, is this clay? Oh yeah, this is a clay. He goes, DJ connection. Yeah. This is DJ connection. Hi, my name is Sally Lewis and I’m calling on behalf of the yellow pages because I want to sell you a yellow page ad. Are you talking about the yellow pages? You mean you’re the person who puts people in the yellow pages? Yellow pages? Are you kidding me?

Thrive nation. And blew my mind. That was on the phone with the person who had the power to put me into the yellow pages because you see the year was 1999 and my company Dj connection was what we were trying to grow the company. We’re trying to grow DJ connection.com. And the move back in the day was if you wanted to grow your company, you had to have the biggest advertisement in that phone book or one of the top ones because everybody used the phone book and I was super excited to receive the telemarketing call from Miss Sally Lewis, who turns out to be Kevin Lewis, his mother.

I wish I could get that excited about. Are you kidding? Hey Jonathan Navan bar. Funny now. Every day. Kind of spontaneous. Your name in print that makes people. I’m in print. Things are going to start happening to me now.

Oh, thrive nation. I was so excited to buy the phone book, the phone book advertisement from Ms Dot Sally Lewis. And I signed that contract. And I am not exaggerating. I am not kidding. This is not an analogy. This is not an allegory. This is not some creative literary, a circular reasoning trick. I literally bought the biggest phone book ad they would sell me. What’s that mean? I was advertising. I was spinning over $2,000 a month on phone book ads. And my phone began to ring because my ideal and likely buyers who are looking to book a Dj for their wedding, for their party, for their Bar Mitzvah, for their holiday party, they would find me in the phone book and they would call me. Yes, yes, they would call me. Sally Lewis is the woman who got me to advertise. Now Dr Zellner encouraged advertising and other people encouraged advertising, but right at the time that I was starting to believe in the power of advertising, Sally Lewis called me and she forever changed my life. So when I found out we were working with her son, Kevin Lewis, I was so excited to work with him and his company. When I found out that Louis roofing was already doing six to $7,000,000 a year of revenue, I knew their business would boom if they executed the proven systems. And so now after a year in the Thrive Time Show business coaching program, Kevin Lewis has grown his company, Louis roofing.com from 6 million to $10,000,000 per year.

That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of money. So if you’re out there saying, well, what did you do specifically to help Kevin? What was the process like? Well, that’s why we’re going to have Kevin on today’s show. So thrive nation. Now, without any further ado, my exclusive interview with Kevin Lewis, the founder of Louis Roofing, and our, our thriver and our friend, our coaching client who’s grown his business from over $6,000,000 a year to $10,000,000 a year as a result of diligently implementing the proven systems that any further ado, our interview with Kevin Lewis direct to you.

Now, I recognize that we have hundreds of thousands of people that download this podcast and many of you are in New York. A ton of you are in South Korea. We’ve got a lot of you in Australia now, Florida, Florida. We’ve got people in New York, I mean people all over the place. But I want to introduce you to a town called Tulsa, Oklahoma where we’re broadcast today. Some people call it the center of the universe close. And, uh, I would say that, uh, it’s home for a lot of small business coach owners and there’s one small business owner that we’ve had the opportunity to work with. Eric chip, business coach. How long have you worked with Mr Kevin Lewis of Lewis roof roofing? Kevin was pushing a year and a half now.

Would you say it’s been at least a year and a half?

And your mother? Uh, Kevin Loses mother. This is how small the Tulsa community is. This just it. I used to think that I didn’t have to advertise when I started my first company, Dj Connection Dot Com, before the glory, before this access, before the awards, I did not buy advertisements. And One lady at bold woman, a wonderful woman who happens to be Kevin’s mom. Oh, sally began calling me and telling me I needed to advertise. And Kevin, my phone didn’t ring. So I said I couldn’t afford to advertise and she just kept following up, very kind, very consistent. And I ended up buying the biggest ad I could possibly buy in the yellow pages from your mom. And it changed my life forever, forever. What was your mom, kind of a persistent mother. They’re grown up there, Kevin, or was she just persistent when selling advertisements to Djs?

Don’t know. To this day, the only time she’s ever quiet is when she’s asleep. So other than that she is a unique woman, let’s put it that way.

So how did you hear of the thrive time show of our business coaching program initially? How did you, how’d you hear about the program?

Had another friend that had a, another business and he was using your services and spoke very highly of you guys and, and uh, you know, I was struggling with some things and, and, and primarily it’s just, you know, goes back to time and, and working on your business, not in your business. And, and I’m, I’m one of those guys would like to work. So I was trying to figure out how to balance everything to keep my home life alive too.

No, I would have asked you this because your business is doing very well. And uh, so for people who don’t know about your company, maybe live outside of Tulsa, can you tell us about Louis roofing and kind of your history with the business? I mean, how long have you been in business? Just give us sort of a background about Louis roofing.

Yeah, Louis Roofing, a long story short, worked for several other companies for many years, ran their companies and did not like what was happening. So I figured I could do it better and um, opened up my own business with nothing, basically a $30,000 truck and a trailer and off we went and uh, for, you know, it, you know, growing to a million dollars a year and then etc. Etc. Anyways. Uh, uh, wE are primarily a commercial contractor. So, uh, we service corporate clients in seven states and uh, um, that’s pretty much us now tulsa and surrounding areas. We do hAve a residential division. Um, we do everything from manufacturer our own, uh, metals and metal roofing to, um, your everyday commercial style riffs.

YoU know, before I built a team to assist me in, before I was mentored by clifton taulbert and dr robert zellner, I built one of the largest dj entertainment. It was the largest entertainment company in the country for weddings. I mean dj connection.com was massive and still is massive. I as soon as I sold it, but I, I built this big company and I never thought about having time freedom. I just thought about having financial freedom. That was my whole goal, you know, just just absolutely hell bent on earning money and becoming profitable and becoming very successful in being able to buy whatever I want, whenever I wanted to and I, and just like you. I loved working I think. I think working for me is kind of like my default. It’s when I go back to if I ever have a tough time in life, I go back to work. I just love to work. Can you talk to us about where you were at before the thrive time coaching program? Where you, a guy that was, you know, the, the financial part wasn’t super hard, but the time freedom part was hard or is it or, or was it harder for you with the financial part? But the time freedom was easy. I mean, talk to me about where you were kind of felt stuck before the thrive time show business coaching program.

It’s been an evolution all the way through. But uh, you know, I, I can, you know, 100 hour week waS a normal week. I enjoy it. I’d get up, boom, I’m going to work, eat, sleep, go back to work. Well, sleep was my biggest issue. But a long story short, I, I enjoy it. It’s my passion and lost. I’m not work necessarily, but what I do, and uh, it with thrive, I’ve learned primarily, you know, I have people that are in charge of different things and I don’t have to be on top of them every day. And, and, and people thrived themselves. I can make them become better by allowing them to fail and, and just kind of releasing the controls a little bit now. Not letting things run a muck, but the, you know, keeping tight business coach reigns on them, but still, um, you know, really, uh, the, what would make me wake up was, you know, I’m with you guys and I’m still doing crazy work and, and whatnot. And my wife was like, you know, um, we’re, we’re having a, a moment that week, which I can say I hope everybody has a moment with their wash every now and then. Anyway, she asked me, um, who do you love more? Do you love louis roofing or me they nation. What a tough question that Mr. Kevin Lewis is a mrs. Kevin lewis asked Mr. Kevin Lewis. I mean, when your spouse asks you, who do you love more, your business or me, uh, I can tell you this, this is how you feel inside. and I’ve been there. I’ve had that happen to me. I found myself in 2007 winning the entrepreneur of the year award and having unbelievable financial freedom, but no time freedom. And so if you’re out there curious about how to create time freedom and financial freedom, you want to listen to the remainder of this interview with Kevin Lewis who grew his business from $6,000,000 to $10,000,000 in business per year while reducing the number of hours that he worked. now, if you wanT to say both time and money and I know you do, I encourage you to check out our good [email protected]. They will deliver your office in printer supplies to you for less onyx imaging.

We’re now entering the dojo of mojo and the thrive time. show the all right

thrive nation. Welcome back to the thrive time show on your radio, and we’re talking today about how skills will help you pay the bills, but it is only through systems, processes, and checklists that you shall create time freedom. Again, skills will help you pay the bills, but it’s only through implementing processes, systems, and checklists that you can ever create. Financial freedom. And so on today’s show, we had one of our thrivers out there, a guy who we’ve been coaching his business for over a year. And imagine you met this guy at starbucks and you’re talking to the guy and he said, hey kevin, hoW’s your business going? He says, well good. You know, I’m, I’m, uh, last year I was doing $6 million dollars of sales with my roofing company, louis roofing dotcom, louis louis [inaudible] dot com. Everybody check it out real quick. It’s louis roofing.com. Imagine you’re, you’re going with your friend, you’re going out with your, with your buddy to starbucks and you say, how’s business?

And he says, we’re doing $6,000,000 a year. And you go, yeah, I already said that, you know, yeah. But I’m just telling you we were doing six months and now we’re doing 10. And you go, what are you go, we weren’t seeing, we weren’t doing six, but now we’re doing 10. And you say to yourself, ah, yeah, but was that, how long did that take you again? And you go a year and you save. Now what would you want to get? You only get a coffee frappuccino and you’re going, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. You grew from 6 million to $10 million dollars in one year, brother. YoU got to be working all the time, man, you must be working all the hundred hour weeks. How do you have the time to meet with me at starbucks? I mean, if you’re doubling your income, surely you’re doubling your personal effort.

And then your friend says, no, actually I work less than ever before. I’m making more money and I have more time freedom. And uh, I’d like to tell you the whole story. All of a sudden me, wouldn’t you want to know that story? If you’re the average american business store to know clay stares, the average american business, according to cnbc right now, the gross domestic product, the average growth rate of the american businesses is three percent. All right? And we’ll put a link to it on the show notes. Three percent. This client has almost doubled their company, I mean conservatively, or they’re growing by 65 percent in one year. Can you talk to me clay stairs or talk to us listeners, help educate us, but how, how, how common it is for an entrepreneur to reach out for coaching and to believe that the key to growing their business is to continue doing what they’ve always done just faster. Can you talk me, because I’m sure you’ve seen that before, where someone says, I want coaching, and you say, well, we need to implement this process or this system or this checklist. and they kind of look at you crazy. Like, yeah, I don’t have time for that because I’m currently installing the roof. Oh yeah. How often do you see that dynamic?

Yeah. Unfortunately, clay, it’s very common. And uh, in the idea of. So many times people think of coaching in their minds. They’re going, oh great. I finally have somebody that’s going to help me do what I want to do, only do it better. And so often though, the, these, uh, as you were talking about, uh, the, when people realize that coaching involves you actually doing different things than you’ve been doing for so long, it can be a very, very difficult, uh, uh, emotional move to release their control of their company to do what somebody else is telling you to do. It’s huge. I remember that was a huge thing with me when I came to work with you, clay, I remember I had to come to that place where I was willing do what you

told me to do rather than just what I wanted to do. I call this moment the wakeup call to and I’d like to ask clients of mine who had massive success. I’ll say I’d like to ask them, when did you first have your wake up call? And chuck, Kevin Lewis has been your client for the last year. And how exciting is it for you to see a guy like Kevin Lewis having massive success as a result of the two of you working together? You teaching him the systems and him implementing the systems?

Well, it’s really cool for me personally because my dad was a nother version of Kevin Lewis. He does commercial roofing, we did commercial concrete, and since I’ve come to work with you and dr z dot clay, I’ve learned all the systems that we never had in our business to create that time freedom. Neither one of my parents had time freedom. TheY didn’t take a vacation over a friday for 30 years. Oh wow. Because somebody had to do payroll and they didn’t know how to train and hire and fire and hold people accountable. So it’s, it’s awesome to see a guy growing. Uh, he’ll jump on a call on a wednesday when we meet at 11 and he’s like, hey, got a million dollar deal. I’m like, that is freaking awesome.

Awesome. Here’s the deal. Here’s the deal though. I want all the listeners out there. I want you to listen to the, to the interview with Kevin Lewis. I’m going to cue it up in just a second. I want you to listen to the interview with kevin without judgment, because how many people would actually get on a radio show or a podcast? And tell you where they were stuck and be honest about it. I mean, so, so many people running around acting like things are okay, but they’re not. But this guy bares his soul. And this interview really touched my heart. It’s been an inspiration to the whole team. Without any further ado, our exclusIve interview with thrive client, Kevin Lewis of lewis roofing.com. The guys grown his business from $6,000,000 to $10,000,000 this year while working less. How’s it possible? Check it out.

You know, what made me wake up was, you know, I’m with you guys and I’m still doing crazy work and, and whatnot. And my wife was like, you know, um, we’re, we’re having a, a moment that week, which I can say I hope everybody has a moment with their wife every now and then. Anyway, she asked me, um, who do you love more? Do you let louis roofing or me? And I had to answer that question. And unfortunately I answered it. It was a terrific. And you know, that’s when it was a wake up to me that, you know, yeah, work is everything. I am, it’s me, that is me, but that is not right. And you know, it was the wrong answer, but

well, on behalf of all the people out there who have found themselves In love with their work and incorrectly prioritizing our faith family and getting out of balance, I, I’ll be the first one to testify. I’m a witness because I absolutely, kevin, isn’t there something magical about going to work, selling something, solving a problem for somebody, making money, going to sleep and doing it again. Maybe there’s something magical about golden hamster wheel. It isn’t it, isn’t it kevin? And there’s something magical about going to work, solving a problem for business coach people, selling them, charge them a fair, a fair price, making a profit, and just having kind of a. I mean, did you enjoy the Cycle of working? What, what part of work do you enjoy doing?

It’s basically the conquer. Um, I, I don’T know how split it is, you know, you’ve run into, I got 100 issues and we’re going to solve all 100 and we’re going to make everything perfect. I don’t know, it’s. Yeah, it’s, it was that cycle, you know, you sell a million dollar job the next day. Okay, my goal, now I’m going to go ahead and sell a million dollars a week and then it’s, that’s not enough and it just, it. The attrition keeps going anD going and and it was a ugly cycle.

Thrive nation, if you feel like you’Re stuck in the cycle of go to work, go to church, go home, go to work, go to church, go home, but then after you go through that cycle, you find yourself saying, I wonder where all my money went. You’re saying, I know, I know where my time went. I’ve got a calendar. I keep track of it. I know where my time, but I have no idea where my money. I would recommend that you reach out to a pro active accountant. Never given you. Check out a variety of accounts to find the right one for you and your business. But if you go to hood cpas.com today, that’s hood cpas.com today and you schedule your free one on one consultation. He’s going to give you a free copy of warren buffett’s only authoriZed biography. The book is called snowball. Get your copy and a free consultation [email protected].

Stay tuned and now back to the business coach radio show that has a diary. Call the guinness book of world records.

Started from the bottom. Now we’ll get the top teacher systems to cook books. I’ve written the books to get some wisdom and I’m get to see my wife and kids and now

what?

Oh, thrIve

Welcome back to the conversation. My name is clay clark. I’m the former u s sba entrepreneur of the year and I pride myself on being sort of an entrepreneurial peter pan who gets to broadcast daily from my land and I will. I will tell you, that to me is exciting because I. I sincerely love my schedule. I love it a lot. I love la. I love it. And clay stairs. Recently it was probably a thursday afternoon and you came to me and you said, I, I love my schedule. I love my. And I know Eric Trump is. Came to me before. He said, I love that we’re doing a podcast interviewing big name celebrity baby names. We’re interviewing huge folks straight. By the way, seth goDen coming up here. Seth goden cow. Come on, podcast in november. In november we have seth goden booked. We have John lee dumas.

Uh, we’ve got lee cockerel. I mean, the list goes on, but when you love what you do and it’s sustainable, oh, that’s a beautiful place to be. So close theirs. I want you to talk about your passion for helping get your clients into a place where they have both financial freedom and time freedom and really what that looks like for you personally because you personally love your schedule now and you have financial freedom to talk about that. Yeah, I remember being a school teacher, a school teacher for 15 years, and man, talk about not having time freedom, getting up early before the sun’s up and being at school and then coaching, getting home late at night and never having any time. And also never having any money. Imagine that even better. Yeah. How about that? But clay, I remember talking with you just what was it maybe six, seven months ago and talking about, hey, we want to move to a place where I’m just working three days a week.

that’s where I want to be and beginning to move my schedule beginning to tighten up our systems so we could create that sales cycle to get enough revenue. I want you to. I want to bring this up real quick because what you just said, you said, hey, I want to move to a three day workweek and I want to make sure that that we’re giving fair time because some of the listeners out there, as soon as they hear three, a three day work week, the hair, these guys prepping the stack, you think of snacking. A lot of people immediately judge you turn, you say you want to work three days and some people feel like you’re not. You’re not really an entrepreneur unless you’re working seven days a week and I know guys like that. Yeah. In fact, I don’t know many guys like you who want to work three days a week. I see a lot of people who feel like that their success as a man is defined by the amount of money they could make, and I really want to push back on that idea and I want to ask all the listeners out there, what is the point of life? Wow. You just took it to a deeper level. No, but I want all the listeners to think about this. Think about it. If are you happy with your aunt in the areas of faith, your family, your finding.

It’s your findings, your phone. Are you happy In those six people are not. They’re either happy in one area. I see people who are just jacked. I’m talking an believable vascularity. The strike asians anD their muscle to carry their bags of chicken around their gender. They carry their supplements around. They are huge. They work out two a day. They work at all. Yeah, I’m serious. They’re tan abs every day, but they’re in great shape and their kids hate them or don’t know their names. Yeah. I see men who are rich rolling around in. They’re frail and their ferrari go into their third and fourth home traveling all the time and there are kids deny that they, the kids like deny them with emotionally because they’re Just tired of the crap that they’re old enough now to realize, okay, this is dad’s never going to care. I see people that are doing great and their spiritual areas, they’re spiritually, man.

These guys are. These are some of the most chipper you’ll see. You’ll see them levitating in front of local churches. They’re levitating and they’re having get togethers with yoda and their local pastor and they’re like, man, I got it all figured out spiritually by hand and you’ll see them pushing a cart broke over there by one 69 mustang and will work for food. Yeah, so it’s the balance of having success in all six areas. Faith, family, finances, fitness, friendship, fun, and it comes down to designing the life you want or living a life you don’t want by default clay stairs. That’s what it comes down to. Yeah, and men, the. The specific decisions that you have to make to live that life. I mean it. You have to be so deliberate every stinking day. That’s the followup parts of the decisions, but then the action after the decision that really separates it. Yeah, and that’s what Kevin Lewis did. Kevin lewis with louis roofing, who we’re talking about today, we interviewed him. He reached out to us because he wasn’t happy with his, with his current schedule, and he wanted to design a life where he would love every single day of every single week, so now thrive nation. WIthout any further ado, our exclusive interview with thrive client, Kevin Lewis of lewis [inaudible] dot com has been able to grow his roofIng company from $6,000,000 in sales to $10 million dollars in sales within one year. While finding time freedom along the way. Stay too.

You get to a place where you. In my. In my case, I wanted to book a ups. I wanted to be a quIck trip. I wanted to book fedex. I wanted to book six flags and all these different goals. I want to book a thousand weddings a year, 2000 or 3000 a year. You travel all around the world searchIng for satisfaction only to realize that you’re neglecting your home. So how, how is eric, um, helped you to implement an org chart and time blocking and how has he helped you create time freedom?

Well, other than the biggest thing is, is, is a yourself, but foremost is your systems, your, your, your checklist, your, um, you’re mad at a time. Basically he would make a schedule and you actually stick to it. The hardest thing for me is a beautiful thing called that every moment of the day schedule. And uh, just like this morning they called me and I, he wasn’t in my, I, he was not in my availability to talk to you.

I did. I called him twice. I texted him and he called me back on his schedule, which I was kind of proud of. Nice, nice.

and, and, and, and, and in my heart it kind of hurts to do that because It’s arrogant and pompous and in my little pea brain, but I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish what I needed to accomplish this morning before I talked to, if that makes sense. So I had to keep basically keeping my eye on the ball and my time slots allotted. So, and just like today I’m, I’m calling you from my home office and I’m not even at work. I’m working, but I’m not at work. um, and it’s a beautiful thing.

I, I feel like this, you just said something you said make a schedule and you actually stick to it. Then you went onto say that it, it, it sounds pompous. It sounds arrogant. It sounds. Well let me just, let me walk the listeners through what happens if you don’t do that. It’s ripe nation. When we return, we’re going to be breaking down the business coach client Kevin Lewis story. We’re going to unpack how Kevin Lewis was able to grow, grow his roofing company from $6,000,000 a year to $10,000,000 a year while also creating time freedom and financial freedom for his family in route to growing the company. Chubb, he made a schedule any stuck to It. Why is that so rare? Man?

It is because the fires during the day, they’re so big and they seem like they’re. They’re raging so fast and you’ve got to get them under control when in reality, having a consistent schedule where you’re working on things systematically is the best way to prevent those fires in the first place.

Get your spine in line. You probably want to book a recurring appointment with tulsa’s number one.

There you go. Tell us about tulsa’s. Number one, chiropractic. That would be the chiropractor of choice from nhl. Great. Wayne gretzky, the great one. Check them out at dr. john sibling.com. Dr john sibling.com. Nine one eight, seven,

nine, five, seven, four, one. Dr john [inaudible] dot com. Make it tip fitness kids books take could talk about me. I can take that. Abuse is father nick that planet. Kids have school boards to show back. I wasn’t young,

right schedule and sticking to it, in my opinion, is one of the signs that you are becoming an entrepreneurial jetta. The ability to make a schedule and stick to it. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to read off a list of things I didn’t do today that I was asked to do today, and there were like for clay stairs to share why this is so hard for most people. Okay, so here is my list of things I’m not going to do today that were asked for me to do today. Somebody sent me an email and said, please sit down with us at our office and explained to us why you’re not going to award us an elephant in the room. Franchise. No. Okay. Well, the elephant in the room franchise is a men’s grooming lounge and in order to run it successfully, if you buy a franchise from me, you must be a diligent doer.

If somebody reaches out to me to buy a franchise and I know them for over a decade and I know they’re not a diligent doer, I know they will run that company into the ground because the systems won’t work unless you do. It’d be like it’d be like buying a car and not buying fuel for it. Another guy reached out to me today about leasing space at the riverwalk and he would like to lease 150 feet of space and have a shared desk. I’m not going to reach out to him. Another person, another person reached out to me and said, I really, really, really want you to work with me in this particular industry. I know you’ve said no, That you’re already working with mike and with my competitor, but I really want to work with you guys. We don’t have to tell them, you know, we don’t have to tell them, you will work on the side.

I want you to send the dl. Right, and I. So I’m not calling him back. I have another person who wants me to speak at their event and their event conflicts with my morals and I’m not calling them back. I have another person I’ve ever person who used to work for me, used to work with us who left on very, very bad terms, who keeps calling me to get us to a. He wants us to hire them back. Just today. now I want to explain to you guys why I didn’t call them back because my days are packed. Yeah. I have to do the show prep for the show. I literally got home today, um, around what was it, 3:00 or so, 3:00. I had to meet with the pool guy today and I want to meet with him because that’s important to me and I want to play in my twin’s birthday party.

My twin girls have a birthday party and I want to do drum lessons with my son. So these are all the things I’m saying no to, so that I can say yes to these things. Trade off a clay stairs. I’m saying no, that’s why I can be a 37 year old adult man having drum lessons with my son because I’m saying no to things. A lot of people can have drum lessons with her son because they’re saying yes to everything and they would have taken that extra two hours to call each of those people back in to explain to them in great detail why they’re not a good fit. Clay stares. Talk to me about white. So hard for people to say no by simply a lot of times saying nothing at all clave. We live in such an emotional world where every single decision that we make is is fully energized by emotion.

It’s like we are moving in a place where if we wanted to do, we want to feel good, we want to be happy and we want everybody to be happy around us so we have a hard time in confrontation because we don’t want to make anybody mad. We have a ta have a hard time dealing with hard issues because it’s hard and we want to feel good. There’s just some. I remember being in this place for years and years of being stuck in the emotional world. Now again, the emotional world isn’t bad. It’s not wrong. It’s just very hard to be successful and to be free with your time if you remain in the emotional world. I think that’s right, and then on another level, I think a lot of people think clay, that that’s what diligence is saying yes to everything and getting everything done for everybody. They like, oh, that makes me a go getter and a doer, the one route when in reality that just means other people are anointing your schedule for you.

You know what? That was a, that was a profound insight there. Thank you. I saw it on diligence. Diligence is a, does not mean a returning every single person’s phone call. Right? And so Kevin Lewis, one of your clients explains to us during today’s podcast how he was able to grow from $6,000,000 a year to $10,000,000 a year of sales while decreasing the amount of hours that he works by a lot by a lot. And so then he further ado, he’s gonna. Explain how, uh, he kind of used to feel bad about not sticking to a schedule, right? But now he feels good about it and his wife does to stay too.

And, and, and, and in my heart it kind of hurts to do that because it’s arrogant and pompous and in my little pea brain, but I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish what I need to accomplish this morning before I talked to, if that makes sense. So I had to keep basically keeping my business coach eye on the ball and my time slots allotted. So, and just like today I’m calling you from my home office and I’m, I’m not even at work. I’m working, but I’m not at work. Um, and it’s a beautiful thing.

I, I feel like this, you just said something you said make a schedule and you actually stick to it. Then you went onto say that it, it, it sounds pompous. Uh, it sounds arrogant. It sounds. Well let me just, let me walk the listeners through what happens if you don’t do that. That’s my bomb effect. Knowledge bombs. This is what happens if you don’t. If you don’t do what kevin just told you. I ran dj connection. No, no, no, no, I did. And that was my first lie right there, kevin. I didn’t run dj connection. Dj connection ran me.

Oh,

and so what happens is on a friday, remember, most people get married on a saturday. Most people get married on saturday. So people want to on a friday night, typically this is what would happen. boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, dj connection. This is clay. Yeah, clay, uh, this is a dog. I hate to do this to you yet, but I really need to change our first dance. We were talking and I think we need to change it. We need to change it. So you, you go back to the office for 80 weddings by the way. So you get one call, you go back to the office, you changed the first dance song, you licensed the new music, you get it ready. And then,

hey clay, this is susan. I’m married to my husband call. You don’t want them to change, you need to change it back

and you’re just going back and forth. And kevin just never ending. And then facebook was invented. Kevin, do you remember life before facebook? Wasn’t that a great time in american history?

Yes. The golden thing. Have a pager most readily available. So people didn’t start reaching out to you saying, hey, by the way, I’m going to add a song changes song and a dance floor changed dance floor. One upgrade downgrade one, and it’s all the day of the wedding because people are emotional heading into the wedding. And I didn’t learn this concept for years and I talked to dr z dot and dr [inaudible] said, hey, set up your systems, let people know, hey, you guys will be reachable up until 5:00 on friday and after that the phones up and I used to go to bed and I would sneak back into the home office at like midnight. Kevin and I would see the red lights flashing of all the missed calls and I felt bad. How did you get over feeling bad? Because I felt bad for ever. And then for me when I discovered that my wife was going to leave me, he felt more bad and so I decided that I’d rather feel bad at the red light flashing and not getting the voicemail with a lonely night. Right. So I want to ask you, how have you. How did you get over feeling bad?

I finally figured out that it’s not. As long as I lay out the expectations people, they’re fine. It’s more me trumping up what they’re thinking, not really what’s going on and it’s fine. As soon as I accepted that, hey, maybe people really aren’t thinking I’m being an ass or, or, or pompous, you know, they understand that I’m busy, I run a bit, you know, I quit worrying about it, if that makes sense. It, it, it, it, it, it just, it just got taken out of my brain. Do not worry about it. This is how it’s gonna work and just do it. And, and that’s the only way I’ve been able to get around It. That’s my way of doing it.

Do you hang out with any business dudes? Do you think of any business dudes?

No.

This is the, this is something I want to share with listeners because this is, this is big. Most guys I know chip who are very successful busIness owners. We don’t hang out with a lot of dudes because we’re alone on entrepreneurship island. Right? You know, I mean so, but if you talk to the average person, kevin, I mean, would you, would you, would you make, you don’t have to agree wIth me on this, I just wanna get your take on this. do you feel like the average person who’s not a business owner doesn’t understand the concept of a 40 hour work week, let alone a 100 hour work week?

Well, they have no concept of that, but they don’t understand our responsibilities to more than that, it’s, it’s all of our employees and their families and I mean we take the load of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people that were responsible for it. At least I consider that and and they don’t understand what we constantly record brains. That’s right decision, wrong decision, and then affects multiple hundreds of people.

The crushing weight of leadership can often make people lose their minds, lose their health and lose their wealth. When people implode, you build an organization and the responsibility of keeping all the spinning plates

moving in together sometimes can just make somebody’s mind exploded. You feel overwhelmed by running a business, you’re going to want to stay too

to claim your tickets to the thrive time show today, interactive business workshop for free. All you have to do is to subscribe to the thrive time, show on itunes, leave an objective review, and send us confirmation and info at thrive time. Show.com to claIm your star and the national star registry. We can’t help you now. Thrive

nation. Welcome back to the conversation. It is the thrive time show on your radio. Now, one of the things that I have discovered from my years of being self employed, 21 years of being self employed is that there is a massive responsibility that you have as an entrepreneur. There’s a sculpture that I keep above my gun, my gun rack there, chop my gun safe. They’re typically, you keep your guns in like a in like a container and you put the glass on the what? What do you. What do you call that chIp? A. A, a cap gun cabinet. A gun. Gun gun. Safe to be a good cabinet. You put glass on it, right? Right. And then you have a lock on. Is that an arm war? I don’t know what it does. What I do is I, my, my, my guns are in the gun case, but so I can get them out faster.

It’s locked, but I removed the gland, stops idiots. They just get, the gun is locked. And so above that though, there’s a picture of atlas from the book. Atlas shrugged. Who does that? That leprechauns name? Uh, no. This is a herculean kind of character who’s got the earth, that one on his shoulders and I could remember what it was like. I have to be 21 and to be responsible for 10 families, christmas, the christmas of 10 families to be responsible for all the gifts, all of their presence and knowing that I’m supporting them, the food. And I can remember 2007. It was the first team photo where I got overwhelmed, but there was like a. Because everyone was, the husband’s brought their business coach spouses or the wives brought their husbands and their kids. And I think in the picture we had like 200 people that were dependent upon me at that time.

Wow. And, uh, now at last year’s christmas party, you know, the holiday party, there were hundreds of people, hundreds, I mean, we’re getting kids just write just adults with family. And I’m going, man, I’d be more than a thousand now. So the responsibility of running a company, this is what it can do to one, it can really like, like pressure can cause over time the earths, you know, fossil fuels, overtime it compresses and it grinds and coal and these, and these earth elements, the ddd tectonic plates, they can become diamonds. Over time, the pressure can cause someone to become a diamond over time, or like the pressure, like the irritant on a clam can create a pearl over time, right? Um, uh, the ddp pressure on muscles over time can, can, can create increased muscle size when you workout and you lift heavier and heavier weights. These are all positive things that can happen as a result of stress.

But also, um, if you’re not up for it, it can cause implosion and clusters. I want you to talk about why you’ve seen clIents in the past maybe begin to implode before coaching. Maybe the feelings you had when you first became an entrepreneur where you felt like you were on the verge of verge, verge of imploding. Before we get back Into this Kevin Lewis story, as Kevin Lewis explains to us how he grew his roofing company this year from $6,000,000 to $9 million dollars within one year as a result of coaching and implementing the proven systems. My friend. Yeah, we’ll, uh, for me, clay, as I, I remember when I was first starting out, I did not fully believe that there was a future of, of success, did not believe that there was a future of things that could actually go positive for me because I didn’t know how to get there.

I didn’t know the path. And so I just naturally didn’t believe that it would be there because I couldn’t see it. And as a result, it caused me so often to just resist, to dIg my heels in, to stay in an area of a that was comfortable for me, an area that was familiar for me and just locked down and not being able to move forward. I remember when it came time for me to hire my first employee, I was just going, oh my gosh. It would be so much easier if I just didn’t bring somebody in. I could just keep it all right here. I could not have. There’s two kinds of pressure. When you hire your first person, one, you have to at least bring them. Bring in that much money. Yeah. Time’s a factor of two because you got to pay tax and there’s the embedded cost of hiring somebody, so you’ve got to bring in at least two times what you’re paying them.

Yeah. Which mean you have to. You have to, and then if you don’t deliver at like say they set an up for you and your job is to close a deal. If you don’t close the deal, you’re kind of letting them down and they’re going to know it. Whereas before nobody knew when I screwed up. Or if you have a team sweep that under the or if you have a team meeting and you decide that you’re going to dress casual to the team meeting that you’re, you know, you’ve said verbally, I want this to be formal and professional. All of a sudden if you dress casual, they dress casual. Chump. You got to prepare that for the team meeting before the team meeting.

Yeah. And that’s what I was going to tag onto what clay stairs was saying, is that you’re not ever going to be able to manage a business or a team if you can’t manage yourself. So if you can’t hold yourself accountable, how can you expect to hold other people?

Pull accountable. I want to talk about my mornings and I want to get your take on this. Uh, our team morning, our Coaches meeting starts at six in the morning. Um, I do my check in calls with shelby, the producer at a 1170 scripps radio there. I will call a shelby a at 5:55 if I have questions or need to clarify something that means previous to 5:55 in the morning. I have two already organized my day, which means for me, my alarm goes off at 3:30 in the morning. I organize my day, then I come to work and I call shelby in route at 5:55 ish. Ramp up that call, but usually six. oh, five, six, 10. Then we go right into the meeting. If you don’t have a call then I go right into our 6:00 AM meeting and you start the meeting though. You always start the meeting and then I come in between six and 6:10 depending upon whether that call goes along or not.

And that’s because we needed to have a consistent coaching time for our team. But we also had already committed to the radio. Right. You know, and so you have the certain trade offs. But when I come into the meeting, I mean I have to be prepared and there are certain people you’ll see in that 6:00 meeting that have had to spend a lot of time getting ready before the meeting. Oh yeah. And you know who they are because they look sharp when the meeting starts. Right. but there are certain people that are doing their best, a wookie, impersonation and our team. Honestly, we don’t have people on our team that do that now. Yeah. But it’s funny when somebody first wants to, when someone first ones to become a business coach and they’ve worked wiTh us long enough and they’ve demonstrated mastery of a certain skill and you bring them into the meeting, you can tell who’s going to sink or swim because I kind of person who who gets there and it kind of looks like a raccoon eyes that are kind of like the telltale sign is there, clean their hair’s dry, everyThing’s done. Except there is still that sleep mark on their face from, from the pillow that you can’t rush that. That’s a good 15, 20 minutes before that thing goes away. So you can’t rush that. It’s right there man.

And why is a member of our team chuck? Are you counting on john and I and wires the team counting on you to have those meetings. Why are those meetings important for the continued growth and success of our organization?

One, it’s just an accountability thing. We are the elite of the elite, you know, that’s what we do. That’s how we roll up here at thrive and also it’s daily group training. There is a lot of stuff going on. We work with up to 160 clients at a time and people have questions and we need to learn and so it’s efficient to teach everybody at the same time. Instead of have seven, nine different coaches asking the same question over and over.

Thrive nation. I am super excited to get back into this interview with Kevin Lewis. The rover has been able to grow his roofing company from $6,000,000 of sales to $10,000,000 in sales. He’s also grown as a person because I’m telling you what your financial success isn’t always an indicator of who you’ve become, but I can say this. You do have to become a better and more decent person to make more money and to manage a larger organization. So we’re super proud of Kevin Lewis and Kevin Lewis. Thank you for baring your soul and agreeing to do this interview with us because not a lot of people would hop on a radio, a radio show, and a podcast is downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people and be transparent about the experience so other people wouldn’t put themselves out there and share of their strengths and struggles and the things they went through in route to creating the success. You’ve had a lot people just want to focus on the highlights, but you focused on the low lights and the highlights. Thank you for being candid. Kevin lewis with louis roofing.com stay too.

They have no concept of that, but they don’t understand our responsibilities to more than that. It’s all of our employees and their families and I mean we take the load of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people that were responsible for it. At least I consider that and, and they don’t understand what we constantly rack our brains. That’s right. Decision, wrong decision and then affects multiple hundreds of people.

And payroll never stops.

No every week.

No. I just think a lot of people don’t. They don’t understand what an entrepreneur goes through, so what happens is as an entrepreneur, if you’ve got to be careful because if you’re out there sharing your problems or asking for feedback or even if you’re not kevin asking for feedback, if you’re just talking or discussing your work day with the average person, they do, we’ll give you just weird. It was bizarre and feedback that’s it’s going to take your business. They’ll say, well, kevin, if somebody calls you, you need to call them right back and you’re going, no, no. That’s going to cause my head to explode. I mean, chip, it’s almost a counter cultural mindset.

Well, the whole thing about it is, is that’s the high watermark that we talk about and as a business owner, you experienced such a high watermark that trying to communicate at that lower level. It’s just weird because those people, not those people, I’m just saying people that haven’t been in that scenario, it’s totally alien to them.

Now you’ve grown your business from, you know, you guys were doing millions of dollars of revenue before and now you’re working in seven states and eric has helped you to expand into those different states while creating more time freedom. Can you explain some of the specific things that eric has helped you to be able to improve or systems or processes or mindsets that have allowed you to move beyond where you were to where you are now.

It goes back to a, this is just dumb things and employee handbook. It goes, it, it starting at the most rudimentary dumb things that, uh, you get so busy and you’re growing your business and you’re not even thinking what you don’t set expectations that you have for employees and, and, and just your checks and balances that that’s the biggest thing. And um, you know, I, I’ve learned that the hard way and the, just all those types of systems is what he has helped me with the most.

And what would you say, because people never had a business coach, you know? And so there’s a lot of people out there that have hired consultants that Will come in and talk with you about your logo for two consecutive months, or we’ll talk to you about a click funnels and they’ll talk to you about all these just vague non-actionable concepts. Can you describe what your coaching experience has been like working with eric?

Well, the difference is, is, is they’re not eric done try to smash down trying to sell me something. Every body that tries to offer services to you, they’re trying to sell you their service, their whatever. And, and eric is actually, you know, hey, this is what we need to do to help you move forward on this. Okay. Once we get this in business coach place, you build upon that it, it’s, it’s about achieving not somebody trying to sell you something.

It’s a flat rate service. So, you know, there’s not another. Here comes

erica. Yeah, it’s not, you know, oh no, we need to try this new thing because this,

yeah, a new landing page for $1,400 and, and new page with $40,000. now. So you, you, you’ve attended one of our in person workshops, I believe is, is that correct?

Yes sir.

How would you describe the in person workshops and just your overall experience with that?

right. It’s amazing. And, and, and the biggest thing is, is

to be honest with you, it was so much information in such a short time. Um, and you’re already focusing on a piece here and like, oh shit, I’m doing the excuse my french anyways, that you’re doing this and that and you move onto the next question. Well, wait a minute, you’re, you’re writing notes. Wait a minute, I’m doing this. You said it was, it was beyond awesome. I really need to do it again. And I was supposed to been there a few weeks ago and um, it just, my, my schedule went bad, bad, many ways. Uh, it, it, it was amazing. It was really eyeopening.

So how would you describe your schedule now or your life now versus where it was, you know, a year and a half. What if I’m saying I got a lot of time freedom and financial freedom, but my car won’t work. I own a ford automobile, I live in tulsa and it just won’t work. I got answer for you. Need

to go check out our see auto specialists and you can actually check them [email protected]. Over 80 years. Combined experience working on ford. So rc auto specialists.com nine. One eight, eight, seven, two eight. One one five. That’s nine. One eight, eight, seven, two, eight, one, one, five.

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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. 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.

Shouldn’t we have a thriver? Just like you on today’s show, Kevin Lewis with louis roofing. He grew his company from $6 million dollars to 10 million to $10,000,000 per your grid from $6,000,000 per year to $10,000,000 per year. As a result of implementing the proven business coaching path, so his schedule looks a lot different now. My main man’s life is different and yours can be too, but not if we don’t get a chance to know you. Go to thrive time show.com and schedule your one on one business coaching session today. Now that he further ado our exclusive interview with kevin,

a typical work day. I’ve started five and, and a. I try to be home by seven. That was my, a typical work day. um, now I, I’m up at 4:30. I go do 14 to 20 miles. I go, I have my time and then the company’s time and then I’m back to my, it’s, there’s more, it’s about me and, and, and what is really important, but also what needs to be done to make sure the business continues in the direction I’m wanting to point it.

Would you, would you say 14 to 20 miles? What? What are you doing in those four? are you running? Are you walking? Are you. What? Do you want to swim in the Arkansas river ride a bike. Okay.

Yeah, I run, I ride a bike, so that’s my new thing is uh, uh, uh, I’m one of those gifted people. I liked work. I liked the pain or like adversity. So, you know, you get out there and you’re riding and just bodies. Tony’s stopped. This isn’t what you’re supposed to do and you just go on through it. I don’t know. It’s an empowering. That’s relaxing to me. It’s beautiful by the way. How’s the new humvee treating? Yeah, humvee. The humvee is a lot of fun. Uh, and uh, the only question I get tired of, is that a real humpy? No, it’s a fake one. It’s a humvee. People look at it, you know, I don’t know that it is so much fun. it really is.

So if you were out there giving advice to a business owner, let’s say you’re talking to a guy in and there’s somebody who’s been a friend of yours and he’s thinking about working with the business coaching program or with, with eric and he’s go, nah, I don’t want to get into one of those marketing upsells driven companies. I don’t want to. I’ve already hired a consultant before that spent two months talking to me about logos and click funnels. Um, what advice would you have for anybody out there who’s kind of dipping their toe into the water and thinking about hiring a business coach?

It’s the smartest thing you could ever do, But I always warn people before I’ve actually sent people over. But you have to sell out. You have to believe in. And when you do, you will see amazing things. It, it, it’s, it’s, it’s been a game changer really has. And I recommend it to everybody. I mean, everybody needs it. I don’t care. I mean, there needs to be, uh, an employee coach to be honest with you. Um, so it’s, it’s an amazing journey.

You have the final word on this, but I will just say we have a coaches meeting every single day with all the business coaches and coaches. meeting starts typically at 6:00 AM on tuesday, wednesday and thursdays. every, every tuesday, wednesday, thursday at 6:00 AM. And on mondays It’s at 7:00 AM. And the purpose of that, kevin, is to have wins of the week two. We start off the meeting by sharing wins. Anybody, any client that had a big win, we want to share in their success. The second is if a client is stuck or they’re unable to execute or get something done, we want to, as a team, as a, as a family, as a coaching program to uh, discuss where the client stuck and figure out the best plan to help them get unstuck. And that’s why I’m in each one each of those meetings. And I also helped make all the paths for all the clients and eric has had nothing but great things to say about you. And I hope I just want to ask this before I give eric the final word. Is your wife a fan of eric? I mean, or is your wife happier now? I mean, is he really making your wife crazy now? How are things? How are things going now? Is, is your wife a fan of the coaching program?

One hundred percent phantom coaching program. Yay. Worked in the business coach program for about a week until I fired her. I learned real quick that we’re going to keep a journal.

so you were keeping the church and the family separated and so with that, uh, but is she happier overall? Like maybe one percent or.

Oh, no, I’d say um, I’d say at least 50 percent.

Yes. Yes. Ms dot lewis.

Me. Oh, of course. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s a long story. It’s just simple things, you know, I’m able to, uh, as she puts it, communicate better now because I’m not thinking of all this other stuff and you know, it, it’s, it’s, it’s good stuff.

You have the final word, my friend. Give us a capstone thought about coaching Kevin Lewis and what that experience has been like for you and what makes kevin so awesome?

Well, kevin is a prototype prototype wherever your poster child for stoicism. So he’s a guy who will come in and say, give me a big wind man, what’s going on this week, this last week for? And he’ll say, landed a two point $2,000,000 job. And I’m like, yeah. And he’s like it just another day. And then they’ll come in and say, I’ve got a competitor out of state trying to come in and steal my people or whatever, and just another day so I don’t have to worry about, hey, we get lost in the weeds and the coaches meetings. It’s all action on, hey, what do we need to do here? Some meetings we call up and he’s like, hey man, I’m rocking. Rolling. You good? You need anything from me? Nope. You good? Yeah, we’re good to go. Some meetings we get into some weeds. Okay.

About expansion is where kevin has had an employee. You had a competitor, tried to steal your employees, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, I do too every week. Right. Kevin is. Is there not a burning fire every week?

Oh yeah.

Oh kevin. And stoic. So he’s able to push through that.

Right. The lows are not low. The highs are not too high. He’s just even keel. And so it’s very easy to focus on those key performance indicators. And actually just like he said earlier, make sure the business is going in the right direction and when the business is going in the right direction and you’re accomplishing your own goals with your family, it’s a fun time so we have a good time when we meet and we just make sure that things are happening the way they need to happen.

Kevin, everyBody out there who’s listening in green country that wants to have a roof put on their commercial building or their residential property. How can they get ahold of you? What’s your. What’s your website and really why should people call you

louis roofing.com and if they want a company that’s going to be honest and do a good job for the company to call, we put her. I put my name on the business, her insulin fake name. We are 100 percent the real deal, not to a bunch of sales guys trying to sell a bunch of stuff. we are a roofing company that dues, but that’s all we do Is roofing

and I’ve. I’ve worked with a lot of roofing companies where we’ve done a 13 point assessment with them and it is rare to find a roofing company that we would even approve to coach. I want you to do this. We go through the assessment and probably 80 percent of the time we say was not a good fit. Kevin’s a great guy grinder. He stands behind his program. He puts his name on the website, on the busIness, on the marketing trucks, on everything. Check them out today. It’s louis roofing. That’s louis roofing.com and kevin, I appreciate you taking time out of your day, away from your family and your business to share your story here on the podcast and radio show. Hope you have an awesome day, my friend.

Alright, thank you. You too.

Take care. All right. Thrive nation, yet another success story. That’s Kevin Lewis with louis roofing. Big shout out to you my friend. Now, during our next segment, we come back, we’re going to be doing a a path, a thriver out there that has a meal delivery service, but before we get into his path, chuck, tell us about our next show sponsor. Well, that’s williams contracts. of course, if you’re out there looking to build a new commercial project or add onto the existing building,

get a hold of [email protected], 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

nation. Welcome back to the thrive time show on your radio. Now on today’s show we’re talking about is how skills allow you to pay the bills, but systems, processes and checklists allow you to create time freedom. And we just finished interviewing Kevin Lewis with lift, with a louis roofing, who we’ve been able to help grow his roofing company from $6,000,000 a year in sales to over $10,000,000 a year in sales. And he’s now workIng less than ever before. And I want to tap into clay stares in your business coach wisdom on this because you are a school teacher? Yes sir. And uh, what ages of kids did you teach before you took over as the head of the shepherds fold camp? I was primarily teaching high school at that point for 11th and twelfth grade. Okay. And this is what happens you, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I volunteered for seven hours a day every single day.

I think it was wednesday at for junior achievement for broken arrow high school. So I did an entire day and I did that for years. I think it was. Vanessa said, I think it was seven years. I did it or six years, but it’s every single week. And I did it because I wanted to make an impact in what I found was around the junior year of high school, maybe sophomore people have developed this, thIs, this thing, and I wonder when to write this down, this, this, this word. It’s called habit and the word habit. The definition of the word habit means a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up a good habit or a bad habit. Either way, the habits begin to control people and they do things and they’re not even aware of why they’re doing the things.

And so much of our coaching as a business coaching program is I’d say 30 percent of what we do is teaching you. A third of what we do is teaching you to proven steps, which, oh, by the way, nine out of 10 businesses fail, but 95 percent of businesses never become profitable. Yeah. Even the 10 percent that make it chip, only half of those ever become profitable. So it’s a shame we teach the systems, which means that if we’re going to teach you the systems that work, the reason why dr z and I haven’t declared 13 separate bankruptcy’s the reason why on our franchise disclosure document for elephant in the room, it has a asks on the federally regulated franchise disclosure document. Have you had any previous bankruptcies? Why can say no is because I haven’t. Now, the reason why most people have two or three when they start a company over and over and they fail is because most people are doing the wrong systems, right?

The second thing we have to do as a coach is we have to help you want to do it through. We have to help you. There we go, want to do it? And the third is we have to help you make a new schedule, an actual schedule you’re going to want to do, but you’ve got to have a new schedule and we’ve got to break those habits. So talk to me clay stairs about Why it is so hard for early initial clients to break those habits. They’re stuck in and the freedom that they can experience only when they break free from those habits that had that hypnotic rhythm of jack and her. They’re just losing every day, but they continue to stay loyal to something that doesn’t work. Yeah. Clay, I found over and over in the leadership training that I’ve done for years with people is that we are so many of us think that the reason why we aren’t doing something or the reason why we aren’t able to achieve something is because we need to have some education. We need to learn more. I need to read a book. We need to talk to somebody who needed to learn how to do it. We need to have a knowledge of how to watch ted talks. Exactly. You got to have the knowledge to do it, but clay, we do not act out of our knowledge. We act out of our belief system. Come on, we act out of what we believe. How many times have you,

you said to yourself, why? Why do I keep doing that? I know Better. It’s right. You know better, but you don’t believe you gotta believe and so the belief, the picture that you have of yourself, the picture that you have of your, of how you’re running your company, that is how you are always going to add. I will always act out of your belief and so for, for us as coaches to come alongside of you and encourage you and begin to speak words of encouragement, words of promise, words of identity, and give you knowledge. I love the way you just said this. That was fantastic. It’s not just about the system that we train you, but we have to help you want to get the. We got to change your water and it’s just can’t let your water get snagged. Thank you so much. You’ve got a kid out of the stagnant water and, and, but to change the, but to change your belIef, you have have

to change your pIctures. And that’s, that’s just huge. Now, thrive nation, we read when we get back from the break, I have a confessional. I’ve, uh, I will have a confession I want to share with the listeners out there that’s been weighing on my heart. Um, I’m 37, show up, do the math. If this happened when I was 18 and 19, that’s 18, 19 years ago, and I feel like I need to get it out there in the open. my kids know about it, my wife knows about it, but I feel like I need to get that off. pull the car over. I feel like I need to get, get this confession out there because if not this story, this, this, this history, this habit that I once had this could haunt me for the rest of my life. Now here’s the, here’s the deal.

ThrIvers. Recently we hit number one overall on itunes numeral as the number one podcast in all categories. Do you understand there’s over 530,000 podcasts in the world, thrive nation. I thank you so much for sharing this with your friends, for getting involved in the podcast. And we hit number one on all categories, right? So I want you to make, I want you to make me a promise here when, when you hear the next story, I only, I want you to keep it private between you, me a 100,000 folks that download the podcast, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. But just keep it within us and three friends you know. And then you tell those three friends, listen, I don’t want you sharing this beyond three friends. That’s it. Because if you, that’s unethical and you tell them, you say, if you’re going to tell your three friends and they tell their friends. That has to stop after you tell three friends because we’re talking about breaking habits and man, habits are tough to break our a clay stairs or they know they are thInking of a non crazy habit chop where you’re not like, this is really embarrassing, but a habit where, oh gosh, no. It rhythm of a business where you think to yourself, that’s something I used to do. Yeah, absolutely. I no longer do what. What’s a habit? Would you used to do it and now you no longer do I stay up late.

I’m a night owl. Unethical. I just, I always been. And the problem was I had to, you know, my previous career I still had to get up really early so I was just like dying all day. But now like we’ve talked about previously in the show, it’s, I enjoy my job. Like I like helping my clients grow and have time freedom, financial freedom. I enjoy doing the podcast and radio show with you guys. So, um, I actually want to get to bed so I can get up and get back to doing what I’m doing. I have a confession I want to make. Last night I went to bed at like 9:00. And here’s the problem. I am so excited. After we interviewed seth goden podcast will be released in november to remember, I was so excited, uh, after interviewing my kinda one of my heroes, his face is on the wall over there by muhammad.

I in the studio there he is on the office. He’s everywhere. I love seth goden. I love his books. One of the top purchased a authors of the last decade. I finished reading his book and this is, this is kind of audio of my inner dialogue chip. I was able to record my inner dialogues, so new technology. I laid in my bed till over 1:00 AM last night. Going gig to gig to gig. I mean I, I couldn’t handle that. I mean my brain was going to explode. I can’t believe we interviewed seth. My wife’s like, babe, are you? Are you doing good? Are you okay in there? Like, you know what I mean? It’s just, It’s a thing. I tried drinking water at tread walking around the house. I tried, I tried everything I could possibly do, but I could not sleep because I was so excited about interviewing

and stay tuned for the confession. 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 thrive time show

on your radio and podcast download. Now. During the first few segments of today’s show, we had Kevin Lewis, one of the members of the thrive nation, a roofer who’s grown his company successfully from $6,000,000 a year in sales to $10,000,000 a year in sales. As a result of the business coach of mr eric chop our cohost, andy dIlligent, execution of the proven path by Mr. Kevin Lewis and he put himself out there. He shared things that were uncomfortable. He cheffies shared things where you thought to yourself, wow, I don’t know if that was kind of rough. That was kind of a.

He’s a real guy and that’s one of the things I really like about working with him is like we don’t have to sugar coat things. If he’s doing some money to talk to him about, I can just talk to them about it and we fixed the problem and get it, get it.

And I feel like if he’s going to bare his soul and put his heart out there, I feel like I should bare my soul and share with the listeners something that I’ve wanted to confess for 18 or 19 years. And so again, my commitment for the thrive nation, I’m going to share with you the truth of the situation. And I only want you to share that I’m all, I’m all, I’m asking you, could you please only share this with your three closest friends because there’s hundreds of thousands and if you can just share it with your three friends maximum and they share with their three friends maximum. Then we can all learn how to break bad habits. And little secret here. We kept secret dateline tulsa, Oklahoma. I’m attending oral roberts university. I’m a freshman. Have no money. Okay? I have maybe in my account at any point, maybe $3,000 maximum rich and what I’m doing at a dj business making payroll and paying the djs.

But after paying the guys, my account would go from $300 a week two then for the next week to five. And I’ve just keep growing it. But it was a deal where I didn’t have a whole lot of money. so I’m eating the ramen ramen noodles. Oh yeah. But specifically I had a lot of the, the uh, budget gore may ninety six cent chicken panini meals and the frozen budget gourmet, by the way, a contradiction in terms jumbo shrimp oxymoron ever. Right. so I’m also, I had the four for a dollar yogurts, the fruit at the bottom of elite edition of the generic brand. So If you’ve got the generic brand, you can afford yogurts for a dollar. And so I would buy the yogurts. I take my yogurts a, I’d walk to walmart across the campus from oral roberts university. I’d walk across the parking lot. There’s a sonic over there, there’s a hilton.

I would walk over there to walmart, I would grab, I’d walk, they didn’t want to use any gas, would walk over that, get my yogurt, bring it back and put it into the fridge within the, it’s called emr, have no idea what emr stood for, which is why you shouldn’t use acronyms. And I’m staying in the emr dorms and I put it in the fridge and then I would, you know, go upstairs doing homework, whatever. And then I would come downstairs to grab my yogurt and that was kind of like what I would eat because the meal plan you can choose whether you want to have 21 meals a week or 14 and it’s a lot less money if you have 14 meals a week. So I had two meals a day and then have the yogurts, the other meals to save money and I’d go down there in my food will always be gone.

So I thought to myself one time, you know what, I put my yogurts in there, I paid my money, I paid $2 for eight yogurts, I paid $2 and sixteen cents after taxes and I paid $2 and sixteen cents and someone has taken my yogurts. I view this as like a gift exchange. So I’m going to look around the fridge for something of higher value or equal value that I would like to procure from the fridge. and no seriously. And somebody would go out to dinner like fridays are all garden or some nice places out back and they would have a t bone steak in the fridge for leftovers. I thought, well, I have no class. Somebody has taken my yogurt, so I will now take is obviously a pirate culture. So then I took, you know, the, the, the steak. I go up there and eat it and I’m eating the steak of going, this is a good deal.

So probably day two I thought, you know, I’m going to go there and get some more yogurts, put it in the fridge, see if and how I morally justified this. I thought if the frigerator I went to oral roberts university, but it wasn’t a christian at the time. So I thought if the fridge god the fridge, you heard of the sun god, the false gods, the. But if the fridge god, I mean there was a lot of greek mythological gods, but the fridge got. If the fridge god takes the sacrifice of my yogurt and I spent $2 and sixteen cents on, I will crank up the ante. So I go up there, I put in the $2 and sixteen cents of yogurts. Sure enough it’s gone. So I take somebody lasagna with the shrimp. I remember it was my second meal and I thought to myself, I kinda liked this vending machine.

I kinda liked the fridge gut. This is a good deal. Fridge god. Oh my gosh. Well I continued that cycle for two consecutive years. Never ever, ever did anyone know and I would always just bring in yogurts and take whatever. And so when I left and it was kind of a game because the front desk guy started saying, hey, somebody is taking the food. And I said, I know somebody took my yoga. I would walk in to the every week I’d walk in and then I would come downstairs around like five in the morning because the guys want. He’s monitoring the area, you know, and I would say the security guy, listen, somebody has taken my food, all I have left is this steak. ANd he’s like, man, I’m sorry. And I would just take it upstairs. So anyway, people over time started to learn that the fridge, god was a benevolent dictator for the fourth floor.

So I’m in a car driving with Jordan guthman, one of your campers yet shepherd school. This is what inspired this story. Okay. Jordan camped at shepherds fold the camp that clay stairs ran. Yeah. And uh, we’re driving up to omaha to dj a wedding and he shadowed me. I’m teaching one in omaha. We’re driving up there and I know it’s so sorry it’s in. It’s in. It’s in omaha, but I remember the name of the town, but we’re driving up to omaha and Jordan was telling me a story. He goes, I gotta tell you a funny story because we’re on a road trip. And I said, what’s the story goes? I was driving, I was, I was, I got back from college is like a fall break. I got back and some kids, there’s very few people back. I got back early so I’m there in the dorms and some kid is like balling about how somebody ate his gourmet New York cheesecake.

And I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, this kid, I guess he’s from New York. His mom, very poor family. She went to the local bakery and shipped him a cheesecake and for his birthday he. So he put it in the fridge. Oh. And like an idiot, he only had one slice and so I made a sacrifice to the fridge. God, I put in some yogurts or whatever. And then I took it and I said, what did you just say? He was, I mean, it’s an emr emr thing. It’s a covenant move. What we do is we make a deposit in the fridge and we take whatever’s in there. I go, you ate a kid’s gouramis easy. I heard the kid crying because it’s like $100 for cheesecake. And he goes and I felt kind of bad but I the whole thing. And I said, oh my gosh, that’s terrible.

And he says, well, here’s what makes us crazier. he’s on the phone with his mom. I guess she shipped some another one. Oh. So she and he puts it in the fridge again and he puts the branch and he’s like. And I felt bad the second time, but I just might as well. I started finding out that I had created a habitual rhythm where our floor, just everybody, and this is like eight years after I went to school there. This tradition has carried on this habit force. If anyone on the fridge got anyone on the floor for a emr floor for north, they would just bring food into the fridge and just without any just reckless abandon any cost without any moral, regardless take. They would just take anybody’s food and and so I’m like, well, what else did you take? he goes, oh man, dude.

I took like, a lot of times guys would make brownies with her girlfriends. I’d get the brand. He’s going, he’s gotta wait to like 80 percent done. Then I would just go upstairs and take them and I’m like, dude, that’s amazing. He was already going to sit down like they’re still in the oven? Yeah, like the other. Not done bacon yet, but it’s edible and then you just shut that thing next to another guy. Guy’s not going to come down and check on him yet. Yeah. I need to have somebody else run interference, like block the elevator because you hit all the numbers. You hit all of the different floors. So it takes forever to get down. What a terrible culture of mistrust to live in. I’m just saying is like, so when I got home, when I it up with vanessa and I first got married, I was used to waking up at three in the morning and go into the fridge god and looking for whatever’s in the fridge.

It no seriously because I was used to set my alarm. I set my alarm because no one who goes to the fridge at three in the morning. I didn’t scam the french guy, so I was so used to it. So now to this day I still wake up naturally, probably at midnight and three. It’s like I’m sitting watch, waIting to see. He’s got my yogurts. I’m waiting to see who’s going to make a deposit because I would go down the steps and check if there was something brought in. Nice. And I like a little kid upstairs at christmas eve. you’re like, to this day vanessa can tell you I still do that. I’m not kidding. I felt good about 10. I wake up at like midnight and like three and I get five and I immediately go to the fridge and I’m thinking like, what is the fridge?

God, how did I get here and Is there a business habit that you had to stop to become successful? You thought to yourself, you know, clay, maybe I’m not a sick freak or I eat people’s food out of the fridge. Maybe I’m not a sick freak like eric chop where I stay up too late. But what, what is something where you had to change a business habit that’s allowed you to become more successful? No, mine was definitely watching tv habits. I was that guy. I was that. I was that average american watches five hours of tv every day. It’s a trap. Oh yeah. In the, you know, I had to watch cheers. You know, you had to watch, you had to watch the next episode of seinfeld and everybody’s talking about, oh my gosh, guess what, you know, it’s coming. Can you believe that happened?

I was in the conversations with everybody, a water cooler. Oh yeah. It was all exciting and everything, you know, I can’t believe that, that, uh, you know, the ross and rachel, I can’t believe ross and rachel got married, you know, and all that kind of stuff. Exactly. You got the cheers thing, so glad you ain’t made a spinoff show with norm or or what was the guy at the post office guy? Who is the guy that posted the post office a cliff? Cliff lift was. No, it was just. It was frazier frazier raise zone. Joe frazier was diane’s girl boyfriend. Now you got to watch that business coach show and then you gotta watch house of cards. There’s so many shows to watch unless you want to break out of the hit, hit the out of the hypnotic rhythm of sucking my friends. If you want to break free from the jackass three, change your habits and change your life. Without any further ado, we always end with a three, two, and one, and a boom. Here we go. three, two, one.