Clay Clark | Business Coach | How to Dramatically Grow Your Business with Implementing Proven Marketing Systems | “We Can Now Be Selective On What Clients We Take. We Are 7X the Size We Were Wen We First Met You.” – Paul Hood

Audio Transcription

I wanted to ask you if you could share about the impact that search engine optimization maybe has had on your business. Because I think a lot of dentists, doctors, lawyers, photographers, web developers, people I meet at conferences, we just had a big conference with Tim Tebow last week. I meet these people who are the best chiropractor in their area, the best neurosurgeon, the best whatever, and people can’t find them. Could you talk about the impact that the search engine optimization has made on the business? It’s immeasurable, Clay. You know, earlier I had mentioned, we brought in like 400 new clients organically in three months, two and a half months. All of them were what’s called inbound liens, meaning they reached out to me. They weren’t referred to me by another client. They were actually Googled, you know, CPAs, and they looked at reviews and videos. And so, when you and I first met, I said, people don’t look for CPAs on Google. They call their friends or whatever. And you smiled and shook your head and said, okay. And you set out to prove me wrong and you did. And so, anybody, especially in the service business, you can call me and I’ll tell you that I didn’t believe Clay Clark for a minute, but it has magnified the reach that we have. And what it’s done for us, Clay, it’s allowed us to be selective on what clients we take. And these clients are calling us. They literally, we don’t have to pick up the phone and call them, they’re calling us. And it’s 100% off of Google, Google reviews, Google searches. So I’ll admit it right here, you proved me wrong. People do look for CPAs off of Google. They look for doctors, dentists, attorneys as well. Now, my final 90 seconds here for you in the hot seat, you know, the conferences, Dr. Zellner participates in the conferences. You know, we’ve had Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, we’ve had the head of Harley Davidson. I mean, over the years, we just continue to bring in new folks. But when you get past the big names, could you maybe describe what the conferences are like or what kind of an impact have the conferences had on your business? Yeah, so the main thing is, as a business owner, there’s plenty of times I felt like I’m alone. There’s nobody that thinks like me. I’ve got great staff, but they go home at the end of the day and you fight negativity and all that. And you don’t know what you’re doing. And nobody taught me how to be a successful business owner in business school. And then I go to your workshop, it’s positive. I’m surrounded by forward, positive thinking, hardworking, success-minded people. And then you start laying out the very simplistic methodologies, because Clay, you taught me there is a pattern to success, and here’s what you do. In your workshops, for the price, my gosh, you need to quadruple the cost of that going in there, because if somebody… Now, here’s what I really like about it. I’m not an excuse maker. I don’t make excuses. A lot of people like to go, and they’re, oh, I can’t do it. I don’t know what I’m doing, or my mama couldn’t, my dad couldn’t, so I can’t. And your workshops take all excuses away. All you got to do is be willing to put in some effort and show up. There’s a pattern to success. It’s teachable, it’s replicatable, and it’s engaging. I would absolutely recommend anybody and everybody to go to your workshop because one, you’re going to walk out of there, you’re going to be on fire, you’re ready to go. But Clay, you give practical steps on what to do. And all I got to do is do it. And that’s what I did, even though I didn’t believe you. You proved me wrong. And here we are, we’re five times the size we were when, like seven times almost the size we were when we met you a few years ago. How does one man take a $54 investment and turn it into a company that he later sold for $45 million of cash and stock? How does one man build an online business worth over $10 million with just two coders? On today’s show, we interview my friend, Peesh Patel, the founder of Digital Tutors, the company later acquired by Pluralsight. During today’s interview, Peech discusses how he started Digital Tutors, how he got his first customers, how he recruited top talent, and his book Lead Your Tribe, Love Your Work, an entrepreneur’s guide to creating a culture that matters, what BAM stands for, and much, much more. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce a show. What this show does, two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow. Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Thrive Nation, on today’s show we have an incredible guest, my friend, Mr. Pish Patel. Welcome on to the show! How are you, sir? I’m awesome, thank you. Pish, for the listeners out there that are not super familiar with your background. Could you walk us through kind of your history building digital tutors, kind of where it all began and then where it ended for you? Yeah, I was a sixth grade science teacher turned college professor then entrepreneur and started with a $54 personal investment and grew it to $10 million with no investors, no debt, and then sold it for over $45 million in cash. So, okay, let’s repeat. Okay, so step one, you got to gather the $54. Step two, sell for $54 million. Okay, now talk to me about this, though. How did you get your first customers at Digital Tutors and what product did Digital Tutors sell to the world? Right, so we were pretty much an online training academy much like your business school online. We were a video based platform for people who make movies and video games. So the key there is niche and then niche again and then we niched one more time. So video based training for people who make movies and video games. And you know our first customer showed up at at nine o’clock in the evening purely by word of mouth. This guy was in Israel so the word had gotten from Oklahoma City all the way to Israel in a matter of a day. And this was before YouTube, before you know Google. It was all a word of mouth thing. And how did you create that word of mouth? Were you doing mailers? Were you cold calling people? How did you get that initial, just to get the word out there initially? Did you run around Oklahoma City with a megaphone? What did you do? I wish. I wasn’t smart enough to do all of that. We followed this method of marketing called cult branding. It was really around, I just need to have one person who believes, and then I’m going to ask them, okay, introduce me to five people who also are your friend network. And then introduce me to those five people, and then we just kept going. And really, that’s how we got to the first 100 customers, is we just asked our customers, hey, go tell your friends. And we looked at it as if we build a product that people want, they’ll tell their friends. That sounds so easy, but I think in execution and application, that can be very hard for people. Could you talk to- It can, but I think as an entrepreneur though, Clay, you and I both agree, it’s what you don’t know. I was too dumb to know what I was even getting into. So what did I have to lose to ask for a referral? Hey, tell me some of your friends. If they say no, okay. Do you have any other friends? Right. That’s a move though. And that’s a move. I was just talking to Paul Hood and your team about this, Paul, probably two weeks ago. I was telling you about an insurance agent that I worked with, and his whole thing, Pish, was after he had wowed you by saving you money and showing you all the holes in your coverage, he would just ask, hey, are you happy with what I’ve done for you so far? Yeah. Well, what five people do you know that I could help? This guy built one of the biggest insurance practices in Oklahoma by doing that. That right there is a knowledge bomb for somebody out there. Absolutely. Now, Pish, you are in Oklahoma, or you were in Oklahoma when you built this company, which is known more for ag tech, agricultural tech, not necessarily ed tech, educational technology. How did you recruit coders in Oklahoma? Well, we recruited amazing people. Half the company was local, the other half was brought in from out of state. But I’ll be honest with you, we built this $10 million business on two developers. I hear people going, we need 50 developers to get to a million. It’s like, no, you got the wrong 50. We only had two. Most of our people were content people. We also got there with no salespeople. So we did all of this completely organically, no outside salespeople. I remember one time I was talking to you about search engine optimization and how you were talking about the importance of just having your blogger constantly blogging, constantly blogging, just getting it out there. Can you talk to listeners out there about the importance of if you have a website for your business, why it’s so important to just keep creating copious amounts of content. That’s right it’s all about content-based marketing that’s kind of the adage we took. We had a $30,000 marketing budget so that’s not a lot of money on a $10 million revenue business. And really the angle that we took was we’re gonna release two blog articles every day no matter what. And it could be anything from a video game review to a really high-end technical technique that we’re going to give away. What happened is over the years, we became the experts. We were seen not only by the search engines, but by the community that we serve as, hey, these folks are the true experts. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling plumbing services, if you’re doing electrical work, if you are a bricklayer, or if you are a doctor. I think the more content that you have out there, the more trust you’re gonna develop in your customer base. What was your wife’s role, Lisa’s role in starting your business? So Lisa took care of all the books and she was the house mom. You know, we hire a lot of young people, a lot of millennials, and a lot of them kind of needed a house mom. So she used her background in child development to help keep the office afloat in terms of emotionally. Now, what was the most challenging aspect of growing from 100 customers to 500 customers? As you began to scale, what was the most difficult aspect of doing that? And I’ll just be dead honest with you. When I exited the business, we had 1.5 million people in the system. So the first 500, 14 years prior to that, were just a blur. Like I said earlier, Clay, I was too dumb to know what I was getting into, and I just kept showing up. I mean, we hit our first million dollars literally just by showing up and working hard, and I think that’s part of the base of any entrepreneurial journey. You’ve just got to show up. Now when you got approached for someone to purchase your business, when a plural site reached out to you guys and said, hey, we want to acquire you, merge with you, hostile takeover, I’m not sure what the language was that was used, what was your initial reaction to potentially selling your baby, the great orange monster that you had built? What was your initial thought when you got approached to be purchased. Well, their initial thought was it’s not for sale. I mean, we’ve never had this conversation of selling the business. For us, we were serving our customer and having a great time, and we loved all our employees. So we were doing what we were destined to do. But really, the owner of Pluralsight said, well, look, if we don’t buy you, I’m just going to be really honest. We’re going to buy somebody just like you, and we’re going to pump them full of cash. And I thought, oh my gosh, we’ve worked so hard to be in a space with no competitors. What’s it going to look like? You know, is this going to be an uphill battle every day or do we merge and do something bigger? And so we decided to be acquired. And when you, it was for $54 million of cash? It was 45. 45. Stock. So when you got $45 million of cash, for the listeners out there who aren’t familiar with this kind of transaction Did they bring by a briefcase and is it filled with one? Oh, I have rubber bands on it. Do they? Go down You get a little alert on your time your phone that says wire complete and that’s as bad as Honest, oh god, that is about as dramatic as it is. It’s like oh, okay, wires complete. We gifted, we decided instead of gifting 10% with something that my wife and I like to do with our income, instead of gifting it in a traditional way that we would gift it, we decided to gift it to all of our employees. So they received $1,000 for every month of service. And if they were on my executive team, they got another big bonus. So some of them walked in that morning with a house payment, car payment, and student loan payment. And then they left at the end of the day with no debt. And when you, so you’re out there, you know, you help the employees, but people say, you know, money changes people. But I’ve known you here for a while. You’ve been a kind and generous guy for a while. Everyone I know who knows you says that you’re a kind and generous guy. Have you found that getting a big lump sum of money has changed you in any way? I mean, do you find yourself going for walks naked in the woods? Do you find yourself getting odd tattoos? Do you find yourself talking in movies a lot? How has it changed you? Honestly, it has not changed me one bit. I’ve been this way since I was a kid. The only thing that it has made us do is become a lot more cautious because all of a sudden there’s a whole bunch of people who now want to be your friend. And I love that hip-hop song, No New Friends. My wife and I don’t need any new friends. You know, that’s interesting, but I read an article about President Obama, and again, the listeners know this isn’t a political show, but this is the thing. During his run for president, one of the things he and Michelle agreed to is we’re not going to meet any new people this year, because henceforth, you can’t trust anyone’s motives. So we’re not going to meet anybody new as we’re running for president. And he talked about how those friends he had from back in the day when he first, you know, before he became a big deal are some of the same friends he has today, most of the same friends he has today. One thing I have noticed though about the money that’s changed you is it’s allowed you to have some time and some space to create piece 2.0 in terms of your career, you know? So now you’re writing books and such. Can you tell us about your book, Lead Your Tribe, Love Your Work? Well it’s really about how we built this culture, and really I think culture as a very competitive tool in every entrepreneur’s tool set. I think strategy is important, execution is important, sales, marketing, all those things are important. But for me, culture was my X factor. And when I would tell people about our environment, how we only turned over 12 people in 14 years, they’d look at me and go, of tech workers? I’m like, oh yeah, and millennial at that. And they’re like, no way, there’s no way you did it. So I decided I’m going to write a book about it. Yeah, and in your book, you talk about a lot of really practical things in the book, but one of them is this concept called BAM. We say boom a lot here, so at first I thought maybe Pish has misspelled boom. I thought, no, he’s a smart guy. I start reading the book and it talks about belonging, affirmation, and meaning. Talk to us about BAM. It’s the BAM philosophy. At the end of the day, people work for BAM. Every company is going to give you a paycheck and some level of security, be it through health insurance or life insurance or some kind of retirement plan. But really people want to work for, they want to belong to something bigger than themselves. They just want to be told that they’re doing a good job. And at the end of the day, it can’t be meaningless work. Give them some meaning in what they’re doing. And people will stay with you forever because they want BAM in their lives. BAM, now BAM, belonging. Bam! Now bam! Belonging. You talk about making your own jerseys. How to create that sense of belonging. How do you… Why do we have to create our own jerseys? Talk to us about this idea. Well, we’re all a team, right? I tell this all the time. We’re a tribe, we’re a team. We’re not a family, because you can’t fire your family. You still got to show up for Thanksgiving dinner, right? Got it. But you can be a great team, and great teams have a really instant way of knowing whose team you’re on you the good guy the bad guy and it’s all about the jerseys so I was huge fan of Spend as much money as it needs to make enough shirts and sweaters and sweatshirts to give everybody enough clothes to wear every day because they’re in the community wearing our brand supporting our brand and Supporting our message. So yeah, your listeners if they’re not investing in office clothing for their people, they’ve got to. Now, affirmation. You talk about meeting rituals. Talk to us about a meeting ritual. Are you burning some sort of incense? What kind of rituals are we talking about here? No incense. I had too many asthmatics who worked for me to burn the incense. But meeting rituals, it starts with core values. So every single meeting we have starts with, okay, let’s go around the room and share stories around our core values. What did you see in the past week or the past month? And it just sets the tone. And I get it, if you have 45 people and they’re all in a room for one hour telling stories, that’s really expensive. But what about the money you’re gonna lose when you don’t share those stories? I think you have to have some campfire time to get the group together and talk. This was a move that I’ve learned from many entrepreneurs who talked to me about the importance of doing this. And, Pesh, I was 24, 25 with the largest wedding entertainment company in the country, and I thought this was a complete waste of time. So I didn’t do it, you know, and I kept having turnover in all the wrong spots. And now I’ve just accepted that this is what you do, and this is going to be a move. And so we schedule it into our calendar. And you think about it, if you have, in my case, you know, you have what, on a Friday, Andrew, there might be 50 people in that meeting, maybe on a Friday, 55 people. And if all of them are making an average of, let’s say, $25 an hour, you know, that might just cost you, you know, a $1,500 meeting, a $2,000 meeting, but it absolutely is vital. Paul, I want to get your take on this. You help companies grow from an accounting perspective. What questions would you have for Peach about how to create a culture or holding people accountable because Peach is the expert of culture development, my friend. He’s the man. Peach, I just want to know, so I deal with a lot of very intelligent people. I deal with engineers, doctors, and Clay. Clay is one of the most obviously intelligent people I know because he’s my coach. But anyway, so you came from the education background, which typically you don’t see a lot of financial success from people that are in the educational background. So you’re obviously a very intelligent person. How did you bridge that gap? I mean, what kind of advice can you give me to get people to really work on their business, to end their business? Because a lot of my clients struggle with that. They are the best at what they do, but they’re doing it. So every minute they’re doing it, they’re not growing. Well, that’s true, but I can probably tell you most of those folks are inefficient. Yes, they are in the middle of doing it, and it seems like they never have any time, but they’re still able to go on vacations. They’re still able to take the evenings off or go to a kid’s soccer game. A lot of that is boiling out enough time to work on the business. For me, it’s as simple as just asking everybody, tell me some stories about our core values. I can tell you very quickly, either they get it or they don’t. When you were growing Digital Tutors, you became efficient, but you also had daily fires and you’re putting out issues there. What time did you typically wake up, and what did the first four hours of your workday typically look like when you were growing digital tutors? Yeah, so in the knee deep of it, I got up about 7, got to the office by 9, and I’m the key firefighter, right? So I thought, so I had to put out all the fires. And it really wasn’t until we started adopting the traction system or the EOS system that I really started to really work myself out of a job. So my mantra in the shop was, at some point this business is gonna outgrow everybody, including me. And I will tell you, I was so proud. It hurt a little, but I was really proud that after I sold the business and I exited, like permanently exited, my phone never went off. I never got an email like, how do we do this? Where’s the password for this? I had to literally work myself out of a job. Gino Wickman’s system traction is a great program. I hear a lot of people say, wow, that’s expensive, but let’s take the cost out of it for a second. Let’s just talk about how it helped you with digital tutors. What kind of principles and action items did you begin to, what kind of action items did you begin to take as a result of the traction program that allowed you to work on the business and not in it? Right, so there’s, within the business you have lots of processes. How do we solve this customer’s issue? How do we close a ticket? How do we release a new product? But rarely is there a system or a process on how are we going to actually run the business, not just our product and our service. It doesn’t matter if it’s traction from Geno or if it’s Vern Harness scaling up or Rockefeller. It doesn’t matter what system it is. Using a system, because they’re all kind of the same, they’re all a little inbred from each other, having a system means you’re going to have a system. You can fall back on, well, I’m not for sure how we do that. Let’s look at the system. It gave everybody a rallying call of this quarterly flow and not just a, oh, we’re going to pick a goal and then try to hit it. It was real accountability. This is what we’re doing. We grew leaps and bounds because we just went back to the system, a process. Your system, BAM, we didn’t talk about the M. I want to talk about the M now. Belonging, the B. The A, the affirmation. Now the M, the meaning. What is this meaning? How do you develop meaning in your workplace where people don’t just say, ah, Frick, all I have to do all day, every day is code this. Or all I’ve got to do is fix mufflers all day. How do you keep the sarcasm and the cynicism and the pessimism out of the business? And how do you add real meaning to somebody’s job? Oh, well, that’s a two-part question with a simple answer. First, it starts with the leader. So if the leader is pessimistic and unvalue of the, you know, have no value in the people that work there, then it’s gonna flow downhill, as they say. But the second really is a simple question that you can ask your employees. If you, next meeting, even on one-on-ones, if you just ask, hey, what’s the most important thing you’re working on? They’re going to tell you exactly what the meaning they want out of their work. They’re going to tell you, this is what’s important to me. We developed this thing called three happies, which is two work happies and one personal happy in the last 24 hours. And we do it every morning at 9 o’clock on the dot. Let me tell you, that little piece of paper will give you all the BAM information you want on any person in your organization. It tells them what’s important to them, what’s meaningful, and by writing and sharing it, they create instant affirmation. It’s an amazing little tool set. They can get it off my website for free. It’s really simple to implement. Could you tell listeners out there the best domain to learn, to gain this information, to gather this from you? Sure. It’s my personal website, so patelokc.com, P-A-T-E-L-O-K-C dot com. Lots and lots of material there. Now you’re speaking all over the world right now. You’re speaking all over America. You’re doing speaking events where people are hiring you to come in and teach about, do keynotes about how to build great company cultures. Could you share with us a little bit about the kinds of things that you would talk about during a one-hour keynote or a 90-minute keynote? You bet. I mean, it goes not only from the story of building this organization and kind of the roller coaster ups and downs, but really key takeaway practical information, things like these three happies. We teach everybody how to do a GROW meeting, which stands for Goals, Reality, Options, and then the commitment is the W, What Will You Do? It’s a great way to diffuse conflict and to get to the point of how do we get this thing done. So for us, it was really about how do we take these creative tech workers and get stuff done, right? We’re so small, we’re in the middle of Oklahoma, we’re not cash rich, we’re scrappy, we just gotta get stuff done. And so we tried to really eliminate any of the garbage of running a business and focus on how do we move the needle? Let me ask you this, you- That’s a lot of what we share. After you began to move the needle with digital tutors, it took off and it created some, obviously some financial freedom for you, some time freedom for you. You’ve gone on to have some financial success there. Can you talk to us about your love for the Oklahoma City Thunder and just how close you sit to that court? I love the Thunder. I’m there almost every game. And the funnest thing that I’ve gotten to do in my whole career is sit courtside. And I love sitting at the baseline because they’re running at you. career, the sit-court side. And I love sitting at the baseline because they’re running at you, and it just feels very different than TV. Does Russell know who you are? Do you and Russell talk a little bit? You and Russell? Russ and I don’t talk, but watching Russell Westbrook play basketball, it kind of feels like watching an adult varsity basketball player playing dodgeball against second graders. The intensity, it’s like his intensity is like two or three times more than that of the average player. Do you agree with that, or am I out of my mind? I mean, that guy’s intense. The speed goes from zero to a thousand. I don’t even know where it comes from, but he’ll it just there’s a fire in him that’s very different than the rest of us humans. What is your favorite Oklahoma City Thunder moment so far? Sit in court side there where you go, oh, that that that right there, that was worth the ticket price. Oh my goodness, there’s been a whole bunch. I can’t, Clay, that was a tough question. Are you a good heckler? I can’t even deal with it. Do you heckle the other team? No. When they’re shooting free throws, do you have a lot of tips you give them? Nope. Like, boo! No. OK. I have lived by this adage that the most heckling comes from the cheapest seats. And I believe that. I sit and I’m respectful of the other team. If one of our players gets traded or goes to another team, I cheer them on in the opening. I’m proud to be there. I love watching the game. So you’re not the streaker. You’re not that streaker guy. You know, Peach, I’m glad to know that you’re not that streaker guy. Yeah, I’m not the streaker guy. I remember when I used to go to the Timberwolves games, there was one guy who was legendary. He would walk up and down the baseline. He had tickets right there on the court. But he would basically just heckle people the whole game. He’d hold the program and just heckle people. Do you have any good hecklers out there where you go, this guy has got a mental disorder? Are there any hecklers that are kind of infamous hecklers at the Thunder Stadium, or is it just all good people? The Oklahoma City Thunder, they’re all good people. I love the guy, Mega Thunder, whatever that guy’s name is, who doesn’t wear a top and has suspenders. Big guy. He has to get tackles for everybody in the stadium. Nice. Now talk to me about, talk to the listeners out there about your shared love of the winery, the whole winery game. Where did this love for having a winery come from, and how have you gotten involved in the alcohol business or as an entrepreneurial endeavor now? Well, everybody seems to enjoy alcohol, so I don’t think that’s going to be going away anytime soon. The winery was a unique situation in that we had just sold the business, and I overheard my son telling a group of friends that, he said, wow, what does your mom and dad do? You’ve got all these video games in this house. And my son said, I don’t know. My mom and dad just hang out the house all day. And you should have seen the look of just horror on my face because I just don’t want to raise a young man to think that’s what adult life looks like. I need him to go one day be a great dad. So I told my wife, we got to find something. This honeymoon of retirement is over. We’re too young. We’re 40 years old. We’ve got to get busy. I bought a winery because it wouldn’t affect my non-compete. It really has no computers or anything like that. I didn’t know much about the wine business. Now I know a lot of hospitality, which I enjoy, but that endeavor has led me to be one of the key investors in the Angry Scotsman Brewery here in Oklahoma City. The Angry Scotsman? Yeah, it’s a super fun brewery here in town. You know, I’m going to Google search that real quick. I’ll put that on the show note there. The Angry Scotsman. Did you come up with that name, or who did come up with that name? No, he’s a Scottish guy, and I’ll be honest with you Clay, I hated the name. Really? I absolutely hated the name and he was like, really? I was like, look, I don’t want to get involved. Which group of young females want to go to a pub or a brewery called the Angry Scotsman? That just sounds scary. He’s like, really? Because I think people like it. I said, well, let’s do this. Let’s just let the numbers decide. So I hired a virtual assistant to go poll 100 college-aged females, and it was overwhelming. They loved the name Angry Scotsman, so I was like, hey, you’re on to something. So now, how do you decide, for the listeners out there, because there’s a lot of listeners out there that are looking for investors, and I know that you do some investing, how do you decide what kind of businesses you’re going to be an angel investor in and what kind of businesses where you go, that’s a great idea but I’m not going to get involved? Well they have to be on, they have to be past the idea stage. So there’s enough gambling money out there that people can raise money with an idea. I look at execution. So can you execute the money that I give you, can you be respectful of it? Can you grow it? I mean, it really follows my own core values. And I’m betting on the person. I’m not really betting on the company or even the idea or the product. I’m really betting on that entrepreneur who can go solve that. So this young man at the brewery, he’s got a PhD in chemistry. He knows how to brew beer because in a can of beer, if you put it in the fridge and you go buy a new one six months later, those cans have to taste the same. That takes a lot of chemistry knowledge to do that. For me, I’m betting on him. If there’s a listener out there who’s trying to get in touch with your organization about funding, is there a certain way, is there a certain website they go to and they submit their business to, or do you reach out to people? How does that process work for someone to get in touch with you about raising investment capital? Yeah, so I don’t do much retail. I really stick with the reoccurring online. I’ve kind of gone back to what am I good at? I know how to sell online and I know how to do marketing online, so I’m finding myself going back to that model. We have a form on the website that they can reach out to and we can set up a time to meet. I say no more than I say yes. That’s just how I am, but I’ll tell people no up front, so I’m not going to lead anybody on. For your listeners, if they’ve done pitch meetings and they hear things like, �Well, that’s really interesting. I’m going to have to take it back to my partners.� That’s a no. Or if they hear, �Oh, I’m going to have to do more due diligence.� That’s a no, because more than likely you’re like a yes the minute that you hear where they’re at and what they want to do. Dr. Z has often said it’s either a hell yes or a no. Everything is either a no or a hell yes. There’s nothing in the middle. Do you agree with that idea? 100%. Okay. So, to the listeners out there, if you have a business that exists, that is making money, it’s not just an idea, and you go to patelokc.com, there you can learn more about your speaking, learn more about the investing, learn more about your book. And in your book, you talk about how people don’t quit jobs, they quit people. So I want to ask you this question. I know Paul Hood has a hot question for you. So again, somebody out there is listening, they’re taking notes, they go, okay, people don’t quit jobs, they quit people. What do you mean by that? Well, think of all the nasty, terrible jobs that are out there and people do them and it’s not typically for a whole bunch of money. People do the work that they feel adds value, that creates BAM, but when you put a manager or a leader in place that does not create BAM for that person, now they’re looking at that job as purely a transactional. It’s essentially, I don’t make enough money to do this job, but really, I don’t make enough money to deal with your garbage, because it’s more than just the job. And I really think if you’re not investing in your people’s emotional well-being and creating BAM for them, you’re missing out. You’re totally missing out on the opportunity. Pesh, Paul Hood has a hot question for you. Now, Paul’s been known to paint our guests into the corner as his favorite pastime as one of our show sponsors. So, Paul, what’s your question for Pesh Patel? Pesh, I don’t know what he’s talking about. I am a very sweet man. I don’t have the… You’re very sweet. I don’t know what to say. I’m very sweet. Yeah. So you mentioned cult marketing. So do you… We do a little bit of referral-based marketing. I’m a financial advisor as well. And did you… When you were in the middle of growing this, did you just use the wow factor to motivate people to refer to you or did you, for instance, we do at our offices, once we set up a planning session with people and they love us, which they generally do, thankfully, we say we’ll give you a $25 gift card. I have one caveat, Pish, before you tackle this question, just one caveat for the listeners out there that don’t know Pish Patel. Pish Patel is a man that if he says he’s going to do something, Pish Patel does it. Boom. Pesh, you always own it. You said if Digital Tutors is going to do this, then if you say I’m going to do it, you did it. So I just want to make sure the listeners out there get this because as a business coach, I’ve discovered that a lot of people drop the ball all the time. Right. So I would say just yes, from my experience, I know that Pesh Patel’s team was wowing people. Back to you, Paul. I just want to make sure because I know that he was wowing people. Yeah. And so we do too, but I just wanted to know, you know, we offer a little token, $25 gift card or something for referrals, and with the knowledge that that’s just the little tip that gets them over the hump because we are going to over deliver. So did you ever have any kind of carrot, if you will, to get referrals or was that just straight up the carrot was how you guys delivered? Yeah, no carrots. So I never wanted customers to feel like a friend of theirs recommended them, they signed up and then when they signed up one of their friends out of just altruistically, they got a card in the mail that had $25 gift card in it. It’s like, whoa, so did the other guys sign me up and recommend it or was they genuine about it? And we went through this, it was a 14-year process to really nail down what worked for us. At the end of the day, it boiled down to building a product that people really wanted. We get lost sometimes in jockeying for what would be better. We removed no discounts, no salespeople. We removed everything that wasn’t making the product better. And then our focus was on, we don’t want customers to churn. So we became obsessive about maintaining and growing the customer base, but not by losing half and gaining a third and losing another half, gaining a third. So churn in the online world is just destructive. And for us, churn meant we’re not doing the right thing by our customer. So we really focused on wow. You said it was 14 years you grew Digital Tutors? That’s right. 14 years. If you’re out there listening today, you want to get rich quick, step one, work at something for 14 years. Then you can get rich real fast. The wire came in real fast, right? It was a quick wire? That’s right. It was a 14-year overnight success. There it is. Now, also in your book, you talk about hiring, you talk about making sure that you’re… You talk about this concept called the second wake-up call. Let’s dive into hiring here. What kind of things do you teach readers in your book about hiring? Well, if you hire somebody and you put them in a desk and you tell them, ready, set, go, do this thing called work, you guys are all setting yourselves up for failure. The cost of replacing employees is upwards of 150% of their salary. So, and I’ve heard of that number even higher depending on the type of work they do. So for us, it actually starts even before your first day. So two weeks before you start with us, you get a box in the mail, all of your paperwork, fill all your W2 stuff or W4, whatever that stuff is, fill it all at home, read all of our handbook, do all that at home. But in the box also includes some clothes, some shirts to wear on your first day, a little book about your team. But I’ll tell you, Clay and Paul, the most important thing in that box was an empty picture frame with a note that said, bring a picture of your loved one so your desk starts to feel like home. People say that two of the most stressful days of any person’s career is the first day they take the job and the day they are let go. I didn’t want their first day to be stressful. When they think, oh my gosh, what have I jumped into, and they see their loved one on their desk, yeah, I get this. For us, it starts before you even take the job. Then on your day one, you’re going to spend half a day with me. And some of your listeners are going to say, well, I’m too busy for half a day. OK, well, just take how much of that salary you’re going to pay and throw some of that away. I agree with what you’re saying strongly, but I know that there’s probably 95 percent of our listeners. I know our listeners. I know these folks. These are great people. And there are some of our going, really? You’re going to have someone shadow you? Like you, the owner, the guy? I mean, you’re the dude. You, really, really, really? Because we have these entrepreneurs out there, and they’re inquisitive people. For somebody out there who wants to ask the question, really? You have them shadow the boss? Again, did you really do that, Bish? Horses mouth. I need every employee to hear it from me. This is why we started the company. This is how you play your part. A lot of people, we teach them the game of business. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know the simple game of business, right? And when I ask things like, we’re paying 100% of your health insurance. Why would I do that? Because you’re nice, well, I like to be. Why else? Because you have to, nope, don’t have to. And then when you explain, oh, it’s because I don’t need you sick, and if you’re sick, I don’t want you making everybody else sick because we’re running a business. They look at you like, oh, that’s why you do that. So we were open book. We taught them how to read our financial statements. We taught them how the money flows and how the teams work. The other half of the day, they would spend with their team learning about how the process works. And really, I’m not asking for any actual work for a couple of weeks, because it’s going to take you a couple of weeks to truly understand how we play before we throw you into the game. Now Pish, in your book you wrote, work is war, and good leaders are in the trenches. Now, I want to provide some balanced perspective to this. You enjoyed teaching people how to make video games and how to do all these different kinds of creative skills, which you turned into your business. With my company, DJ Connection, I loved DJing. I was into DJing. I would bring people with me to Shadow and to DJ. They would go to Shadow and they would learn the DJ skills from me. Here I had the largest wedding entertainment company on the planet and I’m still DJing because I loved it. Where’s the balance between still DJing, working in the trenches, or still coding, or still cold calling, or still doing whatever you have to do, and delegating? For a guy like Paul, still being a CPA versus delegating. Talk to me about getting in the trenches and that balance in this quote, work is war and good leaders are in the trenches. Well, every one of my managers was a working manager. The person who ran the curriculum had to create a course where everybody else may have created 12, 13 a month. They have to create one. If you were in charge of the customer success, well, you also had to take on a couple of accounts and not just manage your team. Every single manager in the organization was a working manager. They knew what they were asking of their people. I felt the same way. I will tell you, over time, over those 14 years, I went from chief janitor and doing everything to, towards the very end, I just really needed to have a once a month meeting with everybody and then a once a week, one hour meeting with my team. That was how far I had gotten away from working in the business. I think it’s that transitionary process, but it really starts with the people you start to promote inside your company to make sure that they are all working managers. I think people respect those kinds of folks more because they go, oh, you’re not just telling me what to do, you’re actually helping me do it. Now, Pesh, I have two final questions for you. I know Paul has one final question for you as well here. So I want to ask you about dysfunctional habits. You see a lot of business owners and now you’re doing some consulting. You’re leading an organization where you’re helping entrepreneurs get some traction. I’m sure you’ve seen common denominators that cause dysfunctional businesses. Can you talk to us about the common denominators that you see amongst chronically dysfunctional businesses and business owners? Absolutely. So, some of them are, they’re thinking small. They’re not really solving a customer problem. I think the big buzzword for 2019 that you’re going to hear from a lot of investors is product market fit. They’re not solving the customer’s problem, and they’re not focused on getting paid. There’s this idea of, well, I just need to raise some money, and I’m successful. I think in the music world, that would be like, I got a record contract, so I’m successful. I don’t need to make any songs or go into a studio and record or even go on tour because I got paid from my contract. And I think that that’s a mistake, right? You’ve got to solve a problem. And people don’t understand when they take on an investor, they’ve just taken on a massive customer, right? Because that investor has an expectation and a communication. And most people don’t need an investor, they just need to get to work solving a custom problem. Let the customer fund their business like mine. I tell listeners of this all the time, but I want to use this as an opportunity to share it again. When you take on an investor, you’re going to take on what I call the three C’s. You’re going to take on the counsel, you know, the advice of the investor. Whether you want their advice or not, if someone’s giving you a million bucks, they’re going to give you advice. You’re going to get their connections, whether you want it or not, if they’re affiliated with good people or bad people. If they have a good reputation or a bad reputation, you take that on. And then the third C is, yeah, you do get the cash. But those are the three C’s that you get with an investor. Paul, you had a tough question for Mr. Peach Patel. Your final question of the day, my friend. The question is, Peach, a lot of times people see people are successful, and like Clay says, it was an overnight success that took 14 years. How did you deal? There had to be adversity in there. How did you deal with that? Who did you turn to? What was your go-to move to get back up and push forward? For me, the God sent was joining the Entrepreneurs Organization. There’s a chapter in Tulsa and one in Oklahoma City. There’s 14,000 members all over the world. Like I said, my background is a sixth grade science teacher, so that’s what I’m good at, that’s what I’m trained at. To run a business, every day was new. Like I said, I was just too dumb to know. I just kept showing up, good or bad, plan, no plan. I just kept showing up. It wasn’t until I got involved with the Entrepreneurs Organization that I got to be around peers who some were in my situation, some were a few years behind me, but many were ahead. And so I got to see what exiting a business looked like and how to structure that deal before mine came along at an intimate level. Otherwise I would have just been lost. How to grow the business, how to transfer. We went from physical CDs in the mail to 100% online. I mean, can you imagine we had, we were at about $3 million in revenue. One day we had three million dollars worth of customers and the next morning we fired all of them and said, okay now you have to buy it completely online. But in that year we went to five. So I mean it was well worth making these transitions. Now for the listeners out there, I have purchased a copy of your book, Lead Your Tribe, Love Your Work, An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating a Culture That Matters. to creating a culture that matters. And it was definitely worth the read, definitely worth the money, definitely worth the investment. For the listeners out there saying, you know, Pish, you’re a well-read guy. I mean, do you have another book you’d recommend, too? Do you have one more book or a couple of books that you’d recommend for all the listeners out there? Yeah, I’ve got two. One is Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last. I’m a huge fan of Simon Sinek. I’ve met him a few times, and I love the message in the book and it resonates with my style of leadership. For all of your Oklahoma listeners or those of your listeners who have an Oklahoma tie, I am in love with Sam Anderson’s book, Boom Count, which is Oklahoma history mixed with Oklahoma City Thunder history and stories of how it all happened. I’m listening to the audio book because I heard it was better than the print and I’m just in love with it I think I’ve bought 20 copies already and you you actually recommended to me the book innovators dilemma by Clayton Christensen Which yeah led to me interviewing Clayton Christensen here just about a month ago and hopefully you heard the the peace Patel shout out in that podcast because He’s a he’s just a living legend up peach I thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule. I know you could be doing anything right now. You could be courtside preparing yourself mentally and spiritually for the next game. You could be chasing your wife around. You could be at your winery. You could be meeting with someone about investing in their business. You could be doing a keynote speech out there. But thank you so much for investing in our listeners. My pleasure, Clay. I really appreciate what you’re doing. And as of all these years I’ve known you, I’ve always wished you nothing but the best of success. Hey, well, thank you and have a great day, my friend. Thanks, Clay. Thanks, Paul. Now it’s time to take some action. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, how highly would you rate your culture? I would encourage you to write down that number today. Again, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest, how highly would you rate the culture in your business? How could you improve the onboarding of the employees within your business? What would be a better way for you to show your employees the path to their career success within your company? And how can you truly mentor each person more effectively? And we like to end each and every show with a boom. So without any further ado, here we go. Three, two, one, boom! All right, Thrive Nation, I want to tell you a story today about a gentleman I had the opportunity to meet years and years ago, and he has really scaled his company. He’s been just a great friend, and he’s a guy who, money’s a magnifier, so when you help somebody make more money, it just makes them more of who they are. He’s a generous man, he’s a hardworking man, he’s actually a CPA. Some people tell me, Clay, doesn’t a CPA stand for a certified pain in the ass? I don’t think that’s always true, folks. There are some good ones out there, and we’re joined here with a long-time client. Paul Hood, welcome to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? Hey, like my old friend, R.D. Mercer, said, CPA stands for Certified Professional Ass Kicker, not Certified Pain in the Ass. I’ve got 11 questions for you in about 10 minutes, so here we go. Let’s get it. Let’s get it. How did you and I first meet? I guess maybe when did you and I first start working together? Back in the day, I had… I still do, I have a really nice car. I was sitting at a restaurant, and the manager came up and said, hey, do you know this guy, Steve Currington? And I said, no. And I said, why? He said, well, because he’s got these nice cars and you really need to meet him. So I met Steve and the first time I met him, he was dressed up in a Hulk outfit at a fundraiser yelling Hulk smash over the place. And I had been searching Clay. I had built a business that was doing about $3 million, had about three offices. And I wanted to go from successful to systematic. And I asked Steve, who do I talk to? And he said, you got to meet my guy. And then he got me to one of your workshops. I said, holy smokes. You know, I went to the best, one of the best accounting schools in the country, and they didn’t teach anything that you were teaching. So I was lit from day one. Now, I remember when you came to the conference and watching you take notes. I mean, you were smoking out that. They had a notebook for taking notes, and it was like the piece of paper was going to set to fire because you were taking so many notes and you were engaging with all the different successful entrepreneurs. And I knew that your business was going to scale because previous to meeting me, you’d already built a successful business. You were top of your class in college, but I knew you could scale. Just to give the listeners some sort of an idea in their mind, how much have you grown from the time that you and I first met to now, just to give you some context? Yeah, so last year, Clay, so we went from about $3 million in revenue with three offices to now we have 17 offices across four states, and last year we did $20 million. million dollars. And we’re poised now, my industry is in a kind of a change or die scenario, and we are literally fighting off private equity companies that are wanting to throw money at us to be a part of what we’re doing, because you helped me create what, in my world, they call the platform firm. How do you take a wisdom-based business and scale it? And it was actually, you know, pretty simple. You know, it’s actually made me angry. I’ve told you multiple times. I went to college and they didn’t teach me this stuff. And you’re saying, have a meeting with your people. What does that mean? And you played a massive role in our expansion. Well, Paul, I want to talk to you about this. This might feel like a backhanded compliment, but that’s not the way I mean it. You were graduating near the top of your class. I mean, you have been a very successful accountant before I met you, but I believe that when we met, you didn’t have a website, or maybe that seems like it’s a backhanded compliment. I don’t want it to feel that way. I just, I’m saying, you were like top of your class CPA, but yet the marketing didn’t match how quality of a service you provided. Maybe I’m getting that wrong. I’d love to get your, just, can you let me talk about that? Because I believe you were a top of the class CPA with a non-existent website. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it’s, I hear what you’re saying, Clay. You’re saying is, oh my God, how’d this guy ever become as successful as he was before he met me. But the reality is, again, business school, they teach you how to be a technician. They don’t teach you how to grow a business, how to manage people, how to create leads, how to create that marketing funnel, that sales funnel that goes into it. I remember the first time we met individually, you said, well, let’s look at your website. I said, what website? Because I’m a professional, and professionals get new business off of referrals. Dude, you turned on that website, and we started getting Google reviews and videos. I’ll tell you, in the three months of the beginning of this year, my sales team closed 400 new clients in three months, all off of inbound calls, meaning they called us. That’s all because of what you’ve done with social media, with content, and that website. So bravo. Now, we talk about, you know, one of the things that you did, which I loved, is you, there are what we call passive learners, people that watch information and they don’t think about how to apply it to their lives. Then there’s active learners. You are an active learner. You think if you see something and you think, how can I apply this to my life? And so I remember when you came to the workshop, you almost immediately, we started talking about renovating your offices on the outside and the inside. So basically renovating the brand, like the website, the digital marketing, but also renovating the way your physical CPA practices look inside. I think in your Claremore office, you renovated your Claremore office. I’m going to try to pull it up on the screen so people can see this, but you actually implemented so many of the things quickly, and so you actually went through the process of renovating your office inside and outside. Why did you decide to renovate your office on the inside and the outside after having been to workshops and conferences? Why did you decide to do that? Because very few people do that. Well, it was two things, Clay. The first thing is when I had clients come in to me and they’d say, you know, they’d rather go to their dentist than see me. And you know, people buy what they want, not what they need. And we were selling what they needed, not what they wanted. And so we needed to portray a success-minded, an anti-CPA environment, if you will, to, you know, with the slogans and the positive saying and the financial things. And it’s kind of weird though, Clay, because if you compare your office and my office, they strangely look alike. I’m not saying I copied off of you, but they strangely look alike. Well, you know, and the other thing- We want to sell success. You know, we don’t want to just do tax returns. We want to sell success. And that’s what I jumped all over going to your, I told you one time, Clay, I could like live in your office. It’s the success and the positive and the motivation that’s created. And so I wanted to recreate that in my offices. Now, other things that you implemented successfully, and again, I’m just trying to brag on some of the wonderful things you’ve been able to accomplish and is, you know, you and I talked and you said, Clay, I have a desire in my heart to write a book. And so you and I worked together on writing your first book, Take a Look Under the Hood, which is a phenomenal book. There you and I did that together. And then the next book here is called Roadkill Tastes Like Chicken. And again, I can’t help somebody to typeset a book or to make a cover if someone doesn’t write the book. And so you are willing to put in the work and then we were able to work together to produce the end result. What would you say to somebody who’s on the outside of the website right now who’s thinking about becoming a client of ours? And we have sort of a our business is designed. I only take on 160 clients. And so I work with a lot of the same people year after year after year. So what would you say about the the amount of effort you had to put in to something like the website or writing the book? And then maybe what would you say about how what kind of work we put in just so you kind of explain how that relationship works. Yeah, Clay, I’m still astonished at what all you guys were willing to do. You took, and you proved to me that you can do this with any business, a business that wants to grow, a business that wants to be seen, a business that wants to measure profitability, a business that wants to start with the end in mind, you have all the tools to do that. Again, Clay, I’m waiting for the check in the mail, but you’re not paying me to say this stuff. It’s reality. I always said, and we’ve sent you a lot of clients over the years, that you’re the offense, I’m the defense. You show them how to make it, I show them how to keep it. And I wrote the first book, really, frankly, you wrote most of the book. I mean, I went through, you did a lot of stuff, and I added some verbiage and made it kind of more towards CPA, the defense side, if you will. And in the second book, you taught me that it’s not about making money. It’s about sowing seeds. It’s about changing people’s lives. It’s about, one of the first things that you and I talked about is, why am I wanting to do this? What’s the intent? What difference am I going to make in the world? With wealth, when you create wealth, you get attention, and therefore, people give you credibility and they’re more apt to do what you advise. I have a great lifestyle, but what I wanted to do is, with the book, with you, with my business, is how do I break generational sin or generational punishment? Or in my book, I call it pigs don’t know pigs stink, because if my mom hadn’t have made a change and said no to being abused and alcoholism, you know, I’d probably be some drunk Indian smacking a woman around, you know? Wouldn’t be my wife, because she’s German. She’d cut me. She’d hurt me. But that, and now I’ve got a college degree and all my kids have college degrees. And so it’s beyond just, I feel like people owe it not only to themselves, to their community, to their family, to people they don’t even know, to be successful and then to sow those seeds of success into other people. And frankly, Clay, I admire you. I am astounded by your knowledge and how you can take a business from where I was to where I am now. And, you know, it’s all about sharing life’s successes because you can create wealth and, you know, benefit the world. But if you can teach other people to create wealth and how to benefit the world, that’s amazing. So bravo to you, Clay. I appreciate that very much. I’ve got three final questions for you, three final questions. I want to tap into your wisdom on this. One of the things about your business that blew my mind is that if we typed in Tulsa CPAs into Google or whatever market you were in, we couldn’t find you. So it’s kind of hard for people sometimes to grasp the idea that the best accountant isn’t findable, that the best dentist isn’t findable. People typically, they go to Google, they type in the search term, and whatever comes up top, that’s who they call. And I wanted to ask you if you could share about the impact that search engine optimization maybe has had on your business. Because I think a lot of dentists, doctors, lawyers, photographers, web developers, people I meet at conferences. We just had a big conference with Tim Tebow last week. I meet these people who are the best chiropractor in their area, the best neurosurgeon, the best whatever, and people can’t find them. Could you talk about the impact that the search engine optimization has made on the business? It’s immeasurable, Clay. You know, earlier I had mentioned we brought in like 400 new clients organically in three months, two and a half months. All of them were what’s called inbound liens, meaning they reached out to me. They weren’t referred to me by another client. They were actually Googled, you know, people don’t look for CPAs on Google, you know, they call their friends or whatever. And you smiled and shook your head and said, okay. And you set out to prove me wrong and you did. And so, anybody, especially in a service business, you can call me and I’ll tell you that I didn’t believe Clay Clark for a minute, but it has magnified the reach that we have. And what it’s done for us, Clay, it’s allowed us to be selective on what clients we take. And these clients are calling us. They literally, we don’t have to pick up the phone and call them, they’re calling us. And it’s 100% off of Google, Google reviews, Google searches. So I’ll admit it right here, you proved me wrong. People do look for CPAs off of Google. They look for doctors, dentists, attorneys as well. Now, my final 90 seconds here for you in the hot seat, you know, the conferences. Dr. Zellner participates in the conferences. You know, we’ve had Tim Tebow, Michael Levine. We’ve had the head of Harley-Davidson. I mean, over the years, we just continue to bring in new folks. But when you get past the big names, could you maybe describe what the conferences are like or what kind of an impact have the conferences had on your business? Yeah, so the main thing is, you know, as a business owner, you know, there’s plenty of times I felt like I’m alone. You know, there’s nobody that thinks like me. You know, I’ve got great staff, but you know, they go home at the end of the day, you know, and you fight negativity and all that. And then, and you don’t know what you’re doing. Nobody taught me how to be a successful business owner in business school. And then I go to your workshop, it’s positive. I’m surrounded by forward, positive thinking, hardworking, success-minded people. And then you start laying out the very simplistic methodologies because, Clay, you taught me there is a pattern to success. And here’s what you do. In your workshops, for the price, my gosh, you need to quadruple the cost of that going in there, because if somebody… Now, here’s what I really like about it. I’m not an excuse maker. I don’t make excuses. A lot of people like to go, and then, oh, I can’t do it. I don’t know what I’m doing, or my mama couldn’t, my dad couldn’t, so I can’t. Your workshops take all excuses away. All you got to do is be willing to put in some effort and show up. There’s a pattern to success. It’s teachable, it’s replicatable, and it’s engaging. I would absolutely recommend anybody and everybody to go to your workshop because one, you’re going to walk out of there, you’re going to be on fire, you’re ready to go. But Clay, you give practical steps on what to do. And all I got to do is do it. And that’s what I did, even though I didn’t believe you. You proved me wrong. And here we are, we’re five times the size we were when, seven times almost, the size we were when we met you a few years ago. Final question for you. People, when they think about growing a business, they think about sales, they think about marketing, they think about accounting, they think about workflow, they think about human resources, they think about public speaking, they think about PR, they think about social media ads. And people always ask me, they go, okay, so you help people with workflows, or they’ll go, okay, so you’re the website guy, or you’re the book writing guy, or you’re the whatever guy. How would you describe what it is that our business coaching platform does or what it’s done for you? So what you’ve done for me and what I’ve seen you do for clients is you clearly define the success pattern. The success pattern that you taught me is you define where you’re at, you define where you want to go, you create a plan, you execute the plan, you measure results, you modify the plan. In that plan, there’s a lot of consistencies, no matter if you’re a pool business, if you’re a lawn business, or you’re a CPA. And so what you did was, and I’m a proponent of going to college, especially the CPA, you have to. But if I didn’t have to, I could have skipped all that crap and hung out with you for a couple of years and learned every step of the way, because every business that I’ve sent to you or that I work with, maybe they’re good in this area, but they’re not good in these areas. And so, to be able to bring the thing full circle, regardless, and Clayton, and again, this is a compliment. You’ve done this with many, many different businesses. So you’re the guy that takes away excuses. If you want to be successful, there’s a pattern. Show up, do the work, modify your plan, and reap the rewards. Paul, I really do appreciate you. I want people to know about the resources that you provide. You have a wonderful team there at hoodcpas.com, hoodcpas.com. We have typically about a million listeners that will listen to this show on a typical week or every couple of weeks. What are the solutions that you provide there at paulhood.com, paulhood.com? Well, so what we do is we’re different than most CPAs because my industry is in a really a change or die scenario. 75% of CPAs are at above retirement age. There’s about 90% of the firms that are out there are potential acquisition targets. So what we have to do is we have to re-envision, and you help me with this, re-envision what we do. We sell success, Clay, just like you do. We’re not marketing people, though. So like I said, you’re the offense, we’re the defense. We teach people how to minimize their income tax, how to maximize returns, how do you keep more, save more, and protect more. And we do it in a format, Clay, that’s a membership-type model to where it’s a fixed fee. So every time you call us, you’re not getting a bill. And same thing, it’s very predictable. Keep more, save more, protect more, not just do your tax return. Paul, I really do appreciate you carving out time to join us today again, folks. That’s paulhood.com. You say, what’s the website? It’s paulhood.com. If you need a CPA in a major way, check out paulhood.com. Paul Hood, thank you so much for your time today, sir. We’ll talk to you soon. See you, brother. See you. Bye-bye. My name is Paul Hood, and I’m from right here in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I’m a CPA with offices in Bartlesville, Tulsa, and Claremont. I originally heard about the Thrive Time Workshop through some friends, a guy named Steve Carrington, who has a very successful business. He said, if you want to be successful, you need to be here. My business, it consists of I’m a CPA and a financial advisor. And we’re very successful. I want to go from successful to systematic. I want to learn systems and processes so that the business can run without me. The atmosphere here at Thrive and Clay’s office and the team is very upbeat, very positive, very proactive, very forward-looking. They have very specific things that they can offer. Clay’s delivery is very unique. He’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, but he’s also one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. So he combines those in a very, very awesome way. One of the most valuable things I’ve learned at the workshop is to be very deliberate, to be very specific, to have a plan in mind, and then they can help you put together the processes to get it done. A favorite aspect is probably just how entertaining it is, and the fact that I pick up one or two or three things every time I come to take my business to the next level well if people are People are missing out on basically a plan a guaranteed plan pretty much if you’re willing to work it to be successful Most people I think everybody should attend one of these workshops at least once because you don’t know what you don’t know And we’re not taught to be successful in school what I’ve learned is My college degree is great for preparing me to be a technician, but to be a business owner and to create a process or a business that can continue without me, I’m not there. I’ve been looking for such processes for a while and what Clay is showing me is how to do that step by step. Well, I’ve enjoyed the entire workshop. What I’ve liked the most is Clay’s presentation style. You go to seminars. I’m 49. I’ve gone to seminars for 30 years. And this first seminar I’ve gone to that is entertaining, both entertaining and it’s very usable information. The atmosphere of Thrive headquarters is really actually kind of convincing me to change the atmosphere of my offices, even though they’re traditional CPA practices. The static, non-inviting environment here, I want to come back. When I came here a few weeks ago, I couldn’t wait to come back. Clay’s presentation training style is really like nothing I’ve seen before. Most business seminars I’ve gone to suit and tie, very, you know, try to stay awake, drink a bunch of cups of coffee, but he plays very entertaining, and the information he has is I haven’t heard before. I’ve heard pieces of it, but the way he puts it together in a total package, and his presentation style is just both entertaining and very knowledgeable. Well, I guess what people are missing out if they don’t come to Thrive Conference, it depends on them. If they like working 60, 70 hours a week and barely getting by or making decent money but you can’t replace your time, that’s fine. If you’re in a position like me, you make good money, but you like to buy back your time. You’d like to still make the money but not have show up, not have a business that’s dependent upon you showing up. Coming here, if you don’t come here, you’re not going to get that. What we’re going to do today is we’re going to give you a little tour of the house that we just bought. In Oklahoma, this is what we call a big old house. So come on in and check this out. We bought this house about a year and a half ago and we’ve been finishing it. It was partially constructed and so everything’s under construction. So this is kind of a sneak preview for everybody. So follow me This right here is The living room family room. What are you gonna call it? It’s got a bar for watching football. Of course go Cowboys It’s got you know, 50 foot ceilings Windows out to the pool really really nice kitchen over here we flew the really, really nice kitchen over here. We flew the Ben Hood in from Mexico. It was handmade. Let’s go this way. This is a really unique room. There’s a six-story tower in the middle of the house. Don’t know why. It’s got six rooms straight up top. You can go 85 feet in the air, shoot deer, take pictures, whatever you want to do. See the sunrise, sunset. This will be a photography studio actually, but you see it’s got 25, 30 foot ceilings up here. It’s got a, we had to get a special permit. It’s got an elevator that goes up six floors. Normally in a residence, you can only get like a three or four story elevator. Again, just six rooms like this. On the third floor, I’m going to have, I suck at golf. I love golf, but I suck at golf And it we’re gonna have a golf simulator up there so I can play golf for 30 minutes I get mad I can leave but it’s all inside and air-conditioned over here off of the photography studio. There’s actually a safe room It’s all concrete walls we have a Steel door made for it and so tornadoes come or people we don’t really care. You know, then whatever it’s a safe room We can come in it’s gonna have security cameras everything else in there built in. Now, down this hall is my favorite room, well, two favorite rooms. One, there is the pantry and there’s a stairwell right there in the back of the pantry that actually leads from my bedroom. So if I want a snack in the middle of the night, it comes straight down from the bedroom. There are 109 interior doors here, 33 exterior doors, 25,000 square feet. It’s got five garages, different garages. This is the best room in the place. We teach success principles at Hood & Associates CPAs, and one of them is just to have balance between your personal life, your finances, your fitness, your friends, your family. And so for fitness, I’ve got this. This is, I’ll spend a lot of time in here. And of course, right out here, it’s again, it’s all under construction. There’s stuff everywhere, but about a 70,000 gallon swimming pool. We’ll have, it’s got a swim jet. So you can exercise against the current or it can make waves. It’s got a huge hot tub that you can two places you can stand and it’ll massage you from your neck to your to your back, you know because when you’re out being successful making money you get kind of tensed up it’s got a layout shelf a walk in a beach entry and Water shooting everywhere. It’s got about eight different waterfalls. It’s got a Cave in it and it’s got a little lazy River a little lake thing Pond thing up on top where you can lay out and play in the water So, you know all the necessities of life now, we’re on the second floor. This is the master suite. It’s actually two stories and has three staircases to the second story. One over here, one there, and then one in another room. It’s got five fireplaces in the whole house, just one here in the master. Second story, the master’s up there, which we’ll go up there here in a minute. This is the master bathroom. Just a little bathroom. If you notice in the shower, there’s no knobs to turn the water on. Everything is digital. We have to have Wi-Fi for it so it talks to your phone or a tablet. And you program it for Paul’s summer shower, Paul’s winter shower, or what have you. It also, in the top there, it’s got a build where if you want to take a shower in a thunderstorm, it has sound, lightning, thunder, all of that good stuff. I guess that’s the thing. Take a shower in a thunderstorm. The bathtub is heated. It’s actually heated, not just the water, but it’s heated. And then over here is the bathroom and there’s two things in there. I know what that one does. That one is called a bidet. Does anybody know how to work a bidet? I don’t. This is the master closet. One of them. I think there’s six closets, but this is, I don’t know how, this is probably a thousand square feet or give or take. All over here. Keeps going over here. I don’t know who needs that many drawers, but apparently we do. This is the wife’s craft room. She likes to craft. We have grandkids and daughter-in-laws, and this will be full of stuff. And they’ll sit in here and make things and make memories. Of course, it’s off to the balcony. There’s a balcony off to the pool all the way around. All right. All the way around. All right. All right. All right. And so there’s tons of places to put my shoes in that closet. That’s what I’m excited about. This is, the house has three laundry rooms. This is the master bedroom laundry room. This is just part of the master suite. So we do laundry right here. This is just a little storage room. You know, you gotta have a place to put suitcases and shoe boxes and stuff like that. Just a little extra thing. It’s wired for the smart home. Now we’re circling back. If you get lost, we’re circling back to the master bathroom, another closet. Right here’s that stairway I said that goes down to the pantry in case I want a snack. This room here I’m excited about. This is, we have three grandkids and a fourth on the way. The house is so big that if our grandkids come and stay with us, we want them to be close. So this is just like an extra bedroom attached to the master suite. Now let’s go upstairs to the second floor of the master. This is a stairway, one of the second of three stairways to the second floor. It’s actually third floor of the house, second floor of the master. We think we’re going to make this a slide because that right there, where we just came from was the grandkids’ bedroom, so they’re going to be able to come up to our second floor, slide down into their bedroom. What do you think about that? I think that’s a necessity. This is the third story of the house, second story of the master bedroom. This room right here is kind of cool. It’s going to be like a little spa room. We’ve got a commercial tanning bed that goes in there, and a massage chair, and all the relaxing music and all of that. This would be like a library or reading room off of the master. Still part of the master. It’s got a separate balcony out there. Every room in the house is wired for speakers for entertaining. There’s a lot of speakers, I can tell you why. And they suck putting them up. I’d put a bunch of them up, but there’s a lot of them. These fans are really cool. They spin like this, and then the fans inside of them spin. So it’s got like three different motions going on at once. Okay, we’re now back on the second story of the house over by the tower. This is my office. This is where my office will be and and then we can go over here and you can see the the second floor of the tower. Now on the third floor of the tower, I’m gonna put a golf simulator like I said earlier because I suck at golf but I want to play. But you can see, we just got to keep our grandkids, because we have three granddaughters. They’ll be okay, but I have a grandson coming. And I know he’s going to want to be climbing. We’re going to have to be careful of that. This is a, this will be just an entertaining room, a game room. There’ll be a pool table here. Kids play Fortnite. Now over here is, when you have a game room, you also got to have a place to have snacks. So this is our snack kitchen. This is one of three kitchens in the house. Like I say, there’s three laundry rooms, three kitchens. There are 13 bathrooms. This is kind of cool. But this is for entertaining. I was looking to learn how to take my business, like they’ve said today, from being very successful to being systematic. I’ve got a very successful practice in three different cities. Make good money. Just want to take it to the next level with systems and processes to where I can drive my cars more. Paul Hood. I’ve been a CPA for 33 years. And what kind of growth have you and your great team had here over the past, let’s say, five, six years? The last five, when I met you five years ago, we were doing three million. This year we’ll do 24 million. Which is more than, and he’s an accountant, so we’re gonna talk about that. So Paul introduced me to Bob, because he said there’s a guy that came into my office looking to raise some capital, I think that was the thing, and he needed to get some sales going. That’s how, and so we, if we tell Paul from the accounting perspective, I’ll pass the mic to you. You do accounting. You do accounting. Why do you have to have a website make sense and all that branding stuff? How has that impacted your brand having websites and all those branding things in place? Well, when I met you, like most CPAs, I thought my clients only come from referrals, but we get five leads in a two-month period every month just off of Google. And so this is my face. We have 17 offices across four states. We have them in every state. But this is our face. Like what you were saying, it’s visual. And it also allows us to say why we’re different, that about us from there is spectacular. And it’s an industry that has changed. We’re modifying it. We’re going to, we offer our services in a subscript model to where it’s all inclusive. And it’s just been awesome. Well, determine the level of success. So success in business is not what you know how to do, it’s actually doing it. The thing that I would tell you is stop it. Get a guy like this guy and let him go after it. It’s insane. Because then you can be doing what you do well and take that time and invest in something else on top of that. On top of that, he has contacts. This is not, I don’t get anything for selling his. Just telling you what he’s done for us so that we could focus. And then he’ll come in and I’ll say, you know, I think I’ve got it all. And he listens for five minutes and he makes one and I want to slap myself in the face. Well, why didn’t I think about that? That’s idiotic. But they’re sick freaks. They just get it done. I don’t know. I think it’s because of merit-based pay in our office. So the people here, like they get paid. So if we were taking on your account and someone else to do this, but if you hired a different marketing company, I’m just giving you best practices. You wanna make sure that they win when you win. So like in our office, if we grow Dave Acy’s podcast, that benefits our company, to the extent it benefits them, but we actually benefit if they benefit. Does that make sense to you? Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I wanna tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay’s done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with like Lee Crocker, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. In the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal. They were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. Anyways, just an amazing man. Anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve got nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns because our clubs were all closed for three months and you have $350,000 of bills you’ve got to pay and we have no accounts receivable. He helped us navigate that and of course we were conservative enough that we could afford to take that on for a period of time. But he was a great man. I’m very impressed with him. So Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing and I encourage you if you haven’t worked with Clay, work with Clay. He’s going to help magnify you and there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps for maybe six hours a day and literally the rest of time he’s working and he can outwork everybody in the room every single day and and he loves it. So anyways this is Charles Kola with Kola Fitness. Thank you Clay and anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay. It’s a great great opportunity to ever work with him. So you guys have a blessed one. This is Charles Kola. We’ll see you guys. Bye. Bye Hi, I’m Aaron Antis with Shaw Homes. I first heard about clay through Mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job. He had been doing for them and Actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden so I was willing to listen in my career I’ve sold a little over eight hundred million dollars in real estate. So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay, and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15-year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us. And it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry, but the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing, and Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic, and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company. That’s definitely one of the largest in town. And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you if you’re thinking about working with clay. I mean the thing is it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35-year history of Shaw Homes this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us and I know if you give them a shot I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me the thing I would have missed out on literally an 1800% increase in our internet leads. Going from 10 a month to 180 a month, that would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend ClayClark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years, and my three kids started school, and they were in school full-time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide, what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people, I love working with people, I love building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things. The processes and the advertising and marketing, I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time, and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage eight months ago. And in that time, we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clients. The Thrive Time 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, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same system that we use in our auto auction, the same system that we use in our business, is a proven system. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying. 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 system that we use in our auto auction, is a proven system. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying. 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? discover that the same system that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and 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 it. JT, do you know what time it is? Um, 410. It’s T-Bo time in Tulsa, Oklahoma, baby! Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business growth workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old and a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Mm, well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of RusticCuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of RusticCuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we have had the man who is responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15-minute question and answer session. It’s interactive, it’s two days, it’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show 2-Day Interactive Business Workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who have been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at thrivetimeshow.com. Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com, you’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com. Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the Business Conferences button, and you click on the Request Tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you could afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. You started out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that, did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just gotta go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office, and so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come! Who? You! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com, and again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford, and we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies and I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California in the beautiful sunny weather of LA come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine. I’ll see you in Tulsa. Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13-point business 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 gonna leave energized, motivated, but you’re also gonna 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. They’re like, oh but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big, get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you gotta do is go to thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York octa non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And we have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. As Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing, but I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say? Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. And he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. And I went from being an employee to self-employed, to the business owner, to the investor. And I owe a lot of that to you. And I just wanted to take a moment to tell you, thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, you know, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. You know, more than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, too, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.