Clay Clark | Business Podcast | Getting Out of the Rat Race | The Proven Plan to Building a Successful Small Business | Gino Wickman Teaches What It Takes to Become a Successful Entrepreneur + Tebow Joins June 27-28 Business Workshop!

Audio Transcription

This is not a get rich quick scheme, okay? This is a get filthy rich quick scheme, okay? You know what I like more than flying in a private jet like this? My books. Actually not, but I do bring books with me because we were just talking a little bit earlier on the question was how to figure out what you should do with your life, like your destiny, what you’re meant to do, what your purpose is. And I find that’s the most common question and I was just thinking about it when I was here, we’re flying to the biggest investor conference in the world. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. This started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zlutnick. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here We should try, started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top Teaching you the systems to get what we got Colton Dixon’s on the hoops, I’ll break down the books She’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the C and T upon your radio And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Snicks! Yeah, yeah boss, yeah. I need you to get me Clay Clark. Alright, yeah. Right now. Do it. Boom, I’m gonna do it disappoints me I know it’s like boom I’m just gonna go get him right now I’m gonna do it you know I’m like I am I know a guy you know I am the I am I am I am the guy I do the guy sneaks well shut your face I don’t think you meant what you just said what what let’s let’s go get cloy cloy right here I’m gonna wait here I’m gonna do it I’m gonna do it right now I’m gonna talk to him right now he disappoints me boom I go I go get him right now just go ahead job you know well this is what talking about going to get you just get him Oh surrounded by idiots I just want to talk to a person who has a sound mind please so smalls sneaks said you want to see me what’s up at this very moment you have failed to book two of the world’s top five business coaches. Well, quick note. Chet Holmes, who wrote the best-selling book, The Ultimate Salesman. I know. Who was one of the best business coaches of all time. He has died. You should have booked him. And Bill Campbell. You should have booked him. Who was the business coach for Steve Jobs. And the good folks that started Google, Larry and Sergey. I know. Bill Campbell is dead. Excuses. So Bill Campbell is dead. Excuses. Chet Holmes is dead. So it’s not actually possible excuse interview either one of those not even a lot of excuses they were dead i wanted excuses okay i would have what wanted excuses that doesn’t make any sense so there are only two other business coaches i want you to interview i want you to interview michael gubb i just did I just interviewed him last week. I want you to interview. He was on the show best-selling author Traction Gina Wickham I will do on the podcast Gina Wickham. I want him on the podcast I want him on the podcast now that was just because you queue up mafia music and Sound like that doesn’t mean that you’re my boss. I met you for the first time last week at the Italian restaurant after they finally lifted the COVID-19 restrictions and allowed you to serve as a bartender again for the first time. Book it! Calm down! I’m gonna get Gino Wickman booked in the show. It’s gonna be great. He’s gonna love it. I promise you it’s gonna happen. As the godfather of the bar that you visited the sensitivity reopening, aye aye. Sure. With the power of, what power? Bestowed upon me to hereby declare. Sure. That I want to hear audio confirmation. Right. That Geno Wickman did in fact love his appearance on the Thrive Time show. Or I’m gonna, you’re a bartender, no longer serve you a beverage. You are something else, man. I mean, it is so good. Holy cow man. There were belly laughs going on during that one. Get ready to enter the drag con show. Honeymoon! Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom, now we here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got Cutting Dixon’s on the hooks, I bring down the books He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the C and Z up on your radio And now 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we here Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Dr. Z, it’s always ecstasy when you are next to me, but today’s show, there’s something super going on today’s show. Oh yeah. You see, Z, years ago you invested in a bank. You invested in a bank. Bought a bank with some buddies, yeah. You bought a bank with some buddies, and the bank was called Regent Bank. This is true. And I was sitting down with one of your banking buddies, you know, as banking buddies often do. You guys were milling around the lobby looking for free suckers and, you know, stuff like that. Toasters that weren’t handed out. Whatever, you can grab ahold of. Just free stuff. Free popcorn, whatever. And I’m talking to your partner, Sean Copeland, who was I believe the CEO of Regent Bank and the Secretary of Commerce for the state of Oklahoma. I know, he’s kind of a big deal now. And I say, Sean, in this vast lobby of Regent Bank and in your vast office and in all the things that you, all the resources for entrepreneurial education that you have at your disposal, all the resources you have. What is the number one book that you would recommend to me? And Sean says, Traction by Gino Wickman. And I thought to myself, self, I should write that down. Then you and I traveled to Oklahoma City where we met Peesh Patel, who builds a huge company called Digital Tutors, which is sold for millions and millions of dollars. And you and I, we asked him, we said, Peesh, we were at Charleston’s, and we said, Peesh, what book should we be reading? And he says, you should be reading Traction by Geno Wickman. And so now without any further ado, Geno Wickman, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I am great. What a great opening, you guys. And bestow my heart on that story. When you share that story about the book, I’m reminded of the 31 times I got turned down by publishers for that book. So that’s really awesome to hear. Well, let’s talk about this here. You have this idea that’s been in your soul for a while. It’s this concept of the entrepreneurial leap. Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? When did you first start having this idea? When did you start wrestling with this idea that would later manifest itself in the book form? It was exactly 12 years ago when I was 40 years old and building EOS Worldwide and I said when I turn 50, I’m shifting my energy to the front end of the entrepreneurial journey and I’m going to help entrepreneurs in the making get a huge jump start on taking their entrepreneurial leaps. That’s awesome. I think I teared up a little bit there. So tell us the title of your new book as he tries to get it back together here emotionally. The book is called Entrepreneurial Leap. Do you have what it takes to become an entrepreneur? Okay, now I have actually gone through your book and I have a lot of notes here and if it’s okay, I would like to read out a few of the essential traits that are in the book. I certainly won’t share all of the traits that are in the book. See, I’m the kind of guy, I’m going to share just enough to make our listeners get to a place where they can’t stand it. They can’t. You’re going to let them get their beaks wet is what you’re going to do. Right. It’s a no-brainer. I’m going to give them just enough content. They’re going to say, I want to come back. I want to buy the rest of it. So here we go. Essential trait number one, you said here, the visionary, ideas, connect the dots, the sixth sense. When we’re talking about the six essential traits of an entrepreneur, talk to me about this essential trait number one, the visionary. Yeah, and so that is a trait that you are absolutely born with, as are all the other six traits. It’s a very debatable topic. But somebody that has this trait in them, they just see the world a different way than most people. Their brain is always working. And as you said, they connect the dots, and so they’re seeing all these moving parts in the world, and they just put those dots together. They have this sixth sense. They’re able to see around corners. And again, so they just put things together and come up with great ideas that ultimately manifest into businesses that make a nice impact on the world. They don’t see dead people, do they? Or is that a different sense? That’s a different kind of sense. That’s a different sixth sense. Okay, I wasn’t sure, Gino. I didn’t know. Gino, I have a sixth sense. I’ve had a lot of success in business, and I see patterns. This is not a political show. I’m going to throw out an idea, Z, to you. Gino’s not saying this. I’m saying this. I’ve noticed that if you want to go to a large gathering of people right now, you have to bring a brick. You have to bring a brick, yes. And we continue. Or a bat. Or just have a protest that’s peaceful. Can you go to a restaurant yet? Can you do restaurants yet in Michigan right now? Can you do that? Literally yesterday. Thank goodness. Yes. They just opened. Yes. Yes. Woo! Yes! Get your burger! I want to hug somebody. I want to do it. Okay. No lions! Okay, so here we go. Now, essential trait number two, passionate. You’ve got to be passionate for your products, your service. You have a strong belief to fill a void. Talk to me about this passion, because I see a lot of people that want, they want to be an entrepreneur, but there’s no passion there. Talk to me about this, Gino. Talk to me about this passion. Yeah, well, sadly, it’s just not going to happen if you don’t have passion. So typically, again, that passion, as you said, is around that entrepreneur’s thing, whatever that thing is, the dent they want to put in the universe, the product, the service, the void they want to fill. And so they have this undying passion that as they keep getting their ass kicked and knocked down for 10 years as they’re building what they’re building, they just keep getting up. And the only thing that’s ever going to get you up that many times is that incredible passion for what you want to do in the world. Now Gino, I don’t know if you would agree with this. I have made a list of the eight traits To be an unsuccessful entrepreneur, okay, and I’ll turn off a few of them one is have a no vision No, you would have no passion at all not nine zero zero Skip through I have one more final tip. I’m gonna queue up. This is a tip for being not successful as an entrepreneur Here we go. This is my best Always keep bags of your own poop collect it throughout your stay and just have it ready. Would you agree with that? Is that a pro tip for not being a pro entrepreneur? Gino, do you agree with that? I’m going to plead the fifth on that, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Gino, I’ve got a question for you. I’ve been trying for a few weeks. There’s so many people that come up to us and they say, listen, we want to be an entrepreneur. We love your show. We love what you’re doing. Rah, rah, rah. And then how would someone do a set? What are some questions someone can ask themselves that they would know whether they have Passion or not because you ask everybody that people be but most of the guy well of course got passion I got passion. I mean I got passion. I mean you know every Saturday every Saturday night They’re at the house. We got a little passion going I mean we talking about so do you have some like some I mean like you perfect example In the intro or before the show started you’re talking about 31 times you’ve been rejected by your first book traction which puts you on the map which is huge. More than 30. And so that’s the definition of passion you had to go to your 30s I mean how many people would have given up after 10? Most people. 15? 20? 25? Most people would have given up. Most people. And so what are some other little things you have seen that kind of help define passion because I think a lot of people think they want to be an entrepreneur but they don’t really have their head wrapped around whether they have the right stuff or not. Does that make sense? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I’ll give you a couple of thoughts. I’ll just kind of riff a little bit and in here will be a few nuggets. And so, you know, first of all, it’s what gets your blood pumping. What gets you out of bed every morning? What is the dent you want to put in the universe? What is the legacy you want to leave? And not everyone has an answer to that. So I would suggest that most people aren’t passionate. And I’ll split the difference and say half are and half aren’t. But when you ask that series of questions and make that series of statements that I made, half the world’s looking at you scratching their heads. There’s just really nothing they’re totally passionate about. With that said, it doesn’t always have to be necessarily business focused, but we’re talking about entrepreneurs. So there are people that are passionate about sports, and maybe they’ll never start a business around that. That’s a whole different ballgame than this ballpark that we’re in around entrepreneurship. That’s a good point. Now you point out the essential trait number three, is you have to be a problem solver. You have to create a problem, problem-solving setbacks, optimist. I mean, when you guys took over Regent Bank, which at the time when you guys bought it, it was called the Bank of Nowata. They just rebranded right before you bought it. And all banks pretty much lend money from the government, am I correct? Basically, at the end of the day, banks rent money to people. Correct. That’s one way to say it. It’s oversimplified, though. You know what I mean? You get some money from the FDIC, you rent the money to other people, whatever. So there’s a lot of regulations there. And there’s a lot of bankers I run into who say, you just can’t grow a bank in today’s economy. You guys bought the bank right after you bought the bank the recession happened. Yeah, good timing. But a lot of people would have just given up, Z. So I want to get Gino’s take on this. Problem solvers. I see a lot of people that aren’t entrepreneurs, they get overwhelmed by problems and they just go cry. We’re entrepreneurs, we’re inspired to take action. Talk to me about the problem solving trait that you write about in your book. Yeah, and you described it pretty darn good there. And remember, we’re talking about traits that you’re born with. And so as your listeners, and they’re thinking, you know, they’re scanning their body right now with each one of these traits we’re talking about and saying, you know, am I a problem solver? Do I have this trait? Well, you just have to look at your life and look at your history. And the way you’ll know this is, you know, have you always been kind of a creative problem solver? Do you tend to see solutions where other people are seeing problems? Do you love solving problems? When you get hit with a setback, do you tend to lean into it? Are you more of an optimist by nature? And if all of those things are yes, yes, yes, as you look back with every little bump and hurdle you’ve run into, then odds are you are probably a problem solver and you probably have this trait. Z, again, I see a lot of people that are overwhelmed by problems. At the optometry clinic, we’ve been dealing with the shutdown. You’ve been dealing with… We actually had a peaceful protest where I would say 85% of the people that I could tell seemed to be very peaceful. Then you had 15%… You had the Yahoo friends that showed up right in front of your optometry clinic. I know, we were all over the news. Right in front of the mall, the news was out there. It was crazy. I mean, how do you process solving problems? Do you tend to hide a lot? Do you jump right into solving problems? How do you handle it? Oh, I love solving problems. I mean, I think that, you know, when Geno was talking, I mean, he was like reading my mail. I mean, obviously, I mean, but you have to have that thing of… And that’s what bothers me right now with the current status is so many people are talking about the problem. And every time I hear that, I just want to scream at them and go, what’s the solution? What’s your solution? How are you going to fix it? What are you suggesting? I mean, we get it. We have a problem. Okay, enough. Now, let’s work on solutions. I have a pro tip. I have a pro tip. You have a pro tip? Here’s my pro tip. If we lay on the train tracks and wait for the train to see if it runs us over, I have the hypothesis, I have the belief that we’ll probably get hit by the train. And I believe if we keep our economy shut down, the economy will probably stay shut down. This is my take. This is my pro tip. This just in. This just in. So I think we should hit the open button, but that is my controversial take on that, Z. Well, I think, you know… Yeah, let me throw one more thing in the mix. Yeah, go for it. This will be a great indicator as to whether your listener has this trade and so I’m thinking of the leadership teams I work with, you know, three to seven people running a company, we’re locked in the room. Well, my very entrepreneurial leadership teams, when we’re in that full-day session and they’re staring at that whiteboard of 40 issues, they get motivated, energized and and just attack that list. Oh yeah. Where my teams that are not entrepreneurial, they look at that list of issues and the energy goes out of the room and they’re exhausted and they’re scared And so when you get energized looking at a list of issues Pretty good sign that you’re a problem solver. There you go. See I tell you what I was overwhelmed I was looking at the questions for today’s show that we put together Yeah, because one when I read you know Whitman’s book I recognized just two things were happening one He is smarter than I am. Two, I recognize that I probably need to stop talking into the box fan and I probably need to start writing some questions as a result of reading this great book. Well, you see, that’s why you’re a problem solver. I was just sitting there looking into that fan. It took you a little while to get going, but you finally… I was overwhelmed. You geared down though and you got her done. I read the book, I went through it. Okay, so we talked about the essential trait number five of being an entrepreneur. Did we skip four? I’m skipping. Oh, we can’t give them all, Drew. I can’t give them all, eh? I can’t. Fine, I’ll skip number five and I’ll move to essential trait number six. I’ll do that. Wow! Oh my gosh, that’s right. Sorry, drivers. Risk taker. Don’t freeze. Rebellious. Willing to fail. What are you talking about, Mr. Gino Wickman? Yeah, and so this one is a good one from a standpoint of when we’re talking entrepreneurship and someone sees this trait, they’re thinking that the risk we’re talking about is the risk of starting a business, of taking the entrepreneur elite, when truth be told, that’s one of a thousand risks you’re going to take over the next 10 years building your company. And so risk taking is the fact that you don’t freeze when it comes time to make a tough decision. And so being an entrepreneur is all about tough decisions, every day, every week, every month, every year. And you lean into that decision, you make that tough call. A risk taker tends to be rebellious in nature, and so you’re the kind of person that a stop sign is kind of a suggestion to you. You’re willing to fail, you don’t intend to fail, but you’re willing to, you know that that’s part of the game. And then you tend to err on the side of begging for forgiveness than asking for permission. So if that describes you out there, then you probably have this trait of risk taker. Z, I got to tell you this. Can I tell you my pro tip? You mentioned that I’m a terrible driver. Oh, you’re the worst. You mentioned that you’re an entrepreneur if you perceive a stop sign to be potentially a suggestion. Gino, I would like to confess to you a pro driving tip that I have been busted on on two occasions. No ticket. Thank you to the officer. What I’ll do is I call it the… Gino, did you play basketball? Did you play basketball? I did not. Okay, well, Magic Johnson made this big up there in Michigan. It’s the no look pass, right? So what I do is if the traffic is where I don’t want it to be, what I’m going to do is I’m going to signal and I’m going to go into the parking lot of the gas station and look as though I’m looking for gas. I think I want gas. You know those people who look for gas, but then they go, no, no, the gas is two cents cheaper four miles away. I act like I’m that guy. So I’m like, oh, I know. I’ll keep going. And I look away, but the whole time I know where I’m going. I’m cutting through that parking lot. Oh, yeah. But I look away. It’s a no-look. It’s a no-look drive. And I’ve been pulled over twice for this move. And the one time the officer pulled me over, woo, woo, and it’s in a Hummer with the Kim Jong-un wrap on it. Oh, it’s beautiful. And he says, do you recognize you’re driving a Hummer with Kim Jong-un wrapped on the side of it, and I see you do this often? And I’m going, doing what? And he says, the thing where you act like you’re going to get gas, and then you don’t get gas. I’m indecisive. And he’s like, get out of here. Stop. That happened. That was a thing. That was a thing. So anyway, that’s the move. I also do the shoulder move, Z. Whenever, you know it snows, Gino, does it snow a lot up in your region of Detroit? Or are you in the snow-free zone of Detroit? Oh, it snows. It snows. I grew up in Minnesota, and you know how snow rules happen? Once it snows, people all of a sudden are like, you know, stoplights are kind of a suggestion now because it’s snowing. Gino, does that happen up in Detroit when it snows several feet or several inches? Do you have snow rules? It doesn’t get that deep, so no. I’ve never heard of that, so I have to say no to that. Well, Z, we’ll educate Gino. In Oklahoma, we have snow rules here. When it snows, even an inch, people are going, well, it might not be able to come to a full It’s chaos. It’s chaos. People are going, well, I might not be able to come to a full stop, so I’m just not even going to try to stop. Right. So you just drive right through the red light if there’s no other cars, and I’ve been busted doing that move with like an inch of snow. And a whoo, sir. And a hummer. And a hummer. The snow is a powerful amount of snow. He says, sir, do you know why I pulled you over? I’m like, yeah, I went through a red light. Well, why’d you do that? A powerful amount of snow. A lot of momentum. I’m going like 20 miles an hour. I got out of that because I was funny. So okay, we continue. So now we know about the traits of an entrepreneur, but some people want to learn more about this book. Where can they buy the book, or where can they learn more about your book if they want to get into all the essential traits? Yes, well, all major retailers certainly, but the epicenter of all things Entrepreneurial Leap is my website, e-leap.com. You can certainly order it through the site. That will take you to the major retailers. But there’s also nine free tools, a lot of robust content that is free there on that website as well. Now, in your book, you talk about eight critical mistakes that entrepreneurs make. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to tee up a mistake. And I’m going to tip one of your mistakes. And then Z, after we interview you about it, Z’s going to chime in with maybe a funny story about this. So Gino, tell us about this. Mistake number one, not having a vision. An entrepreneur opens up a business, they clearly don’t have a vision. Why is this such a big mistake? Yeah, so it’s a mistake due to lack of clarity, lack of communication, chaos. And so what you typically have is you’ve built this organization to a certain size where there’s just no clarity. Everybody joins you because they fell in love with your passion, you wrangled them in, and everyone is just not aligned around a vision. And to the degree you have a vision, you will align everyone around that vision, you will get there faster, you will solve issues quickly, and you’ll weed out a person or two that’s really not in alignment with your vision. Zohan, you’re an optometrist. Yes, sir. And you know my wife is a beautiful lady. She started working for you at the age of 18 years old then. Yes. And then her creepy boyfriend came around. Right, and I was able to wrangle her away. We’ve been married now 20 years. But you have year by year… No, that was you were the creepy boyfriend. Oh, I’m sorry. Truth, truth. It’s too soon. Here’s the thing. You, though, have helped me out for years. You have given my wife a wrong prescription. You are an optometrist. Oh, yeah. Once we saw you, we had to blur that sucker out. You should be seeing 20-20 now, ma’am. She’s about 20-100 right now. On a good day. What’s the danger of not having a vision? You see business guys all the time not having a vision. It kind of cracks me up sometimes. A guy will, and I see this over and over and over, he’ll have a little bit of a vision, open up his business. And then, quick, I don’t know if he bores, I don’t know if she bores, I don’t know what. Then they get bored. Next thing you know, they went from having a donut shop to now they’re going to sell sundry goods over here in the foyer. Then they’re going to open up a med spa behind the Donut Cooker. And med spa donuts and sundries. You want to take a shower? We have a shower unit now available and a gym out back. We’ll open up anything you think you need. I know a guy is the name of our store. I know a guy dot com. They just keep rolling with other ideas and just when you think they got something kind of settled In they’re settled. They’re just seem so unsettled. You know, that’s like Nixon, you know, they’re there They’re trying to do something else. You’re like, dude, just just stay in your lane and and do what you were doing and do it with excellence You know I mean do you affect that before you want to buy a replica of Ronald Reagan because we sell those we sell those two we have a clay Model or one of the label printers. Okay, I believe it’s out in the back. You know a guy day I’ll tell you what, you propped it up in your house. You see people like this, I’m sure, because you’ve done consulting and speaking and coaching. You’ve interacted with entrepreneurs for years. Do you see that, where the entrepreneur just keeps adding on one more idea while never gaining traction with any idea? Oh, for sure. I’m sitting here laughing because you’re spot on, and then you’re dipping into mistake number six, which is not staying true to your core. Oh, there we go. That’s exactly what happens. They start, you know, trying to sell and be all things to all people and get away from what brought them and unfortunately, they tend to go out of business or at least struggle in flat line forever. So mistake number one is not having a vision. Mistake number six is not staying true to your core. This just in from our home office. I see that a lot, a lot with politicians. I see that a lot with business owners. Politicians, though, are the easiest ones to spot, usually, because they’re like, I am in favor of capitalism. I’m down. This is me talking about it. I love it. I love it. Free market. I know you buy things. Send me to the Capitol because I love capitalism. That’s what I’m into. But now that I’ve been elected, I could see the merits of socialism and that’s what I’m going to do. Yeah, I mean, we all share. And we all see it. It’s a pressure that makes you clarify your vision. Now mistake number two, hiring the wrong people. Gino, have you ever hired the wrong person ever? I have. In my first business, that’s where I learned it, and I got really good at solving that problem and did not make that mistake again in the second business. Have you ever hired a person that had a magnificent resume and really, really was confident in their skills, but they ended up not being what you thought they were? Gene, have you ever interviewed the really good interviewing guy with the really white teeth and the great resume? It’s like a polished resume. It’s leather bound. His dad is a senator, and then he’s just a disaster. Have you ever hired that guy? Too many times. Well, I interviewed that guy. Fortunately, I was smart enough not to hire him most of the time, but definitely made that mistake a handful of times. The leather resume, that was a tip. This is actually an audio tape, Z, of I think one of Geno’s worst hires early on in his career. Really? How did you get that tape? Let me wrangle it up real quick. How did you get that tape? Well, actually, this is Geno’s personal assistant interviewing one of his worst hires. Gino, I’m going to play about 45 seconds of it, and then you can tell me if this was the actual audio, because I’d never know. You have so many. Who are we to vet the audio clips before we play them? Here we go. Right, exactly. Good call. Here we go. Oh, hello, Catherine. Good to see you. I didn’t know you were dropping by. You asked me to come over are you reading the dictionary you caught me I like to break a mental sweat to grab a chair so I trust everything’s going this guy interviewed well swimmingly with our acquisition of average Joe’s so far yeah there’s a lot to do over there so I should probably get back that is a really interesting painting oh thank you yeah that’s uh… that’s me taking the bull by the horns that’s how I handle my business it’s a metaphor I get it it actually happened though it actually happened alright so have you ever hired a guy like that and what do you do for the listeners out there who’ve hired somebody who they thought they’d be the greatest manager ever they claim to read the dictionary in their free time they claim to literally take the bull by the horns, they bring in their own paintings of them doing so. What do you do when you’re stuck with that guy? Well, you don’t hire him, and I don’t want to go on record as the, Becky, just to clarify, that was not me. Oh, okay. Wrong clip. Wrong clip. But if you do get stuck with him, you’re never stuck with him, and I think that’s the takeaway. You can, you know. How do you fire people in Detroit? What do you do? What’s the move? Is there a move? Go ahead. Here’s what I would suggest, because that’s the easy part. The way that this dynamic shows up, for anyone thinking about taking their entrepreneurial leap, is what tends to happen is that entrepreneur starts their business, reaches some level of success, sells a few things, generates some revenue, and they need a body. They grab the closest body to them, which is their brother, sister, significant other, mom, dad, aunt, uncle, throw them into the business, business continues to grow and they keep doing that. And two, three, five years into it, they find themselves surrounded by a bunch of people that really shouldn’t be there. And so the point is, you’ve got to hire people that have your core values, hire people that have the skill set to do the job, slow hire, quick fire. And so once you realize you’ve got the wrong one, the firing part is easy, assuming they’re at-will employees. And we’re not going to get into the legality of that, but the firing part is easy. It’s avoiding that mistake on the front end that almost every entrepreneur makes. Now mistake number three, not spending time with your people. I think a lot of people believe in abdication, not delegation. They get it confused. They hire somebody who’s the golden… See, this guy, he is the golden baby. Oh, please, Jesus. You look at him and you say, this guy is going to be the golden baby. Oh, yeah. 24 karat. And your partner says, the golden baby? No, this will be, look at the golden baby. I don’t even know what that means. Why are you saying, I’ll tell you, he’s the golden baby. He’s the chosen one. And then you put him in a room and you don’t train the golden baby. And you wonder why he’s not getting it done. Talk to me about this. He’s golden. Why can’t you just hire a golden baby and not train him. Hence the name, Goldmember. So I have no idea where you’re going with that, but here’s what this is. Thanks to you, it was. Is the hard-charging entrepreneur with this idea, again, builds a company with people, and these mistakes all stem from my clients when they come to me, somewhere between 10 and 250 employees having made all of these mistakes and we’re correcting these mistakes. And the number one issue I and we hear every single time is communication. And communication is just simply the root of it is that entrepreneur is not spending time with their people and the formula and remedy is a simple solution. It’s meeting with your team weekly, meeting with your team quarterly, and giving feedback often, that will solve 90% of your communication issues overnight. Do you have to schedule an actual meeting with your team on a consistent basis, maybe for those weekly meetings and those quarterlies, or do you recommend entropy and just sort of having an apathetic look at the world and just seeing if we drift into a meeting at the same time and place? We 100% prescribe same day, same time, same agenda, every single week, every single quarter. Oh, can you say that one more time? I blacked out. It was so good. Say it one more time, please. We highly recommend it. We actually, every client does this. Every meeting has got to be same day, same time, same agenda, every single week, every single quarter. That right there is so profound because I’ve been doing consulting now since 2006 and I can tell you nothing is more frustrating, Z, than playing phone tag with a successful person because they don’t answer a number if they don’t know who it is. Or they’re always doing something productive with their time. So you miss them, they don’t check voicemails, they call you back from their mysterious bat line and you don’t answer the phone because you don’t know the numbers. And it just goes round. Have you ever played an epic game of phone tag? Oh yes. Oh, it’s just so fun. I love it. I love having the weekly meeting at the same time every week. Now your meetings don’t go on for four hours or nine hours. Gino, how long is the longest that we should possibly have a weekly meeting. 90 minutes every week, max, not a minute more. You can’t solve every issue. You just need to solve the most important ones, and the rest will wait till next week’s meeting. OK. Now, OK, again, this stuff we’re covering right now is in your newest book. This is a great book, but you’re also, your legendary book, Traction, is also available. Talk to me about this mistake number four, is not knowing who your customer is. Does that mean you’re allowing people to buy things from you and you don’t recognize their face? What does it mean when you say not knowing who your customer is? So the issue here is that entrepreneur, that business, is taking a buckshot approach to selling their wares. And so your marketing efforts, your sales efforts, your branding efforts, they’re just kind of, like I said, taking that buckshot approach and doing a drag net and dragging in whatever they can when the remedy is knowing the demographic, geographic, psychographic, who they are, where they are, what they are, how they think, and targeting your sales and marketing efforts on them so that you have a very focused effort and you maximize all of your resources, time, energy, and money. Can we talk more about golden babies? I think we should. I wish you would. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, the gold member! Do you put golden diapers on your head? I have pro tips. Can I give you some tips? Gino, I’ve had some, for about a decade, I think, I’ve wanted to interview Gino Wickman here. This is sort of an answer to prayer. And so, Gino, I have some pro tips I want to give you, and feel free not to implement them. It’s fine. He’s doing well. Things are going well here. I mean, apparently. I think he’s doing all right. So feel free to one-up me, but these are my tips. One, I think moving forward you should insist that people introduce you as Geno Wickman. Wickman. That sound? I think it’s hot. And I think if you become the kind of man that would correct people that say Wickman, you go, for example, you met me for the first time today, and I would say, Geno Wickman, pleasure to meet you. And you could say, no, no, no, it’s Wickman. It’s like Prince, where Prince had that constant friction with everyone. Because people are like, hey, good to see you, Prince. And he’s like, no, it’s a symbol. You see what I’m saying, Z? Think about that. It’s hot. It’s hot sauce. Oh, yeah, I’m writing it down as you speak. I mean, you guys could really create not traction, but friction. Not be silly, but I think you have traction with that. Yeah, that’s a good idea. Your newest book could be called Friction, Keys to the Golden Baby. I like that. What do you think about that? What do you think? Friction. People would go, he’s written three books, four books, it makes sense. Kind of like how you get a baby and you just spray paint it gold and then take a picture of it on the cover. I don’t think that hard. How many books have you written at this point, Gino? This is number six. So if you wrote Friction, the Golden Baby, people would buy it almost like a mercy purchase. They’re like, it’s like some of Prince’s music got kind of weird there for a while. And people are going, I don’t know if I even like this music, but it’s packaged in a glass sphere of some kind of gold. So I’m going to buy the golden baby. Well, here’s the impression. I’m going to go, I’m going to drop that down a notch, Gino. Clay always shoots… He’s always swinging for a grand slam every time. Me, I’m good with base hits. Just keep up the momentum. You’re a benevolent man. You’re a kind of person. I think instead of doing a whole book cover on that, I challenge you in your next book to somewhere in there, get the phrase, Golden Baby. Somewhere in the book. Golden Baby. Golden Baby. We’ll know it’s for us. That’s your challenge. It’ll be just a little love nugget, and we’ll have her shed a tear. We’ll probably pop some shit back. We’re somebody now! You can use it in your perfect level 10 meetings. You can just kind of say, now guys, as an example, a golden baby would do this. We continue. So Gino Wick, when you talk about your mistake number five, is not charging enough. As an example, you didn’t charge us enough to have to put up with the personal hell of being on this show. Talk to me about not charging enough. That’s a good point. Excellent point. Yeah, so the classic mistake here is undercharging for your services. And so it’s literally a psychological issue. It’s an insecurity. And so almost every entrepreneur, when they take their leap, for some reason they charge less than they should. And most startups, they’re literally a 10% price increase from being profitable or having a loss. That’s a good word. And so there’s two great disciplines here. First of all, there’s a great TED Talk by Casey Brown who goes right to the psychology of this. But number two, Dan Sullivan, one of my mentors, talks about when you’re pricing, think about the number that scares you the most and then add 20%. And that will force you to kind of break through that insecurity, but it’s just a common classic entrepreneurial mistake and it’s the difference between staying in business and going out of business. And Gino, I want to add to that, I want to pile on. The other thing too is the drift. In other words, the drift. Cost goes up, you keep your- You guys there? Did I lose you? No, no, we’re here. We just did a bomb. Can you hear me? What I was saying is, can you hear me, Gino? Hello, hello. Hello, Gino. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Gino, you there? No. Gino! I’m calling you back. He’s still there. He’s still there. He’s there. This is a fake. He’s there. It’s a head fake. I think Golden Baby’s got to be in the battle. Hey guys, I’m back. Are you back? I’m back. Oh, God. I knew you offended him when you were talking about that Golden Baby thing. I know. Okay, continue. I thought he was going to hang up on you any moment. I knew it, passive aggressive, bam. But I was piling on Gino and that is not only day one do you get aggressive and you price things accordingly, but also you have to watch the drift. In other words, there’s a restaurant here in Tulsa, true story, and they had the best lasagna in town and they had it priced accordingly. And then every time they got a new chef in there, he’d be like, I can make this thing a little better, a little bit more mean, a little more chilly, a little more better, a little bigger piece. Pretty soon they didn’t realize what they were charging for the lasagna was actually less than what it cost them to make the lasagna. And everybody loved the lasagna. That’s why you went to the restaurant. It’s as good as a Gino Wittman book. I tell you what, that lasagna is so good. I tell you what, I can’t make it. I mean, this is crazy. They must buy in bulk or something. I don’t know. I want six orders to go, too. It’s not profitable, but I want a lot of them. Let’s make a lot of them. I guess it’s kind of like the truck driver that says, I lose $1,000 on every run. They go, what are you going to do about that? He goes, well, I’m just going to get more trucks. I’ll make it up. Gina, this is a problem for people. Pricing is a huge problem. Exactly right. That’s why I’m calling it out before you take your entrepreneur at least so you don’t discover it five years in. Now Gino, do you charge money for your services? I do. Unethical. How did you figure out? It’s unethical. He’s a pirate. He’s a pirate. He’s out there plundering people. He said, I’m going to make a profit in exchange for goods and services that I offer I have a lot of people Sean Copeland swears by your program Pesh Patel swears by the program DDD are you still doing the thing where you you work with people for free forever or what’s what’s your hot offer over there? No, that’s unfortunately not my business model. Hmm The people if there’s a people out there want to hire you what do they do? What’s the process look like or are you even available at this point? Because your books have sold just too many copies. Yeah, unfortunately I’m not available, but the good news is we have 374 other EOS implementers that are available all over the world. So I can connect you to any one of them, certainly. Okay, now let’s talk about this. Mistake number, I’m going to go with mistake number seven. I’ve got some other questions I want to get into. Mistake number seven, not knowing the numbers. A lot of people, they go, I have a great product, woo, great lasagna, woo, it’s the golden baby, woo. And then they say, I don’t know if I make any money. Talk to me about the dangers of not knowing your numbers. Yeah, hear, hear. And sadly, somebody that has all six essential traits typically is not great with numbers. It’s actually a weakness of most visionary entrepreneurs. And so the beauty is it’s a very simple remedy, because what’s happening is these companies are flying blind, going with their gut, guessing that everything’s going fine. The way you solve that, three simple things. Number one is look at the five to 15 most important numbers every single week. Number two, look at a monthly P&L every single month, and number three, manage a budget projected to actual every month. And if you don’t know what those three things are, just implement it and you’ll figure it out in about two months. You know, what I’m going to do here, Z, is I’m going to queue up. There’s that show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Who Wants to be a Millionaire? And it kind of creates a suspenseful atmosphere. I’m going to queue up the music here. And what I want to do is we’re going to come in rapid fire with questions for you, Gino. Okay, we’ve got about ten questions from Thrivers all over the nation. All over. And I’m going to fire out the question, and if you can give us the shortest, most concise answer possible, are you ready for the lightning round, sir? Ready. Okay, let me cue it up. Let me try. Have a kick. It’s intense. Here we go. All right. I think this is the right music. Here we go. Question number one. When consulting with a business owner, how frequently do you need to have the awkward talk with them? How often do you have to have an awkward talk with them when consulting with business owners? Every single session in the first year. Really? Every single session? Okay, I got my music ready. Here we go. Next question. This is from a lady by the name of Amelia. What do you tell business owners who get bored easily, the ones that cannot commit to doing the same things day after day, week after week? What do you tell them? Get good at it, learn how to have fun with it, stay focused. Okay, question number three from Luke writes, what do you say to clients that get stuck on website edits, updates that don’t matter, products that they don’t sell, things that don’t matter. What do you say to clients like that? That one stumped me because that one seems obvious. Pull your team together, decide what needs to go, decide what needs to stay, make quick decisions and go forward. Where can people learn more? We have a listener who writes, where is the best place for our listeners to learn more about your level 10 meetings? Two places, purchase the book Tractions or go to eosworldwide.com. Z, get ready for your tough questions. He likes to ask inappropriate political, geopolitical, religious questions. So get ready for that. Here we go. Here we go, next question. This comes in from Sean. Sean writes, what would you say to a business owner that does not yet see the value of accountability when working with a consultant such as the EOS team? Well, number one, I wouldn’t work with you because accountability is the foundation of the relationship with all of my clients, and I fear for your future and your people if you don’t believe in accountability. Next question from a Thriver by the name of Sean writes, can you talk about the process of training business owners to prioritize the stuff that matters as opposed to focusing on the things that don’t matter like a golden baby. So the approach that we take and I take is we work with the owner and their leadership team. And so those are the three to seven people at the helm of the organization. And together, those three to seven people need to list all of their priorities and then choose the top three to seven for the next 90 days and don’t walk out of the room until you 100% agree on what those three to seven priorities are. Andrew writes, what happens when an employee does not do their action items after your level 10 meeting when it’s time for the follow-up two weeks in a row? What say you, Gino Wickman? Rule of thumb, 90% of all to-do should be complete every week. If you have an employee that doesn’t do that, you sit them down, have a conversation, and that is strike one. If it happens again, you sit them down, have another conversation, that is strike two. If it happens again, that is strike three, and you’ve got an epidemic, and it’s time to make a people change. Julia writes, how do you equip implementers? Or how do you personally navigate the emotions of an artist slash expert entrepreneur that thinks they know it all but does nothing? Well, that one’s a little more difficult. So we’re able to solve that, and I’m able to solve that probably half the time. Some mini interventions, some group therapy in the sessions with the leadership team. The other half of the time is a deep psychological issue that stems back to when they were seven years old and they need about seven years of therapy before they’re ready to ultimately solve that issue. Z, it’s time for you to ask your offensive questions, as you often do. Z, your questions… Z is known to ask questions that are so offensive that our listeners, our guests will just hang up. Z, it’s happened. We don’t have any audio of it. It has? Well, we don’t have any audio of it. In theory, it could have happened. It could have happened. I know. Okay, go ahead and ask any questions you want about you know wake of an America’s golden baby of consulting Gina if you could go back if you get the time machine the DeLorean go back 20 years and have a meeting with yourself Okay, what would I say to myself? Yes, I would say to myself, let your freak flag fly. Whoa. Lower your guard. Be 100 percent you and don’t apologize for it. I love that. So, you know what I would say to my younger self? You want to hear? I pre-recorded it for today’s show. I should probably go return that. I don’t know what I would say to my younger self. You know what they say, see a broad to get that booty act, lay her down and smack him yack him. That’s what I would say. That’s about 20 years ago. That was about you. Okay, two more questions for Gino Wickman. Gino, Wickman, America’s golden baby of consulting. What’s next for you, Gino? Are you on a beach somewhere in the winter? On the beaches of Detroit? A snowbird. What’s next for you? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? Are you buying a lion? On the beaches of Detroit. I mean, you’re a snowbird. I mean, you, you know, are you, what’s next for you? You got a beach house, you’re building a big beach house somewhere in the Caribbean. You can’t tell us the exact location. And you’re ordering a bunch of umbrellas for your drinks and all that kind of stuff. What’s next? Yeah, far from writing off into the sunset, I’ve got many decades of work left to do, but this next 10 years is focused on entrepreneurial leap and impacting one million entrepreneurs in the making over the next 10 years. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. entrepreneurial leap and impacting 1 million entrepreneurs in the making over the next 10 years. I love that. That’s awesome buddy. If you say listen, have you picked a time in the future where you say you know what that’s my goal and when I hit that age I am rolling up the sleeves, peace and out, saying see you later alligator. Far from it. So this next 10 year goal will take me to 60, and then there will be another 10-year goal at 60, and another one at 70, and another one at 80, until I keel over. I’m going to die in the middle of a project. I love that. Okay, my question I have for you, this is the one I sincerely want to know the answer to because this is one that I get asked this question so much by our listeners. They want to know, Gino Wickman, how do you organize the first four hours of your day? What time do you get up and how do you organize the first four hours of your day? Because you’re a very productive man. How do you do it? Yeah. So, my advice to the world is when you go to bed, go to bed knowing your plan for the next day. Do not go to sleep without knowing your plan for the next day. So, what I do somewhere between 5 o’clock and 11 o’clock is lay out my next day. So when I wake up, I hit the ground running, as opposed to what most people do, getting distracted by emails, phone calls, et cetera, and let the world take over. And so those first four hours, you know, I wake up at various times. It’s not always the same time, but I wake up, I typically have a morning routine, which is some thinking, writing, and some light exercise. And then I hit the ground running with whatever that first item is on my list my days are very What’s the word I’m looking for very Each day is a bit different some days. I have a session some days I’m doing podcasts like this, but whatever that first thing is on my schedule. I attack that first and Work my way through my plan for the day. What’s the average time you wake up? On average, I would say 6.30. 6.30. That sounds like a fair time. You have it at 6.30. Do you talk to a lot of people during those first hours of your day? Or do you take more of this you time? Yeah, I’m typically talking to people as early as 7.30, I would say. And it depends. If I’m driving, I’m always scheduling my calls during drive time. And so if I’m in the car at 7.30, I’ve got a call or two scheduled for that drive time. Gino, I appreciate you being on the show so much, and I encourage every listener out there to check out your new book, The Entrepreneurial Leap. Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? I really do appreciate you making the poor life choices needed to end up on today’s show, and I just really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yeah, it was a blast. You guys are absolutely nuts, but it was a true blast. We are flying the freak flag. And listen, whenever you get that package delivered from probably UPS or I don’t know FedEx, open it quickly because it’s probably going to have a golden baby in there. So just… A golden… So leave that on the board for a while. We went to the golden baby statue store. It’s an extension of… Is that going to be a live one? I thought you were going to send him a live golden baby. It’s an extension of Z’s Optometry Clinic. It’s off in the back. There’s a room where he sells the golden babies statues. It’s a big… Thank you, Gino. Thank you, Gino. Thank you, guys. And now, without any further ado, 3, 2, 1, boom! Boom. Boom. Boom. Why does this still keep happening to me? I don’t know whose prayer I’m breaking into, but I’m breaking into somebody’s prayer saying Lord why do I keep going through the same things over and over again and the Lord sent me here to tell you the problem is with your default until you change your mind. You change your friends. You change your address. You change your phone number. You change the songs you sing. You change everything else, but you didn’t change your mind. There is nothing as powerful as a change in that mind. Boom! Nothing is powerful as a change in mind. Boom! Better be jokes, cause I’m like BOOM! We takin’ over, it’s our time now BOOM! Oh you ain’t know it, we bout to thrive now Big, overwhelming, optimistic, pro, middle, A-Clay, hey, that’s like a kiddo Come get em, said, hurdle every obstacle Tryna do the impossible Turned my whole life around, haters thought it was comical Had to make some moves, didn’t leave, it’s team not a thing Quarterback to play, man, I had to call an auto boom Drop back, stop that, rearrange and twist it up, I’ma take my BOOM! Leave em where they at if they ain’t ready Used to have lotta homies, now they droppin’ like a belly I’m like BOOM! We takin’ over, it’s our time now BOOM! Oh you ain’t know it, we bout to thrive now Big, overwhelming, optimistic, pro, middle, A-Clay, hey, that’s like a kiddo Come get em, said, hurdle every obstacle Turned my whole life around, haters thought it was comical Had to make some moves, didn’t leave, it’s team not a thing Quarterback to play, man I have the color of the ball Drop back, stop that, rearrange or twist it up Only got my life within this message, you gon’ dip it up Bet you ain’t an option, ain’t no way that I can give it up Ha ha, hey now let’s go, pick it up Nothing like your posse, look poppy, you cannot top me They watch me and try to copy, like Rocky, you cannot stop me More real than ever, we grinding off on the weather We shining because we better get with us, we boutta cheddar Once I change my mind, dog, trust me, no going back Coming for that top spot, I’m feeling like they owe me that Time for us to level up I feel like we been holding back Throw your hands up Say it with me if you’re going down Boom! Nothing is powerful as a changed mind Boom! Better get yours cause I’m a take mine Boom! Leave em where they at if they ain’t ready Used to have a lot of homies Now they dropping like a belly I’m like boom! We taking over, it’s our time now Boom! Oh you ain’t know, we about to thrive now Big, overwhelming, optimistic, pro-gentle Hey Clay, hey Hey, let me get up Came a long way from where I used to work Used to call me the Steve, like the way I used to sweat Cold habits die hard, but you gotta label man If they ain’t riding like a Harley, then you don’t need em You cheering and you clapping, I don’t need that Fake friends treat em like back, don’t make em lean back Sight for no vision, makes ya blind, I can see that Anything I think up in my mind, I can achieve I can make a million if I want to I’ma keep it real cause I want to Other women try to holla, girl I won’t choose And disrespecting white people’s what I won’t do Go and do your dance, go and do your dance If you really wanna change, gotta have a plan Even when they sit down, I’ma take a stand Throw your hands up, say it with me, you need to know it man Thoughts become your thoughts, thoughts become your actions So be intentional about the way your passion is focused There’s no hocus pocus, we only live once man, and you know this You can’t press the rewind, but you can make a beeline To the next level like you’re headed for the treeline I was born in Minnesota, moved to Oklahoma Incorporated, built into my rhymes, now it’s time to show ya How a former Southern student can turn up the rap With a lyrical miracle flow in the cash to match I’m imported, a Minnesota refugee But I’m consistent as can be as I rap on hip-hop beats Bringin’ rappers attack, even though that I’m white I can play that folkin’ music, but I ain’t vanilla, I Here we go, here we go, here we go, full steam 3, 2, 1, dynamite on the scene Boom! Nothing is powerful as a changed mind Boom! Better get yours cause I’m a take mine Boom! Leave em where they at if they ain’t ready Used to have a lot of homies, now they drop em like a bestie I’m like boom! We taking over, it’s our time now Boom! Oh you ain’t know, we about to fly now Big, overwhelming, optimistic, momentum Boom! And the Lord sent me here to tell you the problem is with your default. Until you change your default, you will always go back to being who you were before because you have never changed your mind. You change your friends, you change your address, you change your phone number, you change the songs you sing, you change everything else, but you didn’t change your mind. There is nothing as powerful as a changed mind. Well, I have had coaches for, I bet, at least the last 10 years, and none of them has done what you guys have done. I’ve had to fire all the other ones. And you guys have made a difference in everything that I’ve done, whether it’s getting leads or showing me how to write script or doing cold calls. It’s all been huge. Okay, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we are interviewing a long-time client that’s having massive success. The website is Mike Sell Monograms. That’s the website, Mike Sell Monograms. Our today’s guest is not a hologram. She’s not AI. She’s a real human. She has a real business. She’s not a scam occury. It’s a real company. Mikesellmonograms.com. Meg, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you? I’m fabulous. Well, I’m super excited to interview you. And I wanted to ask you, tell us what are all the services that you provide so people can go to your website and verify that you’re real? Can you hang on one minute? I’m totally real, my dog is barking. I like it, no problem. We shall deal with the barking dog, then we shall continue. Okay, I’m back. As soon as I sit down or anything, he wants to play. So let me ask, what are the services that you guys provide there at Mike’s Salmonograms? We do embroidery, screen printing and promotional items, even print, like business cards and letterheads and envelopes. So we do all of that. And how did you start the company or when did you start the company? I started, it’s unbelievable, about 30 years ago with one small machine and we just, one small embroidery machine because we do that in-house. And it just went crazy from there. So that’s how it began. And where are you guys based? We are based out of Greenville, Ohio, in a small little town. So, farm rural area. You provide services though for people all over the country, correct? I do, yes, I do. I ship out everywhere. So without maybe naming your specific clients, what are the kinds of clients you work with? I work with a lot of construction industries, roofers, concrete, lawn care, landscapers, a lot of those kind, even health care. So yeah, I’m all over the board. Well, I wanted to have you on today’s show because, you know, just yesterday I was talking to a wonderful person who reached out to us looking for help. They actually have a dog grooming company and they are just, they’re super excited to start the program. And I thought, you know, I want to ask you because you’ve grown financially, you’re generating more leads, your business has grown, but how would you describe how business mentorship or ongoing business coaching has impacted your business? Well, I have had coaches for, I bet, at least the last 10 years, and none of them has done what you guys have done. I’ve had to fire all the other ones, and you guys have made a difference in everything that I’ve done, whether it’s getting leads or showing me how to write script or doing cold calls. It’s all been huge for me. So, yeah. I would recommend you. Now, I want to ask you, well, I appreciate that. Years ago, and I won’t mention the guy’s last name or the name of his company, but years ago, I was 20 years old, 23 years ago, I needed somebody to teach me the ropes on how to grow a company. And so I hired a guy and what I didn’t understand with his services was that every time I called him He was billing me and it was like to the 15-minute thing You know if you so if I called him for a brief question He would charge me for 15 minutes if he called me and check in he’d bill me for 15 minutes and he didn’t actually do photography web development online ads search engine optimization He didn’t help me with scripts. He just told me what I needed to do and then every time I asked him, okay, well, who should I use to build my website? He would say, I really don’t know, but you know, you got to find, he would hop on the phone and he would say, I remember this very vividly. He was from the Northeast and he would say, Clay, your website is terrible. It’s a terrible website. It looks awful and if you’re going to get your company, and I don’t own the company anymore, I sold it many years ago, but this was, so I’m talking about a company many, many years ago, but he was like, your website for your company, DJ connection, it’s horrible. It’s horrible. It’s embarrassing. And you got to work on your business and not in your business. You got to be working on your business. And it’s horrible. I go, well, you know, Bruce, who should I go with? I don’t know. I have a guy, I can recommend a guy. I make a kickback. If you want to use them, it’s probably 10 grand. And I’m going 10 grand? Oh, 10 grand. Now, I’m like, okay, so how do I optimize it? I don’t know, but you need to get one of those search engine guys, because I don’t do that. I’m just telling you, looking at it, it’s terrible. You’ve got to work on your business. And I was paying money for that sort of jackassery. And then over time, I had to then hire a web company, Creative State, who did a good job, and I spent well over $20,000 developing my website. And then I had to hire a videographer that I spent just thousands and thousands. And with what we do, it’s all in one. Can you kind of explain what it’s like to have an all-in-one resource? Oh my, I love it. Well, first of all, you redid my website. The next thing you put me at the top of the page, I believe on Google, I’ve got four Google people that called me this week and they got them from Google. You do it all. You’re a one-stop shop guy. That’s all I can say. And you help me grow my business. You show me how to write script and all of that. So yeah. Now I’m going to pull up a diagram that I think best describes what we do. But I want to get your take on this. Because again, you’re living it. You’re the customer. We have an honor to serve you and work with you. And so I want to get your feedback on this. This is a workflow. And people ask me all the time, they say, Clay, what is the most important thing to grow a business? What’s the most important part? And I say, well, that’s like asking somebody who’s making cookies, what’s the most important ingredient? I mean, if you don’t include eggs, you’re going to have a problem. If you don’t include flour, you’re going to have a problem. That’s like asking an auto mechanic or an automotive repair guy, what’s the most important part of the car? Is it the steering wheel? Is it the engine? Is it the windshield? Is it the tires? I would argue if you remove the tires or the steering wheel or any core component of the car, it would stop working. And when you run a business, you’ve got marketing, you’ve got branding, you need to know your goals, you got to track your numbers, you got to learn time blocking, you got to figure out your unique value proposition, you’ve got to figure out your sales conversion process and your scripts, as you mentioned, you have to focus on developing a sustainable customer acquisition cost. What does it cost you to get a new customer? You got to build repeatable systems. You’ve got to learn how to manage people. You’ve got to build a repetitive schedule that works for your whole team. You’ve got to master HR. You’ve got to do accounting. You got to do legal, all of that. And really, I feel like through our coaching program, we guide our clients through all of that. But I want to get your reaction, just kind of looking at this diagram. How would you describe what the coaching experience is like when you’re kind of referencing this diagram? Well, when I look at the diagram, it looks like, oh, my lands, I’ll never be able to do that. When you do coaching, you do it one step at a time. It’s kind of like, as the old saying goes, eating an elephant one bite at a time. They just walk you through it a little bit at a time. My coach has helped me even on words, on what to say. We’ve started making cold calls. I have one of my girls making cold calls and she doesn’t like it at all, but the coach got on the phone with her and made some cold calls with some of our customers that we had picked out. And it has changed her on how to make cold calls. He was with us. He did the calls, called the people that we had, you know, looked through Google to find. And it was wonderful. She’s changed her attitude on cold calls a little bit, not a lot, but I’m paying her for Google reviews and that’s helped her want more review. It’s just been amazing. That’s all I can say. Now, uh, you know, one of the things that I love about working with you is, is I hear from Carter and the team, you’re, you’re, you’re super coachable. So when I heard that your sales are up significantly, I was not shocked. Without telling your actual financial numbers, how would you describe the growth in terms of the financial benefit? Obviously, we charge for our service. We charge people $1,700 a month, and we don’t apologize for that price. We do operate at a 20% margin. We make 20%. We make $340 a month per client, and we work with 160 clients. How would you describe the financial impact on your business? Well, last year my growth was 13% up and this year so far it’s up 20%. So yeah, my growth is doing really well and we’re not even, I don’t feel like we’re working super duper hard. You know, it’s not like we’re going crazy. It’s just one step at a time. It’s been, yeah, highly recommend you. Well, I appreciate that. You know, creating checklists, checklists is a big thing. And again, you know, I do conferences, big conferences, small conferences. I have a huge conference coming up in June and I have a checklist and I think if people saw it, they’d probably get nauseous, but I’m not exaggerating. It’s over 40 pages long and it’s everything that has to be checked before the conference takes off. So it’s lighting, it’s sound, it’s speakers, it’s cables, it’s cords, it’s speaker times, it’s speaker bios, it’s videos, it’s music, it’s the mariachi band, it’s renting the llamas, yes, we rent llamas. It is helicopter rentals, it is the catering for the dinners, it’s the VIP dinner, it’s who’s picking up who at the airport. I mean, it is a massive list of items. And if I tried to recite all 42 pages of things that are on that list, it wouldn’t be possible. So that’s why I have a checklist for my haircut chain, Elephant in the Room. I have a meeting with a great teammate here in just a moment, and she’s been on our team for almost 10 years, this wonderful teammate. She’s been on our team for almost 10 years, Elephant in the Room. And her frustration, we’re gonna talk about today, is we have a new employee that was choosing not to use the checklist and as the manager she was imposing the Usage of the checklist and was doing a great job and the employee pushed back and so we’re gonna have a exciting meeting in about 35 minutes where we’re gonna meet the manager and I and this employee and talk about the importance of Checklists, but we’ve helped had to help you. We’ve had the honor to help you develop those checklists and systems Could you talk about what kind of impact that’s had on your business? It has had a really big impact with me. Checklists personally are daunting. I don’t like doing them, but I’m really glad when I get them done. And Carter has helped me so much in making more checklists. Right now I’m working on checklists for quoting, which I never even thought about before until I was talking to Carter, so that I can have one of my girls start quoting some of my jobs for me. But it’s all with checklists. I never thought of doing checklists until you guys came up with that checklist. So I love it, even though I hate it, if that makes any sense. No, no, it’s good. Now, this idea of merit-based pay, you know, next time that I see you in Tulsa, if you come to one of our business conferences. I have planted hundreds of trees on my property, many of which produce fruit. You know, I have fruit trees. I have peach trees and apple trees and pear trees, different kinds of trees. And I pay my kids, every time they pull a weed, I pay them 10 cents. And they get paid 10 cents per weed they pull. And then every time that they get a peach off a tree, a fresh peach, they get 10 cents. And I pay them that way because they get after it. And so, I’m not exaggerating. So yesterday, my kids pulled over a thousand weeds each and they got it done, and they got it done in about four hours. So all the weeds on the property were pulled. It looks sharp now. But if I told my kids I’m paying them 12 an hour, they probably would be out there moving slow, moping around, not getting things done. But in like four hours, these guys hold thousands of weeds. The property looks great. And I use merit-based pay for everything. I have a checklist for cleaning our bathrooms. And every time that a person cleans the bathroom, we give them a bonus or a payment for that. I pay my staff at Elephant in the Room. Every time that they do a great job or get a great comment or a great review from a customer, we pay them a bonus. Our search engine team, every time they write an article, they get a bonus. Our web development team, every time a client approves of a website they’re happy with, they get a bonus. Our video team, every time that we make a video for clients like you, if you approve the video and you like it, they get a bonus. I mean, everything is merit-based pay, but I find in most businesses, by default, there is no merit-based pay, and therefore people don’t want to do anything other than just clock in and get paid. We’ve been helping you build merit-based pay systems. How has incentivized pay impacted your business? Oh, wow. Well, I have Lori who does my cold calls and does reviews and delivers my products to my customers. And when she delivers them, she needs to get a review. So at first we started doing it and she was hesitant, she didn’t really like it until I told her I was paying her $3 a review. Oh, well that kind of incentivized her. And then when she started doing cold calls and I would get a customer from one of her cold calls and I’m paying her a percentage off of that invoice that she got, then that incentivized her. So she’s really kind of more excited about doing cold calls and getting reviews. So it’s been fun. Now get calls from Google. That you know I have one of the brands I work with is called Oxifresh. OXIFresh.com. OXIFresh.com. I’ll pull it up so people know it’s a real company. And since I’ve worked with Oxifresh, I mean they’ve grown now to have over 500 locations. Five hundred locations. And so they’re booking thousands of carpet cleaning jobs each and every week. It’s a really incredible, the growth there. But when you look at that business, a lot of the business comes from search engine optimization. It comes from repeat customers. So, again, the big three, search engine optimization, repeat customers, and it comes through social media marketing. How has search engine optimization, again, our team provides the search engine optimization for you. How has the search engine optimization impacted your business in terms of helping you gather new clients? Well, actually, I got three or I can’t remember if it was three or four calls just this week from Google. And it has helped hugely. People have called me from like 25 to 50 miles away. And when it’s too far away, they’ll say, yeah, well, maybe that’s too far. I mean, it’s up to 75 miles, one lady called, because she found me on Google. And she only wanted one thing, and she thought I was too far away to come up. But yeah, so it’s worked great. So what do you say to somebody who’s watching this video right now, they’re on the outside, they’re a dentist, they’re a doctor, they’re a lawyer, they’re a home remodeler, they’re a dog groomer, they’re a, we have a haircut. It’s pretty wild. We work in so many different industries. We have a hair school we work with, a cosmetology school. We have a nail salon. We have a dog training business we work with. We have mortgage providers, lawyers we work with, dentists, auto wrappers, just all the industries we work with. We’ve done work with UPS. We’ve done work with Farmers Insurance, we’ve done work with State Farm. I can go on a listing. It’s literally 160 clients, I think there’s probably 100 different industries we’re involved in. What do you say to somebody who’s thinking about going to thrivetimeshow.com and scheduling that free consultation? Because we do a free consultation, I don’t want to waste anybody’s time, and I don’t want to waste my time. So, what do you say to anybody who’s thinking about going to thrivetimeshow.com and scheduling that first free 13-point assessment? I would say do it. I mean, anybody that talks to me about my company and they’re questioning what they need to do with their company, and I’ve had several people call you guys. One was like a waste management team, another was a landscaper. I totally recommend it, and I recommend it to anyone that talks to me about how my business is growing. I tell them to go to you guys. You’re it. Now, Meg, you know, you have experienced the weekly calls. And I don’t know how to even discuss this without sounding like I’m a jerk to all other consultants. I’m not trying to be a jerk, but this is real. I’ve hired a lot of consultants. When I was building my first company, DJConnection.com, and then I went on to grow a company called Party Perfect, which I later sold, and I grew Epic Photography. I hired consultants to help me go down the path to build my businesses. I wanted to build epicphotos.com. I wanted to build Elephant in the Room. I had visions of things I wanted to build, so I thought what I’m going to do is I’m going to go ahead and hire some consultants. I found this bizarre concept that many of them wanted to meet monthly or quarterly. Yeah. And I’m going, what? Because we’d have a meeting and in the meeting, the way our meetings work is we hop on the call, it’s about an hour, we block out an hour. And sometimes the calls are 30 minutes, but we encourage our clients to always block out an hour. And we have an agenda pulled up and then you as the client leave with homework. And we, as the coaching service, we leave with homework and we assign a to-do date and an action item and we meet. And every week we meet so it creates a momentum because you got your homework done, we got our homework done and it creates a real momentum. And I found that these companies I would meet with quarterly, it was a complete and massive waste of time because usually they never did their homework and usually a quarter had gone by. So three months had gone by. And many of the things that I was assigned to do, I didn’t understand how to do, and every time I called them, they would charge me per interaction. So I decided that when I built my consulting service, and it was never something I sat down and wanted to do actually, people were asking me, could you help me grow my business? People were calling me, even though I wasn’t even a service, ThriveTimeShow.com didn’t exist, I hadn’t started MakeYourLifeEpic.com. People would just call me and they’d say, hey, I’ve got a bridal gown business. One of my longtime clients back in the day, Fashiano, she calls us, could you help me grow my business? I remember saying, yes, but we have to meet weekly. And I don’t know a lot of other coaching services that do meet weekly. Can you talk about the importance of weekly meetings? Oh, wow, it keeps me accountable, that’s for sure. Because when I know I’m getting my coach call, I know how I work. It’s usually Tuesday night is when I do my homework because I know he’s calling me Wednesday morning. But I need that accountability to keep me focused, to keep me going because otherwise I wouldn’t do it. A month call or three months, that would be outrageous. I would get nothing done by then. I would just be meandering. Well, you are the best to work with and Carter has nothing but great things to say about you. But I’ll give you the final word. What do you say to anybody out there watching today? They’re thinking about coming to a conference. They’re thinking about becoming a client. They’re thinking about scheduling a consultation. What do you say there, Ms. Mag? I would say do it. Go to the conference. Talk to the people that’s there. That’s where you’ll see the real people and what they’re working on. And for sure, at least call the free consultation, do that. That’s what I started with, is a free consultation. And it was a dollar, I think, right? Yeah, we don’t charge it. The way we do it, it’s kind of crazy. I tell people, if you want to move forward, we’re going to charge you a dollar. I just did it last night with this incredible pet groomer. I’m going to send this video to the pet groomer guy. But I think people go, a dollar? Yeah, a dollar. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to charge you a dollar. And so I told the guy last night, we’ll charge you a dollar. And then your first couple of coaching sessions and your conference is included in that. And that way, if you can’t stand the conference and you can’t stand the first couple of meetings, you’re only out a dollar. And I think that’s a better way to roll because, you know, our average client’s with us for six and a half years. So I think it’s a better way to go. Mm-hmm. Yep, it was. It got me. It worked. And I’m still happy, very happy. Well, thank you for all you do. Thank you for carving out time. And again, if you’re out there today and you’re looking for the services that you provide, I want people to know about you again. So tell us, just kind of run off a list real quick here. Again, what are all the services that you provide? So maybe any of our listeners who are watching this, they may consider utilizing your services. Oh, absolutely. I do embroidery, any kind of logo, business logo that you have. We do screen printing and we do all kinds of promotional items, which that includes anything you can think of actually. And we do print, which is envelopes, business cards, note pads, any of those kind of things. Anything that you need with your logo on, we can do it. Mikesellmonograms.com. Again, folks, that’s Mikesellmonograms.com. Mag, thank you so much for your time. We’ll talk to you soon. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, on today’s abbreviated show, I want to talk to you a little bit about a great franchise opportunity. On part one of today’s show, we talked a lot about how to start a successful company, but now I want to get really specific and give you an actual opportunity that I know that the vast majority of people listening to today’s show, you would benefit from. The brand is called windowninjas.com. Again, it’s called window ninjas.com. Gabe has been a long time client of ours. The success of his company has been amazing. He’s been able to open up multiple locations all across the nation. He’s having a lot of success and now he’s franchising the company. So if you’re out there today and you want to achieve financial freedom and you want to have a time freedom and financial freedom producing business, you want to own your own business, but you’re not really sure what kind of business to open, windowninjas.com may be a great solution for you. They provide window cleaning, gutter cleaning, pressure washing, dry vent cleaning, chimney sweeping, and a variety of other services. Gabe, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m wonderful, Clay. Thanks for having me today. Back in the flow. So I got to ask you here. How long have you been in business? For anybody out there that doesn’t know the history of window ninjas.com. Uh, we’ve been in operation for seven years now, Clay. So a seven years. How many locations do you have? Uh, we are currently in 11 locations over four states, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and we’re currently in, and we’re pretty much in a good portion of the majority of the major Metro areas in each one of those cities. So, uh, tell us, why do you have, why have you gotten to a place where you’ve decided to franchise? What’s driving the desire and how many locations do you have open right now? Man, that’s a great question, Clay. My original goal was not to franchise, so it has definitely been a change over the past two years since I’ve had a different mind shift. And the reason being is because as, I mean, it took a lot of capital and a lot of time out of my day to really get the right people in each one of the locations that we are in. And from a corporate level, we provide a lot of support for each one of those locations and there is a lot of, what should I say? How can I say this? A little bit of a need for my time in each one of those locations on a daily basis as I’m checking up with the managers and checking up with all my people, you know, and just making sure everybody’s doing what they do. So, I decided that it would be beneficial for Window Ninjas as a whole, as well as each one of the location managers for us to franchise because then that will give them an opportunity to, if they wanted to, take over the existing location as a franchise, run it, operate it, become an owner themselves. Or they could stay on the corporate side, we could run it as a corporate store and keep, you know, paying them as managers and giving them bonus plans like that. So, and plus, as we started to grow, I was like, man, it would be better off if we just franchised because it would open up more opportunities for a multitude of different people throughout the United States. And it would allow us to do what we do best and that’s train and educate and motivate every single day. So let’s get into the specifics of buying a window ninjas.com franchise. If somebody wants to buy a window ninjas.com franchise, how much money does it cost to buy a window ninjas.com franchise? And then what does it look like on a daily basis to run a window ninjas.com franchise? Well, as far as costs go, it’s pretty economical. You’re looking at a $49,500 franchise fee, which is pretty common in the market and in our industry. A lot of other industries are much higher. So I think we’re reasonably priced when it comes there. And as far as an all-in buy-in with your truck and your equipment and ladders and squeegees and you know if you choose the high-rise option, ropes and repelling gear, I mean you’re looking anywhere between $150,000 to $175,000 all-in, which is again is reasonable when you include the franchise fee and that. So at about 150 to 175 you have a good investment where you can get a good return on your money within one to two years and become very profitable over the next three to five years. We’re noticing that a lot of our locations are profiting right around the 35% and as we look into it a little bit more we’re seeing where we can actually get that number to closer to 40 if not 45 in the next year because there’s some things that we’ve really done well at making more efficient. So as far as the cost goes, that’s what you’re looking around, looking at. And as far as running it, the day-to-day operations are fairly simple. We have a corporate call center here in Wilmington, North Carolina, where all of the calls come in here from every single location. So if a customer finds you online or if they get a referral from a neighbor or something like that. Any of those phone calls when they want to schedule, they just come right in here to us. So, that means the franchisee doesn’t have to answer the phone. They don’t have to have an office staff. They don’t have to rent a building and pay for internet and heat and cooling and all of that good stuff. So, their costs on their side go down a lot as well. So, it’s really a good partnership when you join up with our guys over here at Window Ninjas because like I said, with what we do on our corporate side as far as facilitating help for those guys on the ground, it really allows them to do what they do best, and that’s typically meeting with their customers, getting quotes done, popping in on their service technicians, making sure that everything on the service side is being done 100%, absolutely magnificent, and going out and meeting and greeting new clients and bringing new jobs into that market as well. Now on a weekly basis, when somebody runs a window ninjas.com franchise, let’s just kind of go through some core tasks that need to be done on a weekly basis. Obviously every week you’ve got to always be hiring and training new people. You always have to be hiring or onboarding new people, training new people. You probably want to have, again this is on a weekly basis, every single week you want to be training people. Also you need to be gathering objective reviews from actual customers that don’t hate you. You know, you got to wow your customers. So let’s talk about those two ideas, wowing the customer, getting reviews, and always doing interviews. Why do you always have to be doing interviews and always have to be getting those Google reviews? Well, if you’re doing a good job of getting Google reviews, we strive for one a day per location every single day. But if you’re doing a good job of getting Google reviews, we have found that the clients that find us through the internet, through looking through our Google reviews, are better customers. We have pretty much been qualified. It’s like a amped up version of a referral. But customers come to us through those reviews man they typically want to buy now they trust us we’ve built credibility because of Google reviews and it just increases our business because it’s a the cost of acquisition to that for that client is way cheaper than if we had to advertise not saying that we don’t advertise we do but again those customers tend to be better and they don’t have enough people to facilitate the needs of our clients, then we’re going to start losing clients. So it’s always best practice to just hire, hire, hire. We’re always looking for great people. We’re always looking for great people with a good attitude, a positive mindset, and people that are willing to learn a new skill or take a skill that maybe they’ve already learned and then bring it into us and then have us like help them with that as well. But yeah, you always gotta be looking for new people every single day, because you never know when somebody may, I don’t know, may have a family emergency. Uh, they might get sick. Um, you know, they might need to move to another country or whatever the case may be, but sometimes you just lose people. And if you don’t have somebody to back them up immediately, then you’re definitely going to suffer with your customer service aspect, which is going to affect your Google reviews. Now, let’s talk about this, the call center. If you buy a window ninjas.com franchise, you guys have a call center that actually answers the phone for the franchisees. So the local franchisees, they don’t have to manage a call center. They don’t have to hire a call center. They don’t have to staff a call center team. They don’t have to run the logistics of managing that team. They don’t have to have phone lines. They don’t have to have weekly training. They don’t have to record the calls. You do all that for them. Talk about the benefit of having a call center booking all your jobs for you. Oh, man, the call center is huge in a multitude of ways. I’ll share a little big win for one of our locations that really relates back to the call center. So the PGA Championships were going on in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Well, it’s going on this weekend. And one of our guys in Greenville, South Carolina, was able to get tickets to the match yesterday. So he didn’t have to worry about anything. All of his service trucks were already fully booked. He has crew leaders on every one of those trucks. He got those guys out. He goes to Pinehurst. He’s watching the golf match and we’re over here answering all of his calls because it comes in here to our corporate office, our call center, they’re taking his calls, they’re booking jobs, they’re quoting jobs over the phone, they’re sending jobs out to get estimated. But man, his whole entire business was just running smooth with his limited availability and he was able to go out and spend some great quality time with him and some of the friends at a great event while his service technicians were making money for themselves, they were making customers happy, and they were doing everything that they normally do on a day-to-day basis. And the benefit of that call center is that we staff our call center with about 10 different customer service reps every single day. And those guys just go to war for every single one of our locations. They answer the calls, they make calls out, they’re reaching out to everybody they can so they can keep every one of our service locations booked And we pay those guys well, and so when you join window ninjas you get that For a small fee which is a fraction of what you would pay To house people yourself have somebody manage those people train those people Pay for rent on a building or a mortgage, you know, heating bills, cooling, electricity bills, internet, all of that stuff, those are big expenses. And so it really saves them a lot of money and it allows them to be much more profitable in the end. Now, my final question I have for you about running a windowninjas.com franchise is, you know, we run the business on a daily basis. There’s going to be, you know, some challenges. I, you know, every business, if you buy a business, there’s some sort of challenge, a daily challenge that may be the hardest part of running the company. If you had to say what the hardest parts are of running a Window Ninjas, what would be the most challenging aspects of running a Window Ninjas franchise? And as a follow-up to that, how long does it take to learn how to run a Window Ninjas franchise? That’s another good one. Well, there’s always, as with any business, there’s always what I call burning fires. Something’s going to go wrong and you hope that that’s just one thing out of the day because you’ll have like a hundred things that will go right. So some of the challenges can be, let’s start from the beginning. When you’re opening up a brand new market, hey, we got to do a little bit more marketing. Maybe we’ll have to spend a little bit more money on marketing so that we can get our name out there in a brand new location that we have never been in. Okay. So, that’s a little bit of a challenge. But I think that’s the same challenge that most new businesses are going to find. As far as training goes, hey, that’s a little bit of a challenge. Some people are a little, you know, worried about if they’re going to be able to learn the skill of window cleaning or pressure washing or cleaning out gutters properly. But we take about a month of time and we spend with our new franchisees as far as training. It’s a full week in-house every single day, five days, boom, you’re getting all the information you need in a classroom setting and in a physical setting so that you can, so that those guys know exactly what they need to do on a day-to-day basis as far as skill work goes. And then we just continue to follow up with them over the next three weeks. So after about, you know, whether it’s online training, communication over the phone, one-on-one meetings, whatever we need to do, but we really support them heavily throughout that next month. And as they get back to their location and they’re just doing the repetition of the actual skill and the work and then finding new employees by going through our hiring process and stuff like that, then they bring people on and start training their own people and it just becomes a really, really, really good deal. But in the beginning, yeah, marketing and just learning the skill is probably the two biggest challenges. And then as they start to develop and become very knowledgeable in the skill and knowledgeable in the business, you know, the little challenges pop up from day to day, just like any other business, but it’s nothing crazy, nothing that we can’t handle and nothing that is really out of the ordinary. Now, I encourage everybody to go to windowninjas.com to learn more about opening a franchise. It’s windowninjas.com. That’s where you go to learn more about opening a franchise. Gabe, I’ll give you the final word for all the listeners out there that are taking notes, sir. Hey, if anybody out there is looking for a great opportunity for their time freedom, when it comes to time freedom and financial freedom, definitely give us a call. Window Ninjas has an opportunity for everybody out there in the market that is looking to have some sort of business that can allow them those two things, time freedom, financial freedom. We can do it for you. We can definitely help you out. And if you’re looking for a great business to get into, why not reach out to us over here at Window Ninjas and let us know how we can help you and maybe we can just form a relationship where we can make some greatness together. Gabe, thank you so much for your time today, sir. I can’t wait to talk to you next week. All right. Sounds good, Clay. Thank you. If you want to do anything worthwhile in life, you’ve got to be hungry. It’s better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. So every day I was working to develop myself. And that’s what you must do. I promise you one thing. You have never seen any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of the season. We got 30 minutes for the rest of our lives! There were none before me and there will be none after me. Therefore that makes me the one and only. Young and single and love to make a certified, bona fide and duly qualified to bring you satisfaction and a whole lot of action. Look at me, I’m your love man. I was hungry! I was hungry! You gotta be hungry! show. As you can see behind me, we’ve got all kinds of energy going on. People are starting to show up for the conference. It is hot in this place. We’ve got grill guns over here. We’ve got people playing the drums. We’ve got a fire breather. And people are so excited as they come in. Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the grill gun. Hi, I’m Bob Healy. I’m the inventor of the grill gun and the civi gun. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. 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? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow is 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. Also, this is the first Thrive Time Show event that we’ve had where we’re going to have a man who has built a hundred million dollar net worth. Wow. Who’ll be presenting. Now we’ve had a couple presenters that have had a billion dollar net worth in some like a real estate sort of things. Yeah. But this is the first time we’ve had a guy who’s built a service business and he’s built over a hundred million dollar net worth in the service business. It’s the yacht driving, multi-state living guru of franchising, Peter Taunton will be in the house. This is the founder of Snap Fitness, the guy behind 9 Round Boxing. He’s going to be here in Tulsa, Russel, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. JT, why should everybody want to hear what Peter Taunton has to say? Oh, because he’s incredible. He’s just a fountain of knowledge. He is awesome. He has inspired me listening to him talk and not only that he also has he practices what he teaches so he’s a real teacher he’s not a fake teacher like business school teachers so you got to come learn from him. And now the best-selling author of the carnivore diet and the multiple-time Joe Rogan guest Dr. Sean Baker joins our two-day interactive business growth and life optimization workshop. Also let me tell you this folks I don’t get this wrong because if I get it wrong, someone’s going to say, you screwed that up, buddy. So Michael Levine, this is Michael Levine. He’s going to be coming. You say, who’s Michael Levine? I don’t get this wrong. This is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestselling authors he’s represented, including pretty much everybody you know who’s been a super celebrity. This is Michael Levine, a good friend of mine. He’s gonna come and talk to you about personal branding and the mindset needed to be super successful. The lineup will continue to grow. We have hit Christian reporting artist, Colton Dixon in the house. Now people say, Colton Dixon’s in the house? Yes, Colton Dixon’s in the house. So if you like top 40 Christian music, Colton Dixon’s gonna be in the house performing. The lineup will continue to grow 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 thrive time show dot com. Again, that’s thrive time show dot com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? I don’t know what I do. How does it work? You just go to thrive time show dot com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrive. Drive. Can you just go to thrive time show dot 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 start 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 got to go to thrive time show dot com. You might say, well, when’s it going to be? June 27th and 28th. 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. It’s Tulsa, Russell. It’s I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa Ruslim, 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. So when? June 27th and 28th. Who? You. You’re going to come. Who? 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, Russelaum. 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. I’ve represented 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 damn exciting. Clay Clark has put 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. James, did I tell you my good friend John Lee Dumas is also joining us at the in-person, two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. That Tim Tebow and that Michael Levine will be at, have I told you this? You have not told me that. Oh, he’s coming all the way from Puerto Rico. This is John Lee Dumas, the host of the chart-topping EOFire.com podcast. He’s absolutely a living legend. This guy started a podcast after wrapping up his service in the United States military, and he started recording this podcast daily in his home, to the point where he started interviewing big-time folks like Gary Vaynerchuk, like Tony Robbins and he just kept interviewing bigger and bigger names putting up shows day after day and now he is the legendary host of the EO Fire podcast and he’s traveled all the way from Prince Hill, Rico to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th live time show, two day interactive business workshop. If you’re out there today folks, if you’ve ever wanted to grow a podcast, a broadcast, you want to improve your marketing, if you’ve ever wanted to improve your Marketing your branding if you’ve ever wanted to increase your sales you want to come to the two-day interactive June 27th and 28th thrive time show business workshop featuring Tim Tebow Michael Levine John Lee Dumas and countless big-time super successful entrepreneurs It’s gonna be life-changing your tickets right now at thrive time show calm James. What website is that? ThriveTimeshow.com. Chief, one more time for the sports enthusiasts. ThriveTimeshow.com. ♪ Shine, everything rides on tonight ♪ ♪ Even if I got three strikes, I’ma go for it ♪ ♪ This moment, we own it, ay, I’m not to be played with ♪ ♪ Because it could get dangerous, see, these people I ride with this moment. 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. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re gonna teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re gonna 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. They’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to 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 you. 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 in Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Keel Sockett, 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 I 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. And so 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 hours. 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’s my age, and I can say or cannot say? Well, I have to, 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. Not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. 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, 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 a 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, watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa! Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpy. I’m originally from Tulsa born and raised here. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. So having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored. You’re awake and alive the whole time. It’s not pushy. They don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively, they’re pretty friendly, helpful, very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. The biggest takeaways are, you know, you want to take a step-by-step approach to your business. Whether it’s marketing, you know, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use, to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay, and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence. That businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort and you’ve got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the road map out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do and he gave me the road map out step by step. He’s set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allow me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want, they guarantee it will be answered. This conference motivates me and also gives me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things. There’s stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else can do it for you. I can see the marketing working. It’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. It’s been super fun, super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivated me. Your competition’s going to come eventually or try to pick up this package, so you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. I’m Rachel with Tip Top Canine and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top Canine. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See, this is nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing, and this is our new team. We went from four to 14, and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome but Ryan is a really great salesman so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016 we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. So we really just want to thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. If you decide to not attend the Drive Time workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The atmosphere at Clay’s office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door. And it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business, bottom line. I love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing, I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned, marketing is key, marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. The brand uses completely eliminates that because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. It depends on how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business is real critical if I’m going to grow and change. Play really teaches you how to navigate through those things and not only find freedom, but find a purpose in your business and find the purposes for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real. Hey, Flyover family, come join us June the 27th and 28th, 2024 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’re going to be there with Clay Clark, an amazing group of individuals that have made such a difference in so many people’s lives. Do you want to increase your production in a job? Do you want to make more sales? Do you want to own your own business? Do you want to have breakthroughs financially? The key to that is knowledge. Clay Clark is anointed to help people in business. We’ve watched him over the last couple of years and we’ve been blown away. He’s part owner of over 160 businesses. $2.4 billion in sales. Before politics and the great reset came into Clay’s life, he had the number one rated Apple podcast. And he interviewed people like Anthony Robbins, Seth Godin, the top authors, the top business minds in the world. At this specific event, there was an interesting cast of characters that come from gangs to American Idol. Some of the guests that are going to be there, Michael Levine, Colton Dixon, Peter Taunton, John Lee Dumas, Mondo De La Viga. And Tim Tebow. They’re there to share what they’ve done and their breakthroughs and what their story is. And then Clay lays his map of business success, calls the path for every person to follow. So you may be sitting there thinking, okay, okay, I get it, I get it. What do I have to do? Go to thrivetimeshow.com. When you get there, the tickets are $250 or whatever you can afford. Yes, you got that right. $250 or whatever you can afford. You can name your price. So there are no excuses. You have to join us there. There are only a few VIP tickets left, like David said, special dinner and special time with the speakers. That is $500 why they last. So $500, only a few left if you want a VIP ticket. We want to meet these speakers as well. So we got VIP tickets. I want to meet Tim Tebow. I do too. The date is June the 27th and 28th 2024 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com to get your ticket. Hey guys, Luke Erickson here with the Thrivetimeshow. As you can see behind me, we’ve got all kinds of energy going on. People are starting to show up for the conference and it is hot in this place. We’ve got grill guns over here, we’ve got people playing the drums, we’ve got a fire breather, and man, people are so excited as they come in. The conference is kicked off, this house is packed, we’ve got air-conditioned shop windows up there, we’ve got sneaker-wearing tents, we’ve got window-closing concepts up there. We’re talking about what is possible when you just implement, when you implement, when you do that, people are going crazy. Now, Michael Levin, writer of many, many PR books, the man who represented people like Michael Jackson, Barbara Streisand, George Bush, Stanley Park, he was speaking to people We just wrapped up day one. It was incredible. We had some remarkable speakers. Michael Levine. We just finished with a lady named Jill Donovan who owns a company called Rustic Cuff talking about the power of the Dream 100. I cannot wait to see what tomorrow holds. Hey guys, Luke Erickson with the Thrive Time Show here with you. It is day 2 and the energy is high. People are so excited to be showing up. The team is ready. Come on, let’s see what it’s like to go on in for day two. Follow me. I’ll tell you what, people are so excited to be here for day two. It is going to be incredible. Cannot wait to see what today has in store. Right now, here at the conference, we’ve broken into groups going over search engine optimization. I know for most of us, myself included, if you hear that term, you go, what is that? What does that mean? That’s too techy for me. Well, our experts are breaking it down for people so that you can clearly understand how to come up top in Google. It’s doable. It’s possible. Now, we’re in the middle of a break. And what we like to do is we like to give you as much tangible and relevant information from about the start of the hour for 45 minutes then we take approximately a 15 minute break to allow people to connect with other entrepreneurs around them bathroom break and also use this time to just really digest all of the good information that you’re receiving the whole time. Right behind me we’ve got Bob with his drill gun melting an ice sculpture. It is awesome. The ice sculpture represents our life, right? It’s here for a time, but we all need to have the sense of urgency to implement the things that we’re learning so that we can make the most of the time that we have. We are outside. You can see a line behind me. What’s going on is that we partner with different companies to help them implement the proven systems over and over and over again and one of those companies is Master Machine and so what we like to do is partner with these companies to also help them give samples to other people as they come to the conference and truly get their name out. I just wanted to recap some of the amazing things that have happened today. We’ve had entrepreneurs like Paul Hood with Hood CPAs, we’ve had Jill Donovan and Michael Levine come up. It just imparts so much wisdom and knowledge. We’ve got an incredible giveaway for one of our TVs. Hey there, Thrive Nation. One of the things that we love most about our business conferences is that we want every entrepreneur to leave with their questions answered. So what we do is we let them put the questions up on the board here so that they can ask their specific questions and Clay will not end the conference until every question is answered. My name is Clay Kilar, and I’ll be answering all the different questions that entrepreneurs brought to the conference. Whenever someone comes here and starts to hear this information, especially for the first time, it just brings about so much anticipation of wanting to actually implement the proven systems and processes. And so Clay always wants to make sure that he answers all of their questions so that they’re the most set up for the test to be able to go home and start implementing. If you have any questions, email us at info at tribe timeshare.com. Hello, I’m Wes Carter. I’m one of the shareholders at Winters and King. My favorite thing that Thrive has helped me accomplish here in our firm is thinking a little bit outside the box. They do SEO, they do printing, they help us with a lot of things from the day-to-day marketing for the firm, but they also help us think of things that as attorneys we probably wouldn’t normally think of that help us market our services to our clients. One of the things I love about working with Thrive is that they make it enjoyable to actually do work with them. It’s not dry, it’s usually fun, but it’s always very enjoyable and practical. They give me things and ideas that I can put into place. It’s not just some theoretical spiel that they give me. We get practical steps that we work on together to do my job better. So me personally, I would easily recommend Thrive 15 services to my friends, my families. I recommend them to my clients. I think they do a good job. They’re passionate. They care about their clients. And I think it’s actually a valuable service they provide to people that are in the business world. My name is Jeff Thomas. I’m originally from Atlanta, Georgia. It’s all about getting to the grindstone. It is about putting the… It’s one thing to have a specific vision or a dream, but knowledge without application isn’t knowledge at all. It’s a… That’s nothing. Really funny. The atmosphere is very lively. Everybody that is working for Clay is very upbeat and not tired, not sluggish, not complaining, not whining. They don’t have anything to do with those types of characteristics. It’s all about getting to the grind and having fun while you do it. I haven’t actually been to any conferences in the past. But what I will say from what I’ve seen on YouTube and what from other friends have told me is this isn’t like a motivational kind of thing such as you know, hoo-hoo, rah-rah, it gets you motivated, but it’s like practical steps that if you do take them, which most people aren’t willing to do, then you will grow and you will achieve the specific things that you want. Well, for one thing, I would say that this isn’t necessarily for everyone, so if you’re not willing to work, this isn’t for you. But I will say that if you are willing to work and you know you’re just getting started but you have actually taken a step in that direction, then this will actually help you grow further exponentially than you could ever imagine. My name is Taylor Hall. I’m the general manager of the Tulsa Oilers professional hockey team. Our goal every night here at the BOK Center is to try to fill the seats with lots of people and create an exciting environment so when somebody comes to a game, they want to come back. Working with Clay and the staff at Thrive, they’ve really helped us in many, many ways. Website and graphic design and video production and a lot of businesses, including ours, doesn’t have a staff or a full-time videographer or graphic designer. But the biggest thing that we noticed was the needle mover. More sales, more attendance, more successes in business. We had a record year last season working with Clay for the first time. Our average attendance is higher than it’s ever been. So there’s a lot of really cool things that we did and they worked. That’s the nice thing about working with Clay and the team over there. It’s just not one person, you get the entire team. If you need video design and editing and production, they’ve got that. If you need graphic design, if you need some coaching, your salespeople and call scripts, PR, they offer all that. Clay was instrumental in helping guiding us and getting us on the right track so that we could really raise the bar and become ultra successful. So it’s been an amazing experience for us. My name is Kaitlin. I own a tumbling gym called Justice Tumbling Company. Working with Clay is so helpful. He’s diligent with everything and making sure we execute our goals and really make things happen. It’s fun and it’s high. It really gets you in a good mood. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. to execute our goals and really make things happen. It’s fun, it’s tight, it really gets you energized and going. It just makes you really want to work. To get the momentum going, to really just like get that buzz, really give you the energy to get up and make it happen. I’m Bob Healy. I’m in the charcoal grilling industry and the name of my business is Grillblazer. How will I apply what I’m learning at this conference and my regular weekly attendance that it’s helping me establish the business and get it off the ground. Clay’s presentation style is just blatant disregard for what anybody wants. He just has fun, it’s him, everything that you see is authentically clay. It’s a great deal of fun, everybody enjoys it. They know when you walk in they think they’re coming into a carnival, and frankly they are, it’s just great fun. There’s not another conference like it. You don’t go to a carnival atmosphere and learn what to do here at the Pride Conference. It’s great. The reason people should attend at least one of these conferences because it’s common sense. And everybody’s fed an entire line about the way you should run a business, but until you actually experience running a business, which is, candidly, what you learn here, how to run a business, you don’t know what you’re doing. My name is Tyler Hastings, and this is my wife, Rachel, and our company is Delricht Research out of New Orleans. During our time working with Thrive, we’ve had numerous successes. When we first started, we were working with one physician, we had one research site, and we were seeing on average, you know, between 10 and 15 patients a week. Since working with Thrive in the last 18 months, we now have four research sites, we work with over five physicians, and on average we’re now seeing over 60 patients per week. Recently, we’ve been the top enroller worldwide in seven studies, which is just incredible considering where we were two years ago, 18 months ago. Thrive really differs from the other conferences that we’ve been to and the other kind of programs that we’ve been through because they actually really practice what they preach and they implement the same systems and the processes that they teach you about. And they give you real life examples that really work for them and show you with the training how to implement that yourself. For example, Tyler and I actually got the opportunity to come out to Tulsa and we’re fortunate enough that the Thrive team took us out to some of the businesses that they own. And we really got to see in real life, real time, some of the systems and processes. And it was just incredible. A real life example of some of the businesses and the things that they’re implementing. Having a coach is important to us. They act as not only an accountability factor, but they’re someone we can talk to on a daily basis as we go through the problems of running a business that inevitably come up. They always understand what we’re going through and they’re always there to help us or guide us through the problems that we experience. The best part of our experience working with Thrive has just been seeing our relationship grow. So at each step as our business grows, we know that they have something else to provide us with. They’ve got the resources, whether it be marketing, graphic design, website development, or even in the accounting practices, maybe we need a new insurance policy. If they have someone they can connect us with, or they have the direct resource we need to speak with for any of the problems we face. If someone’s thinking about signing up for the coaching program, I would highly recommend that they call in for a free 30-minute coaching session and see exactly what the team can do for you. Just speak with someone, let them know what you’re going through, and I think you’ll find that, you know, regardless of what you need, there’s someone there that can help you. Clay’s presentation style is very real and raw. Like, it just gets real down to the bone of it and the real purpose of it. There’s no, like, fluffy vagueness about it, you know. So, he really gets to the point. I’m always reminded about how important it is to be intentional and to really pay attention to how you schedule your time and really honor it. Because whatever gets scheduled gets done. That’s what he said from Lee Cockrell himself. Just constantly hearing that and getting reminded helps me to reinforce that in my own life. It always helps to get an outside perspective, and especially from a guy that’s grown so many multi-million dollar businesses. It doesn’t hurt. My name is Nick Guajardo. I heard about the Thrive Time Show workshop through Andy Mathren. He’s my, Andy Mathren and Larry Montgomery. They’re my bosses at Restore Home Health. So I work with a home health company called Restore Home Health. And my role is pretty much to bring in business. So I was hoping to learn kind of the sales process on top of just kind of the responsibilities and help understand what it looks like on the SEO side and just kind of an all around what it looks like to own a business because that’s something I want to do in the future for sure. How I would describe the atmosphere here at Thrive is high energy, great professionalism, great people. It’s just a place you definitely want to visit and be at. Plays delivery style, humorous, professional, hilarious. I haven’t seen someone do it better. So he does a great job. Most valuable thing I’ve learned so far? A lot of it has been extremely valuable. But one thing that’s always really stuck out to me is learning the SEO stuff. I mean, that is, I think, things you don’t really even think about, and then you hear it, and you think you know it, but you don’t know it. So I feel like that was the most valuable. Well, they’re missing out on just coming down to just basic applications to be a business owner. I mean, I feel like it’s like an absolute necessity to come here and learn the ins and outs and maybe come here once or twice if they take good notes, that kind of thing. Why? To just, it’s the experience here and what you can learn, like absolutely. So, marketing and SEO seemed like something that would be very scary, but then in the way that Clay and his team described it, it became very clear and concise and something that’s very accessible to any business owner. I’ve learned a lot about marketing at this conference and a lot about business management and HR, really everything, the key components of anybody’s business, they’re going to give you the best tools to be successful at it. So most workshops or conferences can be really boring, really one note, or they just seem so theatrical that it’s a joke and it’s not even giving you the tools that you need or that you came there for. But here it’s still high energy, it’s still fun, everything’s to the point, but it’s very professional and yeah, you’re missing out on easy steps to use in your business that are very accessible and very familiar. My name is Abigail McCarter. The best thing I’ve learned so far is definitely like organization, schedule wise, always keeping a to-do list, keeping your calendar organized. I’m kind of all over the place so that’s always good to know. So, Clave’s presentation style and the atmosphere is electric. It’s so energetic, it’s so fun, plays hilarious, but also knows a ton, so it’s just really great all around. This conference is much different than any other conference I’ve gone to, again because it’s fun. A lot of other conferences it’s like really quiet, really cold, and you’re just kind of get bored, but this one you’re like always engaged, you’re always learning something and the staff is amazing. They’re always super helpful. So it’s just been really great. My name is Clint Howard. We’re a personal training and fitness training facility. Oh wow, I’m learning a ton. Like this morning so far it’s been searches and optimization. So really just the importance of being at the top of Google, how Google works and why it’s so important to go out and get video reviews and testimonials and all that. So I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. I’m learning a ton. Google works and why it’s so important to go out and get video reviews and testimonials and getting Google reviews. And so all those things, we can take back and really apply that immediately. So it’s really cool to see not only how to do it, but really the relevance and importance of it over your long-term strategy of your business. Now, it’s amazing, actually, the way in this morning and yesterday, I was videoing as I was walking in the front entrance, and actually, me, I go to a lot of seminars, I go to a lot of conferences, massive ones. I’ve been doing that since I was like 22 years old, so gosh, almost 20 years now. And this is by far the most entertaining, not only the content, the content is amazing, but Clay and you guys do a great job mixing in entertainment where it’s fun, it’s fresh, it’s lively, you never get bored. And I heard a study one time that a brief list of people who are in the industry, they are the ones who are the most likely to get bored. And I was like, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a conference, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a conference, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, I’m going to go to a seminar, It’s lively, you never get bored. And I heard a study one time that the reason that children learn so much quicker is because it’s fun, learning is fun. And so obviously, Clay is nailed that, where it’s very fun to be here and keeps you awake, keeps you energized, so have a blast. Yeah, I think any business owner or someone that wants to own a business or considering owning and starting a business, should definitely come. I know that I was referred here by friends of mine and clients of mine, and I’ve referred other people. Again, just to understand what it takes to make a business successful, to have a good time, obviously, you know, I can just say it, have fun, and network with a lot of people here you can learn from, and there’s a lot of breaks if you talk to other people. So I think this is a must-attend, pretty invited, all the business, and more than once you start this. My name’s Jamie Fagel, I’m with Jameson Fine Cabinetry. I heard about the conference through Andrew. He’s the coach that I deal with here at Thrive. The most valuable piece I found even working with Andrew, but it’s been solidified when it came here, was you’ve got to actually do the things that they’re telling you. With no action, you’re not going to get anything from it. I would highly recommend this to almost anybody in business today. I have recommended it to some of my other business partners. It’s phenomenal. It’s really something that, if you want to start a business, the only way of doing things is, God, this is what you got to do. It’s the only way it will work. Hey, this is Charles and Amber Kola. We’re the owners of Kola Fitness. The way we’re able to do that is working with Clay for the last three years. He has really readjusted our thinking and taught us that our business is here to serve us. And by doing that, we’re able to live the lifestyle we want and take off on a random vacation last minute. We had totally planned on being at the conference. So, wish we could be there and meet all of you. We know you’re having a great time. Yes, Clay in the last three years has helped us build all the necessary systems, checklists, workflows, task lists, time blocks, audits that are always running and the right capable lieutenants to keep track of all that so that you too can get time freedom, financial freedom. And that’s what we have done and Clay has helped us do. We’ve got multiple companies in multiple states and they’re all doing very well, getting ready to go to more locations in this next year. And Co-op Fitness has a really big future. We’re teaming up with a couple other groups and we should scale the company here shortly. Hopefully we’ll open like 50 locations in the next 10 years. So but yeah, we’re on the way. We’re gonna probably more than double our company, maybe triple our company in the next eight to nine months. And it’s just awesome. God is working in our business and we’re making Jesus and changing lives. We’re a strong Christian company that focuses on making Jesus famous and changing lives in the fitness field. And this is Charles and Amber Cola. Thank you Thrive. Hit your action items. We love you guys. We wish we were there. You guys have a wonderful day. Bye-bye. My name is Jennifer Johnson. I’m in the pest control industry and also weed control fertilization and my business is Platinum Pest and Lawn. Some of the things that, I’ll be able to apply a lot of the things that I’ve learned in our business because this is not my first conference and so a lot of the things that we’ve learned we’ve put into place and now we’re doing the next level of refining the processes for just a different concept and so it’s getting better and better. So I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to be here. of refining the processes for just a different concept. And so it’s getting better and better. Things that were just big processes before, we have the foundation laid, and now we’re able to make it better and better. And I’m hearing different things now that we’ve implemented things. And so we can just make it even better, implement it in our own business. Clay’s presentation and the atmosphere is very exciting and fun. It keeps you awake. It makes it interesting. You have a lot of information, but if it’s not going to be entertaining, your brain is going to tune it out. But Play makes it just entertaining enough that you retain what you learn. Lots of rhyming and catchy things so that you remember stuff. What makes you? Something that makes this conference different than other workshops or conferences that I’ve been to is that there’s a lot of people here in my same situation. We’re all, most of us are pretty small businesses wanting to improve and we want real life information and something that will work and that’s attainable and not just some crazy magic formula but actual action items that we can implement in our business and actually see a difference. Everyone should attend a drive type business conference, whether you’re a business owner or not. A, if you’re a business owner, it has practical applications that you can apply to so many different parts of your business. And then you need to come back for more, so that you can keep doing more of the wonderful things that you learned. But secondly, I am also a mom of three kids, and a lot of the concepts can actually be applied to home, like getting routines and getting, setting systems at home has just seriously made a huge difference in my life at home. So I’ve been able to improve our business, but I’ve also been able to improve things at home. And so that’s why everyone should come, no matter what your station is in life. My name is Nolan Kew. I’m originally from San Francisco, California. The industry that I’m in is financial services. I’ve learned a ton so far, but what I can best apply from this conference is the opportunity, that hunger to go out there and make a big difference in my district. Clay’s presentation style is amazing. He’s got an endless amount of energy. It’s contagious. And yeah, by being here, I really do want to go back and be able to face all the adversity that the industry has. Yeah, this conference, the thing that makes it different is that it’s special because it has a unique set of individuals that all share that same energy. I think you typed it as dragon energy, but yeah, that’s… Everyone should come to a multiple, but their first would be very special. Yeah, you’re welcome with a lot about consistency, and so just staying consistent with different things in the business. I feel like applying that to our business model will really help us grow. The atmosphere is very positive, uplifting, and then it’s very, very, very, very, very welcoming. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s a great place to be. I think it’s very fun and energetic. And so it gets you pumped and it gets you excited and it encourages you to do big things. Probably how real they are. They tell you up front what you need to do and what’s like a no-go. And so conferences are, they kind of sugar coat things. So I like how real they are here. I think it’ll definitely, if you want your business to grow, I think this would be a great experience. And then not only that, it’ll encourage you and inform you on so many things you don’t think about on a daily basis. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place, so having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool, the people are nice, it’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally wanna model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which, you know, we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, so the humor definitely helps, it breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts, and it’s very interactive, you can raise your hand, it’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak, you know. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. It’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars. So you’re missing the thought process of someone who’s already started like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information, but just getting in the thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses. To me, just that is priceless. That’s money. Well, we’re definitely not getting upsold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where they upsold us. It was great information and then they upsold us like half the conference. Now I don’t want to like bang my head into a wall. And she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like it’s good information, but we’re like, oh my gosh, I want to strangle you. Shut up and go with the presentation that we paid for and that’s not here there’s no upsells or anything so that’s awesome I hate that that makes me angry so glad that’s not happening so the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here I didn’t learn linear workflows I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years So what they’re teaching here is actually way Better than what I got at business school, and I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school I would definitely recommend that people would check out the thrive 15 conference it’s The information that you’re going to get is just very very beneficial and the mindset that you’re gonna get, that you’re gonna leave with, is just absolutely worth the price of a little bit of money and a few days worth of your time. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just wanna give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just wanna say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome. But Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd. We’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, tens of thousands. So we really just want to thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to 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. And Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like 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 Crockrell, 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, and they run 160 companies every single week. 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 of critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it 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, like 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. And 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 of you. And 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 and when we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him and he told me he’s like I’m not gonna touch it I’m gonna turn it down because he knew it was gonna harm the common good of people in the long run and 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. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten 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 ever worked with Clay, work with Clay. He’s going to help magnify you. There’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps four, maybe six hours a day, and literally the rest of the time he’s working. He can outwork everybody in the room every single day, and he loves it. Anyways, this is Charles Kola with Kola Fitness. Thank you, Clay. 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 Antus with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And I 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 $800 million 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 sales people for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. 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 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 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 if I didn’t work with Clay is 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 the 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 to 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 Clinic. I want people are going crazy. Michael Levin, writer of many many PR books, the man who represents people like Michael Jackson, Barbara Streisand, George Bush, he is standing behind me speaking to people here at our conference talking about branding. One of the greatest branding experts alive today is here at our conference talking to entrepreneurs. We just wrapped up day one. It was incredible. We had some remarkable speakers. Michael Levine. We just finished with a lady named Jill Donovan who owns a company called Rustic Cuff talking about the power of the Dream 100. I cannot wait to see what tomorrow holds. Hey guys, Luke Erickson with the Thrive Time Show here with you. It is day two and the energy is high. People are so excited to be showing up. The team is ready. Come on, let’s see what it’s like to go on in for day two. It is going to be incredible. Cannot wait to see what today has in store. Right now, here at the conference, we’ve broken into groups going over search engine optimization. I know for most of us, myself included, if you hear that term, you go, what is that? What does that mean? That’s too techy for me. Well, our experts are breaking it down for people so that you can clearly understand how to come up top in Google. It’s doable. It’s possible. Now we’re in the middle of a break, and what we like to do is we like to give you as much tangible and relevant information from about the start of the hour for 45 minutes. Then we take approximately a 15-minute break to allow people to connect with other entrepreneurs around them. Bathroom break and also use this time to just really digest all of the good information that you’re receiving the whole time. Right behind me we’ve got Bob with his grill gun melting an ice sculpture. It is awesome. The ice sculpture represents our life, right? It’s here for a time, but we all need to have the sense of urgency to implement the things that we’re learning so that we can make the most of the time that we have. We are outside. You can see a line behind me. What’s going on is that we partner with different companies to help them implement the proven systems over and over and over again, and one of those companies is Master Machine. And so what we like to do is partner with these companies to also help them give samples to other people as they come to the conference and truly get their name out. I just wanted to recap some of the amazing things that have happened today. We’ve had entrepreneurs like Paul Hood with Hood CPAs. We’ve had Jill Donovan and Michael Levine come up. It just imparts so much wisdom and knowledge. We’ve got an incredible giveaway for one of our teamies. Hey there Thrive Nation. One of the things that we love most about our business conferences is that we want every entrepreneur to leave with their questions answered. So what we do is we let them put the questions up on the board here so that they can ask their specific questions and Clay will not end the conference until every question is answered. Behind this, Clay Kilar is answering all the different questions that entrepreneurs have brought to the conference. Whenever someone comes here and starts to hear this information, especially for the first time, it just brings about so much anticipation of wanting to actually implement the proven systems and processes. And so, Clay always wants to make sure that he answers all of those questions so that they are the most set up for success, to be able to go home and start implementing them. If you have any questions, email us at info at tribe timeshare dot com. We have come to the end of the 2019 Christmas conference. It was incredible. These entrepreneurs have gotten so many tangible things that they can go and they can implement. Check us out for more information at thrivetimeshow.com. And as we always like to do, we want to end with a boom. Three, two, one, boom. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored, you’re waiting live the whole time. It’s not pushy, they don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively, they’re pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. The biggest takeaways are, you know, you want to take a step-by-step approach to your business. Whether it’s marketing, you know, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay, and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence, that businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort, and you got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the road map out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do, and he gave me the road map out step by step. We’ve set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allowing me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want. They guarantee it’ll be answered. This conference motivates me and also give me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things. There’s stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for you. I can see the marketing working. It’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. It’s never been super fun, it’s super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivates me. Your competition is going to come eventually, or try to pick up this tactic. So you’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to have to be a little bit more flexible. You’re going to come eventually or try to pick up these tactics. So you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. If you decide to not attend the Thrive Time workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The atmosphere at Play’s office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door. And it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business, bottom line. I love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing, I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned, marketing is key, marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow our business using Google reviews and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me, as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business, as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before, we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group interviews has completely eliminated that, because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands on how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business is real critical if I’m going to grow and change. Play really teaches you how to navigate through those things and not only find freedom, but find your purpose in your business and find the purposes for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real.