TipTopK9.com | The 14 Steps to Turn-Key Business Success + Celebrating the Success of TipTopK9.com, NavigationEyeCare.com & TipTopK9.com + “Clay really helped us with his systems, doubling our size, helped us double our incomes.” – Ryan Wimpey

Audio Transcription

Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. Having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which, you know, we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, and so the humor definitely helps. It breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts, and it’s very interactive. You can raise your hand. It’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. It’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars. You’re missing the thought process of someone that’s already started like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information but just getting in the thought process of Clay Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches. Getting in the thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses. To me just that is priceless. That’s money. Well we’re definitely not getting up sold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where they up what was great information and then they up sold us like half the conference. I don’t want to like bang my head into a wall, and she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like, it’s good information, but we’re like, oh my gosh, I want to strangle you. Shut up and go with the presentation that we paid for. And that’s not here. There’s no upsells or anything, so that’s awesome. I hate that. Oh, it makes me angry. So, glad that’s not happening. So the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school and I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. The information that you’re gonna get is just very, very beneficial. And the mindset that you’re gonna get, that you’re gonna leave with, is just absolutely worth the price of a little bit of money and a few days worth of your time. Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show. ♪ We started from the bottom now we hit it ♪ ♪ We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get it We started from the bottom, now we hit it We started from the bottom, now we hit it We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top Teaching you the systems to get what we got Cousin Dixon’s on the hooks, I bring down the books He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi If you see and see up on your radio Alright, Devin, on today’s show we’re going to actually feature a client success story that Jordan has been working with. This is a long-time client of ours. She’s an optometrist. She just had a baby and she’s built a successful company. So she’s given birth to a business and a baby all within the same limited period of time. How is that possible? Because she’s a hard worker and she knows her goals and she knows what has to be done to hit her goals. And so on part two of today’s show, we’re going to actually share her story or she’s going to share her story. And it’s a really encouraging story. If you’re out there today and you feel stuck, I don’t want you to feel stuck, but I do want you to know something statistically speaking. According to usdebtclock.org, usdebtclock.org, there’s only nine million people in America today that identify as being self-employed. And of those nine million, 96% of the, and everyone needs to look this up, 96% of the businesses in America today, according to Inc. Magazine, fail and only 9 million people in our country are self-employed out of a country of 330 million people. Which means that only 3% of our country is self-employed to begin with and then 96% of that group fails. Why is that? Well, I mean, that’s a great question. That’s the golden baby question right there. No one really knows, I guess. Now, can you introduce us to our new friend on the mic here? Yes. Who do we have here on the mic? Yes, we have Rihanna. She works with us here and she’s awesome. Now Rihanna, did you go to college? Did you go to college? Yes, I have my associates right now and I’m currently working on my bachelor’s actually. What are you studying? I’m studying marketing right now. Okay, and you don’t have to give away too much personal information, but I mean, do you come from a family of entrepreneurs? Is that what they do? Kind of. My dad wanted to start up his own business, but it kind of never really took off like how he wanted it to. But he kind of had a vision to do it, maybe. He did. Yes, he absolutely did. OK, well, I’m going to walk everybody through the 14 steps needed to grow a successful company. And then we’re going to walk you through a successful client. And so I think it’ll be a powerful story for somebody out there. And again, folks, this is an optometrist. Now, she did go to eight years of school previous to becoming our client, and so it is a story that required a lot of education, but when she got out of school, she didn’t know how to start a business. Then, I’m also going to introduce you today to a cleaning service. This lady, she was a client of ours for a long, long time. Her name’s Stephanie, and Stephanie first heard about us while listening to podcasts, and it occurred to her, you know what, I should start my own company. And she grew her business by 1,462% within the years that she was a client. So she went from a startup to a very successful company. And we’re going to share with you her story as well. So let’s go with box number one here. Establish your revenue goals. Let’s just say that you were going to start a business. Devyn, what would…why is it important that you have your revenue goals figured out in your mind? Well, you have to know what you need to hit. You need to know how many customers you need, you need to know how many things to sell to reach your goals. You have your associate’s degree? You have your associate’s degree? I do, yes. I’m working on my bachelor’s. Working on your bachelor’s. Okay. And with that, is there any class you’ve had so far where they talk about knowing your revenue goals? I’ve had to take a couple of accounting classes. And do they talk about this or what do they talk about? I’ve had to take a couple of accounting classes. I’ve had to take a couple of accounting classes. I’ve had to take a couple of accounting classes. of accounting classes. Do they talk about this or what are they talking about? Did they ever talk about knowing your revenue goals if you were to start a company? Yeah, yeah. All about budgeting, all about what you want to make, and how you’re gonna do it. Okay, cool, great. So box number two, you have to know the numbers, the number of clients you need to break even. So if you have a business, whether it’s a cleaning service or an optometry clinic, Devon, you got to know the break-even numbers. Now, again, I’m going to go to our two-year associate graduate here. Do you think, just your take on this, again, you’re doing great in the office here, what percentage of clients do you think that reach out to us know their break-even point before they reach out to us? What do you think? Man, I’m really not sure. Like before? Before they reach out. It’s kind of like they reach out for help, but how many of them do you think know how many customers they need to break even before we talk to them? I don’t know. Maybe like anywhere from 40 to 60 percent maybe. What do you think? Like 20 percent. Really? Yeah. Okay, so and again I think what happens is I think people get excited about the vision. You know, they get excited about the cleaning service. They get excited about the optometry clinic. They get excited about whatever that is. And a lot of times clients don’t know that. So if you’re listening out there today, you’ve got to know how many customers you need to break even. You’ve got to know that. You’ve got to know that. Okay. So an example would be I have a haircut chain and we cut hair, men’s hair, and basically we have to do an average of about 3,000 haircuts a month to break even. Okay. So that’s just how many haircuts we need to break even. It’s very important that I know that number. And why, Devyn, is that important? It’s important because if we don’t cut 3,000 heads a month, then we’re losing money. Back to your college experience. So you’re at college. Yep. And did you talk at all about break-even numbers? Did that happen? Was that a big point of discussion? It wasn’t. It was probably a chapter or two. It wasn’t like the entire class, but they did say it’s important to know how much you’re making, how much you have to sell in order to make a profit. How did you do in college? Did you like college? Were you a big college person? I did. I did. I focused mostly on studies. I did a lot of commuting and right now I’m online so it’s really just sticking to exactly what I’ve got going on with my classes. How far did you have to drive to work or to college every day? To college? I was driving about 20 to 25 minutes. Every day? Yes. Are you like listening to audio books while you drive or what are you doing while you’re driving? Mostly it was really music or just thinking about what I’m going to be having on for the next day. Got it. Devyn, do you have to drive to work now? Yeah. How long is your commute? It’s about 30 minutes. Really? Yeah. Where are you driving from? Catoosa. Really? Yeah. Really? So you’re out there by the casino area? Yeah. Are you in the woods? So I have to drive by the Hard Rock. Every day, every morning? Yeah. 30 minutes? That sign is so bright, too. Yeah, like 27. Okay. And I’ll just tell people out there, if you’re an entrepreneur and you want to become successful, one of the things you’ve got to do is you’ve got to turn your commute into sort of your mobile classroom so you can kind of learn these things. And you can, as you’re driving, you can be having these thoughts of, I wonder what my break-even point is. Oh, no, I don’t know. Okay, box number four, you have to figure out your unique value proposition. Now this is the part where it gets a little bit scary for people. It’s where you are not the first optometrist in America. You’re not the only cleaning service in America. And so, back to you. You went to college. You go to college. In college, the last two years, did they ever talk to you about knowing your unique value proposition? Did they ever say, this is the key? Honestly, no, not really. They talked to us about making sure you know what you want to do so that way you’re not wasting your time So let’s talk about let’s just say that you were an optometrist. I know you’re not let’s say you were You gotta be thinking about what would you do to stand out in a cluttered marketplace? And I’ll pull up an example so you can see this client. You can know she’s a real person here So so Devon if you are sitting down with an optometrist, okay, you’re sitting down. This is all right here. This is dr. Amber This is the client of Jordan’s. There she is. Nice lady, Dr. Amber. What would you, how could she make her business different and stand out? Well, first off, why does her business have to stand out? Because then she’s just like every other optometrist. Like she doesn’t stand out. So no one’s going to be like, ooh, they look different. I’m going to go to them. So how, so with her business, what we had to do is figure out, okay, what can we do to make your business stand out in the cluttered marketplace? All right. And what we did with her is her business is sort of a minimalist, really I would say like clean, very kind of an environment that’s very welcoming, it’s very clean, the way she displays her glasses and frames, that’s the look. We also have to make sure that we are the highest rated and most reviewed optometry clinic in her community, that’s a big thing out there in Chesapeake, Virginia. But we had to really sit down and go what can we do that makes us unique? And what we came up with was her first exam is such a low price, such a great deal, why would you not check it out? It’s just $99. And she’s the highest rated and most reviewed. So if you were looking for an optometrist in that community, you would at least give Dr. Amber a try because it’s like lowest priced, most reviewed, why not check it out? Okay, that’s box four. Now box five, you gotta improve the branding. Now branding, associates, college, do they talk about branding? That’s gonna be more about what I’m learning right now in my marketing courses. Okay, okay, so you haven’t got there yet, but you’re getting there, transitioning, okay. Yes, yeah. So the branding thing, this is big, because last night, I didn’t wanna go there, but I got invited to go, so the people who invited me, I like them, but I did not want to go. Have you ever been to the Summit Club with your associate’s degree program? Did they take you to the Summit Club? No, I don’t believe so. Have you been to the Summit Club? No. Okay. The Summit Club is sort of like a bougie country club in the sky. I’ll Google it real quick. Summit Club, Tulsa. It’s on top of the Bank of America Tower. I used to actually be in charge of the marketing for this particular series of properties, but it’s been years since I’ve been there. But this is sort of the look up there. You’re in the sky, but it’s like a nice restaurant. I think I was actually, see, this is my chair. This is where I was sitting, right? That was my chair, there it is. So it’s the Summit Club, and I’m there, and I always wear a sport coat and jeans. But I was the only guy there that was wearing Yeezys. And I didn’t have the thought of, I think I’ll be the only person who wears Yeezy. Because everyone else is wearing like nice brown dress shoes or what, you know, shoes that women wear when they’re dressed up. I’m wearing Yeezys. I’m not saying that’s a pro tip for life. I’m just saying that’s what was happening. So how many, why do you think, Devyn, I got asked at least a dozen times last night from people, what are those shoes? Because you were, you were standing out. You were, you weren’t wearing what everyone else was wearing. And even whether it’s good or bad, you’re like, what are those shoes? Yeah. What are you wearing? Are those, what are those? You know, they kept being asked that question. And it’s because there just wasn’t a lot of people that wear Yeezys. Well, I never go outside, so this is like a first for me. I’m out and they’re going, what are you wearing? And so all these judges and doctors and dentists and lawyers were all there being bougie and they’re like, what are you wearing? But it stands out. So you got to figure out how are you going to stand out in a way? And then if you do stand out from a branding perspective, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, one of the guys who was at this event, he says, that’s the podcast guy. You’re the podcast guy. He’s the podcast guy. Hey, podcast guy. And then all of a sudden, so whatever I’ve done or haven’t done up to this point in my life, I’ve now been reduced to the podcast guy. That’s fair. But why do you think, during your associates degree program, I want to ask you this. Did they at any point, did they talk about branding or has it just now begun in the marketing program? Have you just, did they talk at all when your first couple years of college about branding or just now is it a new conversation? So it’s mostly just a new conversation now because my associates was actually in business administration. Business administration. So that’s working off the theory that somebody’s selling something. And then you would be administering over that. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So, and again, this is, and I’m not ripping that idea, I’m just saying that this is important. The theory of administrating something would be based upon the premise that something is selling first. Because if nothing’s selling, then there would be nothing to administer, right? That’s the idea? Right, yeah. So, the branding thing, you know, whether it’s good or bad, people are like, that’s the podcast guy. That’s basically, you’re the podcast guy. You’re the America podcast guy. So, pretty soon on my table, like you’re the America podcast, that’s the America podcast. My name, they don’t know my show is Thrive Time Show, but they’re calling me the America podcast guy. So that’s fine. At least they know what it is, kind of, but they’re going to be like, I listened to that show. It was great. I liked your interview with Roseanne. I, whatever. Okay. So now we’ve got this three legged marketing stool. You have to have three ways that you market three, not 407, but three. So back to your… now you have the business administration. If you are managing, administering over a marketing team, and they had three ways they were supposed to market, why is that easier to manage than if they had 407 ways of marketing? It’s easier to specialize in three legs of marketing rather than a bunch of different ones. It’s easier to manage. It’s easier to make those specific ways of marketing successful. True, true. And Devin, you work with business owners that don’t have a three-legged marketing stool. We start with them, they have like 407. And they’re saying, I try to do trade shows, I also do magazines, I do billboards, I get my name out there, I have a megaphone, I yell at people at the mall, I send mailers. Why is it important to just have three legs to your marketing stool, your figurative marketing stool? Well, just like Rhianna was saying, you can improve better on the three legs. And if something kind of is off, it’s easier to figure out which one’s not working because there’s only three instead of 500. Rhianna, how many Rhiannas do you know? Me and the famous one, that’s it. That’s it? Yeah. So when you tell people your name, is it often that people go, oh, I know another Rihanna. Are you the only one? No, I have never met anyone with the same name as me Really? Yeah, really and I’ve never met anyone who knows any other Rihanna’s. Do you have your mom and dad? Do they name your other kids interesting names? No, they’ve got pretty generic names actually, but they had where did Rihanna come from where they come up with the name? Um, I think they just heard it and they really liked it. Really? I You know Devon I wanted to name my son Marvelous. My wife was like, you can’t do that. You like it? I think it’s Marvelous. I was like, if I name him Marvelous, you can’t forget it. It’s like seared in your brain. Imagine you meet a guy, like him or not, you’re like, what’s your name? Marvelous. You’ll never forget it. Another example, this isn’t what you should do, but imagine that you find a seven-year-old at an ice cream store, ice cream store like Baskin Robbins or Brahms, and the kid’s having a great time. If you went up to the child and you took the ice cream from them and said, you’ll never forget this day, I’m taking your ice cream, and you left, they’d probably remember it. Another example, if you’re driving on the road and you saw a massive fire, not that you should do this, but if you saw a massive fire engulfing the side of the road or a ditch fire or a car on fire, don’t you remember those things more so than just a normal drive to work? Yeah. You guys both commute to work. Do you remember your drive to work today, Ms. Brianna? Do you remember your drive? You go, because most people don’t. Kind of scary though. Maybe, or maybe it’s good. Do you remember, Devin, your trip to work today? Yeah. You do? I mean, yeah, because it’s just this morning, but I’ll probably forget it. You do remember it? Yeah. Okay, I’m just saying, it’s like, as a general rule, we kind of, if we’re not careful, we… Right. And again, this is, we could get into psychology, we could study this, but I’m just saying, if, from a, just an ability to function, if everything was memorable, we couldn’t remember anything. Does that make sense? Yes, it does make sense. So if you, let’s play a little game here. Let’s say that you, Devin and Rheanna teamed up and you wanted to open up an optometry clinic in Tulsa. So you’re going to team up with our client here and open up another Amber Tieten business. Amber Teton optometry clinic, navigationicare.com. And just to be just to be fun here, just give some little meat on the bone, okay? Do you know where Southern Hills is? Southern Hills, the golf course? Yes. Okay, so let’s say that you’re not over in Southern Hills, we’re gonna go east a little bit. Now you’re kind of getting over there by St. Francis Hospital. Can you picture it? Can you picture it? We’re still gonna go east. We’re headed over to Woodland Hills Mall. Can you picture it? Okay, we’re still gonna go east. We’re keep going east. We’re going east. We’re driving past all these optometry clinics. There’s a lot of them. Now we’re east, east, east. Now we’ve run into Bass Pro Shop. Can you picture it? So now you’re the neighbor of Bass Pro Shop. You’re the neighbor of Bass Pro Shop, okay? And you wanna stand out. You wanna be the optometry clinic that everybody goes to. What is a way, just through the architecture of your building, it’s a square building, you know, what is a way through just the architecture of the optometry clinic that you could stand at or through your signage? I know for Navigation Eye Care, for example, they have a penguin. Just get a big, huge, blow-up penguin and put it right outside. And even if people don’t like the penguin or they do, they’re going to remember it because they’re like, wow, there’s a penguin. You can paint your building purple. You have a purple cow theme. And if everything was painted in purple cow print, even if you personally hate that idea, everyone would go, did you see the purple cow? It’s crazy. Because it would be an eyesore or it would get your attention because the Bass Pro Shop has kind of a rustic, long cabin theme. What if you painted it yellow? Hello, yellow. If you painted it yellow, bright yellow, hello, you’d see it, right? Yes. So, that’s kind of what marketing is. It’s getting the attention of your ideal and likely buyer. Now once we move past that, we move into the sales conversion. Now this part here, and Rhianna, you’re doing an awesome job on this, but this is where you have sales scripts, recorded calls, and you need somebody to administer, which you’re doing a great job of by the way, and someone is administering me and they’re just implementing the task. Do you play volleyball? Not. What was your sport? I didn’t actually play a lot of sports. I was a cheerleader. You’re a cheerleader. Okay, so could you do a full? No, I was not the most talented when it came to tumbling. Okay, okay, but you get the idea what a full is. So Devin, you play softball. Yes. So, theoretically, there’s a certain batting stance. You have an open stance or a closed stance. We could argue about this, but there’s a batting stance. But essentially, are you left-handed or right-handed? Right-handed. But there’s a certain athletic position that one has to assume if they’re going to hit the baseball. In this case, it’s softball, right? Yes. Now, why, as a player, does everyone have a similar stance? Yeah. Why? Because, I mean, if you… Because that’s the way it is. You have to have your feet straddle the base and then you have to twist your hips to get the power. It’s just how it is. If you don’t do it, you’re not going to hit the ball hard. Now you throw the ball underhanded as a pitcher. As a pitcher, yes. And they can throw the ball pretty hard. What if you tried to throw it overhand? Is that legal? No, you can’t do that. You can’t? No. I think not. What if you wanted to as a softball player? I don’t think that would be allowed. What if you hit the ball and instead of running to first base, you went to third base and then to first base every time? That would be crazy. So you hit the ball, the ball goes into right field, and you sprint to the pitcher’s mound, you yell at the pitcher, you run to third base, then you go to first base. What would happen? It would be all chaos with breakers. No one would know what to do. It might be a good move. You might get on base. Let’s say you’re a cheerleader. Did you do routines? Yeah, we did. Okay, so how long was the routine? Depended. Most of the time it was just like if we were just performing for the school, about a minute. Was it in between? Were you doing the games? Performing at the games? Yeah, usually at halftime. Okay, so they’re playing. You got a halftime. They bring you out there. You’re doing your routine. Now, what if you got a minute, right? And they play some songs. Here’s just some upbeat song. Yeah. And what if like the song’s over, but you’re still just going? To your own, I mean, what if you’re like, you know, they’re getting, and now ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to start here, the third down and 10 on your home field. And then you’re still just rocking. What’s going to happen? Probably get some weird looks. Right. But at the same time, that’s how certain people are in business without management or someone to administer over the execution of the proven system. Does that make sense? Yeah. So right around box seven on this plan here, the creativity has to stop and it has to become about execution or implementation. And that’s why I wanted to praise you. You’re doing a great job. You’re like really on target, Rihanna. You’re knocking it out. Devin does a great job too, but it’s like if somebody doesn’t do that, it’s so weird. Because then you’re like, why are you running to third base? It’s first base. I just like to do it that way. But again, in a call center, you’d go, why are you not following the script? What is your deal? I just prefer to do it this way. It’s odd. So like for Elephant in the Room, our haircut chain, the reason why our first haircut’s a dollar, there’s a lot of reasons to it, but one is we donate the first dollar to a charity. So that’s it’s a cause called compassion.com. And that ministry is somewhat reliant upon our consistency of donations. To my wife does the write offs and handles that. We can’t just arbitrarily say, you know, this month I’m donating to myself. You know, you can’t you got to follow the script. Everyone’s got to follow the same thing. And the first haircut is a dollar. We have to explain to people what they get. And everyone’s so I’d say probably every third, maybe every fifth call, the customer says, well, how much does it cost in the store? And you go, well, it’s a dollar for the first haircut in the store. The local store will know their price. Well, the reason why is because each store has their own pricing structure. So if you’re over the phone quoting prices and you don’t know, it all gets jacked up. Everything gets screwed up if it all doesn’t go through the same system. So that’s where the administration comes. That’s why you need call recording, call scripts, one sheets, pre-written emails. I personally like box seven, eight, nine. It’s very calm for me. These first couple boxes are a little crazy though. Because when you’re sitting down with a client and asking them their goals or their vision or about their branding, it can go crazy. And so, it’s like your infinite numbers of colors in your painting or something. It can be wild. Okay, so box number eight. You gotta know your sustainable acquisition costs. How much does it cost you to get a new customer? So Rihanna, if you were running a company, this optometry clinic in this case, why would you want to know how much money it costs you to get a new customer? That way you can get as many customers coming in as possible. So if it cost you $20 per customer to get one, and you made a profit of $200 per customer, what would you do, Rihanna? I’d be pretty happy with the result of it. It costs $20 to get them in and I make a profit of $200. I feel like that’s a pretty good profit made off of getting a new customer in. Plus I’ll have their loyalty for the rest of the times that they are needing to come in. This box 8 is the most exciting part of business but no one ever talks about it because once you’re there you’re like well why don’t I just keep advertising more? If I pay $20 and bring in $200 let’s keep doing that faster. And that’s where it gets faster, more intense. All right. Now, box number nine, you have to create repeatable systems, processes, and file organization. And again, this is nomenclature, how to name things. We’ve all seen a periodic table. If I believe that uranium should be labeled as RF7BC3PO, that’s going to get weird because if I’m a scientist and you’re a scientist and you’re like, did you put uranium? You’re supposed to put sodium in there. You’ve created a toxic waste, buddy. My bad. I mean, you can’t just make up. Everyone has to have a system and an organization. Are you an organized person, Reena? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Are you organized, Devin? Yes. But there’s people that are not, ever. And if you’re not organized, what will happen if you scale a business, Devin? If you scale a business and you don’t have an organized system to start? Chaos. You can’t track anything. Like, what works? You don’t know, because you’re not organized. Sodom, Gomorrah, chaos, not good. Box 11. You’ve got to create a repetitive weekly schedule that works for you. Now, I have some of my clients, true story, some of my clients that elect to or choose to work like 10 hours a week. It’s a true story. I’ve got some of my clients who’ve built very successful companies and now they just want to work 10 hours a week. One of my clients texts me this week and he says, hey, I’m going to be in Canada skiing this week and next week, I’ll see you in three weeks. No problem, it’s great, awesome, woo! Another client of mine, other clients of mine, they like to work a lot, no problem. But Rihanna, why would we ask every client we work with, what do you want your ideal schedule to be? That way you can set a reasonable timeline for how big you want your company to be. It’s true, there it is. But again, some clients have a lot of kids, some clients have no kids, some clients are single, some clients are married, but everybody out there, you’ve got to know what you want your ideal schedule to be. So move on to box 12, human resources. You got to define in your mind who are A players. And by the way, Rihanna, you’re doing a good job. You’re on team A player, doing a great job. But A players, I’ll just tell you what A player is. This is how I would describe it. It’s people that are kind, and they show up on time. Kind of rhymes. People that are kind and show up on time. And then when they’re working, you know, the job is always on their mind. These are just very simple things I tell people. Again, kind, on time, and what they’re doing is on their mind. Let’s go back to softball right field. You ever played on a team where the right fielder was not kind. Yeah. How does it make the whole team go? If one person is just upset and decides to notify you about it, it just kills the vibe of everything on the cheer squad. You ever have somebody on the cheer squad being vague here, not looking for names, but you ever had it where one person was just a toxic person? Definitely yes, the whole vibe is weird. Yeah. Yep. You know so kind then the idea that this person is kind They’re on time you ever had somebody on your softball team Devin that was perpetually late. Yes, you have some other cheer squad They just can’t figure out. It’s 3 p.m.. Yes, and it all thing is weird Yeah, and then it’s not on their mind. This is a true story I was playing baseball back of the day. I was fairly good not that it were great, but I was, you know, batting third was good, but not great. It was, you know, good, but not great. And I remember one time, it was one of my games, the ball gets hit into right field and our right fielder was not paying attention. Like he was, I don’t know, waving at his girlfriend, waving at his mom, waving at the universe, thinking about a thing, writing a poem in his mind, thinking about a haiku, thinking about a rap lyric, tying a shoe, I don’t know. But the ball, boo, and the guy just is not there. And you’re like, wow, it’s amazing the ball didn’t hit you. You ever seen that in sports? Yeah. You ever seen that before, Brianna, like in cheer squad? Yeah. And then the whole thing is weird. So you gotta have people that it’s like, what they’re doing in their job is on their mind, they’re on time, and they’re kind. Those are just things that have to work. And then finally, you’ve gotta do accounting. And what happens is a lot of business owners, they don’t want to do accounting. And so I want to ask you, Devyn, you work with actual business owners. Why do some clients not want to do accounting? Because the numbers are the truth, and some people don’t want to see the truth. Ooh! Glory! That’s a big thing. And I think it’s important, you know, if you’ve ever played a competitive sport, the people that are winning usually want to know the score. And the people that are losing by 702 points, they’re normally like, we’re just doing it for fun. But go, yeah, it’s the fourth quarter and your basketball team’s down by 14 points every game. It’s just fun. We’re all about fun. Well, you’re saying that because you’re not winning. So you got to ultimately look at the numbers and the numbers are the truth. Rihanna, where did you kind of learn your work ethic? Where did you figure this out? Was it just something you’ve always had in you? Your mom and dad kind of beat that into your skull? What happened? Well, my dad will say I was born with it, but I learned a lot of how I feel about work from him. Really? So your dad just kind of patterns that? He was just always there to support me, and just watching him and how he does what he does was kind of just a bit of inspiration for me. That’s great. Now, Devin, what about you? Where did you kind of figure out the work ethic thing? Yeah, I think I definitely got it from my dad. We’re both super competitive. I also had a really great coach who was super old school. That’s exactly what I needed in my life. Old school coach. What sport was it? Softball and basketball. He was the kind of coach that would catch the foul ball with his bare hands and be like, oh, only stings for a second. We’d get hit with the softball, he’d be like, sorry princess, rub some dirt on it. That’s what we needed. So yeah, definitely Coach Jones. Coach Jones. Big shout out to Coach Jones. Now, folks, if you’re out there today and you’re in need of a Coach Jones, one, he might be available, I’m not sure, but I want to encourage you today, folks, if you’re feeling stuck, you don’t know what to do, you need a proven system, I want to encourage you that you have the tenacity and the capacity needed to succeed. And so on today’s show, we’re going to have two back-to-back success stories. The first one is going to feature Dr. Amber Teton. She’s going to share her story about how she grew her optometry clinic with the coaching and help of Jordan on our team. And then on part two of today’s show, we’re going to share with you Stephanie’s story about how she grew her cleaning service. Now with Stephanie, she actually worked with multiple coaches on our team. And with every client we work with, we do the photography, the videography, the web development, the search engine optimization, all those components. So it really is a series of fascinating stories. What I’m going to do, I’m going to try to get these shows edited and I’m going to send it to both of you guys. That way when you’re on your next commute, maybe you could listen and you’re going to go, oh, that was us. Because I think it’s really important that, I really do believe this though, there’s so many people that it’s like, success is this mythological, foggy, smoky Nonlinear how do we get their thing? But once you grasp these 14 steps are what you need to do to achieve success. It really is exciting It’s invigorating and it can happen. So thank you guys for your time I really do appreciate you your knowledge on cheerleading softball your associates degree the whole thing. I appreciate it coach Jones big shout-out to you All right, Thrive Nation If you’re looking for a success story something to encourage you that you have the mental capacity and the tenacity to succeed. Today’s show is going to be a blasty blast and a show that I recommend that you take notes, you visit the website, you verify that today’s guest is a real person and she’s not a hologram. Dr. Amber, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you? Watch, I am doing great. So Jordan, we’ve had the opportunity to work with Dr. Amber here for a while and she’s having massive growth. So before we get into the details, could you describe what makes her great to work with? Cause you’re always bragging on her. So what makes her so great to work with? Well, for one, she never misses a meeting. She’s always on time and she always does the action items that I have her do. So whether it’s starting the team, the staff meeting once a week, the daily huddle, getting reviews, video reviews, the group interview. She just does it. And so my understanding is, Dr. Amber, you’re up, your business has grown. As a percentage, how much have you grown? Is it 2%, 5%? What kind of a percentage of growth have you had? Wow, so just as some examples, in December, we grew over like 150%. The month before November. We grew, I think it was, Jordan, like 280%. We haven’t yet hit the end of January, so we’re waiting on the results for that. But we’ve only been open for a little over one year, and we’ve already seen, I mean, amazing growth. That’s awesome. So you’re having the big growth, and I think there’s a lot of people that they view success as sort of a murky, mystical thing. I’ll give you an example, folks. My family, my wife used to get together with all the aunts for a big Thanksgiving meal once a year. All the women would get together, all the guys would get together, a big Thanksgiving meal. And there was some of the recipes they had over the years that were written, they’re passed down from grandmothers and great aunts. And you could no longer read the actual ingredients on the note card. It was just a note card with like the remnants of what used to be words. And I’m looking at it, I’m like, how are you possibly making a pie using this? What does this say? And they would hold it for the nostalgic reason, but it really carried no actual practical value because nothing was written down. That’s how the recipe was. I think a lot of people view success that way. They view it as kind of a woo-woo series of guesswork and they’re chasing this elusive thing called success. And I want you to know here at The Thrive Time Show, we break down that complicated idea of success into tangible action steps that you can take here. So Dr. Amber, I want to get your thoughts on this real quick, just some basic stuff. First off, what kind of a doctor are you? I am an eye doctor or also known as optometrist. How long did you have to go to school to become an optometrist? For about eight years. About eight years. And what’s the proper pronunciation of your last name so people can look you up to verify you’re not a hologram? I’m Steve-ten. Okay, so you went to college for how many years total? Well, total 10 years, but it takes about eight years to be an optometrist. Got it. And so you’re having massive growth. And so I want to give people just some visuals here. The first thing we have to do with every client we ever work with is we have to sit down and figure out what are your goals. Now, I’m not asking you to share on this public platform what your goals were or what they are, but did you have in your mind, did you already have goals established or is that something that you needed help thinking of? I would say that’s kind of as a new start business, kind of hard to even categorize those goals and really put into perspective how much you could grow and how much you could reach those. So we knew we wanted to get improved, but we were kind of in a rut and didn’t quite how to do that and enter lovely podcasts and actually taking the step to join. Well, I am super, super glad you’re so transparent about this. I know a lot of people feel overwhelmed and so I’m going to give people kind of a visual here. So step one with every client we work with, and by the way, folks, if you go to thrivetimeshow.com, you’ll see thousands of testimonials from real people. Step one, we have to establish our revenue goals. What’s our annual goal for revenue and then what’s our weekly gross revenue goal? Now step number two, we got to know how many patients we need to see just to break even. Now Jordan, you work with a lot of wonderful clients, but again with Dr. Amber, I mean you’ve been bragging on her for quite a while here. Some clients, they get kind of emotional when it comes down to making the tracking sheet. Right. What’s the process been like working with our good friend here as far as making that tracking sheet? Was it a complicated thing? Was it a multiple month thing? Or did you guys knock it out pretty quick? No, it took maybe like the first meeting, maybe, maybe the first two meetings just to nail down everything and what everything meant. And then from then on, it’s just, it’s, it’s always plugged in before, before every meeting, all the numbers are plugged in. So the, the income for the week, the expenses for the week, the profit for the week, the leads, um, how much the ads were this week, it’s all plugged in and it took zero time. It took me- As far as, you know, as far as you, you have to measure what you treasure. I mean, that’s a big thing. We all have to measure what we treasure. As you as a doctor, Dr. Amber, how does that help you to know all your numbers and to see it all on one spreadsheet? Absolutely. I have been telling Jordan in the past that otherwise you were just kind of flying by the seat of your pants. I mean, I thought the numbers looked good. We’d go day to day at the end of the day, looking at like the actual growth, but you had no way to actually track, okay, how many patients did you see? How many new patients did we see? Where’s the money going? Also just looking at the amount of leads and how that kind of correlates in patterns to how many reviews we got. And then also where all of our like dream 100s going, Google, all of that. It just really puts it in perspective and gives you a goal and an actual item to be accountable for. And again, I’m looking at the numbers here. It looks like you’re up about 200%. I mean, because again, you had some months where you’re up higher than that and some months a little less, but I mean, you are absolutely growing. I want people to know this. I’m going to pull this up just to kind of brag on you. This is so important. I want to do a search here. I’m going to do a search right now. We’re going to go to usdebtclock.org. I’m not trying to depress anybody. But if you go here, there’s a middle column where they keep an accurate track of how many Americans identify as being self-employed. So in America today with a population of approximately 330 million Americans, we have 9,000,000, 9,000,000, 9,000,000, 47,817 self-employed people. And according to Inc. Magazine, 90, 96% of businesses fail, according to Inc. Magazine. Now, I’m not saying that Inc. Magazine is the end all with stats. You also have the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with similar stats. What we’re finding is most businesses don’t ever succeed. So statistically speaking, just so we’re clear, if there’s 330 million Americans out there and only nine million of them are self-employed, that’s like 3% of our population is self-employed. Now, if you talk about 96% of them failing, we’re down to now only 4% of that 3% is successful by default. So again, if you’re out there today and you feel like you’re struggling, don’t feel bad, you just got to follow a proven system. Now box number three, Jordan works with our clients to figure out your schedule, you know, your boundaries, how many hours you’re willing to work. We’ve got some doctors, true story, we work with who say, you know, I’m gonna work three days a week, that’s it. Other doctors say six days a week, some say seven days a week. How important was it for you and your husband and your team to figure out the hours that you would be open, the hours you’re not open, just in terms of just blocking out that time? For me, it’s invaluable. So a little bit of personal story, I actually just got back from, quote unquote, I guess you’d call it a maternity leave, Jordan. So it was actually the only time I missed a call with him was when I was giving birth. So finding the time for when I needed to work and when family time was invaluable. And I think also having that be a recipe where I could still succeed makes it even more important, especially as a mom and a wife, being able to have my own business, but also being able to have boundaries on when I would actually see patients, when I would work on the business, and then when I would be able to go home. This is awesome. Again, folks, this woman has given birth to a baby, which in my opinion, you deserve a lifetime achievement award. Anytime a woman gives birth to a baby out of their body, they deserve some kind of lifetime achievement award. But also she gave birth to a successful company at the same time. So the time will never be just right, but everybody out there, you got to block out time to be successful. There’s never a perfect time. You’re never too old or too young, or you just gotta do it. Now, box number four, if you had to figure out your unique value proposition, and we had to improve the branding, box number five. So we look at your website, navigationicare.com, and a website, by the way, folks, is a little bit like a garden. You’re never quite done. You’re always pulling weeds, always tweaking. As we look at it now, I’m sure we’ll catch something we wanna fix tomorrow or improve, or, but the idea is you have to eventually launch and perfect is the enemy of done. Perfect is the enemy of done. So I want to talk to you about that for a second. I find that a lot of doctors I work with are hesitant to launch the site until it’s perfect. Therefore they never launch it. But I find that the clients that are the most successful can launch it and then say, you know what, I’m going to come back later and fix my lobby. I can go back, come back later and improve the look of my website. Could you talk about the process of launching the website? What was that like to work with Jordan and your team there, our team and your team? It was really helpful. He was pretty confident in us from the beginning. I was, I guess, as a doctor, you’re a little nervous and you don’t want to make videos of yourself. I’m a pretty humble person, so that aspect just needed a little push and shove. He’s done great on the website and just basically with our Navigation ITARE logo, using that, but also just capturing what the office is, the energy within the office, and also being encouraging when we kind of find a tune. For instance, our no-brainer and our deal on that. He was really helpful in making that succeed. Now, a no-brainer, I don’t want you to get lost with the language, I’m gonna pull up this diagram again. Hopefully this diagram is helpful for everybody. With my clients, they always tell me it’s like it helps them so much to see it. After we start the marketing, this is box number six, the three-legged marketing stool, which is how do we get customers? Once the phone starts ringing or once people start visiting the website, you have to have a no-brainer offer that is so good and so exciting that somebody who doesn’t know you is willing to fill out the form. So just let me give you an example. I’m not the only guy, this just in, the only guy that cuts hair in the city of Oklahoma City. So if you do a search for OKC Men’s Haircuts, my company, Elephant in the Room, is not the only company that cuts hair. But if you do a Google search for OKC Men’s Haircuts, we clearly come up top in the search results. And then people go to the website and they go, I don’t know about this. There’s other options. These aren’t the only people I’m looking at. They’re not loyal to my button. They’re not loyal to my website. And they look and they go, wait a minute. First haircut’s a dollar. I could try that. Because it’s the risk and reward, whether it’s conscious or subconscious. People do not want to have a bad first experience. And I see so many optometrists specifically, and doctors that say, first exam, only $400. And people are like, huh? And it’s not appealing. And people have been having a horrible experience. And they go, man, I spent $400 for a terrible experience. But this is a great offer you guys have come up with. Talk to us about the offer, the no brainer, and maybe what kind of value that’s had for your business. Absolutely. So the first time exam and a pair of glasses is $99. We did fine tune that a little bit. At first, we had a kind of an age range on it since we see all the way from six months up. Since I came back in December, we actually fine tuned that to be $99 for everybody. It’s been excellent. Jordan can attest to this. Our phones lately are ringing constantly. Like we kind of have a blessing in disguise, a good problem to have. Our staff is really busy with constant calls for leads or even our lead sheet with people that want to know more. It is a great first step as well. So it gets everybody in the door. It’s not a $99 and then end there. We have so many people that take advantage of that as step in the door and then they love our office and the experience and they want to invest more. They get another pair of glasses, they get contact lenses, they say, oh my goodness, at the checkout, they want to schedule their whole family or their best friend. So it has been invaluable to grow up with this. Nothing that we would have ever thought of ourselves. So completely, completely just mind blowing how much we’ve grown since we’ve started using that. You know, one thing about business consulting is it’s a lot like hiring a personal trainer for fitness. They’re very analogous ideas. You hire a personal trainer for fitness and you don’t show up. It’s not something you can delegate. You can’t just say, Jordan, you’re my personal trainer, but I don’t want to work out today. So I’m sending my good friend, Carl, my office assistant. He’s going to work out in my place. He’ll do some pull-ups, get him on the burpees, get him on the pull-ups, have him run a lot of crushers, okay? Because I wanna get in shape, so really push that guy. And I think a lot of people view business consulting that way. It is a participation sport. It is a full contact sport. And if it wasn’t for great people like Dr. Amber, the system wouldn’t work. You know, and with a lot of our clients, we help them design their office, their lobby. But in this case with Dr. Amber, she really put a lot of thought into the design of her business. So when we send people into the actual office, they’re having a great experience in the actual location. The sights, the smells, the sounds, the whole atmosphere is great. And a big kudos to you for doing that. Because again, if we help people market off a cliff, we have a lot of our clients, we do the interior design and we help them with that. But there are some doctors that say, I will decorate my own office and it’s the worst thing possible. So you’ve done a great job with that. Now we talk about sales, moving into sales. Eventually we have to sell something. Eventually we have to sell something. So sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, print pieces, all of that. How important has it been for you to begin to put in sales systems? Because the word sales for most optometrists is almost like a curse word. How important has it been to put in sales systems for your optometry clinics success? Well, I would say it’s been a pivotal point of growth. So we have lead sheets where we get back in touch with anybody who wants more communication. We have call scripts that make it just seamless for our team from day one even. We brought on a new staff member, the beginning, or pardon me, the end of December. From day one, she knew how to answer the phone. She knew what was expected and how to schedule a patient. She knew about the no-brainer. It makes it just a lot easier because of the small practice that just opened up. I don’t really have the time, nor am I the most useful in training. As well as my other staff, I would rather have them be answering the phone, scheduling appointments, keep doing their job. And then the sales part, yeah, no optometrist really likes to sell. We would rather like to recommend or prescribe. But it is one of the few practices, along with kind of dentistry, where actually for the profession, yes, I have an iXam, but we make a lot of our money and a lot of our business by actually selling or the consumer purchasing something. So with the selling process, Jordan would attest to this, I definitely have A-plus players right now. We’ve kind of weeded out the weeds, per se, and some B and C-plus players, which has been a great stepping stone to a new office. But the energy and the staff really help in the selling for them to know the product, for them to feel confident, and for them to kind of quote the deal. And we have checklists for all of that. They make it really easy on, okay, what’s the price on this? Can they get this with it, et cetera. Now, for anybody out there who goes to, you want to see an example of a system once it’s done, I should say, or is getting closer to done. If you go to eitrlounge.com, folks, and you click on the staff button, I unfortunately cannot give you the passwords to my franchise, but this is what it should look like behind the scenes. You basically have all your documents and all your checklists documented. So as we work over the years with your practice to help it grow, eventually we’ll have every system, everything documented. So my staff, if they’re looking for the opening daily manager checklist, they can just click on the link and bam, all the documents are there, all the systems. And it’s a process, but at the end of the day, what you look for in business is you look for what’s called a return on investment. Many of our listeners already know that, but I want to make sure we’re on the same page here. My game or my goal, my process is to help you bring in more money than you pay us. And so, you know, I hire an accountant, just full disclosure, folks, I spend about $4,000 a month, every month on the same accounting firm. I have no problem with them at all. It’s called CCK. They’re an accounting firm based in Tulsa. They do work with clients all over the country. It’s called CCK Strategies. I don’t make a commission for recommending them, although I’ve asked, but I do not make a commission for recommending them. But I pay about $4,000 a month to them. You might say, well, why do you pay them every month? Well, because every time I have an accounting question, I can get on the phone and get the answer real quick. And so having those recurring weekly meetings keeps the accounting on track. Full disclosure, I work with a law firm called wintersking.com. Wintersking, again, I don’t make a commission, although I’ve asked. Wintersking.com. This is who I use for all my legal stuff. If people say, man, why do you spend four grand a month on your legal and four grand a month on accounting? Are you spending eight grand a month recurring? Yes, because I don’t ever want to get myself in a legal conundrum. I want to stay on top of these things. And I think that’s the same thing with business consulting. We charge you $1,700 a month, 1-7-0-0. Could you speak to, um, you know, just for the sake of time, what is, when you pay the $1,700, how would you describe the value you’re getting back as far as that value proposition, the 1,700 you’re spending versus the value that you’re getting back? Well, the only word I can kind of think right now is no-brainer. Pardon to say it, but it’s kind of a non-negotiable. So, the return on investment is something that really can’t be quantified with the growth we’ve had and just having the stepping stones along the way on what we need to do. And Jordan kind of says it’s kind of like almost like everyone’s rather repeat, keep doing and you’ll see growth. But I think having him there as a coach and that accountability to me each week is just the best. I think my husband and I are all in and we would say it’s just part of our business right now. Now, I would tell people if they lived in your area and they wanted to have an eye care experience that is awesome, I would say, you know, hey, it’s $99. Okay. So worst case scenario, you go in there and you had the worst experience possible, which you’re not going to have. You know, it’s just a no brainer. But at the end of the day, you have to try it out, folks. You have to go to the website. You have to look into it. You have to schedule that consultation. But for anybody who’s in your area, what markets do you serve? Can you tell us what area are you in and where can people, what kind of our, I guess what geographical area do you service? So we’re located in Chesapeake, Virginia. We are, this area is part of a seven city or kind of seven suburb area called the Hampton Roads community. We actually have most of the military, we have the largest Navy base, we have a Air Force base just north of us. So we get an influx of a lot of different communities of people. A lot of people who have been here long term in the Chesapeake area that’s very rural, but growing. We also get people who are from Norfolk, who are from Newport News, who are across the water. It’s really seven cities that is an inner structure of just different bridges and land. Quite different than the Midwest, although my husband and I are from the Midwest. But the Navy is what brought us here, and my husband now is more reserved out of the Navy, active duty, and we just are really blessed to serve a community that supports the Navy and the people in it. And we’re just a quick, brief 14-hour drive from your office, so if you’re in the Tulsa area, it might be worth the 14-hour drive. You don’t have to do the math, folks, but it’s only 14 hours away from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Now, final question I have here for you, and again, we help you with the HR, the hiring processes, the checklist. There’s a lot of stuff we do. I just wanted to be able to celebrate your success and that 200-plus percent growth there. But for anybody other that’s thinking about scheduling a 13-point assessment, we have thousands of testimonials. People can see by going to Thrivetimeshow.com and clicking on the testimonials button. But what would you say for anybody who’s thinking about scheduling a free 13-point assessment? You know, because we only take on 160 clients, so I don’t want to waste anybody’s time. I don’t want anyone to waste their time. What would you say to anybody who’s thinking about scheduling a free 13-point assessment with myself? I would say 100% go for it with the caveat, are you willing to put in the work? Are you willing to be held accountable every week? And are you excited about growing more than you probably could have ever imagined and more than you’ll be able to do on your own? Boom, Dr. Amber, I really do appreciate you carving out time. Jordan, thank you so much for making this happen. Jordan’s always bragging on you and it’s great to be able to celebrate you here on today’s show. Thank you so much. Thank you, I appreciate it. Take care. Bye. I know many of you have had a challenging year. Many of you watching this have a successful company. Many of you have a business that has struggled. Maybe you’ve had a business that you’ve just, for whatever reason, have never been able to get over the hump. Maybe you’ve always been just kind of stuck in a rut and that’s become your normal. Maybe you went from the goal, you used to have a goal to thrive, and now your goal is just to survive. Well, to build your faith and to build your encouragement that you have the mental capacity and the tenacity needed to succeed, I thought I would get one of our younger success stories on the Thrive Time shows. You can talk to an entrepreneur who I don’t believe is yet 30 years old, but yet is still achieving massive success. Stephanie, welcome onto the Thrive Time show. How are you? Good, Clay. Thank you. So, Stephanie, where’s home for you? I live in rural western Wisconsin, so Sparta, Wisconsin. And how did you originally hear about the Thrive Time Show business consulting program? I heard about you guys actually through Entrepreneurs on Fire. You did an interview with J.D. over there. And do you remember where you were when you first heard that show? I was cleaning a house, actually. Well, you were cleaning a house in Wisconsin, and from the time that you… I remember the exact house, yep. So from the time that you decided to get up the courage needed to schedule a call until now, how much have you grown? Since then, let’s see, 1,462%. 1,462%. And what kind of a timeframe has that been in the time that you reached out to now? Yep, I reached out, we started working together in March of 2020, it is October, end of October 2021. So, you know, year and a half. Wow, okay. So, we’ve done a lot together and many things you’ve done very, very well. And so I thought I’d do on today’s show is I’m gonna bring up the things that you’ve been able to implement that we’ve taught you. And I’d love to get your take on how you’ve been able to implement these. So I’m gonna go through 10 core systems that I believe you’ve been able to implement well and I’d like to get your take on it. First off, you were not resistant to the idea of upgrading your branding. You were not resistant to the idea of upgrading your website print pieces. You actually leaned in and you wanted to get it done and get it done quickly. Talk to the listeners out there about how having an upgraded website has helped you. Yeah, the just overwhelming professionalism that people get from visiting our website just really blows them away to make them like realize that we are professional and that we stand apart from everybody else in the area. So the website was key. I also think one thing that a lot of clients probably get stuck on is being like too nitpicky about things and just like wanting it perfect as opposed to wanting it done. So I think the biggest thing is get it done. We can always change things later, but it’s better to have an awesome website than a perfect website, like right now, you know, Yeah. Now, step two, we optimized your website. A lot of people have great websites that look wonderful, but they’re not canonically compliant. They’re not indexable. They’re not searchable. So therefore, humans on the planet Earth who are using search engines can’t find them. You, again, you didn’t push back. You leaned into it. Talk to the listeners out there about how optimizing your website has helped increase your leads. Oh, definitely. So Google leads are like huge for us and people finding our website are huge. So writing the content articles, making sure those keywords are showing up. We’re showing up when people search, you know, health cleanings, or whatever, they’re searching whatever search terms we’re trying to show up for. So that’s huge. And, of course, the review side of things is huge, too, for pointing people towards our website. Okay. You jumped ahead on my little cheat sheet here. But step three is gathering objective reviews. You guys have done a great job of gathering objective reviews from your happy clients. Talk to the listeners out there about the importance of gathering objective Google reviews from your happy clients. Oh, it’s so important. Like, when I started working with Thrive, I definitely didn’t think, like, I needed to focus on that. I think I had 12 Google reviews when we started working together, and now, between the two locations, we have, I think like 210 or something like that, like five-star reviews, all real. And when people find us, I mean, it’s not even a how much do you cost, it’s when can you come? I don’t care how much you cost. So people are ready to close like that. Now, step four is building a transparent and easy to understand sales system. You know, a pricing structure where somebody who maybe is not the most complicated individual, somebody who’s very simple like me could understand your pricing real quickly. Again, you’ve leaned in on that. You’ve been great to work with. Talk to the listeners about the importance of having a simple to understand pricing structure that your ideal and likely buyer can understand immediately. You just want them to not be confused. They’re like, why is this like this or whatever? And also from the like inside perspective of the managers or whoever is answering your phone, they need to be able to quickly, you know, answer questions and stuff without having a lot of training. So it needs to be able to be, you know, in like the sales script when they’re doing a call that they can just very quickly know what the numbers are and not have to be complex about it. Now step five is implementing sales scripting. You have done a great job of implementing sales scripting and so many entrepreneurs, I’m telling you, oh, they say, I don’t want to do a script because I don’t want to sound like I’m reading a script. I don’t want my staff to be sounding like they’re reading. I want my team to have their own personality. I want them to embrace their true selves. And therefore, when their phone rings at their local business, every time their phone rings, it’s just like a minefield. You never know if the phone’s going to be answered professionally, if it’ll be answered at all. You never know what people are going to say. Nothing’s written down. It becomes a verbal tribal tradition, it becomes a celebration of Jackassery. Tell the listeners out there, why have you embraced sales scripting and how has it helped your company? Sales scripts are amazing, as well as of course the call recording so that we can hold people accountable to the sales script. But it just takes all the guesswork and then all of the variables of what people say are removed so that if, you know, something is not working, we’re able to pinpoint what that is and tweak one thing as opposed to whatever the people are deciding to say. It flows really nicely, and it doesn’t sound robotic at all once you get used to it. I could say it off the top of my head, the exact scripts we use, and we know they close. That way, we know it works instead of just people doing whatever they feel like. Now, you also implemented a quality control checklist system, where basically it’s not in people’s minds. They don’t have to remember, your technicians don’t have to remember what they’re supposed to do. There’s a checklist for everything. I mean, everything. When you go into clean a home or a commercial business, there’s a checklist for everything. Talk to the listeners out there about the mind freedom that you’ve experienced since, you know, taking it out of your head and putting it on a checklist. Yeah, it just makes it so simple because it’s like, here’s the standard the cleaning tech is responsible for and is going to be held accountable to. And if that’s not hit, then we know that there’s a problem. They don’t get to say like, well, I didn’t know. They don’t get to say, I didn’t know. And then on the client side, they have expectations set. Instead of them setting the expectation, we are setting the expectation, as opposed to them being like, well, I thought you guys were gonna clean my gutters. It’s like, well, it ain’t on the checklist, so we’re not gonna clean your gutters. Now, knowing and optimizing your numbers in terms of the financial aspects of the company, again, you’ve leaned into that. A lot of people who are into fitness, I find lean into that. They wanna know how much they weigh, what their body fat percentage is, how many calories they’re eating. People that don’t wanna lean into fitness don’t wanna know how many calories they’re eating, don’t wanna know their body fat percentage. People that are into artwork, doing well at art, musicians, I’ve worked with a lot of musicians. Musicians that are good want to know how they sound. They want to hear themselves. People that are not good don’t want to hear themselves. Of great ballet dancers and performers want to see themselves in a mirror. They want to analyze. Great builders want to see checklists and processes and blueprints. People, accountants who are good at their job, they want to know the numbers. Entrepreneurs who are not good at entrepreneurship never want to know their numbers. Talk to the listeners out there about the importance of knowing and optimizing your numbers, actually knowing how much profit you’re going to make per job. Yeah, I would say number one most important thing, in my opinion, is the tracking sheet that we implement together. And that every single day I’m in the tracking sheet and knowing exactly where my business is, especially now I am very removed from the day-to-day kind of operations to a point. I’m not answering the phones, I’m not doing this, I’m not seeing the complaints or any quality issues or whatever, but I have, you know, my finger on the pulse of my business and every single aspect of the, you know, revenue, expenses, leads, closing rates, number of appointments, number of reviews, number of photos that are getting uploaded, like just everything you could possibly know about the business, I know. So I’m never questioning, like, or going off of emotion, because that’s not what we wanna do. We wanna go off of facts and numbers. And so I know that, you know, we’re growing or whatever, we’re closing, et cetera, et cetera, because the numbers don’t lie. So I love the tracking sheet, and I think it’s the number one thing that people should implement. If they don’t do nothing else, they need to know their numbers. Now, you’ve attended a multiple in-person, two-day interactive business workshops. And the reason why we include that is a quasi-free service. What do I mean by that? I mean, it’s not a revenue generator for me. If you’re a client of mine, I say, hey, you can come to these events. We make it very, very affordable. If you’re not a client, you can pay $250 to attend the workshop. And if you’re in a tight spot, we have scholarship tickets available. But the point is everybody can afford to attend. Can you explain how the interactive business workshops have actually helped you to maybe further understand the path or to get a whole picture view of the actual business plan? Yeah, I love the conferences because I always walk away with action items, even though I go over these things with my coach every week. I always walk away with something like, wow, I get like a fresh perspective on things because you’re interacting with a lot of other business owners and like bouncing ideas off of each other and hearing what worked for them or what people are struggling with. And of course, then like having you like explain it in the way that you do, it just makes it very like actionable. Like I always go away with like, this is what I need to do on Monday to make these things happen. It’s not just like, it’s this motivational thing. Do you laugh a little bit? Do you have a little bit of fun? I do, I have a lot of fun at the conferences. Okay, and what kind of people attend the conferences? Not liberals. Oh, that’s funny. It seems like all, we start at 7 a.m. and it seems like, you know, the entrepreneurs are like, this is awesome. We start at 7, I can be done by 3, I can still make some calls. You’re sitting next to people that have had massive success, people that have been on the program for years. Is that helpful to sit next to other people that have actually been successful? The people I’ve met there have changed my life. Obviously you guys have all changed my life, literally. I’m not just blowing smoke here. But meeting the people, you know, the Josh Wilsons of the world who I literally texted him today. Like, you know, we’re on a friend basis. We have calls all the time. Like, just the people that I’ve met are just, it’s life changing. What is your website if people right now want to go online and they want to look up your website and kind of, you know, see who you are and what you’re all about? Yeah, it is www.serene-clean.com. And okay, so you came to the workshop, you’ve implemented the tracking sheet, the group interview. People say, it’s so hard to find people. I’ve never had a hard time finding people. Even right now, I don’t have a hard time finding people, but I can tell you it’s a system that I’ve applied. It’s a proven system, a proven process that I’ve done. I’ve been doing this process of hiring people. This marks, I know it’s crazy, 22 years of doing the same system. Every week, interviewing people, 22 years I’ve been doing this. I’m a 40 year old person. I’ve been doing the group interview for 22 years. Can you talk about the importance of doing the group interview and how it’s changed your business? Oh, it’s so important. Like that has been, I would say that’s a big game changer too because I always have candidates like ready to go when something happens. And you know, in the past two months we have taken on a huge contract and I have hired probably 40 people and somebody quit today, somebody quit yesterday. I fired somebody three days ago, it doesn’t matter. Next, next, next, you know, so it’s amazing. Just a little context, just so you know, things that will get you fired if you’re out there and you don’t know about serene-clean.com. If you’re not on time, if you don’t honor your commitments to the client, you’re gonna get fired. And there are certain people on the planet earth that don’t want to honor their commitments to their client and they don’t wanna show up on time and therefore you’re not a good fit for Serene Clean. So she’s not running around just randomly firing people. She’s just saying, if you have a certain standard and expectation, and on behalf of the customer, because you’re a customer advocate, you’re saying, this is the standard we have to deliver at. Now, next thing, step number 11 here, you pay yourself well and you don’t apologize for it. Now, it is gonna be said that you actually make more money now per month than many people make per year. And I repeat that, you make now more money per month than many people now make per year. And you’ve learned to pay yourself well and not apologize for it. But I knew you, you know, going back to when you first called us to where, you know, you were really grinding to make it work. And now you’re doing really well. Now that you’re paying yourself well and not apologizing for it, are you able to enjoy more time freedom to work out, to read, to spend time with family, friends, to think more meta on your business or how has that impacted you? Oh yeah, definitely not having to worry about income is really empowering and also of course that just allows you to do a lot of good in the world because number one, we’re here to make money but money is just a tool. And so that allows us to help the community, help our families, buy cool stuff of course, but the time freedom is really, that’s the whole point of this for me is like, I don’t want to have to be anywhere I don’t want to be at any given time. So, and now I can do that. Now, final thing is you’ve been able to sustain diligence and accountability. What does that mean? Diligence is where it’s the steady application of effort over time. It’s like long after the motivation, the big idea wears off. You know, there’s always the excitement of a new idea. Woo, new idea. Yes, new idea. Love the new idea. Just had a new idea. I should buy a boat. I should start a company. It should be called Serene Clean. Well, long after that idea has worn off, then diligence kicks in. And diligence is a steady application of effort. If you’re out there and you’ve ever played sports at a high level, you’ve ever been a top notch speaker, you’ve ever been a top musician, anybody out there who’s done anything at a high level, you know the level of preparation is what prepares you for the ovations. Again, the preparation is what prepares you for the ovations. And then, but everybody out there, if you have a sound mind and you’re being honest, you need a little bit of accountability. We all need accountability. Somebody that can hold us accountable to push through goals, push through obstacles that made that time seem insurmountable. You know, sometimes it’s like, it seems overwhelming. How has the weekly meeting and the accountability helped you to stay diligent and consistent over time? Yeah, I love that. My coach definitely holds me, because everybody needs to be held accountable no matter how high achieving you think you are. And obviously, the pig-headed discipline is awesome to have that, but you still need somebody to hold you accountable. And for me, there’s certain things, like there’s always some place that you can do better and improve on. And so what my coach, Bloomer, he always, you know, it’s like, okay, it’s been two weeks now, you haven’t gotten a video review, what’s going on? And it’s like, I don’t like getting video reviews, like he’s calling me out on it. I love that because like, I hate it, but I love it. And because that’s, we need to be told where we’re failing. I mean, they’re telling us where we’re good, but we need to be told where we’re failing. Oh, that’s amazing. Now, again, you are a diligent woman who’s reached out. We only take on 160 clients. I think you certainly occupy one of those spaces as well. And what’s interesting is, you know, last year our average client grew by 104 percent and we didn’t have any client that grew by over 500 percent. So 1,462 percent is certainly going to impact that average. What advice would you have for anybody out there listening who’s contemplating going to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire to schedule a consultation. Because again, if people want to schedule a free consultation with me, I don’t charge for that. We do have call screeners. They’re going to make sure I’m not wasting your time and you’re not wasting my time to see if you’re a good fit. But there’s people out there contemplating going to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire.com. That’s thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire.com. What advice would you have or feedback would you have for somebody thinking about attending one of our in-person workshops or scheduling a one-on-one consultation? I think that most people should definitely go to the conference, but when it comes to the one-on-one coaching, I think you really need to look at yourself and say, am I ready to maybe be told to do things that I’m not comfortable with, and am I ready to do it? Because you can always hemm and haw and go back and forth, but if you’re not ready to implement anything, it’s probably not a good fit, because your coaches are going to push you. And that’s the whole point. You’re paying them to push you. So if you’re not ready and willing to make changes, then don’t bother. I tell you what, I really do appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to join us. I’m so excited about your growth there. And hopefully we’ll see you in December. Are you coming in December to the conference? Not with this big job. I’m on a military base. I’m on a military base right now. Oh, shit, I’m rejected. Okay, that’s fine, but maybe we’ll see you at the next one. Okay, thank you for being here, I appreciate you. Thank you, Clay. Take care, bye-bye. Okay, hey guys, my name is Stephanie Pipkin. I own Serene Clean, and this is my grandma, Sue. And we are gonna briefly just go over the Dream 100 drop-offs that she does for Serene Clean and how it has really helped grow our business and spread the word of our business in our area. So just a little background on Serene Clean and working with Thrive Coaching. So I’ve used Thrive out of Oklahoma for two years this month. And when we started working with Thrive, we were at about $200,000 in revenue a year. And this year we’re projected to do $1.4 million in revenue a year. So it’s grown very, very drastically since we’ve implemented all the systems. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today is some of the, or one of the systems that they have encouraged and harassed us to use and it works really good. And that’s Dream 100 Dropoffs. And that’s something that my grandma Sue does for me and she is absolutely killing it. So grandma, basically, if you can just describe what it is that you do at these drop-offs. What do you do? When I get there, of course I introduce myself and the business, and I just tell them that I am a business-to-business call. I am not there to sell them anything. I’m just there to introduce them to a new business in our area. What do you bring and leave with them? I actually have a little gift for them and then a sweet treat and I have the paperwork that explains all about Serene Clean and as I’m talking to them I try to like give a little bit of thing talk about things that would encourage them makes it a little more relaxed and casual and then I do sign my name on all the things so I tell them that they can’t forget me and put a little smiley face with it and leave them as I go then I say and here’s a sweet treat to get you through the day. So basically she just goes gets a box of donuts, hits all our stops for the day and what she’s leaving behind is basically a sales sheet that explains like what makes Serene Clean different and on the back of it is commercial references of companies that we already cleaned for. So the whole purpose of this is to get us more janitorial accounts, because those are excellent accounts for us. And the thing she’s also asking is, how do they clean now? And are they using a service now? How happy are they with it? Like, is there any issues? And who are you usually talking to? Are you talking to the receptionist? Who are you talking to? It’s kind of split. A lot of the businesses I’ve been to recently, I’ve actually talked to the owners. If it’s a large, large business, I’ll be talking to the lady or person, it’s usually a girl, at the front desk. I ask her, sometimes they don’t know or they don’t tell me, and sometimes they do know, so it just works out really well to find out from them, do they have a cleaner? And a lot of them that I talk to the owners, they actually are doing a lot of the cleaning themselves. So it just gives me a little heads up too of what they’re doing and then I pass it on to Steph. Yeah, so then at the end of her stop, she types up a little synopsis of who she talked to, what was the reaction, things like that, and is there room because really the goal of her doing this is to get the foot in the door for me to do a walkthrough and bid an account. That is the whole purpose of this and overall how would you say the reaction is? It’s been really well. You don’t know but I always I get excited when it’s a great day and the sun is shining and sometimes it’s snowing, but whenever, when I have a great day and everybody’s just happy to see me, it just makes it a fun thing to know them. And I’ve been from the area for a long time, so a lot of times I see old friends also while I’m out. Yeah, and this has worked really well for Grandma in particular because it’s just coming from a very not salesy place at all. It’s not, you know, they’re not trying to sell, she’s just trying to introduce them and it’s very you know a lot of people are just so like turned off by you know Like very hard-selling and so it’s just like one getting them with the doughnuts like nobody will turn that down and then Really? It’s just yeah a very friendly thing and this is like a long game thing almost never Is it the first stop that they’re gonna you know have us do a walkthrough a lot of times that? Sheet will sit on a desk for a long time and then when they’re ready to go and you know they they’re either pissed off about their current service or they’re just overwhelmed doing it themselves. Who is that you know lady who dropped off the donuts? Where is that she? Ah Serene Queen and then it’s Top of Mind and it’s just really impressive and so kind of like the highlight of her doing this she’s done this how long have you been doing this? Eight months. Eight months. She got me a walk-through at a very large manufacturing facility who is like a dream client. It’s daytime commercial, Monday through Friday, like an amazing account, like who I would wildly want. And she got me a walkthrough and we ended up winning the bid and have been cleaning for them for two weeks now. And that’s like a $5,000 a month account. So it’s significantly impactful. And again, this is long game thinking of, you know, she’s making these introductions and we’ve gotten plenty of smaller accounts as well from her doing these things. Just being consistent. That’s the biggest thing is you do this every week, right? Every single week, unless we have a significant snowstorm. Every week. It’s fairly inexpensive from, for us, we always did the donuts. I’ve tried other things, but the donuts just seem to be a hit. Yeah, I just know a lot of people are hesitant to do this. But if we can do this in a small town and to have that kind of success rate, and it really, we just want to be top of mind. And it’s working. And it’s growing the business really, really well. And it’s just fun to work with Grandma. So yeah, so that is how we do Dream 100. And it’s working great. And we just say, go do it. Don’t be scared. Just make yourself do it, basically. For me, I don’t like to do it, but I knew grandma would be great at it, and so this is one of those things of delegating and outsourcing if you don’t wanna do it, but if you don’t have somebody to do it, you need to do it. Because if you don’t, your business will just not grow the way you want. So yeah, that is how we handle this. So, thanks grandma. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just wanna give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house, right? This is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See, it’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team and by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to fourteen and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So, we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So, now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, The Thrivetime Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business Come to Tulsa book a ticket and I guarantee you it’s going to the best business workshop ever We’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you If we go back eight years ago, think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to their phone. Well, okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s up and down roller coaster, and so now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100 as a percentage what is that? I have grown I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. That’s a hundred percent growth every year I’ve worked with. Now so so I’m looking we’ve been good friends seven eight years and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean the first time you do it, that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, is I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take, no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. Well, I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management He said the most effective executives make one decision a year What you do is you make a decision? What is your system and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system? And so that that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here I you know, I we have a brand new gal that just can’t came in working for us. She nailed down the script and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every hundred calls. We make two to three hundred calls a day per rep. Right. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there’s having a hard time. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between two and three hundred calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do… If someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say you buy a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe even further down the road. Maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012. And at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met, how did we meet? What was the first interaction or some interaction where you and I first connected? I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But do you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah. Well, we had that speaking thing that. Oh, there it was. So it’s Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redmond. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help direct my life, to get some mentorship. But I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant. with different businesses, implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. And the experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life-changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe wherever I end up will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn, I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. You know, working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence. And then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life, that standard of excellence that you want to implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall in the group interview talks about how the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal-oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory and we’re on our own trajectory. And the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship that as we pursue our goals and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I’d say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that, I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. He’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. He’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s, again, unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that are satisfied with mediocrity, people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people. In short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time, the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks, he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay. I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day actually. I carried a notebook with me all around and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself, be open to learning and adjusting parts about you be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.