Clay Clark | Business Podcast | The Harley Davidson Turn-Around Story + How to Attract the Attention of Your Market In a Crowded Marketplace | Clay Clark Interviews Harley CMO, Ken Schmidt + Tebow Joins Dec 5-6 Business Workflow

Audio Transcription

Repositioning the business. For the sake of time, I’m going to just skip to my favorite one of the moment. My favorite one of the moment is Subway. I admire what they’ve done. You can’t give them more credit than they deserve. Jared went to them. But to give them credit, somebody recognized what he was. By the way, it wasn’t corporate. Some of the franchisees in a regional ad company had to prove the thing to them. But they have embraced it once they found out what they had on their hands. So here’s what Subway has done. Subway is in the fast food industry. That’s where they are. So think of everything we’ve talked about up until now, because it all connects. They’re in the fast food industry. They’re in the fast food industry with Wendy’s and McDonald’s and Burger King and Mr. Hero and Pizza Hut and that’s where they are, all right. The fast food industry has certain norms, all right, has certain ways of doing business, has certain ways of presenting products and they pretty much all do the same thing like Amish, Subway repositioned themselves as a weight loss business. Now the reason I admire this so much is I always admire sales that requires you to stand in a room alone with a mirror and practice maintaining a straight face when you deliver the proposition. To me, that’s like great performance art and I have enormous respect for it. And I think it takes that kind of practice and some pretty big cojones to step to the public stage and tell everybody that this Buick-sized loaf of bread is a weight loss product. Now that takes up, right? And you’ve got to respect it, right? Because you don’t see those kind of cojones much in corporate America. Everybody’s got little tiny ones in corporate America. These guys got some big ones. This big loaf of bread is a weight loss product. And it will make you skinny. And then they just copied, they went completely outside of their industry, and they copied everything from the weight loss industry. Before and after picture. Spokesperson who lost a lot of weight on the diet. A diet plan. They copied everything from weight loss advertising, and brought it over to fast food and kept a straight face while they were doing it. Now you know behind closed doors, there’s one guy on the floor rolling around laughing, you know, there’s a bunch of attorneys with really tight underwear worrying about what they’re saying. I mean, look, there’s a lot going on behind closed doors, right? But publicly, they got this Jared guy to keep a straight face and deliver this message. I admire that enormously and it’s such a profound example of reposition. 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. Like we have workflows that are kind of all over the place. Having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. 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. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot. 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. 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 that’s already started like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information, but just getting in the thought process of Blake Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches, getting in that thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses, to me just that is priceless. That’s money. Well we’re definitely not getting up sold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where they, where it was great information and then they up sold us like half the conference and I don’t want to like bang my head into a wall and she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like, it’s good information, but we’re like, oh my gosh, I want to strangle you. Shut up and go with the presentation that we paid for. And that’s not here. There’s no upsells or anything, so that’s awesome. I hate that. Oh, it makes me angry. So glad that’s not happening. So the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business. And I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. The information that you’re going to get is just very, very beneficial. And the mindset that you’re going to get, that you’re going to 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 want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. 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 4 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, times a thousand. So we really just wanna thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with, we love you guys. Today, for the vast majority of American motorcycle enthusiasts, Harley-Davidson is known as the king of America’s roads. However, in 1985, the iconic brand found itself within just hours of bankruptcy. Overwhelmed by the Japanese competition, the recession that had hit America, and the onslaught of management missteps, the company needed to change something if it was going to survive. And in 1985, the company did just that. In 1985, Ken Schmidt was hired as the company’s chief communication officer and was charged with communicating to both customers and potential investors alike while trying to work with the leadership team to find a new strategy and a path for survival. Ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce to you my good friend, Ken Schmidt. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow. 1985 when Ken Schmidt joined Harley-Davidson as their chief communications officer, the company was making bikes that were actually winning awards. So they were buying into the lie that a great product will sell itself. They won the quality awards, they were focusing on quality, quality, quality, quality, but they weren’t selling anything. They weren’t making a profit. And that is where Ken started. So ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for Mr. Ken Schmidt. Hey! So Ken, you started from the bottom with a company of great bikes, but you weren’t making any money. How did you fix it? I did it all in one day. Wow. Hey, I’ve got a question for you. Where the heck are we? Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s wild, man. I’ve never seen anything like this. We’re in the Disneyland of entrepreneurship. I came in from Washington, D.C. last night, and I thought this was going to be a meeting room in a hotel, frankly. So this is kind of blowing my mind. You’ve got a band, for God’s sake, and they’re dressed in Christmas clothing. This is really cool. We’re stealing from your playbook. Right on. Okay. I’ll try to keep this short. I tend to be long-winded and apologize for that. Let me tell you what I did on my first day of work at a company that had just, two weeks before I started, laid off 40% of its workforce. That’s both on the manufacturing side and that’s on the internal side. So finance, marketing, administration, mailroom, welders, painters, the blood was splattered everywhere. There was not a bank in America that would issue Harley Davidson a line of credit in September of 1985, which is why we beat. My first official job at the company was putting together our communication plan to announce to the world that we were filing for bankruptcy, which I can tell you is a really shitty time to start a new job, okay? And everyone says, who’d you call first, the unions? I said, no, I called my wife and said, don’t buy anything. You know, like, ships going down. No money to spend. And that’s a very, very important element of all this. And all the more kind of magnificent about why what we started to do began working. Because frankly, I think if we had a lot of money to spend, the company that you see and know today probably wouldn’t exist. We’d have spent ourselves out of existence because we were focused, as I’ll get to in a minute, on all of the wrong things. I was getting a lot of ideas from people inside the company about what we needed to do to change the company’s image, because the company had a horrendous image at that time. Think Hell’s Angels and Outlaws and Banditos and Drug Runners and Cop Killers and all that other kind of nonsense. That’s pretty bad. So I get a lot of ideas from people about what we needed to do and how we needed to convince people to buy the product, all of which required money. So first day of work, I pounded out three questions I know that they’re very very important questions, and I’ll hit you with images a second But they essentially became the foundation upon which we built a global empire a global brand and the three questions are what are people? saying about us What do we want them to say about us? And what are we doing to make them say it can I want to I want to ask you this. Yeah. And I want all the Thrivers to know, on page 107 if you’re following along, Ken asked these three questions, and other companies that ask these questions would be Whole Foods. Whole Foods has asked these questions. Apple has asked these questions. Chick-fil-A has asked these. One of my favorite businesses is Chick-fil-A. Starbucks has asked these questions. Most small business owners never ask these questions, so we get stuck talking about how we don’t have a lot of resources. So once you asked those questions, tell us what happened next. Okay, essentially the reason I was doing this was to say, look, we don’t have money to spend. We need to assess what our, and internalize and understand what our current reputation is, what people are saying about us. What do we want our reputation to be? And then third and finally, how can we harness the power of our customer base and our dealer base and our supplier base, anyone who’s important to the business, to talk about us, to spread our narrative the way we want it to be spread so that people, you know, won’t be afraid of us, will be drawn toward us, and will see us differently than maybe they did in the past. And that’s not stuff that could be done with advertising. Thank God. It’s basically saying, let’s harness the power of the people that we serve and make them advocates for us. And it’s a lot easier, frankly, than it sounds. There’s a book called Radical Marketing, which basically, it’s a case study about what you were doing. Are you aware of the book they wrote about you? No. So, Radical is a book that explains what Ken did. It’s really funny. No, seriously, this is a book I read about this guy before I read the book that you wrote. And so reading this book and they were talking about how Harley customers like loud motors. Yes. You have handlebar designs you liked and apparently before you guys, before you got there, there was a rush to make the bikes more efficient, more like compete with the Japanese bikes. Almost like a rush to the bottom. Can you talk to me about some of the bad ideas that Harley was pushing out that were not working before you began to ask these questions? To that point, we learned a horrible but incredibly valuable lesson that the rest of the world, especially people that manufacture, build, or sell a product, either haven’t learned or are about to learn the hard way. As we were 100% internally focused, 100%, as we needed to build a product that was, and I need fingers for this, world class, and bulletproof, and industry leading, and have superior quality and reliability, and all the stuff that people associate with a good product. As our belief was, geez, the reason people aren’t buying our products the way they did in the past is because stuff coming from Japan or Germany was seen as better than ours. So we made something world class. Everybody would come and want to buy the American option. Tons of things were done. Tons of improvements were made. Incredible stuff happening in the manufacturing plants that resulted in what you just mentioned. Absolutely world class products coming out of Harley. Every motorcycle magazine on the planet put us on their covers, and we’d never been on bike magazine covers since like the 1930s because nobody liked us. Because you know we sold to thugs and criminals and rapists. Profitable little market niches though, so don’t knock it. This is where we’re about to learn the lesson because once those bikes came out for 1986 model year Everybody took their foot off the gas We did it whoo like light up the cigars because there’s going to be a stampede of people coming in to buy Product and now we’re about to learn the ugly lesson We’re saying there’s all this buzz in the market very very positive word-of-mouth people are interested people are coming into dealerships that hadn’t before. Floor traffic was up and sales went down. 1986 was the worst year in the company’s history, after the bankruptcy. I mean, it just couldn’t possibly be a worse scenario to happen. So that’s when a lot of people thought, well, they had their chance. They had their window of time. I’m talking about people inside the company. We had our chance, we had our time, and we blew it. And the lesson that we learned here, simply put, is if you live by product, you’re going to die by product. Because you cannot make your product your competitive lever in a world where everyone has confidence. Unless you have something that’s absolutely brand new that nobody has ever seen before if you were competing in an existing market and relying on your product or Eventually even your service to give you your competitive advantage You’re essentially dooming yourself because you’re going up against other businesses that have product that is equally good and a lot of times priced lower so we made customers, potential customers, focus on our product as our competitive lever. And they all said, wow this stuff looks really good and it’s awesome, but I can get a Honda for 40% of the price of the hard. Why wouldn’t I do that? And we did not have an answer for that. That’s why it was the worst year in the company’s history. All that investment in product and all that incredible success around the product and making it great, brought something into the marketplace that the world saw as great, but on par with everything. Hey, you’re back in the game, awesome. What else have you got? And we didn’t have anything else. On page 108 of your boom book, you’ll read a Seth Godin quote. And Seth Godin. I don’t like Seth. Go on. Seth said, he said, in a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. Not standing out is the same as being invisible. Boring is invisible. Remarkable people and products get talked about. You began to do things that were remarkable, that created a culture, an experience, people who are willing to get tattoos of your brand. Now I’m not knocking anybody out here who’s a plumber or a dentist or a lawyer, but wouldn’t it be cool if people loved your dentistry so much that you come in the next time and they’ve got Dr. Doug’s Dental tattooed on their arm. Like, man, you sold out. I mean, wouldn’t it be cool if you’re Nike? People see Nike tattoos. You see Apple tattoos. And you guys created a brand that was so remarkable that people were willing to tattoo themselves with it. How did you go about doing that? Let me tell you how we did this. The beauty of what we did is entirely born out of failure. And the other reason I say that is because people say, well, how did you get, you know, discover all these new ideas to do anything, to do something different? How did you get people to support it and rally behind it? And it was like, because we didn’t have any money to do anything else. And secondly, because frankly, we were all fighting to save our jobs. What was it that motivated people? Pretty simple. It’s the thought of not getting a paycheck in a city like Milwaukee, Wisconsin or York, Pennsylvania Where there were no other employers, there’s nothing else for people to do. It was awful. So let me tell you another Accidental discovery that we stumbled onto by accident that completely changed the trajectory of the business Because we are getting all these really positive write-ups about product and because the product really did kick ass, it was you know spectacular and beautiful and everything else, we were really challenged by this notion of if we could get people to get on one of these things, take it for a ride, and have the same sort of experience that these guys, that these critics of the bike mags are having, well then they would see how awesome it is. The unfortunate reality was in the bike market in the mid-1980s, there was no such thing as a test ride. Nobody, no Honda, Yamaha, BMW, Kawasaki, nobody would allow people to take their products for a test ride because there was too much fear of liability. Somebody’s going to crash, they’re going to sue us, right in the whole house of cards is going to come tumbling down. We had, thank God, a very different perception of risk management and it was essentially, we’re broke. Sue us. We haven’t got anything. I want to bring this up real quick because this is powerful. On page 111, this is an action step you have to do to do what he’s, to take what he’s teaching and make it practical for your life. That’s called a no-brainer. It’s a deal so good. I mean to test drive a Harley for the low low cost of free, that seems kind of fun. That’s not conventional. Dr. Zellner, my partner who you met last night, his glasses, the first pair of glasses in the exam are $99. Doesn’t make a lot of money on that deal, but they want you to come back and buy other stuff. Our first haircut at Elf in the Room is a dollar. It’s a deal so good, how could you say no to it? Everybody in here needs a no-brainer. On page 111, there are a lot of no-brainers listed for you. You need to find the one that’s going to work for you. But if you guys hadn’t done that test drive move, it probably wouldn’t have worked out, right? And so, see, here’s the big takeaway from that. So we took all of our money that would have been spent advertising. You know, everybody says it’s really hard to measure the effectiveness of advertising. Well I can tell you this, when you’re advertising and selling nothing, very easy to put it, our advertising isn’t working. You’re the one, zero. Very easy allocation of resources, as they say in accounting spheres. So our deal was instead of advertising, we’re gonna lease two trucks, two semis, and we’re gonna load these trucks up with bikes, 44 bikes to a truck, take them out anywhere where there’s likely to be a lot of blue collar, metal bending type people, our traditional customers, and allow anybody with a bike license or anything that if you kind of squinted your eyes look like a bike license, put them on the bike and let them go for 15 miles. Tulsa, Cleveland, these metal bending kind of old school cities. A lot of people were showing up. They were taking test rides. Better than half the people that showed up and this was awesome, were rolling up on Japanese motorcycles. And those were people that we could not convert. Get them to step up and buy a bike that essentially does the same thing but costs twice as much money. Like a sewing machine, like something an old lady would ride. Anyway, I kid the Japanese bike owners, you’re awesome, you rock. Don’t come near me. Anyway. Just rock over there by yourself. Here’s what we start discovering doing the demos. And this is why I say it’s going to change the trajectory of the business. It’s an accidental discovery that becomes the blessing that changes the trajectory of the business. Because larger and larger crowds are showing up to take demo rides, the lines are getting longer. And what do we know about people standing in lines? They don’t like to wait for things. So there’d be, you know, ten people standing in line to ride a specific bike. The guy would take the bike, take his 15-mile ride, would get off, and as soon as he’d get off, we’d have our employee volunteer standing here. You’d have the bike right here, and you’d have the person, the man or woman who just got off the bike right there. I think we can all agree this is a, it’s selling dynamics go and don’t get any better than that. Your people, your product, potential customer. 100% of people, as soon as they would get off the bike, would do this. They’d pull their bike off, they’d pull the light, and they would stare right at us. And the reason they’re staring right at us is pretty freaking obvious. They expect us to say something. So if there’s going to be a conversation here, but what we found is anytime we started talking to this guy, the people standing in line would start bitching. Come on, let’s go. Oh, get it moving. So then we say, well look, if we know everybody either wants to say something or wants to ask a question, let’s figure out a way to do this as quickly as possible because it would be stupid to not listen to to what these people have to say. And this is when the clouds open and literally the hand of God reaches down and saves the business. Because we invented, and about the time it took me to just tell that story, a question that people could answer very quickly. And the question we asked everybody is, what do we need to change on this bike to get you to buy it? And here’s where we make the discovery. The discovery is 100% of human beings standing next to another human being and asked a question will answer the question. When’s the last time you filled out a survey card? When’s the last time you filled out a survey card in your hotel room? Nobody does this. Why? Because we don’t think it’s personal. I need you to preach the good news on this. There’s somebody out there, out there today who’s fighting this a little bit. Not here, it’s a friend of yours who’s at a different conference. But I’ll work with business owners, not you, just fictitious business owners, but other people, and they’ll say, like a lot of dentists, doctors, lawyers who I’ve never met will say these kinds of things. They’ll say, I have a program where I text people and ask them for a Google review, mass text, or I mass email, and I go, that’s cool, you have one Google review, and you’re at the bottom of Google. And then they’ll say well how does oxyfresh your carpet cleaning business have a hundred and forty seven thousand Google reviews we’ll pull that up on the screen there 147 thousand Google reviews car oxyfresh has now a hundred and forty seven thousand Google reviews we’re top in the world at 386 markets and we do not ever we not don’t ever get a Google review from emailing nor do we even get a sincere response so we ask people face to face how was it today what could we do better we write it down and then we ask, why is it so important to be face to face? Why does it not work in the digital age to automate your surveys? The more, I guess the takeaway from all that is the more human your business is, that means the more visible it is, the more human, the more you take the invisible out of the equation, that’s the digital stuff. That’s the faceless, baseless, nameless question or the survey. The more you humanize the business, the faster people respond to that because we all know how to do that. And we all see and recognize value in talking to another human being about what they could do better to help us versus filling out a survey after the fact or maybe two days later, I was right there next to the guy. What’s he going to do with this information now? So what starts happening is 100% of people are answering this question and they’re giving us incredibly simple but brilliant intel. They’re saying, I love the bike but I can’t reach the handlebars. Could they be higher? Could they be lower? Could they be wider? Narrower? Could they be curled back? Could the seat be higher? Could the seat be lower? Could the foot controls be further forward for the back, longer, shorter. All, Harley’s a metal bending business. So the question comes down, what are people asking us to do is bend metal the way they want it bent. What are they saying they will do if we bend it the way they want it bent? They’re saying that they will buy it because it’ll fit their body, for God’s sake. Why aren’t we doing this? We had like 12 varieties of handlebars in 1985. There’s probably 300 varieties of handle, but it’s one phone call. Start bending them this way. Click. Guys in the plant hit a few buttons on the CNC machine and the bars come out this way. Almost immediately, word of mouth in the industry starts going in a completely different trajectory. And media and bike mags are writing about this because no businesses were doing that at that time. They’re gathering customer intel and here’s the important thing doing it right in front of customers so that they can see you doing this asking the questions gathering that intelligence but we’re also seeing a result and seeing the result pretty quickly a few months later there’s stuff coming out into the market and we’re not saying buy this stuff because it’s cool we’re saying buy you know this is what you asked us to do and this is what we’re doing we’re listening to you we ride with you we can’t succeed without you all messaging was about the writer, the potential writer, taking the focus away from the product and putting it on the person that we wanted to sell the product to. Let’s think about what you learned, how it affected the actual dealerships. Because we go to page 112 of the boom book, how many people by show of hands have a brick and mortar company? How many people have a service where you go out to someone’s home, you go there? Okay, so for Oxifresh Carpet Cleaning, the business that I’ve helped coach for years, we were showing that to you. We’ve now topped Google in the world for the phrase carpet cleaning quotes. A lot of people said, you know, we would like, these are face-to-face conversations, we would like it if you would have uniformed people showing up to clean our carpets. And we’d like it if the uniform, you know, if it was a nice uniform, if they showed up on time, if we could book a time and they were on time. If they would ever take a shower previous to coming over, that would be awesome. If they could use less water so my carpet wasn’t wet, you know, for a week. If you guys could find a way to do that. If we could schedule online, and if you see page 112, there’s a big checklist of things you can do, specific things to create this kind of wow experience. But how did the feedback you got from the bikers, how did that work its way into the dealership experience? How did you change that? Pretty easy because as we’re standing, this was literally when we were doing these demo rides and taking these trucks out with a small band of employee volunteers. This was literally the first time for most people in most markets that we went into that motorcycle people could stand toe to toe with people from, quote unquote, the factory. So now I’m talking to factory people here at Harlan. It blows my mind that that wasn’t happening, but it wasn’t. We sold a product, dealers bought the product, and they resold it. So now they’re standing toe-to-toe with people from the factory, and they can see these people from the factory are asking them questions about this thing that we do and how we can do it better and serve people better. And people were really digging that, but a lot of feedback we were getting from people was, I’d really like to buy the product. And it was mostly men at this time, and it’s kind of important to realize at this time, that the single largest hindrance to motorcycle ownership was an ability to ride a bike. It was spousal or important other approval. My wife will not enter a Harley dealership with me because they look horrible. They look scary. They’re full of criminals and thugs and drug runners, right? Selling these unreliable products. You know, all this ugly stuff surrounded the most important part of the business, the point of the sale. So we get in a meeting room like this full of our dealers, dealers who are literally hanging by a thread. A lot of them filed for bankruptcy. A lot of them lost their franchises, second, third, even fourth generation people. The ceiling’s about this high. 90% of the people in the room are smoking, it’s hot, it’s kind of a hostile environment, and we have to get in front of them and say, look, you’re scaring people away. You are scaring people. They’re not comfortable with this environment. People that are curious that want to come in are not coming in. And of course, they didn’t take that feedback very well because it’s basically blaming them for the problem. We said, but what if, because we’re positioning the product that we sell as a premium product, which is a fancy euphemism for really fricking expensive. If we’re going to be selling something that’s premium, the environment has to reflect that. We have to have that initial visual connection that like, wow, this is high-end, this is really cool, and we didn’t have that. This is how this plays out. We get two dealers, one in Milwaukee and the other in Kansas City, to agree to work with us to completely revitalize the retail environment. And yeah, this is expensive, but nowhere near the kind of money that people spend now. But for businesses that are hanging by a thread, asking them to make these investments was huge. So we helped these first two. We’re going to do these as a test. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to change the physical environment of this. Most dealerships didn’t have paved parking lots, okay? I mean, that’s an automatic. We work with these two stores and every week, every Friday, we would send a telegram. That was our mode of communication with our dealers at that time, because most of them would not buy fax machines and this was pre-internet. We send everybody a telegram of just bullet points. Here’s everything that happened this week in these two stores. Here’s the problem that we ran into. Here’s how we solved that problem. Here’s how much this cost. We’re going to be as transparent as possible. Here’s why this happened. Here’s why this worked, why it didn’t work. After about 12 months of this, the projects are done. The new stores are done. The employees in the stores, and this is really important, are trained to not push product, but instead to welcome people and delight them. These first two stores completely recouped their investments in a very difficult market in less than 18 months. The rest of the dealer network starts catching on to this, not because we’re telling them to do this, but because dealers that surrounded the revitalized dealerships in Kansas City and Milwaukee began noticing that all their customers were going to these revitalized shops. So the message became pretty clear that, oh god, I need to do this or they’re going to siphon away all my customers. And like dominoes all across America, then Canada, then Europe, dealerships tried to one-up each other by creating these really cool environments that people found attractive. That’s essentially what saved the business because it’s a street business. What we would always tell dealers is you don’t have to be the best dealership in the world. You don’t need to save hardly. All you need to do is be the best bike dealership in Tulsa, Oklahoma because if you’re beating the other guys, you win. If you win, we all win. On page 112 and 113, there’s a checklist of things that you could, very specific, actionable things you can do. I’m just going to give a, go 90 miles an hour and 90 miles an hour, giving you a lot of examples here. You create a smell that wows your customers. This isn’t by doing just one thing, it’s all the things. There’s an automotive repair shop I worked with and they started offering fresh cookies, like really nice gourmet cookies when you walk in and it always smelled nice. That’s big. People came back for that, they mentioned that. Totally not expected. Right. The sights, the visuals. We put pictures of old-time cars. We did a 1950s kind of theme. So the sights, the sounds, the playlist used to be no music or weird music. We had to come up with the sights, the sounds, the smells. All of the whole experience, the phone, how do we answer the phone, the sights, the sounds, the smells, what do we say on the phone. Just go through your business and you can circle on page 112 and 113 some of the things that you can do to make your business stand out, but you want to stand out and the best example I give you for an obvious one, who here has seen the dental depot in Tulsa, Oklahoma or the dental depot in your city? It’s a dentist in the shape of a train, right? It’s a dentistry and there’s a big train up front. What does that have to do with dentistry? Not a lot, but kids like it, so they talk about it, now you know about it. You just want to come up you want to make sure your business stands out to make sure that you’re breaking out of the clutter. Can you talk to me talk to the listeners out there let’s say that somebody here is kind of where you were you’re kind of the bottom and you’re now going okay I know I got my dollars what how did you do that because somebody out here is gonna have to probably call a family member and say I need 50,000 to revitalize my business that’s not doing so well or you have to call a bank or and you might not be doing that Well right now. Can you explain how you did that? Yes Because we made so many mistakes in attracting Investment and it’s the same mistakes that a lot of businesses Mike. It’s again another one of these wonderful accidental Discoveries where we were doing everything that was obvious and it clearly wasn’t working and what we were doing that was obvious was essentially CEO and CFO are literally going door to door in New York and in Boston and Chicago visiting banks, investment banks, looking for money. We need a line of credit. It’s showing, here’s all the numbers, here’s everything we’re doing, and the entire investment community in unison said, tough. We don’t care. Why would we? Look, you’re associated with outlaws and thugs, the motorcycle markets and the downturn of the economy was very recessionary at that time. I said, why would we invest in you? By accident. Essentially hearts on their sleeves. At 4.45 p.m. on December 31st of 1985, and the only reason I give you that timing is the bankruptcy filing was slated for January 2nd of 1986, the first hour of business. This is the last hour of financial markets being open in 1985. CEO and CFO are sitting across from somebody who agrees to have a meeting on New Year’s Eve, and instead of giving the number story, give the heart story. We’re very passionate. We love this. This means the world to us. This means the world to millions of people around the world. Think of Vietnam era veterans, World War II veterans, people that have that Harley tattoo on their arm. This means something to them. We can’t let this die. And what the person sitting across from them who just happened to own a motorcycle, not hardly, but thank God, literally got like a lump in his throat and said, I believe you. I believe in what you guys are telling me. The passion is overriding the need, essentially. I’ve heard, because they hear these stories a hundred times a day. Now, instead of getting a numbers cause and effect story, they’re seeing people that they believe, seeing people that are incredibly passionate, and people that they could willingly feel like they could take a risk on and support. They got the loan. The interest on the loan, interestingly, was 20.5%. So think about that next time you borrow money. However, that was the lifeline that kept the business alive. Then CEO who recently died and the CFO that was an enormous Eye-opener in terms of perception of the way people see them and what they represent to the business and what they represent to the business Isn’t the dollars it’s the people it’s the hearts behind the business because when someone’s investing in Potential they’re investing in emotion and a gut feel and likeability and I like you and I believe you I trust you more than they Are investing in how much hardware is going to be sold. How much debt do you have? You know, those kind of questions. It totally changed the conversation. As we go to page 114, if you have a question for Ken, we’re gonna open up for questions here in just a moment, I want you to just go through this checklist for sake of time, circle any of these items where you don’t have a plan. Okay, so point one, your unique service offering. Elephant in the room, it’s like a country club for men’s hair. Okay, that is what that business is. It’s higher end. OxiFresh, it’s the world’s greenest carpet cleaner. Dr. Robert Zellner and Associates, it’s home of the $99 first exam glasses. The auto auction, by the way, is decorated to look like a Harley Davidson dealership. You gotta go see that, it looks just like a Harley Davidson dealership. You gotta think about the what is your unique product offering or service offering? If you don’t have it, circle it. Put me a question on the board. I’ll be happy to ask you. I’ll be happy to answer your question. Three, unique decor. Most small businesses that I go into, the environment and the decor is semi-soul-sucking. I cannot tell you how many employees with degrees will apply for a job here and I’ll say, what appealed to you? They go, it’s just fun. That’s the whole, and I’m like, I know, I’ve spent a lot of time in here. But we have, it’s a certain atmosphere we’ve tried to create here. You gotta, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who are doctors, dentists, and lawyers who’ve left to go work for the fun dentist, or the dentist with the decor that matters, or how many people go drink coffee at Starbucks and they’re kind of like leasing the space and they’re just getting free coffee is how they look at it. They just like the decor, the atmosphere. The unique music. You’ve got to have music that fits. If you go into Hobby Lobby, the music is a certain kind. If you go into Starbucks, it’s a certain kind. The experience. You’ve got to think about what can I do. There’s high-end grocery stores that are offering a ton of samples right now that goes over very well. A unique smell. Your branding, your logos, your color. Are you Tiffany Blue? Are you… What are you? What’s your branding? Give back. People today, according to a book called, it’s a Jackie Freiberg’s research, and they researched Lululemon and Warby Parker and Tom Shoes and Apple, and people are three times more likely to buy from a company that gives a percentage back to a charity than one that doesn’t. Three times more. If you’re comparing this plumber versus that plumber, the one that gives back, you’re willing to do business with them. Deep empathy. Are you asking your customers how can we make it better like Harley was doing? And just the overall experience. I mean do you have it nailed down? Southwest is the funny airline with the low fares. Disney is the most magical place in the world, right? Whole Foods. If you have dreadlocks you’ll probably get hired to work at Whole Foods, right? Everything’s written in chalk. It’s a certain experience. It’s there’s a guy who is obsessed with kale working at Whole Foods. It’s just a thing. It’s a culture What is your culture now? I want to open it up. We have about 15 minutes here of Ken’s time I want to open up for any questions that you guys have it could be related to branding or marketing or it could be related to his time at Harley or Anything at all really and if it’s crazy, he’ll probably just help sick me on you. So what’s your question for Ken? Yes, sir, Nathan. Most of your story is in the negative. So the question is most business have to pivot at some point. And you’re asking what again now? What did you weigh that pivot? That’s a great question. Yes, there was a little luck in there, but not luck in terms of we had lucky charms. Luck was more that we took what we were beginning to see and actually acted on it, instead of doing what most businesses do, which is continuously talking about acting on it and then never actually doing it. The fundamental change, the fundamental pivot point in your vernacular was when we were out doing those demos and we found that people want to see us succeed. And when we are asking them questions and involving them in the process, what do we know about people? People support what they help create or feel they help create. So if they’re involved in the process of changing the product or changing the service or changing anything, they’re going to come back for more of that. And we begin sort of thinking to ourselves, because all we’ve ever done is glorify product and talk about features and benefits of product and how the product is made, because that’s what we thought we were supposed to do. And that’s what all of our competitors did. Let’s talk about the iron, the steel, how the metal is bent, how the welds are done, how the paint’s put on, how much torque you’re getting, all that. Never dawned on anybody that that was not creating any demand for us whatsoever. I guess that’s the way everybody does it. There’s nothing different about that. There’s nothing unique. There’s nothing really sellable about that. What we found though is because larger crowds kept showing up, this human side of the coin, which was the side that we never bothered looking at, was more attractive to people than just the product side of the coin. So what we’re going to do fundamentally as a business is, yes, we’re going to build the best bikes the world has ever seen. But we’re going to change our outward looking emphasis, not on pushing product, but on delighting human beings. How can we be way more, infinitely more human than our competitors that push product? How can we make ourselves as people more likable? And the way for us to make ourselves more likable was to be more present. It was to get in front of the people that we hope to serve, let them see us serving them, and let that word of mouth, let those people tell their friends. And that’s exactly what happened. The pivot point that that launched though was we found we began doing a way better job Of relating to potential customers and writers than we were doing inside the company There’s a fundamental rule. This is the way people see your business as a direct reflection of your internal culture So there was a disconnect and we were awesome at relating to customers, but we didn’t talk inside the company to each other very well. So, we were saying, look, if we’re making the needle move by getting in front of the people that we hope to serve in the marketplace, that’s what we have to do on the inside. I need to delight. If I’m in the parts department, I need to be delighting the people in the engineering and the manufacturing departments. They’re my customers. I need to get in front of them, ask how I can serve them better, ask what we can do together better, what an absolute mind-blowing success would look like to them so that I can provide that to them. As that begins to take hold and with executive leadership, CEO banging on this, we’re going to be visible, we’re going to get in front of people, I as a leader am going to make good and make sure that everybody in the business is doing this. Once that took hold, the world saw us for who we were, right? The culture reflected the reality. This is a very human business, a very caring business, a more likable business. At the end of the day, to the point you just made, if you’re just a little bit more likable than the people you’re competing against, you win 100 fricking percent of the time. Because you can’t sell me anything I can’t get from somebody else for less money. But if I like you a little bit better, I’m coming your way. I will say that there’s a notable quotable from Seth Godin that somebody needs to hear today. He says if you’re remarkable it’s likely that some people won’t like you. That’s a part of the definition of being remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous praise ever. The best the timid could hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out. So as an example if you voted for Obama you didn’t vote for Trump and quit saying you’re moderate, because you voted for one of them. And so, you can’t sit there and go, I’m kind of in the middle, because you’ll never win. So, have you ever heard of Harley? I mean, you can tell it’s a Harley. You know it’s a Harley. And some people are like, I would never drive a Harley. That’s okay, they don’t need everybody to like them, they just need some people to love them. And so, you’ve got to figure out your unique value proposition. There was a plumber we worked with in San Jose who realized that no one in town knew who he was. So he auto-wrapped all of his vehicles in neon green and his whole theme was we’ll save you green. You call us, the service call’s free. So we’ll show up on time. The service call’s free, so you don’t have to wait on us. We’ll get there, it’s a free service call. When we get there, we’ll diagnose the problem. If you want us to fix it, we’ll quote it right there. But if not, you’re not gonna wonder what’s the bill gonna be, but it’s free to come out You know and they’re neon green and he’d gone to bankruptcy twice and I talked to him I said, why did you finally auto wrap your vehicles neon green? He was well, I thought about it like two bankruptcies ago But I just didn’t want to be ever made fun of I didn’t want to be cheesy And then my wife was like we are lucky to be in business this third time We need to stand out and so there’s somebody out there fighting that idea Like you kind of have an idea of how to stand out But you’re kind of afraid to do that and Harley has done a great job with that What other questions do you have for Ken Schmitt anybody? Yes the back. Mr. Scott, I believe and then we’ll go to you, sir Correct correct humanity remember I said the the product was seen as awesome and Dealership floor traffic went up, but people weren’t pulling the trigger. And then we’re asking dealers, like, why can’t you close the deal? And they’re using all the sales, selling vernacular. You know, why can’t you make the sale? Why can’t you close? Did you tell them about the quality? I said, of course we told them about the quality. Tell them about all these awards we got. Of course we did. So why aren’t they pulling the trigger? And I said, because they can’t justify the cost. Like, what are we really paying for here? And that’s really sort of the pivot point where it’s product to product. You couldn’t win on the dollar. Our stuff was like 50 to 60% more to do the exact same thing, go forward. So the decision, do we have to lower our price to compete on product, which of course is a sucker’s game, it’s never going to pay off for us, or do we find this different way to compete? Management hated having these discussions with us. They hated it because they were manufacturing people, manufacturers, engineers, finance people who grew up in a world of product, product, product. And geez, the product speaks for itself. You know who says the product speaks for itself? A jackass. All right? Real quick, I mean that. We do not. Anybody that believes that is screwed. You might as well pack it up and go home. The world has never worked that way. I’m going to heal somebody out here that needs a healing. Here we go. I’ve run into a lot of people that have a really cool product they’ve made, like a hair product or a product of new shampoo or a new widget. And they said, I’m going to sell it on Amazon and make millions. I’m like I just want to throw it out there for you if you’re gonna try to compete on price up there you will lose all of your savings and then you’ll say you’re right and I’ve had so many people call me back four or five years later going I got killed on Amazon. You’ve got to find a different way to stand out in this cluttered commerce. You have to stand out. You can’t be the lowest price that’s what you’re gonna die unless you can be. Unless you’re like Walmart. Walmart is scaled to do that. That’s the only example. I mean, Faith, I think it’s Faith, right? You had a question, sir. How did those big pivot conversations go with key players? Initially, those discussions went pretty horrible because essentially what we were looking to do is entirely reinvent the business in a very short time frame because at that point in time, by the mid 80s, the company’s over 80 years old. It’s one of the oldest manufacturing companies in the world, building motorcycles. So that everybody working for the business knew just one thing, build product, sell product, service product. So asking people that are dyed in the wool product people that radically changed the approach of the business was not being well received. And it wasn’t being well received just because we were asking people to change their approach. It wasn’t well received because of where the message was coming from. And where the message was coming from was, quote, unquote, the corporate office. You’re the ones that screwed up the business. You’re the ones that drove it to bankruptcy. So why should we believe anything? You know, why should we listen to you? That was the pushback. Remember I mentioned the two model dealerships that we built. We learned to shut up. Dealers listen to other dealers, just like welders listen to other welders. So we’re going to put these dealers up. We’re going to make them the focal point of the discussion of the challenges they had, but also the results that they had. And once they started putting up charts that look like this, everybody put their cigarettes down and pulled their pens out and start scribbling. Oh, this stuff works. I need to do this. That’s essentially the pivot point. So now they’re getting a believable message from a believable source. I can’t tell you how important that was. Again, we brought that back into the company. Instead of telling welders how to work more efficiently, it’s we need to speed this up. We need to be able to produce more bike frames per day. How would you guys, if you were running this company, do it? A hundred percent of people ask the question, will answer the question. They’ll say, here’s how I would change the layout, says guy who’s been welding for 25 years, who knows a lot about what he’s talking about. Powell, we’re gonna give you enough rope to hang yourself. Go do that. Do it. They would do it in other departments in the business. Well, we want to change what we’re doing over here in the paint department. Let’s see your plan. Do it. It becomes a very contagious thing when people feel a sense of empowerment and accountability. People are watching me. I’m taking a risk here. If I do it and it pays off, I’m going to get a lot of praise. I’m going to get rewards. It’s going to help the company. It’s good for everybody. And again, it’s very, very contagious behavior, and that’s sort of when leadership starts saying, Hey, our job isn’t to tell people what to do. Our job is to create an environment where people feel like they can contribute and be listened to. If we give them enough responsibility, give them enough freedom to make their own decisions and step back, they will rise and they will do that. Ken, Eric Chup this week has been working with a lot of his clients. He has written down some questions that they wanted to ask you. You let Chup work with clients? They’re faux clients. They’re not real clients. We tell them that. My mom and some other people. Paid friends. Okay. I love Chuck. He rocks. One of the questions that I actually had as well when I was talking to some people is, you guys knew there was a change that needed to happen in the business. How did you guys get past suffering from that paralysis by analysis mentality and getting into action like you were talking about? No money I’d spend a lot of time in Detroit Especially late 90s early. I was talking to car companies, and they’re all Everybody wants to do the same thing everybody wants to get more competitive Everybody wants to make more people buy their products everybody wants to create magic at the point of retail They’d always how do you get? How did you motivate people and the lucky blessing we had is we were broke. People realized we have to do something different or we’re screwed versus look at Detroit. They’ll do nothing for you. I’m not going to argue with every motivational speaker in the world. Maybe there’s one who agrees with me, but the thing is, is there’s people say fear means false evidence appearing real. That’s what it means. That’s that’s what I struggle with. Wow. Well, growing up without money, to me, it’s always meant for real evidence appearing real. Like I have no money, so I’m going to get three jobs and people typically don’t look for a breakthrough until a breakdown. They like to get to the very bottom, to their last dollar, to their last day, to the last, you know, divorce, pre divorce thing, right to the end of the last counseling session, to the end of the end of the night. I need help. And I think the sense of urgency that they felt at Harley was caused by for real evidence appearing real. It wasn’t like this false fear. It was going to end. And that’s it. I think a lot of small business owners, we think we have longer than we have to make it work. We got to make it work. You know, we got to have that sense of urgency. Jeff, you’ve got also that there’s that internal sense of optimism. Think things are going to turn my way because I work so hard and I believe so much in this. And people are going to see that and see us are who we really are. And then we’re going to rock and roll. Law of attraction. Yep. Come on, money. Money cometh. Money. Who’s seen that guy? Money cometh. Money cometh. It’s not, you can’t donate $10 to your church and get a thousand back. If that worked that way, that would be the new banking strategy. Let’s donate all the money to the church and get tenfold return. Stop that. I don’t want the Bible Belt, but stop donating and getting tenfold returns. You’ve got to sell something. Back to you Chuck okay can you explain your look through the curve mentality and how that relates to riding a motorcycle and how you turn that into a business principle yeah anybody here owns a motorcycle anybody here’s ever raced a motorcycle knows that one of the first lessons they teach you let’s say that we’re riding a bike and we’re whipping down the road on a long straightaway and we see like a 45 or 90 degree turn. That’s a hell of a sharp turn. Most people’s brain says, look at the turn. Look at the pavement. Look at where you want to see that bike go and make it go. Those people end up dead. The rule of motoring is you don’t look at the turn, you look at the exit of the turn. You look past the turn because the bike’s going to take you where your eyes are looking. You look at the exit instead of what’s straight in front of you. That’s where the bike goes. The metaphor for business, and this is again something that we really work with our dealers on, is the sale, the transaction, that’s the turn. That’s the obvious challenge in front of me. And what most people focus on is the turn, not what’s past the turn. So you say, what’s past the turn here? What’s past the turn is what that person that you’re selling to or trying to sell to or having this discussion with, that’s what that person is going to say about you to somebody else. What do I want this person to say? They’re not going to talk about the transaction. Okay? They’re going to talk about who’s behind the transaction. We know this. So what do I need to say to this person? What do I need to do in front of this person that he or she will tell somebody else about? Look through the turn, not at the immediate need in front of you. 90% of people that buy Harley this year are buying it not because they saw an ad for it, because there are very few ads for it. They’re buying it because a friend or somebody that they sat next to on a long bus trip or somebody that they work with talked them into it. That’s through the turn. That’s the person that we serve delivering the message to somebody else, building our reputation and building demand. Ken’s gonna be speaking tomorrow. I just want to throw this out there. If you have any questions specifically for Ken that didn’t get answered during this session, you can write your question on the board over there and then just put a little dash Ken. And Holly, you can move that board so we can free it up there. And you can put Ken dash in the question. We’ll make sure because tomorrow we’re doing a Q&A until our brains explode. But Marshall, you had one more question. Here we go, Marshall. Marshall’s very tall. I’ll give you the mic. Here we go. Ken, especially with Harley, it’s a huge organization when you’re coming into it. You are shifting the culture. You’re shifting the core values, right? And so there’s multiple layers in order to communicate it through, right? And some people were on board and some people were not on board with the shift. How did you guys make the decision when it was time to keep beating it into their skulls to adopt this new culture? Or how did you decide when it was time to bring in somebody new that shared those core values? How do you decide between adopting new culture and or firing and bringing in new people? Great question. Here’s what the culture looked like then. had probably 60% of the people that work for the company were right around age 50. So, these people who are very, very invested in the business, been there a long time, have been doing things the same way their entire career. A lot of them started when they were 18 years old. Then you had people my age, people at 30-ish getting involved in this, who want to start doing all this stuff differently. So, there’s an immediate clash between these kind of young lions who want to do it differently and these old guys that say, stop messing with me. I just want to ride out my time until I can retire. What we know about people is that we do what the boss tells us to do only when the boss is looking. Otherwise, we do what the boss does. Everybody that works for a living mirrors the behavior of their superior, of their boss, however it is you define that. So simply, learn the hard way like everybody else does. Say, from now on, you know, we’re going to be customer focused. You know, go make it happen, guys. It goes nowhere. As we model the behavior of our superiors, if we’re going to change the culture, that means the people that are most responsible for that, being leadership, leadership need to be the most visible, passionate advocates for the process as humanly possible. They’re the ones that other people are going to model. We very quickly found pockets of tremendous success in the business. I mentioned it a second ago, the welding area, the painting area where people are taking responsibility for what they’re doing. Other people saw that. Hey, we want to do this too, but we also saw other people, other departments that for whatever reason were unwilling to change, weren’t showing up at meetings. And I need to tell you, this was a union environment. So when people were coming in for these meetings about how they were going to be changing the work areas, they’re doing this on their own time, which in a union environment typically doesn’t happen. Again, they want to save their jobs. We also saw areas where absolutely nothing was happening, where employees that were working in those departments were posting for every job available anywhere else in the company. It’s like, I want to be over here where, you know, good stuff is happening, versus here where nothing’s happening. 100% of the time, it was very easy to identify the source of the problem, and that was a leader, manager, team leader, department head, who simply wasn’t buying in. That’s old guard, and do it the way we’ve always done it, screw these guys, they don’t know what they’re talking about approach. Essentially, every one of them got to sit down, and you know what the sit downs look like. You’re gonna get along, or you’re gonna go along. You’re gonna be gone. And we know about dominant businesses is that people actually like accountability. A lack of accountability creates chaos. When employees see people in leadership functions within the business either being disciplined or being suddenly gone, they get the message pretty clearly. Discipline or gone. This is for real, folks. We need to do this. And I, as a leader, need to be exhibiting this behavior or I’m going to be next. People bought in. And once the tide changed, and once the world suddenly fell in love with us, every media outlet in the country said, look at what this company’s doing, all this really amazing, very, very human, very, very simple stuff, and look at what the results are. Obviously, morale goes up, more people support it. Hey, how can I get involved? I want to do stuff too. I want to get promoted. I want to be seen as somebody different tomorrow than I am today. Well, what do I need to be doing different to get the promotion, to get the pay? Thrivers, what we’re going to do here is we’re gonna take a break till 1020 but I want to make some housekeeping notes Ken will be speaking tomorrow. We come back from the break We’re gonna be talking about branding by anything you need to know about branding and proving the image of your company We’re gonna take a break from 1005 to 1020 and then Paul Hood is going to be serving lunch today I believe from courtesy of Los Cabos does that food will be served so Paul will be coming up at 11 to speak with us a little bit there today. But let’s hear it for Ken Schmidt, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thrive Nation, if you’re out there today and you’re saying to yourself, what do I need to do as a result of what I’ve just learned? Well, let me give you an action list of action items that you can actually do as a result of what you’ve learned here today. One, action step number one, take time to interview at least a hundred of your current customers. Again, if you’re an existing business, interview a hundred of your current customers or you can interview a hundred of your former customers. But what you want to ask them is this, you want to ask them this question, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest, how happy were you with my service and why? We’ll know them to give you a number an eight a nine or a ten Again, ask him why and say well What can I do to take your experience with our product or service to attend and write that down? And once you’ve done that you’ve now learned how to improve your business now action item number two Action item number two is create a product or a service that stands out from the clutter of commerce. Don’t make a product that fits in with every other product. obnoxious American-made vehicles that they’re ideal and likely buyers would like and The tricky part about making a remarkable product or service is that universal praise? Isn’t possible it’s never going to happen to quote the former Thrive Time Show guest and the New York Times Multiple times best-selling author Seth Godin he writes if you’re remarkable It’s likely that some people won’t like you and that’s part of the definition of being remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous praise ever. The best the timid can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out. So Thrive Nation, there you have it. Listen to your customers, give them what they want, and break out of the clutter of commerce with something remarkable. And Thrive Nation if you learn something today I would encourage you to share this with a friend or family member you can download each and every show on iTunes on Spotify on iHeartRadio or by just simply streaming the podcast live at ThriveTimeShow.com without any further ado as always 3, 2, 1, Boom! What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system and it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day to day basis. And that simplicity brings power with it. So it shocked me how simple some of the stuff is. And at times I’m like, why didn’t I think about that? Workflow creation, systematic marketing, and coaching has helped our church so much. You know, the workflow creation is what it really is, is they’re going to look and see every moving part of your church, of your ministry, what needs to be done. And it’s going to go up on a massive board. And so now what it does is it takes what you know needs to be done out of your heart and out of your head, really takes the pressure, the stress off your shoulders, and it puts it on the board where your entire team your ministry can see Exactly what you want them to do every day, and so they know this is the playbook This is what we’re doing, and then there’s a laser-sharp accountability with a meeting afterwards Did it get done or not? So it’s it’s changed the way we execute as a church so fast And it’s produced really an excitement because people people they want to get done if they know what they’re supposed to do, a good person wants to get it done. It’s been massive for our team. The systematic marketing has really been like this. In the past, we used to market and we would try something. I’ve done everything, billboards, you know, ads, mailers, internet, Facebook, but we would run something for so long and then we wouldn’t see that it was producing the results we want. Instead of staying consistent, we would jump to another horse. Then we would jump to another horse. And what systematic marketing does is it makes you pick some things and stick with it. And then the coaching is massive. And I think having a coach that looks and sees what you’re doing and can come help you make small adjustments. I believe those small tweaks, once he gets everything set up, those small tweaks can make massive differences. And a great coach doesn’t even have to play your sport, right? Doesn’t even have to do what you do. A coach has an eye to see things that you can’t see, or to see it from a different angle. Just having that extra eye on what I do, and just, hey, have you thought about this? It’s making all the difference in the world. What Clay Clark and his team can provide for your church that you can’t do in-house and I can’t do in-house, well, what’s been massive for me is that search engine optimization, how to get to the top of Google, taking care of transcribing all of my sermons to drive me up the list on Google, stuff that I don’t think about and I don’t have time to do. I’ve got all these things I have to do as a pastor, right? I have sermons to preach, I have a staff to manage, I have a budget to take care of, I got sick folk to see about. I have a team that has to do that. You know how it is, you got to marry people, you got to bury people. We’re never going to stay in a dark room with a keyboard optimizing our Google presence. And these guys do that kind of thing for you. Also, if you’re at a couple hundred member church, I remember how hard it was back in the day to take care of the website needs, to come up with graphic design. And these guys are available to you for sermon slides, getting that kind of stuff done, where you can have a sharp looking presentation of the gospel. And it takes it off you, puts it on them at a very reasonable price. I really believe Clay Clark and his team can help a church with limited resources in a big way. I know what it’s like to be a church of limited resources. My wife and I, we walked into a town where we didn’t know anybody. We had a Bible and we just had a few bucks in our pocket. When somebody introduced us to a couple of families, we started going there. So I know what it’s like to be a church of two, and I know what it’s like to be a church of 2,000 in two different campuses now, 1,000 apiece, and everywhere in between. So I love churches at every level. I believe God wants them all to grow. And I think about the needs I had back in the day, the lack of direction I had. I mean, I was working 80 hours a week all the time, but a lot of times I was a shotgun instead of a rifle. I think when you start, you can really hone in with the right coaching. You can get a lot of your different needs met in one place. Instead of having somebody on marketing and somebody on showing you how to do systems and somebody on graphic design, Thrive can do a lot of that for you at a very reasonable cost. I think it’s a great place to invest in the life of your ministry. I’m telling you, I think you can get the results you want with the coaching here faster than any other way. It’s going to be powerful. 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. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to 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. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building 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. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal. They were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down. Because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time 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 gonna help magnify you. And there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps four, maybe six hours a day, and literally the rest of the time he’s working. And he can outwork everybody in the room every single day, and he loves it. So anyways, this is Charles Kola with Kola Fitness. Thank you, Clay. And anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay, it’s a great, great opportunity to ever work with him. So you guys have a blessed one. This is Charles Kola, we’ll see you guys, bye-bye. Hi, I’m Aaron 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. doing 800 million in sales over a 15-year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes and I mean we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four-month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us and it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry, but the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town and so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing and I think for a lot of people they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with clay, I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35-year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full-time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide what do I want to do. My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people. I love working with people. I love building relationships. But one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things, the processes and the advertising and marketing. I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time, and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago. And in that time, we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer 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. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s T-Bo time in Tulsa, Roseland, baby! Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 2-Day Interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the Thrive Time Show 2-Day Interactive Business Growth Workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old. And a lot of people 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 gonna 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 gonna walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is gonna be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. We’ve had the top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we’ve had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the 2-Day Interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the 2-Day Interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session. So that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15 minute question and answer session. It’s interactive. It’s two days. It’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who have been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com, you’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today Get those tickets today go to thrive timeshow.com again That’s thrive timeshow.com and some people might be saying well, how do I do it? I’m gonna do it, but it has it work. You just go to thrive timeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow We’re going to thrive Again, you just go to thrive timeshow.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 can 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. Did 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 thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russia. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russia, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office, and so it’s going to be packed. Who? You. You’re going to come. Who? You. I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com. And again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. 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 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 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. the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research you will discover that the same 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 got to do is go to thrive timeshow.com to request those tickets, and if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Keosak University 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 hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought, since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Donald, who’s my age, and I can say or cannot say? Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. And he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor. I owe a lot of that to you. I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. 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. So anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.