Clay Clark | Entrepreneur | The 4 Step Path to Financial Freedom

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now, three, two, one, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we’re about to do. Boom, boom, boom. Welcome back inside your audio dojo of mojo. It is the Thrive Time Business Coach Show. My name is Clay Clark, and I am heavily hopped up on Dayquil today. I woke up this morning and for whatever reason I felt like those spring allergies are coming to get me. And if you are maybe new to Oklahoma, if you’ve never experienced this before, about half the state starts to have crazy allergy sinus issues as soon as the spring gets here, when the summer gets here. And it has hit me. And so because I am committed to being here on a daily basis with you, the Thrive Nation, I have bought all of the Dayquil that they will sell me. I have ingested enough Dayquil to kill a small goat. And today we have a great Business Coach Radio Show for you. Today we’re talking about the Empire State of Mind. The mind that you would need, the mindset you need to have if you wanted to build an empire in the world of business, and specifically the four-step path to financial freedom. Yes, there’s 72 things you need to do over here and 16 things you need to do here, but there is a four-step path to financial freedom, and I want to go through it here with you today. The first phase is the early phase. This is where you’re basically searching for your first customers, and you’re just scraping and clawing and hoping to make profitability. Now this is the first step and unfortunately according to Forbes, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs don’t ever pass this level, this area. Basically they start a business because they have a big idea and then they never actually move beyond the idea of just trying to secure the initial customers. However, the next step, step number two, is that is where you actually begin to build your core team, right? You build your core team and you can escape the actual day-to-day workings of the business. And so as your your business coach, my focus is to make sure that you have a clear understanding of where you are and then where you want to get to. So let’s start off with phase number one, securing those early clients. What does that look like? Well, one, you definitely want to get your branding nailed down. You want to get your branding nailed down at this point. You want to have awesome, awesome print pieces. You want to have awesome marketing. You want to have great one sheets. You want your landing page to look great. You want everything that the customer sees and touches to be powerful, to look high quality. And the reason why is because people definitely will perceive you based upon the branding. And in the absence of value, you know, price is the only consideration. So imagine going into Starbucks, let’s say. And let’s say that Starbucks didn’t have great branding. Let’s say you went in there and their signage looked like it was different from every from store to store. Each store had a different logo. Let’s say their website wasn’t updated. It didn’t look sharp. Let’s say that the actual pricing on the menu and the names of the beverages were not clearly defined. Let’s say that every employee wore their own outfit. There was no universal uniform. What would happen is that you would begin to judge that brand, that business, based upon the contextual clues that you have. I mean, that’s how we as a human race have been able to, you know, I think God’s given us a gift to avoid danger by giving us this thing called discernment, or maybe it’s a conscious, a conscience, or maybe it’s just the ability to sense that something’s not right, you know. So what you do is your defenses automatically go up. So I’ll give you an example. I typically wear a hoodie sweatshirt. You know, I used to wear a blue suit and red tie and white shirt for like 16 years. That was my move. I always wore dress clothes, you know. And this is before I started working as a business coach. I mean, I was always dressed up, always dressed sharp because when you met me, I wanted my first impression that you had of me to be that of somebody who’s credible, who you wouldn’t mind doing business with. Well, over time, one of my secret goals is I always wanted to wear a hoodie every day. I thought the idea of someday just kind of going straight up Bill Belichick, the coach of the Patriots, and just wearing a hoodie every day, that’s sort of like my Narnia. That’s sort of my heaven of apparel. I wanted to get into the hoodie only zone. Well, long story short, let’s say that you came and you attended one of our workshops at the Riverwalk here in Jinx, America. So you’re on the left coast of the Riverwalk. You’ve been there all day and the workshop ends at about 3. They start at 7 a.m. The Intel 3. By the way, if you want to learn more about it, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. They are the most comprehensive business coach experiences you could possibly have. There’s more. We teach you search engine marketing, branding, sales. It’s all right there. But let’s just say you go out to your car. And when you go out to your car, you say, you know what, I got some paperwork. I’m going to come back in here. I’m just going to stay late. So now you’re staying from 3 o’clock to about 11 o’clock. And for some reason you get out there to the parking lot and your car won’t start. Well, let’s say that a guy in a suit, with a blue suit and a red tie and a white shirt walks up to you and says, hey, do you need some help? You would probably have the initial signs, you would initially probably guess that this person is there to help you, they are safe, they’re going to help you, and that’s probably how you would perceive that situation. Now let’s say that the same person approached you to help and they had a hoodie sweatshirt on and this is again at night time, 11 o’clock at night. They have the hood up over their head to keep warm or to keep out of the elements, whatever. They have a hat pulled down low. They have baggy jeans. And what would be your initial impression? Well, you’d probably be less accepting or less trusting of the person trying to help you regardless of whether the person had great intentions or not and regardless of whether that person has the tools and the prerequisite things needed to help you get your car going. So what happened is you would actually reject the messenger because of the branding. You would actually judge the book based on the cover. I see this all the time at the mall, Woodland Hills Mall. Dr. Robert Zellner has the massive optometry clinic located there. It’s at 65th and Memorial. That’s where his Dr. Robert Zellner and Associates Eye Care Center is located. If you go inside the mall, there are certain guys that dress sort of dressed to impress. There’s guys who dress sort of thuggish. It’s amazing to watch people in the mall but people will react a certain way based upon the way the person dresses. Another example is whenever I am traveling on an airplane I’ll typically wear my hoodie, sweatshirt and I’ll wear my baggy jeans but I will also intentionally be trying to avoid conversations because I have a ton of work I want to get done on the plane, right? So I’ll actually keep my hood on the entire time that I am on the plane. And it is amazing how few people will approach you and ask you questions when you have the hood on your hoodie sweatshirt when you keep it up. It just shows that, hey, I’m antisocial. I’m trying to get paperwork done, or whatever you might perceive me as. But it limits conversations. Now, when I go on the plane and I’ve got a suit on, and I have my tie on and I’ve got my white dress shirt, man, it’s like a conversation starter. People ask you, hey, what do you do? And so maybe if you want to get business on an airplane, maybe you should wear a suit and a red tie and a white shirt and maybe that’ll open up conversations for you. And maybe if you’re wearing a hoodie sweatshirt right now and you wear one every single day and you don’t have enough business, then maybe you need to start changing your apparel a little bit. I want to give you a notable quotable from Elon Musk. Elon Musk is the guy who most notably started PayPal. He started Tesla. He started SpaceX. He’s basically a guy who has gone on to have prolific success. By the way, he started SolarCity. As a business coach, I spent all my time studying these people. Elon Musk had this notable quotable. He says, brand is just a perception. And perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product. So that first phase, as we’re talking about the empire state of mind, and the four phases, the four phases, the four steps, and in the path to financial freedom, that first step is you want to secure your early clients and get to profitability. So one is you definitely want to get your brand knocked out. If the brand is not solid, you don’t want to move on here. Also, you want to get that three-legged marketing stool going. Now the three-legged marketing stool is the ways in which you go out there and acquire customers. How do you get your phone to ring? So right now I’m working with an entrepreneur that’s a young couple and they’re great, great people. And they are in the construction business and they’re at this first phase where we have their website built for them now. It looks very sharp. We have their business cards made. It looks great. We have the one sheet made. We have everything that we need to have done in terms of branding. However, now they have to come up with a way to secure clients. We have to do this. And as the business coach, I’m showing them the proven path. So if you happen to be in the construction business, I will give you the big three, because I’ve done this with lots of contractors, is one, you would want to implement the system called the Dream 100. Two, you’d want to implement the search engine optimization strategy that will get you right to the top of Google. And three, you want to do AdWords, retargeting ads, and Facebook ads. Again, I’ll repeat that if you’re taking notes. If you are in the construction business, you want to do the Dream 100. Two, you want to have a search engine optimization strategy being implemented so you can get to the top of Google. And three, you want to have Facebook ads, you want to have retargeting ads, and you want to have AdWords. You want to have all those three-legged marketing stools. You want to have all three legs running at the same time so that you can begin to acquire customers. And if you don’t know how a search engine works, it’s okay. We can teach you at our next in-person workshop. If you go to thrivetimeshow.com, you can get your tickets and we’ll show you exactly how the search engine optimization strategy works. If you don’t know how to do the Dream 100, well, the Dream 100 was a system that was developed by Chet Holmes. What happened was Chet Holmes is a best-selling author and he actually was the former business partner of Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger, by the way, is Warren Buffett’s business partner. If you’re scoring at home, Charlie Munger is actually worth $1.45 billion today. Charlie Munger is doing well as Warren Buffett’s unsung hero. Don’t feel bad that you haven’t heard the name Charlie Munger yet. Trust me, Warren is taking care of his main man, Charlie. But anyway, he went to work for Charlie Munger and he distilled some of the marketing systems that he saw being implemented over and over again. And one of those systems is called the Dream 100. And it is documented in a book called The Ultimate Sales Machine. But I wanted to read to you a short excerpt from this book so you can kind of see the power of the Dream 100 system. It says about 3% of buyers at any given time are buying now. 7% of the population is open to the idea of buying. The remaining 90% fall into one of these three equal categories. The top third are not thinking about it. The next third think they’re not interested. And the final third are definitely not interested. So with this construction company, they’re reaching out to their top 100 ideal and likely buyers, the people that they want to sell to the most, knowing that about 90%, 95% of people are going to reject them. But if they stay in touch, they are eventually going to sell something to their ideal and likely buyers. And that in combination with search engine optimization, with the Facebook ads, with the retargeting, and the ad words, they’re eventually going to make their phone ring, right? When we come back, we’re going to talk to you more about this phase one of growing a successful business that has the potential to create both time freedom and financial freedom for you and your family. Stay tuned. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. During the break, check out thrivetimeshow.com to learn more information about our next upcoming in-person two-day workshop. They were designed with you in mind. They’re 15 hours of power. We teach branding, search engine, marketing. It’s a game changer. Stay tuned. Hello Thrive Nation. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark and I am your host with the most. I’m America’s number one business coach and perhaps the most humbled man in the city of Tulsa. Typically I’m joined here with Dr. Robert Zellner, but today he cannot be here as he is out expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire. And as luck would have it, the allergies have hit me hard. So I’ve been taking Dayquil, copious amounts of Dayquil, so much Dayquil that it would kill a small goat but I am here with you pushing through the pain and providing you with that business school without the BS experience that you can’t get anywhere else. Today we are talking about the Empire State of Mind, the four steps that you need to take to achieve financial freedom as a business owner. Step number one you have to secure those early clients and you’ve got to get to profitability. As a business coach, I’m bleeding with you. You have to do this. You’ve got to find those early customers and you’ve got to reach profitability as soon as possible. And for anybody just tuning in who wants to know, well that’s a great idea, but how do I do it? Well that’s a great question. One, you definitely have to get your branding on point. You’ve got to get your branding looking world class. Elon Musk, we talked about him on the previous segment, but he’s the guy who launched PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity. He says, brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product. So you’ve got to get that branding nailed down. That’s the business cards, the websites, the one sheets. I know it might be a little self-serving, but yes, we do that for clients. But whether you use the thrive15.com team to help you transform your business or you use somebody else, just get that done as soon as possible. But now once your branding is done, you can have the most overhyped brand in the world, but if you don’t sell something, bad things are going to happen. So what happens is you have to learn how to get those early customers to call you. There’s three moves that I would recommend that you would implement right now if you’re a contractor. I’ve had a lot of contractors email the show, text into the show, email us info at thrive15.com. So I was giving you the example in the previous segment. If you’re a contractor and you want to know, well, what are the three best ways to get customers. One is by implementing the Dream 100 system, which is simply you make a list of the 100 ideal and likely buyers that you want to go after. The 100 ideal and likely buyers that you want to earn their business. The referral sources that you want to go after. As an example, years ago I worked with a landscaper and on his Dream 100 list he had a major, major commercial account. He also had a home builder on his list. He was able to land both of them and to get all of those referrals. Those referral sources weren’t just one landscaping job at a time. Those were massive amounts of referrals. Years ago I worked with a guy who did home flipping. On his Dream 100 list, he made a list of bankers because he wanted to be the first one who was notified about homes that the banks unfortunately had to repossess because he knew that if a bank repossessed a property that they don’t want to hold that property too long. They want to sell it and get it off the books. And so he wanted to be the guy that could go in and look at these houses and help basically buy them from the bank and fix them up and sell them at a profit. And so he put on his Dream 100 list, a list of hundreds of different banking contacts. And sure enough, he ended up landing the affection and the referrals of a certain bank in Tulsa. And he generated so many referrals from this bank that he was able to build a monstrous, a very, very successful company. So with the three-legged marketing stool, I suggested for the contractors was, one, you want to have a Dream 100. Two, you want to have a search engine optimization regimen. You want to have that in place because a lot of people want to get to the top of Google. They want to do that and they want to view that as an event, but it’s more of a process. And Google has built their search engine in a way that has been designed to keep scammers off of the rankings. So as a business coach, when I sit down and coach with a business and teach them how to grow their company, one of the things that a lot of people tell me is they want to get to the top of Google, but they don’t have really a concept of how that works. And so getting to the top of Google is a four-step process. It requires, there’s four variables that will impact your overall Google score. So the first variable that will impact your Google score is the amount of content. So as an example, for this radio show, this show is typically a two-hour show, and so if you were going to transcribe the entire show, it would produce about 16 to 20,000 words of original, high-quality content. And so as a business coach, I ask business owners, hey, what are ways that you could add content to your website that would add value using existing documents, documentation, things you’ve already created. And a lot of times they don’t have any original text, but that’s what Google’s looking for. So what they have to do is commit to a weekly process. And that process could be doing a weekly podcast that they transcribe. It could be writing articles on their website every day. I mean, if you Google Tulsa Insurance today, Tulsa Insurance. Let’s go ahead and pull out the Google, pull out the Google of fun. All right, if you Google Tulsa Insurance, who comes up top? Well, I’m seeing the Tulsa Insurance guy. I’m showing that he comes up top in the organic search. Well, why? Well, because he has an incredible amount of content. I mean, this guy has committed to writing content on a very consistent and faithful basis. I don’t know how long he’s been writing content. He’s not a client of mine. I can say if you Google Tulsa Cookies, you can see a client of mine. That’s Barbie Cookies. She’s top in Google. If you can see a client we’ve worked with there. If you Google Tulsa Basketball Camps, you can see a client we’ve worked with. If you Google a lot of things in Tulsa, you’re going to find… If you Google, search Tulsa Mortgages, you’re going to find a client we’ve worked with that comes up top in the engines. But if you Google Tulsa Insurance, you’re going to find the Tulsa Insurance Guide. And this dude has over 289 pages of content. The second thing that impacts your… And by the way, you have to have at least a thousand words per page for it to count. So figure out your process. If you don’t know how to write content or you don’t even know where to start, just book a ticket to our in-person Thrive Time workshop. We’ll answer your questions in one of the sessions, and you can ask any questions you want after. We can show you examples. You can actually do a kind of a mini hands-on tutorial. We’ll teach you. I promise that you will leave empowered. Now the second variable that impacts your Google score is the number of reviews you have. So if you Google Thrive 15 and Jinx. If you Google that, there you can see reviews from people like you that have attended our actual in-person workshops. We have 134 people that have attended and wrote nice comments. We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of people come through, but we’ve had 134 people that have made the time to write a review about our business. The number of reviews that you have impacts your score fairly dramatically. So if you Google Tulsa men’s haircuts, that’s one of the companies I own, BAM! You’ll find Elephant in the Room near the top. And by the way, your first haircut at the Elephant in the Room is always just a dollar. So get in there men! What are you doing? Why have you not been to the Elephant in the Room men’s grooming lounge? Your first haircut is just a dollar. And it’s a paraffin hand dip. It’s a hot towel treatment. We have a beverage of choice for you. We’ve got the rustic, a barn decor. We’ve got the Edison bulbs. I don’t know why you haven’t been out there yet. I’ll tell you why you haven’t been out there yet, because we haven’t done a good enough of a job of marketing the business yet, because that’s the whole first phase of the business, is just marketing and branding, generating customers. When we come back, we’re going to teach you more about how to effectively market and brand your business. Stay tuned, Thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the heavily Dayquil inspired version of the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark. I am your business coach, the former United States Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year and the father of five human kids. This past weekend, my wife and I, we celebrated our 16th anniversary. That means that we’ve been together. I’ve been tricking the same woman into staying married to me for 16 years. So as we’re talking about the four phases of a business and the four phases you need to really grow a business, the first phase, right, the first phase we’ve been talking about is that early phase where you focus on the branding and how to acquire customers. Let me tell you what, branding according to Elon Musk, branding is just perception and a perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product. I must be a branding expert if I’ve been able to trick my incredible wife, Mrs. Vanessa Clark to staying married to me for 16 years. And if you go on Facebook and you look for Vanessa Clark or you find her on the internet, maybe you type in Now I See and Vanessa Clark, you can find her in her book. It’s truly a sign to my marketing skills. I mean, I do pride myself on being one of the most humble people on the radio, but I really want to just say to myself, good job, self. Good job with your marketing. Because there is just zero, it doesn’t even make sense that I was able to attract her and get my branding game up to a level that she would actually say yes to me some 16 years ago at Tarp Chapel in Broken Arrow. Now let’s assume, Thrivers, that you now have a system where you have great branding and you can acquire customers and you can operate at a profit. That’s what the first phase is all about. Branding, marketing, operating at a profit. Now we move on to phase two. This is that middle phase. And as a business coach, I know most business owners never move beyond phase one. Because according to Forbes, eight out of ten entrepreneurs fail. Eight out of ten entrepreneurs are failing. It doesn’t mean that they’re doing okay or just getting by. They are failing. They go out of business. Eight out of ten entrepreneurs. And that’s not good. And that’s what this show is all about. That’s what the Thrive 15 Business Coach Experience is all about. That’s why we’ve built our two-day interactive Thrive Time Business Coaching Workshops. If you go to thrivetimeshow.com, you can see them. The next one is coming up here soon. You definitely want to get your tickets because everybody who’s attended the workshop has told me, man, this was like a game changer for me. And we have a scholarship available for you. So if for some reason you can’t afford it, now you can. Go to thrivetimeshow.com, book your tickets, and we’ll make it happen. We will help you learn how to do the next, we’ll dive deep into this phase two. But today, because it’s a radio show, I can’t go super deep, but I’m going to go as deep as I can get onto phase two. So build your core and you want to escape the the self-employment Kind of a death trap here. So here’s an example. You’re really good at plumbing Let’s say so you’re a very good plumber people call you step one You have good branding good marketing people call you and they need plumbing. So now you are getting Customers you don’t want to stay there though. You don’t want to you know, be cleaning toilets the rest of your life There’s nothing wrong with cleaning toilets. I mean, I used to work at Applebee’s. I worked at Target. I worked at DirecTV. I’ve done every kind of job. I’ve done construction. You have to start somewhere. You can’t be too awesome to be willing to… you can’t have that ego to the level where you are not going to start and do what it takes to be successful. But also, you can’t have the mindset where you just are staying in that trap of really just creating your own job. So you’re self-employed. You have a job, but you’re self-employed, but you don’t own the business. The business owns you. So that phase two is where you begin to build systems so that other people can do the job. And the systems must be very, very detailed. So I’m just gonna go with the plumbing example. But if you’re a plumber, you’d want to make a checklist for how you leave every job site. I’ve worked with a lot of plumbers, helped them do this. You want to have a checklist for how you leave every job site. Very detailed. You know, this is what we did, this is how much it’s going to be, and then we check off the box that we did leave the job site clean, that we did collect payment from the customer, that we did show up at this time, we did leave at that time. But you’d want to have a job checklist, a job site checklist. And you’re thinking, what’s common sense? I don’t know why I need a checklist. I mean, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. Why do I need a checklist? I mean, what kind of person would need a checklist? Well, I will tell you, once you start hiring people, you’re going to find that the majority of people that you hire, they’re not going to be mentally engaged at the job. And so this is a thing that I think people don’t understand, okay? But there’s a thing called employee engagement and I’ll give you a second to Google if you want. It’s employee engagement and Gallup did research on this and what Gallup found is that the average employee is not engaged in work. Okay, so what does that mean? That means that the average employee is not thinking deeply on their job when they’re doing it. As an example, I went in to grab a coffee the other morning at a local convenience store. Not a quick trip. This actually happened, by the way. I go in and the guy’s got headphones on. He’s listening to headphones and at no point does he recognize that I am in fact there. So he just keeps on doing what he’s doing. He doesn’t stop and say hello. He doesn’t say, hey, can I help you? He just has headphones on and he’s probably cleaning up the coffee machine. In his defense, it’s like 3 a.m. It’s, you know, but it’s not the level of engagement you would find at Quick Trip. I mean, at Quick Trip, these people are on it. You walk in, the buzzer goes off, and they say, hey, welcome to Quick Trip, how can I help you? I mean, they’re on it, but the average employee’s not engaged. So as you’re building these systems, this phase two, what you wanna do is you wanna build the systems so that your business is entirely dependent upon systems and not people. Okay, so one is you want to document everything. The second aspect of this is after you document everything, you want to make sure that the presentation layer is solid. So you need to have a training video for almost everything, or you want to have some sort of visual graphic for everything. You want to make it easy for anybody that you hire to know what to do quickly. You don’t want it to be a thing where the new person you just hired has to search around everywhere to try to find the information they need to do their job well. You really, really want to document everything and you want to make sure, point number two, that the presentation is very solid. If you don’t do this though, if every time you hire somebody, they are unable to do the job well and you decide, you know what, if you want it done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. I see entrepreneurs all the time saying that. Well, if you want to have it done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. Because if you don’t do it, no one’s going to do it yourself, like you. So you’ve just got to do everything you’re going to do yourself. And if you don’t, your business is going to fail. If you believe that, if you buy into that concept that you must do everything, then you are never going to build time, freedom, and financial freedom. And a lot of times it’s just you don’t know where to start. You don’t even know how do I even begin making a repeatable process because for you so many things are common sense. For you so many things are just normal. This is what you do every day. Well, as a business coach, that’s all I do every day. I spend my time, and yes, I own my own companies, but I spend my entire day, even in my own businesses, I spend all my time working on the business and not in the business. So for Elephant in the Room, our men’s grooming lounge, I don’t cut hair, you know, but I help build the systems that allow our wonderfully talented stylists and grooming professionals to cut your hair in a way that generates great reviews. So I encourage you, though, I encourage you Thrive Nation, if you are in that level where you have the business coming in, you have some money coming in, you have some customers coming in, please begin scheduling time to work on your business and not just in your business. So when we come back, I’m going to talk about how you can find time to work on your business and not just in your business. Stay tuned to Thrivetimeshow.com. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. For anybody out there who’s been searching for a business coach, sort of a business Yoda, if you will, to help you grow your business. Well, I may not be your Yoda, but I am your Broda, and I am from Minnesota. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, sent here to help you get into a great financial position. Typically, I’m joined here on the Thrive Time Business Coach Show with Dr. Robert Zellner, but he is actually out today expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire. And as luck would have it, on the day that he is gone, I am just being smashed, just destroyed. Have you ever been just destroyed by allergies? I mean, where you wake up and you’re just, I don’t feel very good. I mean, that’s about where I’m at. And so what I decided to do is I decided I’m going to take so much DayQuil that I’m going to rebuke the negative waves from the, technically speaking, medically speaking, I’m rejecting the negative waves of the allergies by slamming copious amounts of Dayquil, and I feel creative. We’ll just leave it at that. You shouldn’t operate a motor vehicle when you have that much Dayquil, but you can do a radio show, and so here I am. And today what we’re talking about is why most small businesses don’t work, and really, at the end of the day, what you can do about it. And so we’re teaching you the four steps that you need to go through in order to create financial freedom in your own life. So phase number one is you must secure early clients. You got to get the clients and you’ve got to make a profit. How do you do it? We can teach you very in-depth at our next in-person workshop how to do this. But it really comes down to the branding. You’ve just got to nail down your branding right away. Your business cards, your logo, your website, everything has to be solid. Then you’ve got to figure out your marketing. You’ve got to come up with a turnkey, three-legged marketing stool to generate customers. When I say turnkey, it cannot be person-dependent. You can’t just have one person on your staff who is the unicorn. You know, a lot of people, they hire somebody and they just watch the person put on a laser show. Sales are coming in all the time. You’re like, man, what are they doing? The unicorn is generating sales and you don’t know how they’re doing it. You have no clue how they’re doing it. So you pull them aside one day, maybe you get curious one day and you say, Greg, how are you generating sales? And Greg says, you know, for me, sales are more like organic. You know, I just, I do it, go out there and then boom, next thing you know, I got a deal. Boom, I got another deal. I mean, I generate customers all day. I mean, some people have a restaurant and you see a manager who’s just very, very effective. The other day for my anniversary, we just celebrated our 16th anniversary. Vanessa Clark, if you’re listening, you are a great American. Thank you for marrying me. But we went to Russo’s. Russo’s is a restaurant there at 91st and Hill and their manager is the man. He’s the man. I mean he makes that place happen. He does such a good job. Very impressed with the manager over there at Russo’s. But the thing is if you took that manager out of that business, it’s a franchise. And so he executes the system well, but the idea of building a systems-dependent business would be that if you took him out of the business and I wouldn’t want to do it and I’m sure he wouldn’t want to do it either but that the business should still be able to run without him. And the best example I could think about is the New England Patriots. And I know that I talk about them all the time on the show and I know that I’m obsessed with them but I just want to give you an example of what I mean here. So the Patriots every year they do the same thing. What they do is they go out there and they trade away their draft picks for basically proven players. They want a guy in his third year who’s a proven player as opposed to rookies. And if they do get a rookie, they want rookies that are very intelligent and people they can plug into their system. To quote Bill Belichick, they’re looking for good football players. They’re not out there looking for tons of potential and who could be the best. They’re just looking for guys who are good, who can actually execute the system. So I’m going to read to you some of the recent transactions that they’ve picked up and you tell me if you know who these people are. So Connor McDermott, they just got this guy, they drafted him in the sixth round from UCLA. He’s 305 pounds, he’s 6 foot 8. Well he also, by the way Thrivers, he also was a Mr. Basketball, which means that he was the best high school basketball player in his state or one of the best high school basketball Players in his state and now it’s just scary the guy is 300 and was he 300 again 300 Emily pull it up here pulling up the stats here. Oh, there we go He’s 305 pounds and he’s six foot eight and they just drafted him to be an offensive lineman to protect Tom Brady and every year they keep doing it. They’ve drafted guys who were, they drafted a guy years ago who was a wrestler at the college level and they brought him in and he became an unbelievable offensive lineman. But the thing is they have a system and they know what they’re looking for. So every year, year after year, for 15 years in a row, the team just keeps on winning because they’ve built a system. They’ve built a culture. They’ve built a process for winning. And that’s what’s allowed them to be successful year in, year out. There’s been years where Brady was hurt. Matt Castle comes in, some random quarterback who actually had not played any downs. I don’t know if you know that, but Matt Castle had not played any downs in college. He never played a college down. He was on a college team, but he was the backup the entire time. He comes in and puts on a laser show. They still have a great year. And then last year, Tom Brady gets hurt again, they bring in Garoppolo. Who the heck is Garoppolo? Well, now Garoppolo is the guy that everybody is trying to get. All these NFL teams are going, oh, we’ve got to get Garoppolo. We’ve got to get this guy. He’s a top-level dude. Well, that’s what happened with Matt Castle. People are just salivating. The NFL general managers are just salivating over bringing in Matt Castle. It’s just unbelievable how the Patriots have had success year after year after year. And they do this because they have a system. And the system means that it’s dependent upon the system, not the individual players. If you do not do this, you are going to be stuck in the self-employment trap, where it’s you have a job, and you’re the only one who knows how to do the job. And so now you have to work all of the time at that job. You’ve created a job that no one else can do because you save your invoices over here and you have your checklist over there and 90% of it’s trapped in your head, right? You want to get it out of your head and put it on systems instead and if you’re stuck with if you don’t know how to do that if you don’t know how to work on the business or you can’t find time to do it, well let me tell you when Bill Belichick watches film. That guy’s the first guy at the stadium like every day. He’s notorious for being the last guy out, the first guy in. He watches the game film. He breaks it down like a science and that’s when he does it. I would say the good news though for you is you’re not running an NFL team, you’re running a business. And so once you build the systems, you get your time freedom back. And so I would recommend for every coaching client I work with, every single business coach client I work with, I tell them this and I’m going to tell you the same thing. You’ve got to block out time to do this. So for me, I find between 3 a.m. and 9 a.m. is an unbelievably great time on a weekend to get ahead and to work on the business. Because my kids aren’t up yet, my wife doesn’t miss me at that point. It’s a move. It’s a move. This past weekend, we were doing some major, major search engine updates there at the thrive15.com world headquarters as we’re putting out copious amounts of business coach content and we got there at 1 a.m. We, there was a team of Robert and Eric and Devin and myself and John and Steve Currington even showed up there. We were there from 1 a.m. until noon. Well, guess what? No one misses us at 1 a.m. I mean, we’re up early, yeah, we miss some sleep, but we got it done. And so if you want to escape the self-employment trap where if you get sick at all, I mean, if you get sick at all, everything is going to crash. I mean, if you’re gone for a weekend, if you can’t go on a vacation because you’re the only one who knows how to do anything, you’re worried that if you get sick, no one can do the job. If you, if God forbid, if one employee quits, your whole business falls apart because only one person on your team knows how to do sales. If one lady stops working, one guy starts working, now no one knows where the customer files are. If one cabinet installer puts in his two week notice, now you can’t deliver the product. If that’s you, we need to move beyond that. We don’t want to be self-employed and be trapped there. We want to build a system. We want to be the owner of our business. We don’t want our business to own us. And so the two action items I would encourage you to take is, one, go to Thrivetimeshow.com and schedule your free assessment. During the assessment, we’re going to help you figure out these biggest limiting factors and show you where to start and show you the proven process to success. That’s what a business coach does. And step number two, I would encourage you to go to Thrivetimeshow.com and book your tickets for your next in-person workshop. It’s so easy to build a scalable business if you know how to attract customers and sell things at a profit. It’s so easy. We can help you do it. I promise that you can do it. Now phase three, this is a great place to be and this is where the business is entirely reliant upon systems and you’ve begun to establish a core management team. People that have your values, your philosophies, and they can execute the system. My friend, you have what it takes to start a successful company or to grow one. But many of you have been waiting for a sign, maybe even a bell. Well, if that’s you, you just heard it. This is your day. Google this. Check it out. Psalms 118.24. This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. You have what it takes. You have the air in your lungs to get it done. And now it is on you, it’s incumbent on you to take the action. I encourage you to be a doer and not an intender and to start that business. Because once you have time freedom and financial freedom, everything changes. You get to be the person you’ve always wanted to be. You get to do the things you wanted to do. You get to go to Atwoods for two hours and talk to people about chickens. Raising chickens. Not that I’ve ever done that. You can burn pinion wood all day. Your number one to-do list item for the day could be burning pinion. That could be it. Stay tuned. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Burn that pinion. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Today we are talking about the specific four steps that you need to go through. We were talking about the four step path to financial freedom. Really having that empire state of mind needed to grow beyond just creating a job. Because one, it feels so rewarding when you create your own business. When you have this idea, when you see a niche, when you see a need. I remember I met a lady years ago, she has a company called Sweet Bottom Cookies. And yes, this story does tie into a Patriots story, but I like the story and I like the Patriots, so I’m going to tell it to you now. So what happened is, I ran into her at a speaking event when I was in South Carolina. I was in Charleston, South Carolina, and her name was Michelle Lewis. And so if you get a chance to Google search Sweet Bottom Cookies and Michelle Lewis, check that out. And your humble business coach, Clay Clark, you can find the story. It was covered in the Moltier News, by the way, M-O-U-L-T-I-E-R, Moltier News. And so she had this vision, she had this idea that she wanted to grow her cookie company, her cookie empire. She had this empire state of mind. She knew that she wanted to do this. And so at the end of the conference, I was invited to speak by the local chamber of commerce. She invited me to kind of connect with her during the lunch time. Or no, no, I’m sorry. She asked my wife a question or somehow my wife connected with her. The next thing you know, my wife invited her to lunch. So we’re having lunch, my wife and I and this lady, Michelle. Well, Michelle has a great product. All right. So she has to choose at phase one at this point, she had a great product. And phase one is where you have a great product, but you need to help, you need to get the branding tightened up and you need to get the selling going. You need to get the selling systems. And so I sat down with her and discovered she was at phase one. We talked to her a lot about branding and the action steps she needed to take. And to her credit, she’d already nailed down a lot of the aspects of branding. She just needs some refinement. And then the next step is she began to execute her marketing systems. And she used the Dream 100, she used internet marketing. Well anyway, long story short, I’m at a Patriots game to watch the New England Patriots play versus the Washington Redskins. And this is for my birthday a couple years back. My wife bought me tickets. So we’re in New England to watch the Redskins play versus Tom Brady. And it was epic, it was awesome, and I was loving it. Because the Patriots fans are interesting people in that they have merged their patriotism and their love for America with their love of their football team. So they almost view it, the fans there typically almost view it as though you are not an American if you don’t recognize the Patriots as America’s team, because their team is in fact named after our country it’s a patriotic team the team is called the patriots at the game i mean when the offense on the redskins gets out there it’s just intense i mean the crowd’s just yelling they yell such encouraging things as come on redskins you guys freaking out terrible you guys are gonna lose unbelievable boo! and i’m talking about not just like a little bit of boo but like a massive boo. Like boo! Boo! It’s almost like our defense was being carried by the power of those boos. They’re tremendous boos. It was like the wind was at our backs. All the players needed to do was just go on to the field, and the boos, when they’re booing the other team, were so loud that our team had that momentum. It was unbelievable. Well, anyway, we go to the game, and things are going well. Well, one guy on the team gets hurt. Dion Lewis got hurt during that game. He’s a really fast running back who can elude tacklers and he’s yet another member of the Belichick team, the make and model of a patriot because they built this, they built a system, by the way, the Patriots have built a system where every year there’s new players, the roster changes quite a bit every year, but yet they just keep on winning. You know, it’s just new, you don’t even know who the players are every year. Every year it’s just random players and all they do is go after high character people that are coachable, they put them on the field and they win. So long story short, Deion Lewis gets hurt and I’m saying, man, I am thirsty. I would like to go get a beverage. So I go upstairs. Vanessa got me great seats. We’re sitting right there, I mean right near the field. It was awesome. About the 50 yard line, maybe 45 yard line. So I go up to get my beverage and I get in line and this line is epic because it’s at a Patriots game and it’s just there’s you know 80,000 people or whatever I think Gillette Stadium hosts holds 60,000 people let me see here so Gillette the Gillette Stadium by the way sits just outside outside of Boston in a town called Foxboro and then so it’s not actually in in Boston like a lot of people think it is so you have to drive. It’s almost like you’re driving out to Bixby from Oklahoma City to watch a game It’s almost like there’s a big city like Oklahoma City or Tulsa and you have to drive out to a city like Bixby or maybe Leonard To go see the team because they play outside. They’re based in that rural community called Foxboro. Yeah, so there’s sixty six thousand eight hundred Twenty-nine people is the capacity so I go up there to the concession stand, and this was, I met Michelle I think in 2013, and as a business coach I’ve coached so many businesses all over the world. I mean that’s what I do. You know, you say, what are you going to do tomorrow, business coach? What are you going to do the next day, business coach? I mean, that’s what I do, right? That’s all I do. So I go up there and I go to order a beverage, and guess whose cookies are available to purchase at Gillette Stadium and many other stadiums all around the world. Oh, it’s Sweet Bottom Cookies. That’s Michelle Lewis right there. So it was exciting. I took a picture of it, saved it for the archives. I think my wife put it up on Facebook or I put it up on Facebook. We celebrated it. We were so pumped up for her. I called her and things are going great. So if you’re in that first phase where you are just struggling to get clients, really you need to get out to our next in-person Thrive Time workshop and we’re going to help you with your branding and you’ve got to focus on getting those initial sales and generating those customers. Now the next step though is where you now want to build those systems so that the company is built based upon systems and you can avoid that self-employment trap. When I say systems, I’m talking about pre-written emails, call scripts, checklists. I’m talking about detailed operations manuals, handbooks, the whole deal. And we have a big checklist that we can give you at our next in-person workshop at Thrivetimeshow.com. Get your tickets, tickets, get your tickets. And then the next level, phase three, is this is where you want to become system reliant and you want to establish your core management team. So if you go up to Thrive15.com or you go to Thrivetimeshow.com and you kind of check out our team, you’ll notice that we are just like the Patriots. We have some people that come, some people that go, people that leave, but at the end of the day, I’m not going anywhere, right? And the business is built upon the systems. And then we have great people that we hire to run and manage those systems. And so one of our key players, John, he executes these systems on a daily basis because he has the same values that I do. He believes that it’s a problem if something doesn’t start exactly on time. He is obsessed with naming files correctly. He is irritated with casualness. He wants excellence. And why does he want excellence? Either he has OCD or he’s just obsessed with coaching businesses to be successful, and he wants our business to be successful. So he’s a guy where as a business coach I don’t have to coach him about the details of file nomenclature, of accuracy, of saving. He is a guy who fits the make and model of a Clay Clark teammate. Thus, he’s a guy who fits the squad, who fits the make and model we’re looking for. And now when I’m out of town I can delegate the systems to him and things don’t fall apart. And again that’s because we are systems reliant and we’ve established a core management team. So if you’re struggling to establish a core management team, what you need to do is you need to begin this process called the group interview. Now the group interview is the system that I came up with years ago. It works great. Dr. Z loves the group interview. It’s a move because what happens is in every business you’re looking for talented people and there’s a lot of people out there that are not the right fit and the only way you can figure out who is the right fit and who’s not the right fit is by meeting these people. So what you do is you want to do a weekly job post on Craigslist. I’ll go ahead and wait you can write this down. Craigslist, Indeed, and Monster.com. Every week, every week. So every week you post the job. And when you post the job, a certain number of candidates are going to respond to the job post. However, according to the US Chamber and the CBS News story that you can read, 75% of employees steal at work, and over 6 out of 10 people lie on their resume. So you don’t want to waste your time, spending all of your time and energy reading every single resume. What you want to do is you want to respond with that. Hey, I like your resume. I’d like to set up a time to meet with you this Tuesday at five. And you like the resume because you received the resume. Don’t read the resume. Do not read the resume. Do not read the resume. And then when you what happens is when you set up the group interview, the people who are the geniuses will show up on time. And so the last two weeks, I’m just giving you examples. We’ve been doing group interviews for 18 years, but the last two weeks we did a group interview and one crop came to mind. I’m thinking, look, this would be a great crop. Somebody told me we had some ORU students coming, some TU graduates coming. I think we had a total of 25 people, no, 23 people who had RSVP’d and said they were going to come to the interview at 5 o’clock at the Thrive15.com world headquarters. And of those 23 people, how many would you guess that actually showed up? Don’t be cynical and super negative, but how many do you speculate showed up for a job interview on time? And by the way, is that important to you as an owner if people show up on time or not? I don’t know. Maybe you are the most casual man in the world and you have some business model that’s going to work on island time and Maybe you have a bar in a Caribbean town where being on time doesn’t matter too much But for America on the continental contiguous United States typically being on time being prompt is a valued Attribute in virtue so how many of these 23 do you speculate showed up on time? Yeses and it guesses okay three Any guesses? Any guesses? Okay, three. Three! Three people showed up on time for the interviews. Of these three people, how many of them do you think were attentive, that actually paid attention and had the skills that we were looking for for that particular job? Now they stated on their resume that they had the skills. Oh, yes. But how many of them actually paid attention during the interview and actually could do what they said they could do on the resume. Oh, one! One! Oh, one! I remember last year, I say last year a lot, but it really was two years ago. I’m 36, I’m getting just old enough where everything seems like it was last year, but it was really two years ago. We had a master’s degree in computer science from a major, major school in Pennsylvania. I think it was Penn State. He had a degree in advanced computer science and he had like a master’s and he was working on, you know, just all these different, I mean, just every kind of degree you could have. Every kind of major and minor and all that. He sends in his resume and so we had a great phone interview with the guy. So we decided we’re going to fly him out to Tulsa to see if he can actually do what he says that he can do. You know, we’re going to see if he actually can in fact code because he says he wants to be a coder for us and one of the key things you have to do if you’re a coder at Thrive15.com is you have to be able to code. We brought him out and he couldn’t code. The guy could not code. The one thing he couldn’t do was code. He could fly here, oh yes. He could talk on the phone, oh yes. He could write a resume that was fictitious, but he could not code. And why is that? Because most people learn by doing and not just by memorization. And the whole school system is predicated on memorization. Look, it’s Billy. He can memorize everything. Let’s give him an A. Look, here comes Carl. He struggles to memorize. Let’s give him a C. But in the world of entrepreneurship, in the real world workplace, it’s about what you can do, not based on what you say you can do. Now we come back, we’re going to talk about how you assimilate new people onto your team and how you begin to prune the tree and develop a world-class management team and our quest to help you become very successful and to potentially become a billionaire. I want to be a billionaire. Alright Thrive Nation, welcome back into your daily conversation. It is the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark and I’m heavily influenced by DayQuil today. You know I asked the guys on my team, I woke up this morning feeling like the allergies, the allergy plague had taken over my cranium. You know when you have such a the sinus congestion where if you look down or you begin to bend over to pick something over, to pick something up, the pain that begins to rush to the middle of your head is epic. There’s just that pain between the eyes that makes the man cry. It’s unbelievable and so I realize that you the listener, need to have a quality broadcast today. And I also realized that Dr. Robert Zellner is geographically not with us here today because he’s out expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire. So I looked to the left, I looked to the right, and I realized that as your business coach, I needed to do the only thing that I could do, and that is to take as much day quill as humanly possible. So you can’t, you shouldn’t operate a motor vehicle when you’ve had this much day quill You shouldn’t feed this much day quill to a goat because you would kill it But if I take the day quill it just increases my creativity by 2% and here I am with you The Raging Bull of entrepreneurship no amount of day quill can hold me down and I am here and today we are talking about the four steps to building a successful Business the four phases of building a successful business. That first phase, oh I hate the first phase. Some of you like the first phase, but I hate the first phase. The first phase is branding, marketing, trying to generate customers. I hate it when you see somebody out there trying to generate customers and they’ve been doing it for like a decade and they haven’t had any success yet. I hate that part. I love it when we help them have success, but I hate that when you meet somebody, perhaps that’s you, you’ve been working for years on your new idea. You have a great tasting product and all you want to do is sell it so you can make copious amounts of money and you just are struggling. If that’s you, get over to a Thrivetime workshop. It’s Thrivetimeshow.com. It’s a game-changing event. If you go on Google and read the reviews, don’t even listen to what I’m saying. Read the reviews. I’m trying to sell you something. Read the reviews. Come on. Read the reviews. Check it out. It’s the Thrive Time Show workshops. It’s going to change the game for you if you struggle to sell. Step two, you’ve got to build your core systems. Once you start selling something, you’ve got to build the systems that are going to allow other people to do the job. Because if you don’t do that, you’re always going to be stuck. And if you get in that self-employment trap where you’re always stuck, you can’t go on vacations, you can’t go on holidays, and no matter how much money that you have, you’re not going to be able to have time freedom. And so I’m going to cue up a song for you in just a minute. I played a little bit of a clip of it earlier, but it’s called Billionaire by Bruno Mars. And Bruno Mars is a man that I, as a business coach, I study success stories. And he’s a guy who grew up homeless. If you don’t know that, Bruno Mars actually grew up homeless. And he has gone on to become a multimillionaire and a mega star. He’s battled with his own demons and who hasn’t? But Bruno Mars is a guy who wrote a song called Billionaire. I think if you listen to the song Billionaire, I think we all say, oh, I’d love to be a billionaire. But I would ask you today, why? Why would you want to become a billionaire? I mean, what would be, if you had all the money in the world and you had all the time freedom in the world, what would you do with it? Wait a minute, wait a minute. See, I screwed up that question because I just said to you, if you had all the money in the world and all the time in the world, see a lot of people don’t realize, once you have all the money in the world, if you don’t have systems in place, then you’re not going to have all the time in the world to even enjoy it. So even after you’ve earned the money, you won’t have the time needed to do it. Let me ask you this. Is it possible that Exceptionally good business owners know something that you don’t know Is it possible that? People who have been able to build big brands that are very successful That are growing that they have multiple locations. They have businesses that are thriving Is it possible that people who are growing a successful company and who now have created time freedom, that these people maybe know something that you don’t know. Because if that is true, and it’s not just luck in the caste system and your bloodline, if we really do believe that America is the world of opportunity and you truly have a choice as to where you’re going to go with your life and what you’re going to do and that you can determine the level of success that you’re going to have. If you truly do believe that, then you need to think deeply. So I’m going to cue up this song, Billionaire, by Bruno Mars. I’d like you to write down all of the things that you would be doing if you had all the financial freedom and the time freedom. I wanna be a billionaire so freakin’ bad. Why would you want to do that? Buy all of the things I never had. Would you want to buy a bunch of things if you had all the money? I want to be on the cover of Forbes magazine. Do you want to do that? Smiling next to Oprah and the Queen. Do you want to hang out with Oprah? Is that what you want? Oh, every time I close my eyes. What would you do if you had all the money you needed? I’d see my name in shiny lights. Would you want your name in lights? But why would you want to become a billionaire? I mean the question I have for you is, is that if you earned a lot of money, because in America by default if you ask somebody what do you want to do, most people that I’ve met say I want to become successful. And I think that’s a noble goal. I’m not a communist. I’m glad you want to become successful. But why? I mean, why would you actually want to become successful? And what does successful look like? Well, to me, success means you have time freedom and financial freedom. That means that you have the time freedom to enjoy the money you’ve earned, right? Because the money is just a unit of time. You could use the money to pay someone to mow the lawn for you. You could use the money to pay someone to run the business for you. You could use the money to do a lot of things so that you could focus on doing what you want to do. So the idea of success without a focus on achieving both time freedom and financial freedom to me makes zero sense. I don’t understand why someone would just want to have financial success and not have time freedom. So I’m going to walk you through Bruno Mars’ song and what he’s talking about, okay? So he says, I want to be on the cover of Forbes magazine. Now I’ve never been on Forbes magazine. Thrive 15 has been featured in Forbes. And if you Google Thrive 15 Forbes, you’ll learn more about our business coach program right there on Forbes. It’s been in Forbes twice actually. I’ve been in Fast Company, I’ve been featured in Bloomberg. Well, when you go to these media interviews, one, for Bloomberg, they made me wear a bunch of makeup. They had makeup on my face. I don’t ever, I mean, people who meet me, I don’t think anybody who’s ever met me has thought, wow, that guy looks like he’s wearing makeup. I mean, I’m a man-bear pig. I don’t wear makeup. But Bloomberg makes you wear makeup. Then you have to go to New York City. Then you’re not allowed to take photos with your kids inside Bloomberg for security reasons and just on and on. I don’t know if you want to be in the cover of a magazine. Maybe you do, right? And then you talk about you want to smile next to Oprah and the Queen. I mean, maybe, maybe you want to hang out with the rich and famous or maybe you just want to spend more time with your kids. You know, maybe you just want to spend more time with your wife. You know, maybe you have a limited time on the planet Earth and you do. And maybe what you want to do is just spend more time with the people that you care about pursuing the lifestyle that you want to live. Maybe you want to become a lifestyle entrepreneur. And if that’s what you’re looking for, if you’re looking to create both time freedom and financial freedom, that’s what we’re talking about. And that’s why this third level is so important. You have to surround yourself with a team of people who could become your core management team. If you don’t want to do that? You’re gonna end up making a lot of money and having no financial freedom stay tuned. It’s the thrive time show on your radio Everybody know welcome back to the thrive time show Started from the bottom now we here Started from the bottom now we here Started from the bottom now we here Started from the bottom and you have still found yourself at the bottom, or maybe you started at the bottom but you’ve worked your way to the top but you now feel like it’s the bottom, this is the show for you. And this next phase we’re talking today, we’re talking about the empire state of mind, the four-step path to financial freedom. Step one, you’ve got to get that branding, you’ve got to get that selling, those selling systems, you’ve got to learn to sell something at a profit. Step two, you’ve got to build your core systems. You do not want to get locked into that self-employment trap. You want to build systems so that everything works off of pre-written checklists, scripts, everything is documented. I’m talking about proformas, detailed, if you want to know how to do it, just get out to an in-person workshop, Thrivetimeshow.com, and we’ll teach you how to do it. Step three though is you have to establish a solid management team and this means that you need to be ruthless with firing idiots. You cannot have people in your system on your team who do not have the mental capacity and or the aspirational capacity to eventually someday become a manager. Let me repeat you cannot have people on your team who do not have the mental capacity and or the aspirational capacity to want to someday take over your team. Because if you spend all of your time mentoring these people, training these people, coaching these people, and they’re not willing to do what’s needed to do to grow the company, they’re not willing to take over your position someday, they’re not willing to execute your proven systems, then you are going to be miserable. And let me tell you an example from my own life of where this happened. I built DJ Connection years ago and there were some, we built it to be very large, very successful. We’re doing thousands of weddings per year. And the one thing that I screwed up on, I was luckily able to fix it eventually, was that I had a team of people that I could not stand. I just could not stand being around them. I don’t like them now, didn’t like them then, and there was a group of people, I liked a lot of people. I mean, I liked Josh Smith, I thought Josh Smith was great. I liked Andy Matheran. I mean, I had some really great guys, but there were some people that irritated the heck out of me. So let me give you an example. We had one guy who worked in our business who pretended to be a youth pastor. He pretended to be a youth pastor. So he actually worked at my office and in the office, this is about 10 or 15 years ago, but he’s working at my office. And he’s doing a good job at the office, but he tells society, he tells people that he is a youth pastor, he’s a volunteer youth pastor. So at night, you know, Wednesday nights he’s going off to youth group, leading the youth group, leading the music, that kind of thing. But in reality he was leaving every single day during the work day to go visit strip clubs during the lunch hour. So he would go to these houses of ill repute right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma during the work day and he would go out and do this during the work day, then come home, or then come back to the office, keep working, and then he would go to youth group and lead youth group. And I’m just going, I didn’t know that he was doing this. And so one day he left a receipt on his desk and I saw it and I’m going, are you kidding me? So I confront the guy privately about it. I said, hey, do you go such and such? Do you go to this location? Do you go to this business? And he says, hey, it’s none of your business. And that’s an invasion of privacy. And so all of a sudden I felt like I was somehow in the wrong for holding him accountable. Then we had another employee. This is all at the same time, another employee who was heavily involved in a local ministry and he is just unbelievable. So he says, I’m going to go out to, I met this girl online and I’m going to go out to meet her in Arizona. And I’m going to go meet her and we’ve been dating online for about six months and I want to meet her. I think she’d be a great person. It’s a great, great person to meet. And he says all this stuff. Well then one day he’s unloading his equipment after a DJ show and he’s explaining to the guys how he Told the girl that he loved her so that she would engage in Parallel activity with him. He said he goes. Yeah, I told her that I loved her, you know, so that we could sleep together He he was openly saying this so he’s saying that then we have another guy who is pretending to be a youth minister but is working at a strip club. And then we have another guy, another guy who is drunk as a skunk all day and during the work day. But, but, but we’re selling a lot of things. We’re making a lot of money. And so it was kind of one by one I saw these secrets and I was like, you know, what should I do? So as it related to driving and drinking, I pulled the guy aside. I said, Hey, you know, you can’t drink and drive to shows. I’m going to make sure you have not had any beverages. You cannot drink at the office. You cannot drink on the way to the office. You cannot drink on the way home. I will be legally responsible. I need you to get it together.” Well, then I found another guy who had like six kids from five different mothers all out of wedlock. Unbelievable! And he’s one of our sales guys. So I have a team of four guys who, this is their thing. Then we have another guy who smokes so much pot and he’s constantly basically living with different women, but he’s a volunteer at this church. So I’ve got these five different knuckleheads working in my office. And there’s a team of, you know, 40 guys, 50 guys, but I hated those people. And so every day that I came to work, it was like a penalty almost. I didn’t want to come to my own office. I thought, man, this is just terrible. And so I actually started to resent my own success. I mean, yes, I had financial freedom, but I didn’t have a lot of time, time, freedom. And you see it with celebrities all the time. The celebrity will achieve a massive amount of financial success, but they don’t have any success in their life. They don’t have any sincere relationships. They don’t get to enjoy their financial freedom with time freedom. They don’t get to choose the F6 life they want to live. You might be saying, well what’s the F6 life? They don’t get to pursue their faith. They don’t get time with the family they want to spend time with. They don’t get the time to invest in the relationships, the friendships. That’s F number three, friendships. They don’t get a chance to focus on their fitness. They don’t get a chance to focus on having any fun. And they don’t get a chance to focus on their finances. And so what happens is is that they are living a life that they don’t want quickly. They’re going fast, making fast money, spending that fast money. And I realized in about 2006, 2007, that I had built a very successful business, but I didn’t have anybody who worked there that had the mental capacity or the aspirational capacity to someday take over the business, nor did they have the values that I wanted. And that’s why when I met Jason Bailey, I was so excited about him because he had the values that I had and he wanted to someday take over the business. So if you do not establish a team, you’re going to end up depressed, although you’re going to end up making a lot of money financially. And there is a song that was written this past year that came out by an artist who I’ve actually met by the name of Mike Posner. And as a business coach, it’s kind of fun because I get a chance to meet celebrities from time to time and different people. Well, Mike Posner wrote a song called Cooler Than Me back in the day, and then he did, he kind of disappeared, and he became depressed, and he basically kind of musically was trying to find his voice, trying to figure out what he was going to do with his career. His record label decided not to put out his album, or he decided not to release it because he didn’t like the way it was going. Long story short, he began kind of drifting around and he wrote a song recently called Abiza. It’s called Took a Pill on Abiza. And that song expresses how he emotionally felt at the top of his business, of his music career, when he was actually hitting the bottom of his emotional life. So he felt the least satisfied at the time when society would think that he should be the most satisfied. So when we come back, we’re going to break down the lyrics to this song, Took a Pill and a Beezer, and I think it will really resonate with any of the entrepreneurs out there that are making a lot of money but are not enjoying their current lifestyle because you haven’t built a core management team. Stay tuned. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SVA Entrepreneur of the Year. I am heavily influenced by DayQuil today. I woke up with some serious sinus, unbelievable allergy-ness. So I am pumped up on the DayQuil, but I am super duper maximum extra strength pumped up about you because this is your year for financial abundance you can do it I know you can do it my mind is not nearly as sound as yours I don’t I don’t have a a discernible skill I’m not very good at baking cookies I’m not great at cutting hair. I’m not a skilled optometrist. I’m not good at maintaining vehicles. I’m not a skilled photographer. I’m not a videographer. But I have been very successful as an entrepreneur. I was the Entrepreneur of the Year for the state of Oklahoma. I’ve started, you know, helped start companies like Epic Photography, Elephant in the Room, Men’s Grooming Lounge. Dr. Zellner’s built his big auto auction. He’s built Dr. Robert Zellner and Associates, A to Z Medical. I mean, I go on and on listing off the businesses that he’s been able to build and I’ve been able to build. And I just say that because if we can do it, I know that you have the mental capacity and the tenacity needed to become successful. But if you do that, once you learn how to make money, we need to ask ourself, what is the purpose? Like, what is the quest? Why are we trying to earn money? We’re not just trying to earn financial freedom, are we? I mean, are we? Is that what we’re trying to do? No, no, no. We’re trying to build financial freedom and what? Time freedom. That’s right. We’re trying to build financial freedom and time freedom. Because once you have the financial freedom and the time freedom to enjoy your finances, then you can have, from my experience, what I call the F6 life, where you get to dictate when and where you spend time with your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship and your fun. And it can all be achieved if you get that business, that foundational business success checked off the list as soon as possible. So if you’re just tuning in, the four segments, the four steps in the path to financial freedom we’ve covered today is one, that in the early stage it’s all about getting your branding right, getting your sales. You’ve got to get your branding and your sales and you want to be profitably selling things. That’s step one. Step two, you want to build those core systems, those checklists and processes that make your business dependent upon systems and not individual people. Step three is you absolutely have to build a core management team. And before the break I was telling you, with DJ Connection I had surrounded myself with a bunch of people that could sell well, that could deliver great entertainment, but I hated these people. There were some great DJs we had. We had Andy Mathren was a great DJ, Jason Bailey was a great guy, Eric Herrmann was a great guy, but there was a lot of those people I freaking hated them. I hated what they stood for. I hated the strip clubs they went to. I hated them oversleeping. I hated their lack of ethics. We had a guy working for us doing sales that was volunteering as a youth pastor who then ended up We discovered that he Went to strip clubs every day for lunch and somehow he wanted me to feel bad and accused me of invading his privacy When I brought it to his attention that that was not the level of Integrity and the kind of person I wanted working in my office I mean we had some people we had just screwed up people working in my office But we were producing a lot of profits. Now with the businesses I have, I only surround myself with people that I want to work with. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, the shoe company based in Las Vegas, he has said repeatedly you should fire people that you don’t like. I would argue you definitely should fire people that you don’t like and people that don’t have your core values. People that don’t, get them out of your office. Otherwise you’re going to get to the top and you’re going to be depressed at the top. You’re going to go from the bottom to the top and when you get to the top, you won’t even like it up there. And so an artist that I got a chance to meet years ago, named Mike Posner, went through this process where he actually built a big successful music career. He wrote a song that came out that was on the radio that I think a lot of people know called Cooler Than Me. You know, and then after he wrote the song Cooler Than Me, he started writing songs for Justin Bieber. He wrote the song called Boyfriend for Justin Bieber. He’s doing a song with Lil Wayne. He’s having a lot of success, but he just felt miserable. And so he wrote this song called Took A Pill and a Visa. And I want to play it for you, and I want to kind of break it down with you. And I want you to take some notes on it, because I want to make sure that you don’t end up where he ended up, finding himself at the top but feeling alone and really at the bottom emotionally. He took drugs to fit in with a DJ named Avicii. Insert bad word. He felt bad when he got sober. He moved to Los Angeles. I’m a real big baller cause I made a million dollars and I spend it on girls and shoes. But you don’t want to be high like me. Never really know a ride like me. You don’t want to end up like him. You don’t want to step off that roller coaster and be all alone. You don’t want to build a business you don’t like. You don’t want to ride the bus like this. Never know who to trust like this. You’re under my idiot you can’t trust. He knows. It’s a sad song. I know our sad souls, sad souls. And that is exactly where I found myself in a cop when I built DJ Connection. I found myself working in an environment where I was surrounded by morons. And then I realized that this next level, step four, this next phase, the ability to sell the business, to scale the business, or to own it passively was never going to be possible if I didn’t fire idiots. And if you’re listening right now and you’re not an idiot, then this is not about you, right? But if you are listening right now and you are an idiot and you’re offended, you’re an idiot apologist, and you feel like that the workplace should be a church in which you give everyone unconditional love and you always forgive them and you never fire anybody and you have no standards, then one, you’re arguing with Steve Jobs. I mean, Steve Jobs has said that most people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. I encourage you to Google that quote there. Steve Jobs says most people think about life and they think about business. Most people think that by virtue of being born, somebody deserves a job. Not true. So the unemployment rate, we always talk about the unemployment rate is, oh, the unemployment rate, you know, is 4.7%. Let me ask you this. Out of the 100 people that you know, what percentage of them would you hire? Of the people that you know. Have you ever been to Walmart at midnight? Have you ever been to Waffle House by the casino after midnight? Why are you there? Have you ever done this before? I was a DJ, so I’ve been to all these places. Have you ever been to insert the place, any public gathering? I mean, there’s certain people that don’t deserve a job because of the choices that they make on a daily basis. There are people out there, I hate to say it, actually I don’t hate to say it, I’m glad I’m saying it, there’s people out there who are idiots, ignoramuses, and they will suck your joy. We had somebody in my office the other day, you tell me Thrivers, how you handle the ethics of this. This is a guy that we punted there. In my office I have a picture of Jesus and I have an American flag, right? I have an American flag posted and a picture of Jesus on the wall. I have a lot of other decor, a lot of other pageantry, a lot of other accoutrements that surround myself and the Thrive15 experience, but he made a comment that he was offended by the picture of Jesus and the American flag. He said that that offended him. That was very offensive. I had another employee years ago who I’m having a Christmas party and he’s just, oh, he’s offended. Oh, oh, well, how come you can’t go to a holiday party? Because it’s not a holiday party for me. It is Christ-must. It’s Christ to the max. That’s what it’s all about for me. If it’s not for you, that’s okay. Then go out there and open your own business called Starbucks, where they celebrate the holidays, right? I mean, think about this example. Every single day, every single day, the founder of Hobby Lobby, David Green, was fined every day. Every day. You know that he was fined every day. And why was he fined every day? He was fined every day because he refused to abide by the new government mandated laws that said that his company, Hobby Lobby, needed to pay for the abortion of babies. He didn’t think it was right. And so he said no every single day. He paid $1.3 million in fines every day. But he did it because he built Hobby Lobby not to serve the country, not to serve everybody else, but to serve God. It was his business. It’s his vision now on the other end of the spectrum Howard Schultz the guy who’s Founded you know Starbucks. He actually didn’t found it He met these guys who sold coffee grinders, and he encouraged them to open up locations They wouldn’t do it, so he did it and basically assumed the leadership role, but long story short He’s an extremely left liberal and everything that he does stands for a the advancement of the progressive movement I’m just asking you today. What is the point of your business? I want to help you get there. Dr. Zeller and I can teach you specifically how to do it at our next in-person Thrivetimeshow.com workshop. If you go to Thrivetimeshow.com you can learn specifically how to get the tickets for the next in-person workshop and we can teach you how to grow a business. I’ll leave you with this final question. Why? Figure out that why and then pursue it relentlessly. We’ll see you next time. Three, two, one, boom! JT, do you know what time it is? Um, 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Russia, baby! Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, but I’ve never had to do it. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, but I’ve never had the two-time Heisman Award winning Tim Tebow come present. And a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Hmm, well, they’re gonna have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Also, this is the first Thrive Time Show event that we’ve had, where we’re going to have a man who has built a $100 million net worth. Wow. He’ll be presenting. Now, we’ve had a couple of presenters that have had a billion dollar net worth in some real estate sort of things. Yeah. But this is the first time we’ve had a guy who’s built a service business, and he’s built over $100 million net worth in the service business. It’s the yacht driving, multi-state living guru of franchising. Peter Taunton will be in the house. This is the founder of Snap Fitness, the guy behind Nine Round Boxing. He’s gonna be here in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. JT, why should everybody wanna hear what Peter Taunton has to say? Oh, cause he’s incredible. He’s just a fountain of knowledge. He is awesome. He has inspired me listening to him talk. And not only that, he also has, he practices what he teaches. So he’s a real teacher. He’s not a fake teacher like business school teachers so you got to come learn from him. Also let me tell you this folks I don’t get this wrong because if I get it wrong someone’s gonna say you screwed that up buddy so Michael Levine this is Michael Levine he’s gonna be coming he said who’s Michael Levine I don’t get this wrong this is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestselling authors he’s represented, including pretty much everybody you know who’s been a super celebrity. This is Michael Levine, a good friend of mine. He’s going to come and talk to you about personal branding and the mindset needed to be super successful. The lineup will continue to grow. We have hit Christian reporting artist Colton Dixon in the house. Now people say, Colton Dixon’s in the house? Yes, Colton Dixon’s in the house. So if you like Top 40 Christian music, Colton Dixon’s going to be in the house performing. The lineup will continue to grow each and every day. We’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrive. Can 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 Yep, 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 Yeah, 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, when’s it going to be? June 27 and 28. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell Oklahoma. It’s Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. So when? June 27th and 28th. Who? You! You’re going to come! 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 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. James, did I tell you my good friend John Lee Dumas is also joining us at the in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop, that Tim Tebow, and that Michael Levine. Have I told you this? You have not told me that. He’s coming all the way from Puerto Rico. This is John Lee Dumas, the host of the chart-topping EOFire.com podcast. He’s absolutely a living legend. This guy started a podcast after wrapping up his service in the United States military, and he started recording this podcast daily in his home to the point where he started interviewing big-time folks like Gary Vaynerchuk, like Tony Robbins, and he just kept interviewing bigger and bigger names, putting up shows day after day, and now he is the legendary host of the EO Fire podcast, and he’s traveling all the way from Pluto, Rico, to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop. If you’re out there Two Day Interactive Business Workshop. If you’re out there today, folks, if you’ve ever wanted to grow a podcast, a broadcast, you want to improve your marketing, if you’ve ever wanted to improve your marketing, your branding, if you’ve ever wanted to increase your sales, you want to come to the Two Day Interactive June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop featuring Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, Jodly Dumas, and countless big time, super successful entrepreneurs. It’s going to be life changing. Get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com. James, what website is that? Thrivetimeshow.com James, one more time for the 40’s enthusiasts. Thrivetimeshow.com I’m not to be played with because it could get dangerous. See these people I ride with. This moment we are in. Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems, so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re gonna leave energized, motivated, but you’re also gonna leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, 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 built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money So if you’re out there today, and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop All you got to do is go to thrifttimeshow.com to request those tickets, and if you can’t afford $250 We have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York Octa non verba Watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa! Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And 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 as a mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend Eric Eric Trump But we’re also talking about money bricks and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour So clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing but I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald who is my age and I can say or cannot say Well 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 Thorne 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 Direct TV, and he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books, and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor, and I owe a lot of that to you, and I just wanted to take a moment to tell you, thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success and I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you thank you sir for changing my life. Well not only that Clay, 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 too, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changing a life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business, and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using, and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school. And I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow. The linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. So having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool. The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility, and basically create it just on our business side. What was your first impression of the conference? Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored. You’re waiting live the whole time. It’s not pushy. They don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively. He’s pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back, and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. The biggest takeaways are you want to take a step by step approach to your business. Whether it’s marketing, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use, to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence. That businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort and you’ve got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the road map out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do and he gave me the road map out step by step. We’ve set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allow me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want, they guarantee it will be answered. This conference motivates me and also gives me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things, they’re stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else can do it for you. I can see the marketing working. It’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. Everyone’s super fun, super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivates me. Your competition’s going to come eventually or try to pick up these tag teams. So you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. 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 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 want to thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. If you decide to not attend the Thrive Time workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The atmosphere of Clay’s office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door and it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business, bottom line. Love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing. I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. ♪♪♪ The most valuable thing that I’ve learned, marketing is key, marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business as well as recruiting new employees. Before, we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group interviews has completely eliminated that because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands-on how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing, and overall, just how to structure the business, how it works for me, and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business is real critical if I’m going to grow and change. Play really teaches you how to navigate through those things and not only find freedom, but find your purpose in your business and find the purpose for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real. Attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real.