Clay Clark | Entrepreneurship | Understanding Why Taking Certain Risks As An Entrepreneur Is Simply Not Worth It | Rule #1 for Personal Success, Don’t Lose Money | How Your Entrepreneurial Dreams Can Quickly Become a Nightmare

Audio Transcription

I’m going to try to get a better view of the lake. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zuckner. Two men, eight kids co-created by two different women, 13 multimillion dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We took lives, started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hoops, I break down the books. See, bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s the C and T up on your radio. And now, three, two, one, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom… If we are not intentional, it is so easy for our dream to become a job that we hate, and a task that we loathe, a chore that we can endure no more. I remember when I first had the dream of starting DJConnection.com out of my college dorm room at Oral Roberts University. I was so excited to start my own company to work for myself. In fact, I was willing to work at three different companies simultaneously to start that company. Target, Applebee’s and DirecTV. My wife worked at Office Depot and Earl Roberts University. We lived without air conditioning. We shared one car. We lived in a small apartment. We did whatever it took to build that business. But at a certain point I realized, oh man, I’m DJing nearly 200 shows per year and this is a job that I don’t want, but yet I work for myself. How did this happen? I’m booked out for the next year and a half. How did this happen? My life is filled with obligations. How did this happen? I don’t even like the people who work in my office. I can’t stand any of these people. How did it happen? How did I create a culture that I didn’t like? What weeds did I not pull? What people did I not fire? What, how could I have allowed myself to create a company that I no longer like? Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. Three, two, one, here we go! ♪ Started from the bottom now we’re here ♪ ♪ Started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here ♪ ♪ Started from the bottom now we’re here ♪ ♪ Started from the bottom now we’re here ♪ ♪ Started from the bottom now we’re here ♪ ♪ Started from the bottom now we’re here ♪ All Thrive Nation, welcome back to another exciting edition of the Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast download. Now Dr. Z on today’s show, we have 10 minutes and two big ideas we need to get into. Ooh, let’s get it on. So big idea number one, Mr. So So Fine, Matt Klein. Matt Klein. Hey, Matt Klein, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, you blow my mind, Macline, don’t mind me. Macline, oh, oh, oh, oh. Sorry, we’re Caucasian, we’ve worked on that for several weeks. That’s all we got. Apparently, it doesn’t show. Okay, so here we go, Matt. It was right in the thing. Yeah, it felt good. It didn’t sound good, but it felt like it sounded good. I mean, I would play that, I would rewind the tape. Put that on repeat. That’s the remix. Okay, so here we go. Now, when your dream becomes a job, before it becomes a dream again, think about it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. What did you just say? When your dream becomes a job, before it becomes a dream again, think about it. What did you just say? When your dream becomes a job, before it becomes a dream again, think about it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. What did you just say? When your dream becomes a job, before it becomes a dream again. Think about it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, what did you just say? When your dream becomes a job, okay, but before it becomes a dream again. So I’m okay, so okay, so like let’s say I want to start a business. Yep. I start the business, let’s say I buy a franchise. Let’s say I buy an Oxifresh franchise. Oxifresh. Oxifresh. So clean. Such a great deal. Such a great deal. So then I have a job, but it’s not… Because you own your own business. Right. So now you create your own schedule. Matt, correct me if I’m wrong, you’ve got your own schedule, you’ve got your own auto wrapped vehicle, the new opportunity, your new territory, and you’ve got that honeymoon phase where you’re excited. Can I get the shirts that have my name embroidered on them? Oh, you’ve got the name embroidered, Matt, you’ve got the business cards, you’ve met the top franchisees in OxyPress, you’ve been doing it for five years. Wow, this is exciting. Six years. Matt, you’ve met, at this point, you’ve met people that have done well. You’ve called them on the phone to verify they’re real. You’re excited. But now you’re alone. It’s my dream. Now you’re alone in some rural community in Illinois or Michigan or Florida, wherever, and you realize, frick, I’ve got to get reviews. And my best friend who said he would do the company with me, he just quit. Oh, man. And now your dream became a job. Matt, help us. How do we get through that phase? Yeah, this is, there’s always, this is, I don’t care if you’re the best franchise in the world, you will run across this, right? I mean, whether it’s really struggling with going from one technician to two, or the fact that it is imperative that you go have a conversation with a property manager, because that will make or break the next few months in terms of your growth. And it’s exactly that, right? All the good feelings are now over, and you’re looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, I have this much time in the day, what am I gonna do with it, right? Am I gonna go play some golf? Golf is great, it’s fun, love it. Or am I gonna work on my business, and I’m gonna get it to a point where tomorrow or next year I’m going to be way, way more, um, you know, growth oriented than I was yesterday or the year before. So, you know, that honeymoon piece of it is a great expression to use because it’s just like, it’s like a relationship. It’s like anything else. When you first get it, you’ve done the first step. Now you are a business owner. You have the title of business owner. That’s important. That’s exciting. It’s good for your psyche, it gets you out the door. But sustaining that excitement and going out and having small wins through the day, whether that’s going through a training session with your technicians, whether that’s having a goal of talking to five people that day, that just having the consistency in your business will get you through that piece of the business where you do have a job. You need to treat it like that because the more time you spend on it, the faster you’ll grow. If you just sit there until your comes, you’ll have to go find another job. Winston Churchill, who I realize did not own an OxyFresh, but he could have probably. Are you sure about that? Well, he could. We don’t know. He was leading the United Kingdom in a horrible war against the Nazis, and he did win. But- You think he had dirty carpets? Is that what you’re saying? I’m just saying that probably wasn’t a top priority for him. They said, Winston, do you want to clean the carpet? I don’t know. I mean, I don’t look around that often. Let’s beat the Germans first. But the thing is, Winston Churchill, he once said, the price of greatness is responsibility. The price of greatness is responsibility. So Matt, I want to go through, point two, all the things that you have to be responsible for as a business owner. I’m going to start with Z. And then Matt, I’m going to have you one up him. So you can kind of take notes and one up Z. All right. So here we go. And Andrew, put this on the show notes. One, you can never stop recruiting. You can never stop recruiting. Two, you can never stop advertising. Three, you can never stop training people. Four, you can never stop doing accounting. And there are many other things too, that’s the big four. Z, you can never stop recruiting. So you buy an oxy fresh, you start a new business, you open a new optometry clinic, whatever. Why can you never stop recruiting? Because those employees will leave on their terms whenever they want to. It’s not what’s convenient for you. I have a horrible story right now going on in my life. I’ve got a doctor that’s leaving me, and my daughter’s pregnant at the same time, and she’s going to have a baby, my third grandchild. And I went to this doctor and said, Hey, can you just stay for just a couple more months? That would be just huge in my life, just a couple more months. One more minute with us. Okay, back to you. And they said no. And I was just like, oh, and why did they say no? Because they didn’t want to. It wasn’t in their best interest. And so you’ve always got to have the pump primed. You’ve always got to be able to have the next up. I mean, there’s a reason why Belichick could say next up because he has the next up. This is a this is a thought that is uncomfortable for somebody out there, but someone needs to hear this. My wife and I, we’ve had five kids, but we had a late-term miscarriage. And I don’t know about you, but typically when I have a life tragedy or something horrible happens, I typically don’t get to consult with the man upstairs. I’m like, dear God, if something bad happens, and I know it may, could it happen on like a Thursday? Because I typically DJ on Saturdays. Or the Monday after the… Yeah, just a Monday would be good. God, if we could time that, you know, or like when my son was born and he couldn’t see. Or I can go on and on, tragedies, people dying in my life. My best friend, my first DJ partner guy, died in college in a car accident. These are all horrible things. And I just had this conversation with somebody about a year ago, and they said, I can’t run business this month because my wife had a miscarriage and I need to be with her. I’m like, dude, I care as a human. You, me, let’s go have a beer, let’s hang out, let’s hug. I care. But you as a business owner, you can’t put the sign up on the door as a chiropractor. This is the guy in Dallas, chiropractor. You can’t put a sign up that says, I’m out of business. You can’t do it. You can’t. He had a membership-based model, chiropractic care, and this is the words he said to me, Matt. Tell me if you’ve ever heard something like this. They go, well, man, I didn’t buy this to buy a job. I bought this to have time freedom. Have you ever heard that kind of thing, Matt? I hear it before, present, after. It’s a big, big thing. You know, I think it’s just a frame of mind. You’ve got to kind of get out of that. Don’t think of a job and a business. Just think of being successful. What do you need to do? Right, if today means you need to go out and talk to people, go out and talk to people because there’s certainly competitors that are doing that. So yeah, you’re right. I mean, if you consider owning a business and doing something for your business, a job, then absolutely, you just bought yourself a job. Right, if you think you’re gonna buy something and sit there and do nothing, then you must be pretty rich because you just bought yourself an investment business, which is extremely hard, and you also have a job that’s managing the people running the business, which also could be way, way harder than just running your own business. And I’ve read a lot of books about people that are very, very successful. And I remember Jay Paul Getty reading his book, and Z, you remind me of Jay Paul Getty in a great many ways. Have you ever read about Jay Paul Getty? Sure, of course. There’s many, many attributes of him that are very, very favorable, very similar to you. He was a guy who was easy for him to make decisions at a certain point in his career. Like if he had capable lieutenants, he could make the decision. But he also didn’t like mindless distractions. So he moved all the way to Europe, even though all of his business dealings were in the Middle East and America, but he’s like, I’m going to Europe. So you couldn’t have access to him, but he liked to hang out with people. So he’d have big parties and big events and big big galas, but he actually made more money by being uninterrupted. But as in his book, he talks about, his book’s called As I See It, he talked about the biggest responsibility, the biggest struggle of being the world’s wealthiest man is he’s responsible for all that. And just like you’ve said many times, Z, people say what’s it like running multiple companies? You say it’s like the plates? Yeah, it’s like the vibe you like where you have the sticks and the plates and you run over shit which one’s wobbling the most and you run to it and you spin it and get it back straight. But he basically explained in great eloquent detail that passive income is not a thing for anyone, even the world’s wealthiest man. Like every one of those assets, I mean Matt he had oil that was being pulled out of the ground in the Middle East and those people had like violence going on all the time. So occasionally you have to send over a militia to deal with it? It’s crazy. You have to repossess stuff? I mean, he actually owned ESPN and didn’t know it? How does that happen? I got the book on my shelf. The guy, he put in charge of his petty cash, which was something like $3 million. He could spend up to $3 million a month or something without asking. He met these two guys who had this business they’d been trying to start for years, based in Bristol, Connecticut. There was this failing all-sports network. And they were going to sell it for like 10 cents on the dollar in investments. He’s like, sure. So Jay Paul Getty ends up calling this guy, he’s like, do we own ESPN? Yes, sir, we do. Okay, well, make it work. You know what I mean? What I’m saying is like, when he found out they owned ESPN, I don’t know if you’re… Matt, are you familiar with the early ESPN stories? Maybe not the early one. I just didn’t even know he owned ESPN. Dude, there are so many just… I’ll give you just one story. They didn’t have any money for advertising and J. Paul Getty wouldn’t give them anymore because he didn’t know he owned it. They just had a monthly budget for things. So the producers were like, we’ve got to figure this out. So what they did is they went to the Kentucky Derby and they put a mic in front of celebrities. And they said, why did you like today’s race? And they’re like, oh, the energy was awesome. They go to the next guy, what did you like about your horse winning today? Oh, just the energy, the exhilaration, I love it. And they put it all into a compilation, and their commercial went, why do people love ESPN? And then it’s people saying, I love it. And they did it all without asking anyone’s permission. People thought they were being interviewed about the race. So again, he got legal notices, like you guys can’t do that. And the second move his team did, very crafty, is CBS had the rights to all the games. So they made fake lanyards. They would sneak into the game and play little games. And they would be filming, or they would have access, but from a limited access, upper deck filming only. And then their camera guy would wear a red ESPN jacket. They made all their guys wear red ESPN jackets. And they would stand directly in front of the CBS cameras whenever they would go live to that camera. So when the red light on the camera would go on live, it would say ESPN. Oh, how funny. And they just kept doing it. And they had people, they had headsets, and they’re like, go on down there to the 40-yard line, they’re going to go live, and stand! And they would jump right in front. And that’s how they got ESPN. Stand! But again, that was the world’s wealthiest guy. There’s nothing, there’s no such thing as passive income. Let’s talk about never stop advertising, Matt. Why can you never stop advertising as an owner of any kind of business? Yes, especially now, I think it’s more than ever. Because in a span of 10 years, print mail has really reduced its effectiveness. And internet marketing and many, many companies within that internet marketing realm have come to the surface. So if you don’t understand what’s going on, that’s one big problem. If you don’t have the resources and the ability to take advantage of those through setting up platforms and being able to have a relationship with those companies, that’s a whole nother problem, right? So being able to not only have the budget set there and know it’s going to come back in a return for you, that scares a lot of people. I don’t want to spend that much money. Well, but you want to make this much. So you know, everything’s relative. So you’re going to spend money or you’re going to spend time in growing your business. We want you to do both so that you can really grow faster and more efficient than the next guy. But when you look at all these types of things, the budget should always be there and it should almost sometimes be increasing. That doesn’t mean your marketing ROI shouldn’t go down, it should go up. So always marketing, always having your thumb on the pulse of the current marketing trends and building relationships with those vendors will allow you to call them if something’s going great. I wanna increase my budget. If something’s not going great, why is that going on? So just pushing play and letting it go is not enough anymore. You wanna be able to have a relationship, know who your people are that can help you with that specific marketing campaign and continually trend up and be able to push the button on things that aren’t working and try new things. That’s a big one. Trying new things will always help you grow because if you’re an early adopter of something, you can very, very much take advantage of a huge market. People are usually late adopters to marketing. If you can always stay on top of that, you’ll be able to grow pretty efficiently, consistently. Dr. Zellner, let’s move on to this next area that you can never stop doing. Let’s talk about accounting for a second. Why can you never just abdicate accounting and just say, well, whatever, my accountant handles it, no big deal. Got money in the bank, who cares? Dude, what’s going to happen to your tax situation if you do that? It’d be bad. And one thing, that organization called IRS, they… Fascinating people. They… They’re great people. They’re super people. We love the people. Oh yeah. Every now and then they’ll want to do an audit on your business. And we get a signed letter from them. It’s awesome. I frame those usually. I do too. They’re the best. By the way, I thought about it and I figured that if I continue to pay the taxes I’m paying every year, in 30 years I will have paid for one warhead that was used, like one solid missile, the ballistic missiles. Not like a nuke, but a solid, you know, like a nice solid… Hey, listen, don’t kid yourself. If your income is going to continue to increase, then maybe you can afford a nuke. Yeah, but that’s just it. Maybe my tax dollars could buy a really nice Nuke. Okay, back to you. Just thoughts. Just thoughts. A little old Midwestern boy. A dream. You’ve got a dream. The thing about it is, what’s so great about accounting is it is your guide rails for your business. When you look at your profit and loss statements every month, i.e., which is your accounting, and it lets you know where you stand month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year. And it’s very important for you to know, if the decisions you’re making, if you’re trying something new, like Matt, super fine client said, if you’re trying something new, you go, oh wow, I see a trend now, I’m gonna continue to do that, or now I’m gonna change gears and do something else. And so, it helps let you guide your business, number one. Number two, it keeps you out of trouble with the IRS, which trust me, you don’t want to be in trouble with the IRS. No, you wanna, I’m not kidding about this for all the listeners out there. It is so important that you stay on top of your taxes and you always pay what is owed. If anything, I’d pay a little extra if you’re not sure. I totally disagree with the idea of fighting with the IRS because how does that always turn out? They’ve got a gun and you have like a pocket knife. It’s not really a fair fight. I’m not saying you can’t sneak up on them with a pocket knife and get someone. But typically I’d rather have the gun or the tank in that fight. Now somebody says, I want to know the rest of the story. The guy who was running J. Paul Getty’s fund, his name is Stuart Evey, the former chairman of ESPN. The guys who started ESPN was Bill Rasmussen, along with his son, Scott Rasmussen. They started the company in 1979, and they did not make a profit for what, a lot of things weren’t disclosed until they became a public thing. Many believe it’s like 13 to 14 years. Right. So ESPN, I mean, was unbelievable. If you want to read the story, it’s called Creating an Empire. Put it on the show notes there because, Andrew, this book is a fascinating read for anybody who feels like, man, my business is crazy. No, no, that’s crazy. That’s crazy. That’s crazy. Running ESPN with no marketing budget, that is crazy. Now, the next area you can never stop doing is training, Matt. You can never stop training people. Why can you not ever stop? Why can you never, ever, ever, never, ever, ever, never, ever, ever stop training people? Yeah, that’s a pretty big one. Because, you know, people get comfortable, if there’s not consistent training, they’ll fall behind. Right? I mean, letting them know not only what they’re doing on a daily basis is important, but how that impacts the business, their paycheck, being up to date on new trends in terms of for us, at least cleaning systems processes, right? And you can do a lot of that through reporting. So you can you can train and keep training people because of their productivity and your ability to understand how they’re producing and what their customer is saying about them. Or you can just have consistent training that’s already scheduled. You don’t have to rely on customers and their feedback. You just know everyone’s always trained consistently. So keep everyone on their toes, make sure they’re doing what they need to be doing, make sure there’s a complete confidence level in that technician and how they’re going about their day. If they’re confident in their job, they’re doing the right things, they’re going to be able to get those reviews at a much higher level than if they go in and they’re trying to figure out maybe if they did a good job or not. Consistent training is going to be a huge piece of any business. Z, I have a question I’d like to ask you. I certainly don’t expect you to be a marriage counselor, but this question was asked at the conference by somebody who couldn’t ask you directly. I said, I’m going to ask you. This is the question. They’re saying, you know, hey, I get that I might have to work six or seven days a week. Okay, got it. To get my startup off the ground. They didn’t buy an oxy fresh. It’s not a franchise. It’s a startup business. And they go, I get it. I don’t think my spouse gets. And I’m going, okay, your spouse doesn’t get it, but you get it. What does she want you to do? Well, she says, I’m a business owner. I need to be working just like 40 hours a week or 30 something, you know, the guy at the laptop needs to be, you know, working. And I said, well, you know, you have a dream. It’s become a job and it will continue to always be a job unless you’re willing to put in the work until it becomes a dream again. What would you say to somebody out there? Let’s say there’s a woman out there listening and she owns the company and her husband just doesn’t understand the idea of the sacrifices and the trade-offs, or vice versa. In this case, it was a woman who didn’t see the purpose of the trade-offs and sacrifices that he wanted to make. At least that’s what I heard. So what advice would you have for this person? A song comes to mind, and then I’ll explain why. Well, there it is! It’s Sky Rockets in Flight. flight. Afternoon delight. Afternoon delight. And why a rocket came into my mind is because the analogy of starting a business is like launching a rocket into outer space. It takes a lot of energy, a lot of work, a lot of fuel. In fact, most of the rocket is just the engine to get it up into orbit. But once you get it up into orbit, spouse, I would say to my spouse then, once it’s up into orbit, then it takes less time. It takes less effort. It takes less fuel to maneuver that little bad boy around once you get up into orbit. So early on, it’s all hands on deck, and you need to have that talk before you buy the Oxifresh franchise. You need to have everybody’s been the same page But I’m gonna tell everybody out there you’ve also got to listen to your spouse because you have to give them the ability to say Hey, honey. Hey, dude. I forgot what you look like Would you mind? Remember where we live Hey, dude, come home. Matt Klein, we have more songs in store, but we’re short on time here. So I want to ask you, for anybody out there who says, you know, I would like to look into buying an Oxyfresh because I have a dream, and I don’t mind if it becomes a job. And if it’s only $57,000 to get into the game, that’s cool, because I hate my current job. I want to take my current job, transmute that into a business that I own. I have a big dream and I’m willing for it to become a job and then become a dream again. Matt, what are the steps to getting a hold of SoSoFine? Matt Kline. Yep. So when you guys are ready to take that step into looking into a business that may fit your needs and your goals, go on, fill out the form. Once you do that, we’ll get your information. We’ll reach out, set up an intro call, start learning about you and what you’re looking to accomplish, areas of the country you’re looking to service potentially. We’ll start getting into the details of the business, go through all the financial piece in terms of operational side of the business. So through many conversations, lots of document sharing, franchise disclosure review, we’ll get to a point whether this business makes sense to you or not. Whichever decision you make is fine, but if it does make sense, you wanna take the next steps, the goal is to get you out to Denver, Colorado to go through the training. And that will be with our team here in our home office where everything is located. And from there, if it makes sense, then you become a franchise. So in lesser words, that’s the process, but we’ll take it through one step at a time. Go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash oxyfresh. That’s Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash oxyfresh to learn more. And Zee, I’m going to keep this audio for you before we have to go. Are you ready? Yes. Going to find my baby, going to hold her tight, going to grab some afternoon delight. My motto’s always been when it’s right, it’s right. Why wait until the middle of a cold, dark night when everything’s a little clear in the light of day and we know the night is always gonna be there anyway thinking of you’s working up my appetite looking forward to a little afternoon delight rubbing sticks and stones together make a spark sitting down on the thought of loving you can’t hold it in sight words all together. Captain Flight! Afternoon Delight! You guys have fun. Nice! Afternoon Delight! Well done Thrive Nation! That goes out to you. We’re sorry. I appreciate that guys. That was wonderful. Alright, here we go. 3, 2, 1, BOOM! If you have yet to attend an in-person Thrive Time Show workshop, I would encourage you to do so by booking your tickets today. Just go to thrivetimeshow.com. Click on the conferences button and find the next event that’s right for you and your family. This event is going to change your life. You’re going to meet real entrepreneurs out there just like you. I promise the Thrive Time Show in-person workshop will change your life. If you implement what you learn, it’s gonna absolutely take your life to the next level. And if you don’t believe me, just do some research on YouTube. We have over 1,000 objective video reviews from real people who’ve attended the real in-person Thrive Time Show workshop. We also have over 1,000 reviews on iTunes, and we also have over 500 reviews on Google. Just read the reviews, book your tickets, we’ll see you at our next in-person Thrive Time Show workshop and before we go I must confess many people on the Thrive Time Show team have told me that I have not asked you enough to share the Thrive Time Show podcast with a friend. And there’s all sorts of case studies and examples and proof that if you share a show that you like with someone you know or have fellowship with, that it works. So again, I would ask you today, if you liked today’s show, if you laughed and learned something, who can you share today’s show with? Share it with them on Spotify, on iTunes, just share a link on Instagram or Facebook, maybe Twitter, because I sincerely believe that The Thrive Time Show has the power and the capacity to change somebody’s life. Our mission is to mentor millions, and that includes you and the friends that you know. And we’ll meet up again tomorrow. My name’s Nick Holman, I’m with Holman’s Custom Cabinets. I wanna tell you about our Dream 100 marketing system that we started with Clay Clark through the coaching program. We’ve increased our repeat clients, our repeat builders that we work for, and we’ve got a lot more potential for growth since then. And it’s very scalable, and I’ve taken this young boy that I started this with, this 18-year-old guy, who is my dream 100 marketing guy, who’s just making phone calls, taking donuts, taking cookies out to new contractors and clients to try to reach them to making repeat sales with them. And I had a lot of concerns just at first with trying to maybe train somebody to do this. We had a repeatable process, a script for him to call. He’s doing that over and over. He calls anywhere from two to three hundred people a week. It’s been over three thousand calls since the first of the year and sometimes he’s kind of switched over into sales because we had so many Sales coming in that he had to help handle Those sales and and take away from the you know, the dream 100 marketing because of that we’ve been doing it about seven months it took about two to three months for us to break even to hit the break-even point and From the three to six month mark, three to seven months now, we’ve got a 300% return on my investment. I’m paying this young man, this 18 year old boy, a salary and then a 5% commission on these jobs and he’s just literally been killing it. And we’ve increased our profit by 8%, increased our sales by 10%. And these are repeatable, most of them are repeatable clients, new contractors that I’m doing repeat business on. Some of them I’ve sold four to five jobs to since January when we started this, and it’s been a 335.6% return for this campaign. And we’ve spent a little over $30,000 and made over $100,000 in sales just from this Dream 100 process. And I can’t explain enough how much of a blessing it’s been and how well it works. I’d encourage you to start doing it soon. Thanks. All right, Thrive Nation. I know that a lot of you watching this show on a consistent basis or listening to the show have a business or have aspirations to grow a business. And if you’re not careful, your business can own you rather than you owning your business. You might find yourself at a place in space where you work all the time and you have no time freedom, although you earn financial freedom. And I know for anybody out there that’s never owned a business before, the idea of achieving financial freedom itself may be very exciting, but if you achieve financial freedom and you don’t have any time to enjoy that, the question is, what was the point? And so on today’s show, we’re gonna be joined here with an actual thriver, an actual long-time client who’s been able to achieve a time freedom to build a sustainable schedule that he loves. And here to share the story is Nick Holman. Nick, welcome to The Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? Thank you for having us. Hey, Nick, what’s your website for anybody out there who wants to verify you’re not a hologram? HolmansCabinets.com, H-O-L-M-A-N. Okay, HolmansCabinets.com? Yes, sir. And where are you based there, sir? We’re in Sparta, Tennessee. We cover the middle Tennessee area. And how long have you been in that area? We’ve been here nearly 40 years. My dad started the company when I was just a little kid. Awesome. And so did your dad kind of mentor you in the ways of cabinetry? He did. I grew up from a little kid doing the business. I didn’t plan on doing it, didn’t want to, but it ended up that way, and I really enjoy it. The Lord’s really blessed me. Now, how did you initially hear about us and what we do in terms of growing businesses? I was listening to a podcast called Entrepreneur on Fire and heard you interviewed on there and just sought you out. Well, you know, one thing that we’ve had a pleasure of working with you on and something we’ve enjoyed is we here at the Thrive Time Show, we call them diligent doers is who we work with, people that frankly are hardworking and all they want to know is what do I need to do. The best way I would describe it or a kind of analogous way would be if you’re going to the grocery store, we’ve all been to the grocery store where there’s somebody at the store who has no intention of buying anything. We’ve all been to the mall or we’ve seen somebody who doesn’t want to buy anything. They’re just hanging out. And there’s a lot of people that kind of view entrepreneurship like that. They’re entrepreneurs. And there’s other people that actually are entrepreneurs. They actually implement. We call those diligent doers. And Sean’s had the pleasure of working with you. Oh, yeah. And Sean, so tell us, tell listeners out there, what kind of big improvements have you and Nick worked together to implement within the company, Holman’s Cabinets.com? Yeah. So we, I’ve actually had the pleasure of working with Nick for several months here, but he has worked with several different consultants in our program. So by the time I got to him, I’m just going, hey man, what is at this point, what is your biggest limiting factor? At the time he’s saying, I’m pretty close to this ideal schedule, but there’s about 15 hours on my schedule of stuff that I don’t feel like I can delegate, but I’m kind of stuck there. So it’s been probably three months or so, Nick, that we’ve been working at trying to get those hours off your schedule. schedule, it was more of a high level task that we systemized week by week, working on training employees and refining the system itself. And that’s now resulted in Nick having that time back to use for other things. Now, Nick, before we worked with you, how would you describe where the business was at? I was all over the place. Very, very busy. I worked about 80 to 90 hours a week. Um, never home running, doing jobs, working late at night at home with my laptop, drawing cabinet jobs, quoting cabinet jobs, and just really had no free time whatsoever. And so now how would you describe your schedule versus how it was then? A little bit laid back. I’ve even found myself bored a time or two. And that doesn’t last long. I’ve always, always can find something to do. But I’m looking at other business ventures, which I’m into different things and excited about that. And have a little bit more time with my family. Of course, I love that free time. I’ve got four children, the Lord’s blessed me with. And some time to do ministry work that God’s allowed me to do. And all of this is because of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But I just thank Him. Thank you all for the time that I’ve gotten back to be able to do that. And it just frees up so much time, the time freedom. I don’t really need it financially, but the time is invaluable. So if you could describe for anybody out there that’s listening, what was the process like that we’ve kind of guided you through? What are some of the improvements that you’ve made in the business? The first thing y’all did, of course, was the website, and you started encouraging me to get Google reviews. We’re the highest rated cabinet shop in the state of Tennessee now. Come on now. It’s just been a blessing to see people call, and they say, well, I said, how do you find us? Well, we’ve seen your reviews. They’re just unbelievable, the video reviews, and then also me training. I guess the last few months is hiring and training new people. I did not think that I could ever get anyone to replace a lot of what I was doing, and measuring and learning all the different options of cabinets, appliances, the different ins and outs on different houses, different ins and outs of different cabinet options, whether whether it was custom or prefab or semi-custom, all of those different things. I didn’t think I could train anyone and it’s been possible to do that. And now I’ve got two guys that are doing that. It’s just really relieved a lot of my time, the hiring, the group interviews, doing that has really been helpful, delegating and being able to train and writing down a process process of how they can go through and learn what I’m doing. It answers a lot of their questions before they ever have to ask me with what we’ve written down the, I can’t think of the term of it right now, the schedule and how they’re to do that. It’s just made it so much easier. Let’s talk about the branding for a second. When we first started working with you, did you already have a website in place or did our team have to help you with that or? We did have a website. We redesigned it and made it much more Google canonical where Google could read it better. And of course the reviews and all that, and you all were riding on the back of it all the time. And it’s been a lot more profitable when people look up our website. All over Nashville now, even in that, we’re almost two hours away. People call us all the time from Nashville, Brentwood, Franklin, and then even in our areas it’s just constant because of our website. And before we start working with you, how many web leads would you get maybe in a given month versus how many are you getting now? I’ll look off the top of my head. I don’t know, but I know that, I don’t know, we’re getting on average eight to 10 a week now. I probably got one to two a week before. So maybe four or five times more leads. Yeah. Yeah, I was looking at the tracking sheet before we hopped on here and it’s actually, so this year, 34% of all of your leads have come from that. So that’s a significant amount. Now what we try to do on the Thrive Time Show is for anybody out there that goes to thrivetimeshow.com and you click on the testimonials button, no exaggeration, I’m just going to show this here. We have over 2,000 client success stories on video. So if you go back and watch some of these people you’ll go, wow, that was 10 years ago, wow, that was 5 years ago, wow, that was 6 years ago. The reason why we do that is A, it inspires confidence in potential buyers. Somebody watching this show today might go, well, you know what, this seems credible. The second is we want to build the faith of an entrepreneur, not in a religious sense, in our biblical sense, but the faith that they can do it. How has that aspect, the coaching or the mentorship, helped having somebody that is showing you, hey, this is a proven path. We’ve done it before. We’re going to do it again. We’ve been coaching clients since before. Search engine optimization was a big thing. Now we’re doing it, now that search engine is a big thing, we did it before social media was a big thing, now that it is a big thing, we’re still doing it. How does it help, how has it helped you knowing that you’re following a proven path and not moving just off of guesswork? It’s been tremendous, just having a plan. I can follow a plan if that plan’s laid out. And you could see that, I could see that with other people. You know, you had another cabinet shop that was doing the same thing, I think, in North or South Carolina, you were working with. I seen that and I thought, I can do this. And then having that same plan from learning from y’all, taking the same thing and being able to teach my guys in much the same way, and they’re picking up on it and learning it, and it’s teaching one that’s teaching another, and it’s passing that along. It’s been tremendous. Now we’ve worked on the online reputation, the online reputation enhancement, you know, gathering Google reviews, video reviews. On your site, one thing that’s been nice, and I’ve heard about this through the coaches, is you guys do a good job, and it turns out that matters. And I hate to say this, but I’ve worked with a lot of restaurants in the past, where when we start, we go in through the, we have a proven process I take people through. So if somebody schedules a 13-point assessment with me, I hop on the phone call with them, just like I did with you there, Nick, and I try to go over, you know, okay, I want to ask them, what kind of revenue did you do last year? What kind of revenue did you do the year before? How would you rate your website on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the best? How would you rate your branding? How would you rate your accounting? And we go through all these systems, and I’ve worked with a lot of restaurants who’ve said, you know, the one thing though, is our food’s terrible. And, you know, so when people show up, they typically leave mad or upset. And you guys have always done a great job. And we would call that the quality control loop. And so when we go to your website here, you guys have gathered testimonials. How has having video testimonials from actual clients impacted you? When people call all the time, they say your testimonials are unbelievable. And that helps set us apart from all the other shops that don’t have that. And I’m friends with a lot of the other shop owners, and we do 10 times more than most shops around us. Yeah, I think it’s due to the reviews, it’s due to the testimonials. They can look us up and see that we’re credible. Some of my workers came on board because of the reviews and they saw the credibility that we had among other people. And they wanted to be a part of the team because of the great work and the satisfied clients that we have. Now, if we go to the bottom of your website, we do ongoing search engine optimization for you, which is kind of a big task that if we do it right no one knows we’re doing it It’s kind of like pulling the weeds in a garden. I see so many inspired Patriots. They say clay. I planted a garden I was so inspired by your wife And then I’ll see them you know a couple months later, and they’ll go say how’s the garden they go don’t talk about it Didn’t didn’t weed it didn’t feed it. It’s dead. Going with the rock garden, baby. A rock garden. So, there’s ongoing pruning that has to be done. We have to run the online ads for you, manage that. We have to get the search engine going, optimization. Then we have to track what we’re doing on a weekly basis. How has tracking implemented you, just knowing that all these things are happening behind the scenes? Well, you can continually see where you’re at and what you need to improve on and what you’re doing well at and see how it’s growing. It’s just, I love the numbers. I love to see the numbers and see how you can track that. And it just continues to increase. Or say, hey, I need to work here on this area because we’re having some problems in this area. And that helps you to see that and what you need to work on. And that’s what Sean’s really helped me to do each week, and he points those things out to me. But it’s easy to fix once you know what the issue is. But if you don’t know it, you don’t know what to do, you don’t know what to work on. Now, one thing that blew my mind years ago is I had a chance to interview the NBA Hall of Famer and fellow Christian, David Robinson. And David Robinson was jacked. And if you’re watching this show and you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m gonna pull up this video here, pull up this photo. He was so jacked. He was so physically fit. And do you remember this? You see this outlet? If you Google David Robinson, jacked. David Robinson, just jacked. I mean, this guy just, ah, he was huge. And I remember talking to Dave off camera and then some on camera. I’m like, Dave, how did you know, you know, that it was time to retire? How did you know it was time to go? When did you know it was time to go ahead and retire? He said, Clay, I was hitting the weights every day at the peak of my career. Every day. I’m in the gym, never cheating on my diet, following my diet, always hitting the weights. It’s the consistency. It wasn’t that he had this super complicated workout program, it’s the consistency. And the Bible speaks to this a lot. It’s called Proverbs 10.4. For anybody out there that hasn’t read the Bible in a while, Proverbs 10.4 says, He who has a slack hand becometh poor, but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. And that’s the one thing that I have found over the years that I cannot really train. I can show, I can show people. But you know, today I woke up at three, came into the office about 5.30 today after organizing my day, hopped into our staff meeting at six and every single day. Can you talk a little bit about the diligence of maybe having a coach, if that has helped you or as far as, or maybe your dad taught that to you or just the consistency of putting in the work every day? Yeah, my dad did teach it to me. I wasn’t raised in church or anything like that. Literally, my dad worked seven days a week. We had a cattle farm with about, at one time, 500 head of cattle, the cabinet shop, and we had a tree nursery. So literally, dad worked us seven days a week. And so I grew up with that diligence and just have brought that into my work life, and I enjoy work. Work is fun. I’m very hyper and energetic, and I’m always doing something. My mind never shuts down, even though it’s hard to sleep sometimes. Just being a diligent doer, which is a biblical principle I’ve carried over into my work life and even in other businesses, the Lord’s truly blessed because of that. Sometimes that can go the wrong direction too much if you’re too busy in the areas you don’t need to be in. All of this helps to organize that and to free up some time where you’re not too involved in that. I’ve been told all my life, you don’t have to spend so much time in work and you can balance that out. Well, this has helped me balance that out because there was no way I could have kept going the way I was and it ever worked out. It’s freed up so much of my time and allowed me to have really a more balanced life, be more biblical in my life as a husband and as a father, as a Christian, as a church member. It’s helped me to balance my life in every area. You’re getting five times more leads and working five times less? Yes, sir. I mean, that’s pretty powerful. That’s a pretty powerful success story. Now, have you guys started documenting all the checklists and systems on the backend of the website yet? Is that something you guys have tackled yet? No, no, but that’s something that’s coming right up here. Just getting them all organized on the website for the employees to be able to access those systems. Well, I would just say this, just housekeeping note, when we hop off here, maybe you guys can hop on a call real quick. I’d love to book a 13-point assessment with you just to touch base on a few things, because what’s happening is a lot of our clients, I’ll just give the listeners an example, this would be a tip-top canine, and they are a franchise. And they’re a client that I’ve helped to franchise. And I think they have 16 locations open maybe now. I’m probably getting that wrong, maybe it’s 17 now, but they’re all over the country. They’ve got different locations on the tip tops. And one of the things that has to happen is as the company begins to grow, it’s, you know, we have to come up with a system to organize the systems, you know, to organize all the documents so that everybody can find them. And there’s so many core documents they’ve made over the years. And it’s like, we’ve got to be able to find those quickly. If someone’s looking for the system for how to train a German shepherd or how to write up an employee or how to find the core values document or how to find the goal sheets or how to find the insurance processes or the intake checklist or the bootcamp checklist or the closing progression or the sales manual. He have all those documents organized in one place and that really does help. And so we get off, I’d love to book a time. Yeah. So you and I can hop on a call and we’ll talk about kind of phase 2.0 as we take you from time freedom to maybe opening up multiple locations or scaling or whatever it is that you want to do. But thank you for carving out time for us today and for anybody out there that’s listening who’s contemplating scheduling a free consultation by going to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire. That’s thrivetimeshow.com forward slash EO fire or thinking about coming to one of our in-person business workshops. What would you say to them? I would encourage you to do so immediately. It would free up your time and give you more freedom. I’d encourage them to contact Lake Clark, Shawn Thrive Time Show, and come to one of those business meetings. And I will say this too, housekeeping note, a final note here. Our consulting is $1,700 a month. So everybody out there listening, say, what do you guys charge? It’s $1,700 a month, 1-7-0-0 per month. It’s all month to month. And we have business conferences, and we have VIP tickets and general admission tickets and we make it affordable for everybody. And we have scholarship tickets so everybody can afford to go. Thank you so much for carving out time here. I really do appreciate you. Thank you. And we’ll talk to you soon. Take care, brother. Yes, sir. Thanks. Great job. You have questions? America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your broda from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of Ask Clay Anything on the Thrive Time Business Coach Radio Show. Yes, yes, yes, and yes, Dr. Z, we have a hot question in here from the Thrive Nation. A hot question. Andrew, this is a hot question. It’s hot. Andrew, you know how hot this question is? Pretty darn hot. Oh, yeah. There we go. Step into the Business Coach Saunas. That’s right. Love those. Okay, now, here’s a question. I thought it was hot in here. The question from the Thriver was, how do you deal with a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? And how often do you guys have these? So we’re going to go around the horn. We have Paul Hood, a CPA with thousands of clients on the show. We’ve got Dr. Z here on the show. We’ve got myself. So let’s go around the horn and let’s talk about it. So, Z, how often do you have the things, the variables, the bad things happen to you that some would consider to be… You’re a positive guy, so you don’t let it get you down, but how often do things happen to you where it would be easy to say, wow, that was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? Short of resetting my watermark, as I call it, there was a period of my life that I had a series of very unfortunate things happen to me and my family and my business, and that was pretty much my high watermark of stress and bad day. So once you kind of reset that watermark pretty high, it was a pretty high one for me that time, everything else you kind of go, you put it in perspective and go, well, you know, compared to that day, it’s not so bad. Could be worse. Could be worse. Oh, it could be worse, don’t you know. Could be worse. In Minnesota, by the way, if you ask anyone how they’re doing, you have about a 40% chance that they will respond with, oh, it could be worse. Could be worse. No matter what’s going on. That’s about the peak of the optimism. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it could be worse. But what I do is this. A lot of times, depending upon what category it’s in and how to process it, it can be pretty daunting. It can be pretty debilitating. If you don’t get on top of it with your brain pretty quickly, it can really shut you down for a little while. But when you have a really, really bad day, one thing that I like to do is I like to think about all the positives in my life. I like to pray also and be thankful for all the positive things in my life. I’ll just go through a checklist of all the home runs, all the games won, all those positive memories in your life. You go back home and look at that big fat head of you, the full-sized photo of you, and go, well done. Well done. That’s the only head I know that’s bigger than yours, by the way. It’s a big head thing. I don’t think it’s that big. My head, I was, do I wear a size 14 hat size? Someone has 14 and 3 quarters? I thought it was 18 and a half. 18 and a half, okay. Well, you were like, your hat’s loose. You’re right. But I think what the key is, is that you have to understand that if you’re in control of your joy, and this is a word for everybody listening out there, if you’re in control of your joy, then nothing can take it away from you. Nothing can take away your happiness. If you’re waiting for something to make you happy, you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you let something make you unhappy, you’re doing the wrong thing. So you need to be in control of your joy. You need to be in control. If it’s a bad day, how are you going to fix it? Is there a problem that needs to be fixed, or is it just a bad day? But if there’s a problem that needs to be fixed, and I go into problem-solving mode, step one, what do I need to do? Step two, what do I need to do? Step three, what do I need to do? Oh, and by the way, I’m really thankful because I’ve got three healthy children. I’m really thankful that I’ve got all these things I’m thankful for. I’d like to get Paul’s take on this, because Paul, you manage a team of employees. Yes, sir. And your core team at your three offices, how many people approximately are we talking about? Between the three offices, because you have other offices and locations you’re always expanding, but maybe between Bartlesville, Tulsa, Claremont, how many people are we talking about? Well, we have a total of probably about 40 employees, but my key group is probably 12 or so. So let’s think about our 12s. Let’s think about your 12s. You think about your core 12. I’ll think about my core 12 for a second. It seems as though there’s always something going on in the lives of one of those 12 people because there’s 12 people. There’s so many people, there’s always something. Now, with the team of 50, there’s usually two or three bad things happening every day between those 50. Unfortunately, yes. And with thousands of customers, there seems to be usually, if you have a thousand customers that you provide service for a month, if you’re awesome, you have a 1% or 3% complaint rate. So think about that. Elephant in the room, Paul, we have 4,000 members. And see, if we make a mistake with somebody’s hair, even only 2% of the time, that’s 80 bona fide complaints a month. Sure. So we had a guy, Shadow Me, from Minnesota. And I remember him saying this. He goes, how many complaints do you get a day? Did he say it could have been worse? Well, this is really funny. He goes, how many do you get a day? And I said, like three. He goes, three? I said, yeah, I mean, they only get to me if they’re like next level. But he goes, just for that business? And I said, yeah. So you get like, how many complaints a month? Do the math. Dozens. I mean, you know what I mean? And you start, but he goes, I don’t think I could handle that. And it was very good for him to like know that he emotionally could. I said, why not? He goes, I just, it bothers me. Like, if I get a bad review, it’ll bother me for like a month. Which is unfortunate. So I want to ask you this, Paul. With your clients, you do your best to serve your clients. I know you want to do your best. But if, for whatever reason, like our haircut business, we make a mistake 2% of the time, or if there’s a misunderstanding or whatever, how do you process that when a customer is frustrated? How do you emotionally and mentally process it when your business occasionally misses the mark like my business does and I think any business does. Well, Clay, just like anything, you have to separate real issues with fake issues. You have a family member die. That’s something that there’s not a lot of positive that comes out of that. Most business issues or complaints or bad things, really what I try to do is embrace that and accept that and appreciate that as a learning experience. Because if you’ve got an issue, it’s kind of like let’s say you’re driving down the road and you have your family in the car and the car starts sputtering and everything and you can get really upset, but the reality is maybe that sputtering helps save you from having a wreck. And so the way I look at things is I try to find the positive in it. And I try not to get real upset and just try to say, well, this is something that’s strengthening the strengthening of my team. It’s a learning opportunity. It’s an opportunity to fix something. You know, I have, I’m a registered investment advisor and a personal financial specialist and I get audited every year by, you know, a government entity or whatever. And I’ve embraced that because if I’m not doing something to the best of our abilities or missing something, I want to know. I don’t think it’s and so if I’ve got a client that complains and honestly and I don’t say this to be mean, two-thirds of the complaints are really not valid, but it doesn’t really matter because marketing to me is top of mind. It’s how that person feels when they walk out of my office and what they’re going to say to other people. And so the old adage, the customer is always right, is kind of right. But I embrace it, I approach it head on, I personally make the phone call and what can I do to solve this to make you feel better, to make you happy. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a valid complaint or not, it’s a complaint. And so, I was taught a long time ago, do I want to be right or do I want to be rich? So I’d rather be rich than argue with a client all the time. I just want to make them happy. I have found for me, and Zee, I want to get your take on this. I’ve got a few notable quotables I want to read to you. From the first one will be from that controversial book known as the Bible. In the Bible, Matthew 5.10, I love that verse, Matthew 5.10 says, those who are persecuted because of their righteousness. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So blessed are those who are persecuted for being right. All right, so here’s an example. You have an employee that works for UZ and they’re supposed to be on time. And they’re not. So your job as the owner, manager, whatever, is to bring it up. You say, hey, Doug, I need you to be on time. And Doug goes, oh, come on. Come on, man. What? What? And there’s this blow-up, you know? Yes. And you would… Some people attack you when you call them out for being wrong. You know, when you hold them accountable. Oh, I know. I know. So I think part of it is just embracing that if you’re going to hold people accountable, aka run a business, you just have to get really good with knowing that a lot of people won’t be happy with you all the time, right? I mean, don’t you have to get to a place where you just say, hopefully there’s a reward in heaven because I’m certainly… You know what I mean? Blessed are those who are persecuted because of their righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I think you have to just go, well, hopefully there’s a reward up there because… Whoa! Well, I like the reward can be in the bank statement because all of a sudden you’re cracking the whip and you’re making your business run better. But for everyone listening out there, if you’re thinking about, we know 67% of you are, according to Forbes, that is our business Bible, by the way. I’m not taking anything away from the actual Bible. No, no, no. Business Bible. What happens is that if you go into this owning a business with the idea that you only get to wear the white hat, and you only get to be the good cop. You’re going to lose. You’re not going to. At times, you’ve got to put on the black hat. At times, you’ve got to be the bad cop. At times you’ve got to call people out and you’ve got to correct them. And you know, pruning and correction is good. Yeah, Clay, don’t you agree though that it’s kind of like raising kids. You can be a lazy parent and let them play in the street because you don’t want to upset them and correct them. The same thing applies with employees. If you hold them accountable, that’s actually good for them. It’s good for your business. It’s good for your other employees, but it’s good for them. When you’re not holding them accountable, you’re accepting their slackery and therefore it’s bad for them and they’re never going to achieve and reach their potential. I think about our office and just people on my team. There’s a guy on our team named Matt. Matt always says, how can I get better? At least he does that to me. He says, how can I get better? I give him the same information as I might give somebody else, the same coaching, and he says, thank you. Thank you. How can I get better? But I think a lot of bosses feel like they’re being a bad guy, quote unquote. I hate to be the bad guy, but just by telling somebody, hey, you need to follow the script, hey, you need to show up on time. This is what I’m paying you to do. And they feel bad about holding someone accountable because they’re the bad guy. You’re not the bad guy. You’re the right guy. You’re the righteous guy. Here’s another thought. Robert Green, the bestselling author of the book called Mastery, best-selling book called Mastery. He writes, the most effective attitude to adopt is one of supreme acceptance. The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. Some people have really dark qualities that are especially pronounced. You cannot change such people at their core, but you must merely avoid becoming their victim. Do you agree with that, Zeke? Absolutely. People change seldom. It’s one of my core things. And if they’re a bad apple, they’re typically going to be a bad apple. And instead of sitting there worrying about trying to life coach them into being a good apple, just get them out of your space. The quote that Z gave me years ago was so good. I love this quote. I’m going to high five you. This is setting me free. High five. Oh, this is a good quote. You said to me, you said, Clay, unless you’re a life coach, don’t life coach them. I was going, whoa, whoa, because that’s where I was at for a long time as a young man. I kept trying to fix everybody. How many businesses have you coached over the years where the owner comes up to you and they’ve got a bad apple working for them? And they refuse to fire them because they just know it’s maybe poor management, it’s poor people skills on their part, and they put reflective fault back on the bill. I would say it’s two-thirds of what prevents businesses from growing. Yeah. It’s crazy. It’s the inability of the owner to hold people accountable. The complete refusal to hold people accountable. And as we get back into this root topic of how to deal with the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, I’ve got a couple quick tips here for you, and I’m going to give them to you. One is there was a Joel Osteen quote from the book called The Best Life Now that set me free here. Okay. It says, live your best life now. He says, do your best and forget the rest and just give God the stress. So for me as a Christian, I go, I did my best. Okay, God, if you want me to be going through this whole Job phase of my life right now, if this is like some teaching part of the Bible where I’m getting punished or something, let that happen. If not, whatever. But I used to, once I just realized, you do your best and forget the rest, that helped me a lot. Probably because it rhymed. It helped me a lot. That’s a rapper coming out of you right there. But seriously, it helped me just to know you do your best and forget the rest. And now, I really, I don’t care at all. I don’t care, I don’t care if somebody’s not happy and I did my best, I just don’t care. I don’t care. But I used to care a lot. Don’t you think a lot of that though comes from your core values of what’s important in life. We make good money, but it’s not about the money. I grew up, I’ve lived in trailer parks. Nobody on either side of my family graduated high school besides my mom and I. I can be happy living in a trailer park. Not that there’s anything wrong with a trailer park. The point is, it’s not the money. And I have confidence in myself to rebuild. If something falls apart, I’m going to do my best. And if other people can run along with me, great. But the reality is, I’m going to be happy regardless. So this is what I want you to do right now. This is what I want you to do. This is the action item for all the listeners out there. So here we go. Okay. If somebody out there, if you’re having something bad happen to you today, tomorrow, the next 10 minutes, whatever, if something bad happens, I want you to do this thing called the five minute rule. This is the rule I live by. All right. I try to do it. I’d say by 99% of the time I do it. Don’t make any decisions ever when mad. Okay, that’s good. Don’t make a decision. Just do not make a decision when mad. Okay. Then during those five minutes, think about the decision you’re going to make. How will it affect you a year from now? Will it affect you? Okay. As an example, when I went in the other day to a local fast food restaurant and they totally jacked up my order, you know why I didn’t freak out, Z? Because you did the five minute rule. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Five years from now, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. The other day I was in the parking lot at Atwood’s and a guy cut me off. You spent a lot of time at Atwood’s. Well, a guy cut me off with a big monster truck wheel thing. Oh, yeah. And he gives me the stink eye. I get out of my car and he’s like following me out, following me into the store with the stink eye. You know why I didn’t say anything to him? Because it doesn’t matter. It’s the five minute rule. Because you have the big monster truck. I’m making a decision while I’m mad. I don’t want to get beat up in the parking lot of Atwoods so I can write the wrongs. Don’t give me that shovel I was telling you about. So next time you get upset, take five minutes. Think about that. If it’s a bigger decision, if it’s a big purchase, if it’s a big… Don’t go buy things when you’re angry. Just don’t take big action when you’re angry. I promise your life will be better if you have more of a long-term perspective to everything. That is how you deal with a no-good, terrible day. If you’re out there today and you’re having something bad in your life, don’t make it worse by making immediate action while angry. Don’t, don’t, don’t make it worse. Yeah, when you fight yourself in a hole. You know what they say, see a broad to get that booty ackle? Lay her down or smack em, yak em. Stop the digging. And now without any further ado, we’d like to end each and every show with a boom. So here we go. Three, two, one, boom! JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s T-Bo time in Tulsa, Roseland, baby. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma. During the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024, Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the two-day interactive thrive time show business growth workshop. Yes folks put it in your calendar This December the month of Christmas December 5th and 6th Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma And the thrive time show two-day interactive business growth workshop We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences in 2005. What year were you born? 1995 dude 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, and a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field, and off the field the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Hmm, well, they’re gonna have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s gonna teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. We’ve had the top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we’ve had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15 minute question and answer session. It’s interactive, it’s two days, it’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who have been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com, you’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the Business Conferences button, and you click on the Request Tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket, or whatever price that you could afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it. And I am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton. I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russia. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russia, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrivetimeshow in Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come! Who? You! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com. And again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook you’re gonna leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company it’s practical it’s actionable and it’s Tebow time right here in Tulsa, Russelam get those tickets today at thrive timeshow.com again that’s thrive timeshow.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 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. Thrivetime 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 systems 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 going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same system that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. 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’ve got to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets and if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump, but we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say. Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. He said, ìHave you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad?î I said, ìNo.î My father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. 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. I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you thank you sir for changing my life. Not only that Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.