Clay Clark | Habits of Super Successful People | How Do Successful People Deal w/ the Perpetual Distractions Posed By the Modern World Including: Text Messages, Social Media Comments, Emails, Online Comments, & Fashion Distractions

Audio Transcription

Underwear is kind of similar too. Who I’m here with and where you from? My name is Adam, Brooklyn. Adam always got that drip. It just happens, I didn’t really think it through. There’s sneakers, there’s some goofy shorts. Okay. I wear this to cover this. And then I got this to cover more. How do you do this? How do you like, do you have a specific style? Because you always like wearing whatever you want to wear. You never go based on the rules. How do you do it? Whatever is in the closet, I grab it. I think I got a bunch of the same socks. Underwear is kind of similar too. I grab it, I don’t think about it much. Most people make fun of me and my family, but I keep moving. So I love it, because you do not care, man. You just gonna always do you, you stand out. Certainly Trevor, I gotta tell you, you look cool. Now what’s five fashion pieces you cannot live without? Sometimes my wife gets me nice socks that I throw on, you know, got my kids on them and stuff. Sneakers that fit, yeah, it don’t matter if they’re dirty or not as long as they’re fitting and not hurting. These shorts are a little shorter than usual. You like the hoochie daddy shorts? I don’t know what the hell they are. Goofy shirts, threw this sh** on because I think I got this like five years ago and I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that thing. Now, what’s a common misconception about you? People don’t realize I’m six five I know you’re gonna dig this broadcasting live from the center of the universe it’s business school without the BS featuring optometrist turned entrepreneur dr. Robert Zellner with USS BA entrepreneur of the year clay Clark welcome to the Thrive Time Show on talk radio 1170 Yes, it’s Z and Clay, broadcasting from the box from the 918. Pista’s foolin’ the topic today. Check this killer bus that’s getting you paid. Making a Pista’s boom is what we do. You can do it, let us show you. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. It’s the Thrive Time Show and away we go. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. In 3, 2, 1, here we go. Boom, boom, boom, and boom. Welcome back to The Box That Rocks. It is a Thrive Time show on your radio. Big shout out to the New England Patriots continuing to win, win, win, and win, and then winning more. We are so excited that you, Thrive Nation, have decided to join us today on today’s broadcast. And today we are talking about the art of getting things done. This is going to be a six-part series now, okay? So this is the fourth installment of this series, The Art of Getting Things Done. And it may very well become a ten-part series because we’ve had such a great feedback from listeners out there who have just struggled to get things done for years. They just struggle to get enough time in their schedule freed up to execute, to knock things out. So move 24 is you want to stop emotionally engaging Emotionally engaging with social media comments and reviews about your business now read Hoffman the founder of LinkedIn and a partner with Greylock partners He said the fastest way to change yourself change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be So if you’re around enormously successful people you are going to notice that everybody that you were around who is Enormously successful in business as a general rule. There are some exceptions. They don’t participate in social media the way that you think they do. They don’t respond to comments and reviews. They don’t lose hours upon hours of their day caught up in the constant pull of social media. So John, you’ve worked with a lot of clients. You do a lot of the work behind the scenes to help clients get things done. Can you talk about how big of a problem it is for many people out there with social media and just being able to somehow pull themselves away from the great social media world without a little bit of mentoring? Yeah, so social media just as a general rule is just a giant distraction for all people, whether that’s a business owner or an employee or whatever it might be. People use that to escape, to focus on other things. But specifically we’re talking about how social media comments and reviews can really get in the way of productivity because let’s say somebody leaves you a negative review, whether it’s true or not, a lot of clients will come in and it just wrecks their whole day because they’re so focused on, oh my God, why would anybody say that about me? So as an example, I tracked the totals for today and I put it on the show notes that we’ll share with you Thrivers later. But as of 3.29, this is 3.21 I went in, 3.21 a.m. I just checked so I could have this information here for you. And I’ll put it with you on today’s show notes. It’s also listed under move number 41 if you’re scoring at home on the show notes here. So missed calls, I had seven missed calls thus far today by 3.29 a.m. That means I missed something from five o’clock yesterday. I had two missed friend requests on Facebook. I had six missed Facebook messages, 27 Facebook notifications, 57 LinkedIn My Network notifications, which I don’t go on LinkedIn at all, so I didn’t even know that was a thing. I had two voice messages, 14 text messages I missed, 37 YouTube notifications, 31 Twitter notifications that was 226 interruptions Previous to 333 a.m.. When I finished pulling my report of crap so 300 and I had 226 missed potential interruptions now that was before 333 you answered all those right well I never respond to anything and not only do I not is we had somebody who at the church They actually said hey did I sent you a Facebook message? What’s going on with you? And I said, I don’t respond to that. They said, but you’re on there. I said, I know, because I own businesses. I get how Facebook works. So I’m on there posting wins, wins, and wins all day, but I’m not going to go in there and respond because I just don’t care. Now, Steve, you’re an entrepreneur. How have you either personally, or how have you seen it where somebody has let negative comments, as John pointed out, on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or a bad review, how have you let it seem somebody wreck their day? Well, the minute you respond, people are trying to get a rise out of you. So the minute that you respond, then they respond, and then it’s like in this tit for tat thing where you’re trying to defend yourself, and all I would say is, there’s no winner in that. So don’t try to defend yourself because you’re already losing. It’s kind of like when a kid’s annoying you and they say, well, just ignore them and they’ll leave you alone. But if you tell them, hey, stop, quit, if you just ignore them, they don’t know. So that’s what you got to do is you just got to ignore it because otherwise, now you’re firing back and now maybe there’s some truth to what they’re saying. Maybe that makes you mad too. And maybe there’s some thing, right? So you just got to not engage with it. I want to give all the Thrivers my tip for social media. Totally use it all you want for one minute a day. That’s my tip. Just give yourself one minute, block out that minute, maybe 30 seconds on Twitter, two seconds on YouTube, one second on Facebook, and you’re good. You can use all the ones you want. Just do it within a minute. You’re good. I’ve never actually met a single small business owner that’s ever built a multi-million dollar company by using social media as their way of doing so. There’s like these exceptions, like there’s these outliers. But I mean, if you talk about small business owners like a plumber, like a doctor, like a dentist, now someone like a Rustic Cuff, who that was her brand, was the culture, that’s an outlier. And maybe that pertains to you, and maybe that’s how you’re gonna grow your company. But I see people wasting 90% of their time, John, and making 1% of their income on social media, but spending 99% of their time on there engaging with those comments, my man. I have a super move for social media. You can spend probably an hour, one time, once a year, and just schedule all of the posts that you want on Hootsuite.com. You can actually link up all of your social media. So you have to think about it, what you want to say, but then you can schedule those suckers out for a year, and you never have to look at it again. Oh, that’s a super move. Super move. Now move 25. You want to take a five minute time out before responding to anything serious in your life if you want to get things done. If you want to get things done. So as an example, the higher you go in the food chain, the more people have negative things to say about you. It just happens. So Andy, I want to get your take because you played basketball professionally. And I’m sure you had the boo bird and the stanchions always if you’re a speaker There’s always one guy who’s kind of taunting you or being difficult, but in the stands you’re out there What position did you play when you play professional played shooting guard and power forward as well? It just depends how tall the defender was how tall are you? That’s six five. Okay, so you’re six five Could you shoot good from the outside or were you more of a driver? How did you how did you score? I was more of what you call a slasher. So definitely driving a lot more if they stood off me a little bit I would shoot the ball absolutely how many points a game did you average when you’re a couple of your last couple years in the Professional in Europe it was 18 points a game about nine rebounds, okay? So you do pretty well, and there’s always the guy in the front who’s always American by the way you wouldn’t make an English person. Yeah, sure I was always me I will never forget yeah It was John and I will never forget the guy that took off his shoe and just banged it the whole game. He didn’t even boo, but that replaced the boo. He would just bang the shoe the whole entire game. It’s one of my moves too, Clay. It was very distracting. Yes, Steve’s move completely is very distracting. When I’m on the phone and I’m trying to get a deal from you and I’m trying to convert them over to TLC to do a mortgage with you, I just take my shoe off and I just bang it on the desk and I don’t say anything. I have a confession I want to make, but a funny story that pertains to letting someone get in your head. Because the principle here is you don’t want to let people get in your head. So I want to ask you though first, how did you keep from mentally, how did you keep from losing your cool when someone was harassing you? Because we’re trying to teach you this concept, you want to take a five minute time out before responding to anything in your life, anything serious. How did you do it? How did you not freak out? You really just block it out because of all the times and the hours in practice when nobody was around. You just, you completely block it out because you have the confidence that you’ve worked on those things so many times that somebody banging their shoe or somebody talking trash in the stands doesn’t matter because you put the work in. You never pulled the Ron Artest move where you go up into the stands and beat a few people? I didn’t. I refrained from that. I just figured I’d leave that to Ron Artest. Oh, I didn’t know if that was a move. You’re a better man than me. I actually got beaten by a professional-based basketball player once. Is this a real story? Wow. I wouldn’t believe it would. Like, oh, Currington, you got beat up in the stands? It’d be cool if it happened. I was going to Dousettle Cato High School. We used to play against a team called Annandale. I played boys basketball, obviously guys basketball, but the girls basketball team from Annandale had a very good player and she could shoot three-pointers. When we would shoot inbound the ball right by us, we would dress up. We called ourselves super fans and like 10 of us would just dress up and my goal was to make them cry, the women. So what I would do is I’d find one person I would pick on the entire game. So I don’t remember her name but I know she was number 25 and I got my little you know got my I got my flyer rolled up you know so I could use this kind of like a miniature megaphone and all of us directed our attention. So every time she would get the ball or she would she threw the ball in and she was by us we would just relentlessly talk to her. Every time she would do that, she was a three-point shooter. So she would get the ball and we would go, shoot it now! You are open! You know, just the entire game. And then when she would shoot, we’re like, you’re a ball hog! Your teammates hate you! Look at the way 32 just looked at you! Did you see that? She can’t look at you! And so the whole time we’re trying to create gossip, but people on our team were legitimately mad that she shot so much. They’re like, do you see number 8? Number 8 wants the ball! You freaking… We’re just a whole time… Her dad’s across the stands. He’s not very happy. But she’s on your… She goes to your school, right? This is Annandale, a team we’re playing against. Oh, OK. I was like, oh my God. She’s her best player. By about, I don’t know, the second quarter, she’s looking at us a lot. Run down the court looking. When she scores, she looks at… She made a shot, she looks at us, and I’m like, oh, look at us! Just keep looking at us! You’re feeding the monster!” Well, by the end of the third quarter, she’s crying. And then the guys are like, dude, you should stop. No! This is war! It just kept going. It just kept going. But it was like a deal where we got in her head. And when you get to the highest levels of competition, there are people that want to get in your head. They just do. And it’s actually a move they’ll do. They’ll try to create infighting and dissension and deception and problems. I just encourage you, if you’re listening to today’s show and you are finding yourself perpetually in fights, stop engaging in them. If you have a bad thing that happens and someone calls you and starts dropping F-bombs on your phone, Steve, you can relate to this, I can relate to this, people do that. You wanna just take a five minute time out and go, you know what, I’m gonna call you back in five minutes. And then just think about what you’re gonna say before you say it, because if not, it gets dramatic. You don’t have time for the drama. You just don’t have time for the drama. And Romans 12 19 from the Bible says, Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, It is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord. So basically, they’re going to get theirs from the Lord. From the Lord. You know, it’s kind of… I mean, seriously, don’t try to take all the vengeance in your own hands. Now move number 26. Don’t allow yourself to be guilted into doing things that you don’t want to do. Oh yeah. John, I’m gonna start with you on this. You see clients all the time who say, I can’t update my website, I can’t manage my sales team, I can’t do X, Y, Z, one, two, three, because I have to serve on this board. Because I have to do this activity. And you’re realizing, you don’t have to do it, but they almost feel, John, like they have to because they were guilted into doing it. Yeah, yeah, you see that all the time with clients. They’ll use other things for excuses on why they can’t work on their business and grow their business. And we all do that. We all, you know, we’ll find something so we can put something else off. You know, just as humans, we do that. I will say this, there’s nobody who’s going to call you and go, John, you’ve got to put it on your schedule to optimize that website, unless you have a boss. You own your own business. No one calls me and says, you’ve got to write that book. There’s a huge sense of urgency. You have to write that book. If you don’t write that book, you’re going to let us down. Nor does anyone say good job when you finish it. True, right. I just put it on my agenda and say deep dive 14 hours. Deep dive, there it is. And then I never do it. I mean, it’s so important that you don’t allow yourself to be guilted. I’m just telling you this is so important. You have to learn to say no to things. Warren Buffett, he once said, the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything. But I encourage you to say yes to one thing. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com right now and subscribe to the podcast and claim your free copy of the Start Here ebook. You’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on your radio. Stay tuned. Pop pop is show time, show time, show time, show time. Guess who’s back again? Oh, they don’t know, don’t know, oh, they don’t know, don’t know. I bet they know as soon as we walk in. Show time. Wearing jubilee, every sign of me, yeah. In the woods, back in the woods. Get ready to enter The Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. I know you’re going to dig this. Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. I didn’t see the light until my son could see, but I learned to rock the mic in the high school scene. A young DJ with a million dollar dream, dumped to the pain that rejection brings. So I, like a starved farmer, sweated for that green. Now I’m on your radio with a thank you and please. Share this podcast with a friend and a me. Now this talk’s a business from clay to Z. Boom. Ah, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the conversation. It is the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Now typically it is ecstasy when Z is next to me. And he typically is here. But he’s out expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire today. And so we must push on with great enthusiasm and great momentum. We must try to replicate the aura of Dr. Z. And we’re moving on to move number 26, which is don’t allow yourself to be guilted into doing things that you don’t want to do. Eric Chupp, you’re a business coach. You’ve helped a lot of your clients have massive success. Just the other day, I believe the folks at Keystone Harbor were celebrating a massive win. Massive win. Their rental boats leaped out. We helped them mark it through the summer. They talked to their main competition out on the lake, had a good friendly conversation with them, but towards the end the guy said, oh by the way, whatever you guys are doing about these boat rentals, you killed my summer. I didn’t rent a boat all summer. Nice! Killing the competition. It was a good win. Killing the competition. You know, when it comes to not being guilted into things, this is a huge problem with nice people, right? People that just want to go along to get along. And there’s a Tim Ferriss quote, the guy that wrote the 4-Hour Workweek, he says that a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations they’re willing to have. I see that a lot. If you’re a nice person, you’ve got to have these uncomfortable conversations to you. Just say no. Just say no and move on. It doesn’t have to be an emotional thing. I know for me, the stuff that I get asked to do all the time that I don’t want to do and I’m not going to do never ends. And so, as an example, I don’t drive fast through our parking lots. I don’t because I Just don’t there are speed bumps that I typically go over on the way to the work. I do it, but you know what? Occasionally occasionally I’ll go around the speed bump and I’ll skip over one bump and I’ll go through the parking lot You know and I’ll go through that and then I got told by the folks at One Fire that’s not the move. You shouldn’t actually cut through the parking lot. And so because we shouldn’t cut through the parking lot, I decided to not cut through the parking lot. But there’s other people on my team who haven’t had that message. They didn’t know. They didn’t know you shouldn’t cut through the parking lot. And so every day there’s probably a new company, a new customer, a new somebody who cuts through the parking lot and goes around the speed bumps. Because Steve, it’s a vast, empty parking lot that separates the golf place, what’s the name of the golf place? Flying T. Flying T from our offices. And I bet you there’s not a day that goes by that somebody who I don’t know and I’ve never met is going to violate the rules of the parking lot. Where they’re not going to go over each and every speed bump methodically. I am not going to take time out of my schedule to host a seminar with new customers and employees about how to drive a car because I don’t want to but there are certain people that think I should and I’m not going to I am NOT going to take time out of my schedule to sit there and talk to an adult man or woman about how to drive a car in a parking lot. I’m just not going to and so I’m not going to do it and so even though certain parties may want me to take time out of my schedule to do it I’m not going to do it. That’s just an example of something I’ve been asked to do. Is there any way you could sit down with your team and educate them on driving? No, because they’re going to go through other parking lots and if a parking lot is vastly open, empty, I get it how if you’re a 45-year-old man who has a solid mind or a 45-year-old woman or a 25-year-old, how it makes sense to not go over the speed bumps. And I get it. And I guess if that’s, if it’s not going to be improved, that’s okay. But that’s something where I’ve been asked that. I’ve also been asked to volunteer to speak at certain organizations for lunch. And I never leave the building. I’m just not going to leave the building during the day. And I don’t want to leave the building during the day. And Shep, you see this all the time. People will ask, could you meet for lunch or dinner? And I never leave the building. No. These are booked up. I’m all booked up. And I don’t think I’m doing that, though, to intentionally be a jerk. I just want to go home and see my kids. Well, your life is purposeful, right? And you’ve set a schedule and you have to follow it. Because if you start deviating from that path, that’s a slippery slope you get on. And then you get used to not following your calendar. So you have to have that in your life. But does it not irritate people? Oh, yeah. People think that just because they call you, or just because they email you, or just because they text you, or just because they reach out, that you’re now required to respond and you’re not. Now John, you’ve seen when purposeful people are intentional about not responding to everything, it irritates people. So what’s typically the reaction that you see? Because you’ve seen the reaction of people who just don’t get it, that we don’t leave the building. Yeah, they don’t understand it because they think that you should do, you know, like what Steve’s saying, is if they ask you to do something, now all of a sudden you are obligated to do it for some reason. And in their time. And when you tell them no, it just really angers them and it makes them hurt on a deep spiritual level. Like they’re in the corner and they’re like. But what’s great is you do that enough times to the same people and then they just stop asking you to do things. Here’s another example. There’s a group of guys I know very well and there’s probably six or seven guys and each one of the guys have asked me about five or six times to go camping. Every time they ask, can you go camping, I always say, no, I can’t go camping. They go, well, why not? I say, because I’m not a camper. They go, no, you really don’t know. The Illinois River, it’s so fun to float down the river. It’s so exciting to go to the mountains. It’s just awesome. It’s majestic. You should go. It’s almost like all of a sudden, though, people who are not passionate about any area of their lives. They’re passionate about floating down the river. Right. They are not passionate about doing sales for their own business, but they are passionate about getting me to go. So every time you see them, you are like, no, you really should go. You really, I’m like, I’m not going to go. And then finally we have the awkward conversation where I’m like, even if we believed that the second coming of Christ was going to happen at that campground, I would still be doubtful whether I would go, because I don’t camp. Right. You know what I’m saying? But people… I guess I’ll miss out on the coming of Jesus Christ because I’m not going to go camping. The reason why you have to take such a hard stand on this is like what Chup was saying is like once you open that door to be gilted into things, it’s a slippery slope and it never ends. It never ends. Because it keeps growing. It’ll keep… Oh, well, this one more thing. One more thing. How about this? A photography company. I used to have a photography company and brides used to love to call on the week of the wedding saying hey I have an appointment at 4 is there any way we could move that to 6 and I used to always say no we’re actually all booked out there and the reason why is because I wanted to go home and see my wife because I was already… wait a minute come on… no but you Chuck you’ve seen it where we’ve had schedulers get like overwhelmed with constantly scheduling because people know this person’s gonna let me reschedule all the time well if you do that then like 70% of the people will reschedule and then your schedule is completely screwed up. And Shep, you’ve seen that with people loading in equipment. People say, can I load in at a different time? No you cannot. You know what I do? I flip it. I reschedule their reschedule. Back to the original time. Oh yeah, that’s how I get them. I’ve got to reschedule that back to the original time. I’m like, yeah, we can totally do that. And then I call them 10 minutes later and I’m like, hey, we need to reschedule back to more. Now we come back from the break. We’re going to be talking more about the art of getting things done and specifically move number 27 is you need to stop buying things that you don’t need it is so important that you quit Purchasing things you every time you buy something it comes with a responsibility you have to ensure it Maintain it fix it learn about it in fact the most happy people typically buy the less the least amount of things Lamborghini but the point is you shouldn’t be buying everything, every day, all the time. Because if you do, you’re never going to be done maintaining those things. Consumerism does not lead to happiness. It is the Thrived Time Show on your radio. Today we’re talking about the art of getting things done. Go to thrivetimeshow.com and subscribe to the podcast. And if you love yourself, go download the Start Here book for free at thrivetimeshow.com world headquarters, it’s the Thrive Time Show. We’re going streaking through the quad and into the gymnasium. Come on, everybody. Come on. Snoop. Snoopaloo. Alright Thrive Nation, welcome back to the conversation. It is the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Today we’re talking about the art of getting things done. Have you ever found yourself so busy but not getting anything done? Well, I think a lot of what’s happening is you get so used to being in the habit of doing something that you just always drive to work that way. You always do your Saturday that way. You always spend your Friday nights that way. You always engage in conversations that way. Well if you always do things the same way, you can’t get frustrated with those results. But if you want to change the results, you need to learn how to become a more productive person. And so I am teaching you the 66 moves that Z and I use. And you might not agree with the ethics of all of these things, but they’re the moves that we use to get more done. Now, if you don’t want to get a lot done, or you don’t want to get as much done as we do, you don’t need to maybe implement these moves. But move number 27 is you need to stop buying things. Dave Ramsey says, financial peace isn’t the acquisition of stuff. It’s wanting to live on less than you make so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can’t win until you do this. Dave Ramsey is an American businessman. He’s a radio talk show host, best-selling author, very, very wise in the area of personal finance. So I’m going to start with Andy on this. So Andy, you have been blessed to have high-income jobs, and now you’re obviously a business coach here with the Thrive Time Show, and you have Rise Consult, which is a medical consulting company, and things are going well for you. And you obviously have a nice home and you have a nice car, but how do you draw the line in terms of when personal spending needs to stop? Because I think there’s people out there that earn and spend, earn and spend. And they keep spending more, so they have to earn more. And that gets in the cycle where they’re not ever really happy because they’re just on that treadmill. Talk to me about how do you personally at the Mathren house, how do you decide when to stop spending sure i think uh… there’s there’s a big have a clear going out to eat a lot which really ups and finances are there so just cooking at home you know it is a big thing what enjoys that and that that means there’s a lot money they were not eating out every single day uh… you know we we try to just uh… just be careful we have the five uh… children right that’s a very aware of that we know there’s weddings coming up in the future this time knowledge possibly are you going to contest you Oh no. As college possibly. Are you guys in a contest, you and Matt, on kids? Is that what it is? We copy everything they do for the most part. So that’s why we have five. Well, I had a heck of a time at the Steve Martin concert last Saturday. But Dr. Z upgraded us to a suite. You know, Vanessa and I, so we’re staying in a nice suite there. And he actually, and Eric Chubb will come back on after the break and will explain to us. But Dr. Zona claims that as an optometrist, that he has the capacity, the ability to reverse a vasectomy. He just said he needed a blunt butter knife and then he could make it happen. Oh, he’s a doctor. That’s something. And sterile. Sounds very sterile. It doesn’t matter, he’s a doctor. John, were you at work the day he removed the staples out of Tim Redman’s back? No. Well, I mean, I’m sure I was at work, but I did not physically see that. Did you see that? Steve, were you there? No. This was at 16th? Someone stapled him? This was at 16th and Boston. And Tim had had surgery on his back or something. And Dr. Zellner loves to just joke about his capacities as a doctor because he’s an optometrist. And he says, he goes, Tim, I could remove those stitches. And Tim goes, from my back? I mean, I’ve got to go. Because he had to go see. When you get surgery, you have to go see a specialist to remove these things because they’re like, and he goes, I’ll remove them for you. And Tim was like, let’s do it. And I’m going, what is going on? So next thing I know, I’m not kidding, Tim Redmond is shirtless in our office upstairs. It’s probably in the history folder. He’s shirtless in the office upstairs. And Dr. Z is removing his staples. And he tells one of our team members, he says, go get me some rubbing alcohol, which we don’t have in the office. And he removed all of his, I’m not kidding, he removed all the stitches. So I think he’s actually secretly wanting to get into the reverse of a sex-based business. Yeah, he wants to get another shot. I’m like, no, no, it’s not going to happen. So anyway, if that surgery, if that procedure were something I would do, Steve, then I could have a sixth kid. But for right now, I’m personally capped out, my friend. It’s not possible. Well, I would say, you know, the point says stop buying things you don’t need. And for some people, you might say, stop having children that you don’t need. You can only have so many. I mean, come on. Steve, are you in favor of having a small family? Are you part of the Chinese government? We need our kids. The second kid I had was a daughter. Clay, I know that you have four of them. My wife said, I would have more kids, but I’m afraid I’m going to have another daughter. I don’t want to have another daughter. I don’t know how you do it because I have one daughter and I want to put her back. I tell her all the time, Emma, get back in your womb. Get back in your womb. Get in your womb. We’re going to have a separate show after this show called Parenting a Daughter and the Impossibility of Putting Your Child Back into Your Womb. Dr. Z can do it with a dull butter knife. We won’t be here for that show, but move number 28, commit to simplicity. John, you see this all the time with businesses. They make very complicated workflows, super complicated systems, and it’s a creeping tendency for every business to try to add more and more things. I think every entrepreneur who loves your business, you love your product, you want to make it better and better. You always want to add more things, but a lot of times the things you make don’t get used, John. You’re making tools that no one, none of the employees use. John, talk to me about how to fight the creeping tendency to keep adding more and more new things. Well, so it’s always new ideas that create new things. So everybody wants this, you know, they obviously want to make their business better. So by doing that, they’re trying to think of new ideas that they can implement to do that. So then they have this idea and it’s a great idea and they really want to do this and they’re very passionate about it. And so then you have to spend all of this time, you know, making that work and then by that time you have another new idea and let’s focus on that one instead and forget about that old one. That’s what’s great about Tip Top K9, Clay. Their system is just simple and they’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. If you watch the video that Ryan talks about, my dog would sit but he would just run out the door when the door opened so he learned how to train his own dog. That story is phenomenal. Tip Top K9, these guys have built a proven system to train dogs, which is pretty remarkable. My dog won’t stop jumping up on me. I guess it’s not complicated, right? It’s simple. It’s scalable. They’ve found a way to do it. And they’re now producing gross revenue that is higher than that of many medical clinics we work with. And they actually have just opened up their second and third. They just signed agreements for their second and third locations in Boise, Idaho. And I believe they have one going out in Tennessee and one going in Fargo and maybe one in Oklahoma City. I mean, these guys are rocking, but you know how they’re doing it is it’s the same system over and over. When you go to Subway, it’s the same, Steve, and you pointed out, it’s the same system over and over. Once you nail it, you want to scale it. Remember, simplicity scales, but complexity fails. Don’t scale the fail. That’s what Clay says, right? And keep making calls. I mean, that’s pretty simple right? There’s people going all the you’d be surprised how many people out there You know are too scared of rejection too scared of denial that they won’t make those calls But if you keep making calls, it’s gonna happen for you now Andy math I’m gonna ask you this here in basketball. You’re a good free throw shooter. Why can’t you change your free throw shooting? Philosophy every game sure if you change it half way through the season You’re in a bit of trouble there just because you practice this so many times over, that if all of a sudden you change it up, that could definitely diminish the percentages. So if you tap your foot and then spin it three times and then grab it and then don’t add a thing. Thrive Nation, anybody out there who gets good at anything, anybody who learns to master anything, learns how to do the same thing over and over until they can’t get it wrong. I would ask yourself rhetorically, in what way are you over-complicating your business? My name’s Clay Clark, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. Stay tuned. I can feel it. I can feel you staying tuned. I can feel something in the air tonight. I’ll do it for this moment, for all my life. Tonight, oh Lord. Won’t you exercise my mind, won’t you exercise my mind? I want to be free as I’ll ever be. Exercise my mind, help me exercise my mind. All right Thrive Nation, welcome back. The conversation is The Thrive Time Show on your radio. If you’ve ever struggled to have time freedom, this is the show for you. Steve, time freedom, is it not a challenge? I have time freedom right now, actually. John, is time freedom not a challenge? A huge, huge challenge. Chuck, is time freedom not an issue? It is a huge issue as well as a huge challenge. Now I’m going to talk about a client who’s no longer a client, who has made millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of dollars, who every time I’d meet with this guy, every single one of his meetings was about the same thing. And what he wanted to talk about was, how can I free up time? And the sad part was he had the money to be free, but he always wanted to do ridiculous website updates. And John, you know who I’m talking about. This guy would always want to do endless website updates, endless print pieces, endless videos, endless podcasts, endless things, always just in a perpetual wanting to stay busy. But they would always say they wanted time freedom, but at the end of the day, they just wanted to stay busy, or at least subconsciously they did. And it’s, I just encourage you today to ask yourself, do you actually want to be half time freedom? Because if you don’t that’s fine if you want to stay perpetually busy doing a big to-do list of things that don’t matter then stay Busy, but if you want to have time freedom, you’ve got to commit to simplicity John I want to get your take on this if you could if a client came to you and said So here’s you can go ahead and hit me with the wisdom baseball bat It does a wisdom baseball bat and it’s if you hit me with it I learned but it’s kind of a painful, but if you could just hit me right in the face just crush me in the skull about simplicity I’m ready to do it. You don’t have to worry about my feelings. I just want to know go ahead Let me have it hit me in the junk with the wisdom back go for it Well, okay, so what I would say is Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel just use what already works right come on now So like everybody wants to come up with this crazy new crazy new like innovative product And you know see if it won’t like see if it works. Yeah, I got a wheel that’s an oval. If you’re like you’re floating down the road. If the goal is time freedom, right, then find what works or look at somebody else that already knows what works, duplicate that and then stick with that system so your business is working, then you can work on your time freedom. Well, I’d rather focus on innovation, Chuck. I don’t want to do what works. I’m more of an innovator. I’m more of what I would call a… I go to the coffeehouses a lot and I have a bunch of ideas. I grind. I grind at the coffeehouses. I am not an app developer nor do I know anybody. That doesn’t freaking stop Tom Brady, does it? Remember Tom Brady’s app? The one he made where… Yes. Well, one thing that… When we’re talking about committing to simplicity, if you’re in management or you’re owning a business, I see this a lot where people want to start to automate everything as they get a little bit of success and they start hiring more people and they want to put this crazy complex software in place. And the thing is, your employees are never going to learn how to use all of the functions. So you’re going to spend all this money on an expensive software. And the other thing about that is they’re going to use that as an excuse to not get their job done. But you don’t understand all the employees I have in Boston are freaking awesome. I swear to Christ, we are wicked awesome. We can just get it done. I bet you are. But still. You don’t freaking understand my brother Danny. He can memorize anything. Danny, you know what’s impressive about this point is Chuck, you actually tied in move number 27 and 28 together. Don’t buy things you don’t need. Exactly. And keep things simple. Oh, it’s so nice. I want to read you a notable quotable from Albert Einstein, who allegedly did some things. He actually is the reason why we’re not speaking German. The Germans were developing the atom bomb and were far ahead of us and Albert Einstein pointed out to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hey, we probably should get started. And they’re like, what? I know these people. I remember I’m from Germany. I left. I fled there because I’m Jewish to escape certain death. I was their leading scientist I’m telling you they know how to do it. We need to have a sense of urgency Probably get started and they’re going well. I don’t I don’t know why would you guys want to go golfing innovation and then? Bomb hits Hawaii all of a sudden now right? Yo, I’m oh we are we are more in we’re in we’re ready to do this And he says if you can’t explain it to a six-year-old you don’t understand it yourself. Isaac Newton piles on. He says, truth is ever to be found in simplicity and not in multiplicity and confusion of things. Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, who’s Steve Jobs? Steve Jobs says, that’s been one of my mantras, focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. Someone says, buddy, when you talk that fast, I can’t write it down. And I say, listen, I’m working with you, okay, so let’s do it again. That’s been one of my mantras. Focus in simplicity. in the end because once you get there you can move mountains. Somebody else says, how many people are in the studio? Who are you talking to? Are these voices in your mind? What is wrong with you? They’re outside the door. Oh, they’re outside the door. Okay. Hordes of people. Tom Peters, though. Tom Peters, best-selling author. I love his book, The Search of Excellence. That book right there is a book I don’t talk about a lot because I don’t think the average person could handle reading that book. I think you read it and you go, I don’t want to read it. And then about chapter two you go, yes. Chapter three you go, oh, I’m riding this train yeah and then chapter four you realize only successful people read that book you want to go out to dinner with a CEO he’s read that book and you realize I can’t read it’s not a best-selling like in terms of you you can’t reference that book when talking to like you’re all again it’s called in search of excellence and one of the things he points out in the world of search engine optimization i think that top ten percent by top one percent of search engine optimization experts where people from all over the world is to hire me to come and speak to their company time off the mat because i spent a lot of time on uh… a ton of time i read all the books and then when you’re not spending time on it i’m spending time on it and then when you’re not working on john i just hired another consultant bruce clays from the guy who was searching for dummies to educate us yet again. It’s a never-ending pursuit of excellence. Not only have we read all the books, we actually wrote a book. We did. We wrote a book. The Search Engine Manifesto. I think there’s a guy named Jonathan Kelly’s name on that book. There’s a guy in there. That book is available right now for free. You can download it. It’s part of the Start Here book. It’s available for free download at Thrivetimeshow.com. And the reason why I say this, though, is Tom Peters points out, anybody who’s awesome at something just does the same thing over and over and over until they become the best. Like shooting free throws, right? Like we were talking with Andy earlier. Well, as an example, Michael Jordan, as great as he was, he went and thought, you know what, I was very good in high school at baseball and I’m going to go ahead and try to play professionally. And as great as he was, he realized that I could only hit like with a 200 batting average at the pro level, which is still better than the average person through just athleticism and skill. You can’t be great at everything. You want to be awesome at one thing. You want to dominate that thing. He says almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing, layout, processes, and procedures. Taco Bueno, they didn’t say, man, things are going so well here at Taco Bueno, why don’t we open up a Jiffy Lube? Right. Because they just keep opening up more Taco Buenos. That’s like Limode Cleaners. Same thing. He’s killing it. That’s why they keep opening up Limode Cleaners and not taco stands. Nine locations. You don’t see Limode out there. There’s such a big deal. Limode and Jiffy Lube. Now move 29. Avoid the physical and emotional presence of chronically late and emotional people. Oh yeah. Okay. I’m going to go with John. Joel Osteen says, you cannot, this is what Joel Osteen would say, he says, you cannot expect to live a positive life if you hang out with negative people. That’s all Joel Osteen would say. You cannot expect to live a positive life if you hang out with negative people. Your impression of him is a lot off. It’s kind of like Kirk, Captain Kirk meets Joel Osteen. I’ll work on it, I’ll get better at it. It’s Kirk Osteen. Kirk Osteen. Kirk Osteen. John, walk us through this. Yeah, so the thing about people that are always late is somehow they want to put that now on you because they came into the meeting late, you should continue on your meeting a little longer to make up the fact that they were late. That’s just one of those people. Then the emotional people, oh my gosh, these are my favorite, they’re like, everything’s on fire. Yeah, everything’s on fire. I want to whine about every single thing and then now somehow my problems are your problems, we share problems and let’s talk about it. What I want to do is we had a person we hired that I think made it for two weeks. I knew this person. We’ll call this, I’m going to call this person White Pants. And I want you to share the story. Everybody’s talking about my white pants. Oh nice. After this Chuck is doing a live concert. Everybody’s talking about his white pants. White pants. White pants. White pants. Diverse pants. Why can’t we have diverse pants? Why can’t there just be pants, guys? Why does it always have to be pants? That’s true. Why does it have to be pants? I’ll admit fault in this. It’s my fault. Yeah, it’s just pants. Just pants should be Technicolored Dream Pants. Those pants were offensive for many people of all different races, colors, nationalities. I’m tired of it. I’m not actually going to wear pants anymore as a protest. I’m flipping the script. I’m putting on black pants. When we come back, we’re going to talk about white pants and hiring emotional people. This person, they somehow made it through our group interview process, they were a bad hire, and I think they made it about a week and a half before they were attacked by the Cobra and fired for being an idiot. Stay tuned, it’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. If you are looking for the Start Here book, the world’s best business book, go to thrivetimeshow.com and get your copy today. Start here. I feel my heart beating You make me feel The kind of love I mean, I remember some bills of $4,500 a month just to get leads that I was having to pay for and that’s only get a lead and a contact to where now I’m paying you $1,700 a month and I got 80-some leads last week alone and I paid you $1,700. And to me, that was huge for my industry. That was one huge thing that just blowed me away. Okay folks, money is a magnifier. That’s what it is. Money is a magnifier. It’s an amplifier. It just makes you more of who you already were. So as an example, if you’re a complete jerk and you make a lot of money, you’ll become a bigger jerk. And on today’s show, we’re interviewing a long-time client who’s a really nice, kind, decent person. He doesn’t claim to be perfect, nor do I think that he’s perfect, but he’s a guy that I use over and over and over. I utilize his services to plant trees and do landscaping for my family, for my business, because I really enjoy him as a person. I consider him to be a friend, and it’s been awesome helping him magnify and grow his business. And without any further ado, we have the founder of Outside Inc., Paul Sullins. Welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? Doing good, Clay. Thank you for having me. So, Paul, I got to ask you here, and correct me if I’m wrong, I’m looking at your tracking sheet, which for anybody out there who’s a client, we look at the tracking sheet. And last week, you had 89 leads. So 89 people reached out to you to inquire about hiring you to do landscaping, pool maintenance, backyard work for them, outside remodeling kind of work. And then I’m looking at your tracking sheet like a year ago, and you were getting like four or five leads on a weekly basis. Can you maybe walk the listeners through what it feels like to be on the receiving end of 89 inbound leads in one week. It’s a little scary to be straight honest with you. It’s awesome just to know that the amount of work up front that we put in is actually paying off. You know, you see these people, you hear all these things, and you’re like, hey, it’s going to be there, it’s going to be there. And it’s been kind of mind-blowing to sit there and, you know, one of my office ladies comes in and goes we’ve got 56 calls in one day right after a rainstorm and to actually realize the work and the effort that we put in is actually coming to fruition it’s been amazing. What I’m going to do is I’m going to pull up your website and I’m going to showcase what you do so people can get a little context and know you’re not a hologram. Outside ink irrigation, outside ink irrigation is one of the websites. Also folks if you do a search on Google for Outside Inc. and the word PULSA, you can find the website outsideinc.co. So two different websites there. And when you go to outsideinc.co, we look here, we look at the services you provide. It’s French drainage, it’s landscaping, you do monthly home maintenance. If you look at the irrigation services, you guys are doing irrigation system repair and installation. So you’re not the only guy in your market who’s providing irrigation systems or French drains or, but you’re consistently getting a lot of leads. So I want to focus on the four aspects of business growth. There’s a lot of we can focus on, but I want to focus on four today. The first is marketing. You’ve got to get reviews from happy customers. Every single week I harass you about this and every week you show up with more, but these are actual customers that have actually done business with you. Can you talk about the importance, and I’ll hit play, but I’ll hit mute as I’m playing these, can you talk about the importance of gathering objective video reviews from real customers each and every week? What kind of value has that made when you’re even talking to prospective clients? It’s made a lot of difference. I mean, a lot of the phone calls, we’ll sit there and go, hey, we’re the highest rated, most reviewed company in Tulsa. We’re doing all these things and they’re like, yeah, we know, we went to your website. We saw the clients speak about what you had done around their houses and how well you communicated with them, and that’s how we decided to work with you guys. So it’s just you know I’ve put on I’ve put on so many different client reviews and interviews on the on the web page and it’s it’s been completely different you know through some of your training and seeing some of your different videos from business from the business shows that you put on Clay. I’ve noticed that we don’t have to have the best looking and the most entertained TV produced videos. It’s just getting videos of real people in their backyards, in their yards and actually talking about you as a person and the products that we’ve done for them and how they’ve enjoyed it. How often when you meet somebody, again we’re focused just on marketing right now, when you meet with somebody, how often does the potential buyer reference the fact that you they’ve watched a video review or have looked at examples of video reviews on your website as a percentage like how often do they reference you I’ve seen some of the videos I’ve seen some testimonials percentage-wise I would say at least 25 to maybe 50% you know I have a couple different sales guys and I have some ladies entering the phones here and I mean I’m hearing it all the time I’ve got an office right next to the lady answer the phone and you know she goes hey how did you hear about us well you know we googled you and then it’s like oh hey you know this this this and they were like oh yeah we saw it we already looked at your website and saw the saw the views all the video reviews you’ve done so I mean it is it’s all the time it might be more than that but I would say in the neighborhood of 25 to 40 percent and again if you’re talking about marketing, folks, we’re talking about marketing. It’s V-I-S-M. There’s other details, but everyone needs to remember this. V-I-S-M. Video reviews, images, search engine content, more reviews. Let’s hop on to I, images. You’re constantly gathering images of your projects. So it’s not an event. I think a lot of people think planting a garden is an event, and it’s not an event. I think people think that getting married is an event. It’s not an event. I think people think that raising a child is an event. It’s not an event. It’s a process. Every week, you’re gathering images, before and after images of projects you’ve done. How has that paid off, just the consistency of adding before and after images of projects? It’s actually done it quite well. It gets my guys. Number one, it helps my staff and us know that, number one, because as the owner of the business, you can’t be on every job. You know, as you grow, it helps me know that the guys are doing what I’m wanting them to do in the field. My company is actually being portrayed the way I want it to be portrayed. But then also, people always look at a company and look at, you know, we pull up at a nice fancy truck and they’re like, oh, these guys, all they’re going to do is the big fancy jobs. And not all our jobs are big and fancy. I mean, we talk and we work for the average Joe, the average person in the background. So when they’re able to look on, you know, and see some of these photos of just a little small French drain or we poured a little 10 by 10 concrete patio, it actually helps us relate better to the clients and the customers in the field. I feel just having all those videos and pictures. Just to be super clear again, video reviews, gotta get them every week, images of projects, you do a great job with that. Search engine content, our team handles the optimization, the ongoing updates on the website so you don’t have to mess with that. How much does that help for you knowing that you don’t have to go in to your website and figure out how to code and update a website every week? There’s no way I’d be where I’m at if I had to sit there and mess with that. Running a company, a lot of people always say starting your business is an easy thing. It’s managing it and keep on top of it. And these little details like this, I mean, we’re in an age now, word of mouth is one way, but everybody’s going to Google and going to your websites to see how to get a hold of you. And that’s the marketing we are in today, society. And I think that is super important to have that up and running. And when I don’t have to mess with it, it is blowing me away. Because I mean, I’ve got to deal with my employees. I’ve got to deal with all this other stuff. And so it’s just a huge peace of mind to know that that’s just taken care of. I don’t have to mess with it at all. Now, so again, we go back to this VISM. And I think one way we learn is through repetition, video reviews, images, search engine content, the ongoing optimization of the website. We handle that for all of our clients. And then M, more reviews. We’re never done getting reviews. And so right now if somebody goes to Google and they do a search right now and they type in Tulsa tree planting, which is how I originally heard about you, was I was looking to plant trees at one of my properties. I went to a church called Church on the Move, a really wonderful church that at the time was led by Pastor Willie George. The trees looked incredible on the property. So I kept asking people, who does the trees, who’s doing the work, and I kept hearing your name. That’s how I first met you. Now today when someone types in Tulsa tree planting, you come up top in the search results, 703 reviews, you’re constantly getting video reviews, images, search engine content, more reviews. Let’s talk about that for a second. How much has it helped you to have the most Google reviews? In addition to video, but the most Google reviews? It gives you validity. I really think with people, I kind of tell this to people all the time, is like, I talk to my buddies of mine that own businesses or in any kind of a service industry. And I’m like, what do people do now? Nowadays, they go to Google, they Google, they’re Googling for French grains or Google for this, they’re Googling where to go eat. And if you know to be at the top of Google gives you the opportunity to actually talk to the client and to bid it. Now, you know, we still have to go out and sell the job to the client. But it’s been very important and very helpful to be able to be at the top to be able to get that. I don’t know if I quite answered your question. This is great and you’ve got the four aspects of business I want to focus on today. Again, step one marketing and branding. We covered that. The web branding is anything people see. The website, the print pieces, the logo, the auto wraps. We handle all that with you. We do a lot of that work behind the scenes. That’s marketing and branding. The second step is sales. Sales is converting an ideal and likely lead or an ideal and likely buyer into an actual buyer. And I believe that a lot of times, and I’ve worked with companies in the past that helped me with my marketing when I was first starting DJConnection.com, and I would say, well, yeah, I’m getting a lot of leads, but I’m not selling anything. And they would say, we don’t really help with that. We just focus on the marketing or just the branding. I want to get your thoughts on the sales thing. You do a very good job of tracking. I won’t show your tracking numbers on today’s show, but you do a very good job of tracking. This is how many leads that came in. This is how many people bought. How has that helped you measuring and tracking your sales? Number one, it helps me because as I’ve grown, I’ve got multiple salesmen that work with me. Number one, I’m able to see what my guys in the field are selling every week. It also gives me the capabilities of looking and seeing how our ebbs and flows are in my business. Because I’m an outdoor service company. So in the springs and the falls, it’s able to see when I need to gear up for employees, when I need to gear up and get guys ready for stuff When our down times are so, you know over the last two years, I’m able to go back and look at it going Hey, you know January and February is going to be real slow December So I really need to start as a business owner in October You know September in October start pushing sales and start finding different ways to be able to get more business to keep my guys going so we can book out over that time. So if I wasn’t able to track my sales, my leads coming in, the jobs were sold, I wouldn’t know. You know, you get so busy in your day in and day out, you don’t focus on that stuff. And you know, me meeting with you every week as a business coach and able to sit there and look at that stuff every week, you get trained to be able to look at that stuff and be able to see stuff ahead as you’re growing your business and not looking in the rear view mirror going, man, I wish I would have kept that going or wish I would have known about that six months ago because then I would have been able to adjust then to help us now. Now I’m sitting there going, hey, I’m going to make money to pay bills and we got to get some jobs sold and I’m working in the rear view mirror trying to get stuff closed that we should have been working on three to four months ago. Now most of the clients I work with, I charge clients a flat rate of $1,700 a month plus a small percentage of growth. The idea is hopefully I’m the cheapest employee that you have. You look at it and you go, okay, I’m paying this guy $1,700 a month. Hopefully I’m the least expensive person on the payroll, the least expensive line item. But over time, once we produce fruit, hopefully that small percentage of the growth makes it all worth it. So that’s the idea, to achieve that true win-win. And so the third aspect of the business coaching I want to cover on today’s show is management. So you look at a great project like this, you got to do marketing, branding, true. Step two, you got to do sales. But three, you got to manage. And I think that most people who are self-employed feel sort of isolated and annoyed. I feel like most self-employed people feel isolated and annoyed. They feel like, am I the only one seeing the level of jackassery that is often allowed in the American workplace today? And I have to work with all my wonderful clients to teach best practice management systems. I think you do a fine job of that. That’s something that you, in my opinion, is one of your strengths. You do a very good job of communicating the expectations directly to the client and you manage those expectations. You tell the client, hey Mr. Smith, hey Ms. Smith, we’re going to have your pool remodel or your pool fix or your pool house fixed or your outdoor siding project, your outdoor landscaping. We’re going to have your retaining wall. We’re going to have whatever the project is, we’re going to have it done by this particular day. It’s going to cost this amount of money. You do a very good job of managing that relationship with the client and then managing those employees behind the scenes. Can you talk to us about the importance of just mastering management techniques? I don’t know if anybody is ever a master. One of the things I’ve learned, and I’ve had clients over and over in my field, sat there and going, man, when you said you were there, you were there. You were there every time you said you were going to be there, and you did what you said you were going to do. Number one, I like to be a man of my word. I like to be able to tell people what we’re going to be there. I work in the outdoor industry, I mean it rains, we’re in Oklahoma, so you’re gonna have delays. But setting those expectations with the clients, number one, helps me to be able to go, hey, it’s rain, I can’t get it. We’ve been delayed because of this. And setting those expectations up front makes for a happy end product with your clients. And just going through the process, saying hey, even when I sell the job, I’m like hey, we’re the highest rated, most reviewed company in Tulsa right now. And here’s the reason why. But that also comes with we’re really busy. We’re not going to be able to get to you tomorrow. And the thing is, the people that can get to you tomorrow are probably going to be the best product. And setting those expectations with the clients up front, letting them know, hey, we’re going to be a little behind. We’re you know, we’re six weeks out We’re eight weeks out and letting that client know that and then keeping them up to date it then the client knows Hey, they just didn’t take my deposit or they just didn’t take this and just disappeared They know that hey, we’re coming down, you know, we’re there. We’re still there. We’re gonna get the duck So I think that’s one of the things that’s helping really to set that set with your clients and it makes it important to them at the end. Some of these jobs are an investment for their backyard. It’s a lot of money for them on some of these projects. It’s just like buying a house. You want to know that you’re getting what you’re paying for, and it’s going to be there when you expect it to be there. And we could share just hundreds of video testimonials or Google reviews. I’m just showing some examples here. But the final area I wanted to cover on today’s show, again, I’m just making sure we’re recapping. Marketing and branding, that’s how you generate leads. Second step is sales. You convert ideal and likely buyers into sales. Three is management. You have to manage the expectations. And then the final step is accounting and what I would classify as merit-based pay. At the end of the day, it’s not how much money you make. It’s how much you keep. And I just don’t think that most people think about that when they’re growing a business. And that’s becoming an increasingly part of our ongoing conversations is making sure that you know, because A, you’re the kind of guy that quotes a customer a price and you hold yourself accountable to not changing your bid on the client, but that doesn’t mean that subcontractors or employees won’t try to change the game on you and all of a sudden drive up your expenses. So can you talk about that, that final step of just the accountings? I think a lot of entrepreneurs when they reach out for a business coach or a consultant, they don’t think about the accounting. But I would argue as we continue to grow outside Inc., the accounting aspect of your business is becoming a bigger part. I firmly agree. I just actually just came out of a meeting talking about accounting and bills and what’s coming in. It’s fresh on my mind. And as you grow your business, one of the things I think as you’re young, you’re just trying to get jobs done. You’re just trying to get whatever you can go but as you grow it becomes a huge part it becomes I think more than what most people think it’s going to be and getting you know keeping the money and keeping the accounting it’s just like this last year here Clay I mean you’ve been talking about you know doing merit-based but I think once if you get if you pay people enough where they’re comfortable, they stay there. They don’t want to grow. You know as your business grows, you want to grow. You want to give them more money. You know most people want more money. I think everybody would you know not frown against getting some extra money, but as a business owner you want your salesman, you want your guys out there in the field wanting to be able to make more money. And if you just keep them on a hourly basis, there’s no growth for them to perform better and to make more money. So this last year I’ve switched my sales guys to 100% commission. I used to have them up at base and I put them over to commission. And the amount of calls of clients looking for their bids has got cut down in over half. He’s selling more jobs by I would say 30 to 40 percent, maybe more than that, since we’ve been tracking it. It’s maybe a huge, huge thing because the thing is, if he doesn’t sell, he doesn’t get paid any money. Especially when you find people that are eager to make more money, they’re going to sell more. This is one thing I wanted to bring up and I’ll let you go here because I know you’re a busy guy here. For anybody out there that doesn’t know this, when I built my first company called DJConnection.com, after every event we did, I was obsessive about calling the bride after the wedding and asking them to leave us an objective review. Now, this is before Google was super relevant, so we had WeddingWire and the Knot.com and those kind of things, or we would get video testimonials on an old school video camera we had back in the day. We would archive them, and at a certain point, I remember I talked to a bride and she said to me, you have thousands of video testimonials. And I said, oh yeah, absolutely. And then now today, people go to Thrivetimeshow.com, they click on testimonials, and I had a call, I had the other day, with a wonderful man, and he was saying to me, I was going through your testimonials, and I had to stop around like page 30, because I kept looking at the testimonials, and I realized, there is really no end in sight. I mean, I’m looking at this and there’s like years after years after years of video testimonials and I said, well yeah, because we document that. That’s a very important thing that we do. But I want to ask you this question. For anybody out there that’s thinking about coming to one of our workshops or scheduling a free 13-point assessment with myself to go over how to grow their company, what would you say or maybe what kind of impact do you think that business coaching with our program has made on your business? It’s been huge. One of the things I’ve loved, you know, the problem is a lot of times with business owners is they’re, I feel, especially with me, you know, we come from, for my instance, I come from, I call it W-2 employee status, you know, working for somebody and say, hey, I’m gonna go out here and start my own business. Well, I didn’t go to business school. Nobody’s told me the next steps what of what I really need to focus on because as you grow this business like what is it there you know you can read a thousand books and what’s made it huge for me is to be able to come along you know have you come along beside me and such and go hey you need to focus on this and this is why you need to focus on this and this is why because when we get when we get down and what I call the trenches as a business owner you’re sitting there going man if you all you do is focus on that you can never focus on what you really need to do you can’t focus on your accounting and stuff like that and it’s been amazing it’s actually I don’t know how much it’s grown my company so far in the last two years but it is the peace of mind is unreal because I’m not looking at my numbers at the moment but it has been huge it’s just like I used to have to pay I don’t think it was I think we were paying in the neighborhood of $4,000 a month just for leads Just to get leads in now Two years ago. I mean this time of the year We’re yeah I mean I remember some bills of $4,500 a month just to get leads that I was having to pay for and that’s only get a lead in a contact to where now I’m paying you $1,700 a month and I got 80-some leads last week alone and I paid you $1,700. To me, that was huge for my industry. That was one huge thing that just blew me away. I’ll say this too. You are a client that’s more private about your numbers. That just goes with your personality. Some of my clients are a little bit more flashy. They love to talk about their sales and their sales. I can say this. I was looking at year over year. So you take the month of May when we’re recording this, and you look at this week last year. And last week, you had eight leads. So last year, this week, you had eight leads, from what I can tell on the tracking sheet. And this week, we had 89. So whatever that’s worth for anybody out there. And again, we have some of our clients that like to talk about gross sales. And Paul keeps it more private, and that’s totally fine. So I just encourage everybody out there, you can have a tenfold increase in your number of leads, your amount of activity, you can do it, but you gotta be a diligent doer. You can’t just be a hearer of these words, you have to implement what you’re learning. And Paul, I really appreciate you for making the Thrive Time Show World headquarters look incredible. Thank you for the maintenance you provide, thank you for the work you provide, and again, it’s been awesome serving you. So again, thanks for your time today, sir. Hey, thank you, Clay. Have a great day, buddy. Take care. Bye. All right, bye. I’m Glenn Shaw, owner of Shaw Homes in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Started the company in 1985. At that time, it was one employee doing everything, me. I met Aaron Antus in 2007. The top three things that Aaron did for Shaw Homes was he brought in processes that helped us be able to repeat over and over. He brought in unique hiring skills. He was able to find the right people for the right seat on the bus and Aaron brought sales techniques that we weren’t familiar with up until that time. When Aaron came, we were selling about 80-85 houses a year and during the 16-year period we saw sales get up over 400. Before I met Aaron, the only sales manager we had was myself and I was completely unable to perform perform that job and so Aaron brought major changes and great results with them. In the many years that I was building houses before Aaron I was great at selling if somebody wanted to buy but they had to be knocking on my door asking me to sell my house before I could actually make that sell. I had no sales techniques and no ability to generate sales. Aaron coming in as a natural salesperson just absolutely transformed that and made the sales experience better for the company and better for our buyers. But prior to Aaron, I would work all week for the company. I’d sit in the model home over the weekend and I had a salesperson or two but I was out actually out there all weekend working that. Since hiring Aaron I was able to take my weekends off, even reduce my workload during the week. I went from working 60-70 hours a week to almost a normal workload. So I’ve been a member of the Builder 20 program in the National Association of Home Builders for 25 years, 20 years and During that time I’ve seen a lot of sales managers With the other companies that have been involved and in my opinion Aaron is smarter and sharper Than any sales manager of any builder that’s ever been in our group. Now some markets they don’t have to try to sell they just sell themselves, but with the ability to sell and to train and hire Aaron was better than any of those sales managers that were in my program. I remember when I considered hiring Aaron many years ago the thought of spending the extra money was a little scary, but in hindsight it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. It freed my time, increased our sales, and at the end of the day increased our profitability beyond my wildest expectations. Years ago I was concerned that if I didn’t do whatever a customer asked me to do it might be the last house I sold. And so over time we were able to move away from unlimited customization to pre-designed options. The problem that we were having in those days is that customer would tell us what they wanted but they didn’t really know what they wanted and we would deliver exactly what they told us to do and they wouldn’t be happy with it. So as we became more standardized, we give lots of options but we don’t customize and in the end that allows us to sell more homes for better margins than spending countless hours trying to customize in just every avenue of the sales process. We get weekly reports on sales, on profitability, on production and it provides all the manageable tools that I need to review the company from a $10,000 level. Alright, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, what we’re going to focus on is how to grow a successful company. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to pull up a graphic that is the theory of how to grow a successful company, but vision without execution is hallucination. And so if you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, you can download a book that I have written called A Millionaire’s Guide, How to Become Sustainably Rich. You can download it for free at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, but you have to actually implement that which is in the book. And so on today’s show, we’re joined by a very successful person in the home building business, a great friend of mine, a man by the name of Aaron Antus. Aaron Antus, welcome on to The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m doing great, Clay. Thanks for having me on. Hey, so I got to ask you this for the people out there that want to prove you’re not a hologram. First off, what’s the website for your company so people can verify that you are, in fact, a real business? You bet. It’s shaholmes.com. S-H-A-W-H-O-M-E-S.com. shaholmes.com. I’m pulling up shaholmes.com. Pulling up. That’s the website. Shawhomes.com. When you and I met, before we met, you had been already very successful as a home builder. You turned your dream of being a home builder guy into reality. So how many homes had you sold or what kind of sales had you done in your career as a home builder guy before you and I even met? Before we met, probably about 750 million in sales prior to meeting you. And then, you did, the year we first started working together, what were the sales totals that year? We were at like 19 million. 19 million. And then when you ended 2022, obviously we’re in 2023 and so we’ll see how this year ends, but as far as ending 2022, how much sales did you do last year at the end of 2022? 2022, we were at like 84 million. OK, so from 19 million to 84 million. So you’re doing some things right here. And we’re going to try to do is kind of demystify the plan here. OK, so here we go. So establishing revenue goals. Yeah. When you and I first started working together, we started off with a 13-point assessment. We went over your goals. I’m not going to ask you to share your goals on the air, but why is it important that you have goals? Well, I mean, goals are sort of your guideposts that you set something out there in front of you and you start chasing after it. Without that, you’re just kind of floundering in mediocrity. You don’t have any reason to get up in the morning and really get after it. I think goals are… You can have lots of different types of goals and we’ve talked about a lot of this We’ve talked about you know having financial goals and having you know fitness goals and having friendship goals And just all these different areas. I know you’ve got the f6 you know so That’s kind of something that you know we touched on very early on you asked me like is the goal is one of your goals More income or is it more time? And so I said, well really at this point it’s more income and then later it became more time. So you know it’s changed over the time I’ve known you since 2016. We’re going on seven years and the income went up considerably so now it’s you know turned in the last couple years towards more time. Now the break-even numbers again I’m not asking you for the numbers on the show but you guys have a lot of fixed costs. I mean if you go to shawhomes.com, you’ve got framers, you have plumbers, you have tile people, you have so many skilled people, you have a full-time sales team, you have an admin staff, and if you don’t sell a house, you still have the service of the land, you still have all the overhead. Why is it important for every listener out there to know their break-even point, how many deals they need per month just to break even? Well, yeah, because you’re going backwards real quick and it doesn’t take very long if you’re at the beginning of your businesses, it doesn’t take very long for you to be in a place where the creditors are knocking at your door and you can’t pay your bills and all of a sudden you’re going to lose all your, for us, all of our trades, all of our suppliers are going to start backing out. So you’ve got to know what that number is that lets you tread water so that, okay, this is the worst case scenario, everything above that, at least I’m into the profit zone. So, you know, you go out of business pretty quick. Most businesses don’t last more than just a few months if they get below that break-even number. Now, folks, again, these might seem like simple steps, but they’re all the linear steps you have to take to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And if you want to grow your company, this is how you do it. Box number three, though, is you have to know the hours you’re willing to work. Now, your incredible wife is here off camera for accountability. So at any point, she could yell like, amen or boo. But you guys are on the same page with the hours you’re willing to work. And you guys, as a couple, I want to brag on both of you, you guys both committed to sacrificing time and energy and a lot of things to get to where you’re at in life. And then as you had your children, you raised them, you decided to devote time to raising said kids. And now that your kids are older, you’re devoting time to raising these kids. So it’s not like you advocated being a parent while also growing a company. You did both well. I’d love to get your thoughts on sitting down with your spouse if you’re watching this today or your significant other and making sure you’re on the same page about how many hours per week you’re willing to work. Well, yeah, I mean, you don’t want to grow a business to, you know, make a whole bunch of money just so you can split it in half later. Oh. Because that’s kind of what happens when you don’t work out those details ahead of time. And so my wife and I have been married 25 years. We’ve been together for four before that. And so yeah, sorry, 26. Did I just say 25? 26. But real quick, I hate to do this to you. I just got in trouble. I hate to do this. Your wife just turned 27 on Thursday, and what you said is 100% false. Okay, so the unique value proposition here. Now, let’s talk about this. Whether it’s growing a home building company, or a dog training business, or a haircut chain, or a carpet cleaning franchise, or whatever business we’re involved in helping to grow, you have to sit down as a listener out there, as a business owner. You’ve got to figure out what makes your company unique. Absolutely. So I want to ask you, what makes Shaw Homes unique in the marketplace with other home builders? Yeah, we have more furnished and decorated model homes than any other builder in the market. So, you know, a lot of times people when they walk into a home and they’re trying to decide if they like the floor plan, the layout, whatever, they usually, most builders in our market have an empty house that they walk into. It’s just kind of echoes when you walk through it. There’s no furniture or anything. And we completely, as you can see in this little video here, we completely furnish and decorate it, make it beautiful. We are the most award-winning builder in the state of Oklahoma. We’ve won like five times as many awards as any other builder in the market. So definitely that is one of our big takeaways. Now, I’m going to throw you under the bus real quick, and I don’t mean to do this super passively-aggressively. It’ll just be more of a subtle passive-aggressive. When I met you, you guys had all these awards, but no one knew. That’s true. It was like this weird, bizarre thing where you had all these awards. I remember talking to you, and I’m like, what makes you guys different? And you’re like, you know, we do a good job, and you’re being nice about it. You’re a good salesperson. But I said, well, I mean, tell me about the awards. And you’re like, well, we got this award, that award, this award, like 45 minutes later, it’s like that award, this award. I need to shave now, this award, that award. I need to go brush my teeth, this award, that award, I want to go mow the lawn now, this award, that award, I’m thinking about retiring, this award, my kids are turning 18, I can see it, this award, and this award, and that award. We put those on the website and that helped. The other thing you guys, we needed to change was all these people were saying great things but we didn’t have video reviews of them saying it on camera. So it was like your online reputation didn’t match your real world reputation. You had so much good momentum there and so many people loved you guys. And now you guys have, would you say, 100 video reviews? Oh gosh, I would say more than that. We’ve got, yeah, we have a lot. And everyone, you could just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And this is actually all that’s on this page. If you go to our YouTube channel, we have way more than this. So again, and this is all the stuff, you’re going to grow a successful company folks. Step one, you’ve got to figure out your revenue goals. Step two, you’ve got to figure out your break-even goals. Step three, sit down for an hour of power, sit down with your spouse, make sure that you guys are on the same page of your hours you’re willing to work. Step four, unique value proposition. Figure out what it is that makes you unique and we have an in-depth guide that you can download for free at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire if you get stuck. Next box, you’ve got to improve your branding, your website, your one sheet, in your case, model home presentations, business cards, social media branding, everything that a customer sees needs to be first class. And I was talking to a guy named Ronnie Morales today, and it’s Morales Brothers. I think you met him at a conference. He told me, and this is, I’m not slamming Ronnie. Ronnie, if you’re listening, I’m not slamming you. This is the real thing. Ronnie said he’d listened to our show for seven consecutive years before ever reaching out. And now he’s reached out and he’s up 57% in about eight months. That’s awesome. And we’re going to put his story on part two of today’s show because he’s in Texas and he’s seven years behind you. But he’s doing a great job. What do you think that thing is where people have bad branding and they are not aware of it? Someone hasn’t brought it to our attention? What causes bad branding? You know, the number one thing I hear business owners say is, well, you know, I don’t really need good branding because I sell everything by word of mouth. Oh yeah, baby. I’ve got such an incredible reputation that everybody just comes to me by word of mouth. And then it’s like, okay, yeah, but how much business did you do last year? Well, not very much and, you know, I’m really unprofitable, but I’ve got great reputation out there and I get a lot of word of mouth. So when people switch over to starting to improve branding, I know you helped us a lot with that in just creating a lot better looking website, creating a, we’ve got an office environment now that is when people walk into our model home, they are blown away. We truly wow our customers when they come to our model homes. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience in the state of Oklahoma. The process of that, just going through branding it so that it looks really top-notch. That includes everything from marketing to all of your senses and everything else. It just really brought us to another level. When the customer comes in and experiences us after having walked through other builders homes, they usually come in and go, you guys are just on a whole nother level. It’s sights, sounds, smells, experiences, everything that your customer sees, they’re grading you on and you might not know that they are even judging you because they’re not filling out the form. I have a funny story to share with you that’s kind of sad. I was working with a fitness guy years ago and I’m not going to tell you what studies he’s in or what study he folks, I know you want to know but I’m not going to tell you. And he filled out the form because his wife wanted him to schedule a 13-point assessment. He did not want to. He tells me, Clay, honestly, I’m just doing the call because my wife wants me on the phone. I got to, I don’t really don’t get leads from social media. I don’t get leads from marketing. I get all my leads word of mouth, like you were saying. And I said, well, let me just do this. Let’s just, this first month working together, let me get all the passwords for your Facebook, your Google, your YouTube. And I’m just, it’s the first month, we do this with every single client. We optimize your YouTube, your Facebook, your Instagram, your Twitter, all that. We log on, this is a fitness guy, he was spending like 400 bucks a week, every week on ads. And he hadn’t known, he wasn’t aware, that every time a lead came in, it got stuck in Facebook and went to an email address that he wasn’t checking. So think about this. And it’s like 15 to 20 leads a week for years this guy had. That’s not good. And he didn’t even, so I’m going, you’re spending, you know, 20 grand a year on ads that you’re not getting anything from. And are you aware that the phone number on your site rings to a phone that’s no longer a real phone? And I’m serious, this is real. And then he had before and after photos where somebody had had the idea of let’s get before and after photos. You know where you interview someone before they start working out? Yeah. But then they never completed the thought. You know what I’m saying? I do. Where it’s like they interview him about getting in shape, but then they never actually like aired the part where they’re in shape. Oh no. So it’s just sort of like an interview with people that are not in shape and I’m like, and again, he’s a busy guy, busy entrepreneur, that kind of stuff is very common. It’s kind of laughable if it’s not your company. But okay, next box. You gotta determine your customer acquisition costs. How much does it cost you to get a customer? So Aaron, you guys run ads on Google, on Facebook, on retargeting ads, you have massive signage, there’s a lot of stuff you do. Why is it important to know how much it costs you at the end of the day to get an actual new buyer of a shawl? Well, because if you want more of those, you know what it costs to go generate more of those. It’s a cost where it’s like, okay, well, I’m down in sales this month or this quarter or whatever, and I need four more sales to make it a good quarter here before the end of the quarter. It’s like, I know I can go put money into that and it’s going to cost me X number of dollars per customer to get there. And so then it’s just a matter of do I want to spend that money to get to that point. So for us it’s a pretty high number because it’s a big ticket item, but for some people it might be very small to get that each customer. But for us, you’ve got to know what the number is because ultimately that goes into the price of your product and whatever you sell. We’re doing homes. That is one of our line item costs in our homes. That’s a cost. Yeah. Now, if you go to any of the businesses that I’m involved in, you go to eitrlounge.com forward slash staff. I put in the password here. Once I put in the password, I have all of the documents needed to run the company. And they’re all saved. So the checklist for the manager, the opening checklist for the assistant manager, the bathroom cleaning checklist, everything needed to grow the companies all in one place. And therefore, the business, everybody who works there knows where to go to find those documents. This is the kind of stuff that fires me up and it makes other people crazy. So with the conferences we do, if we ever do a conference that’s out of town, I have a checklist of stuff I print out. I know it seems kind of crazy for people, but this is real. I put it out and it’s like, okay, socks. I’m gone for four days. I want to have 12 pairs of socks. Why? Because it could be hot. I don’t know. It could get wet. I don’t know. I have a list of deodorant and socks and shaving and I have a laptop and a backup laptop and I have patch cables and XLR cables and we bring three… You’ve seen all this stuff, but it’s multiple monitors, backup monitors. It’s backups for everything. When you guys build a Shaw home, you’re not moving off of guesswork. There’s blueprints, there’s plans, there’s systems, so houses don’t fall down. There’s somebody out here listening right now that doesn’t have systems in place. They don’t have checklists. They don’t have it, and so they have to have the, they have to think about everything all the time, because if not, they forget a step. What would you say is the importance of having taken the time to have built these systems now? It is the night and day difference between running around like your hair is on fire every day, constantly playing firefighter or you know you hear people say I’m up to my armpits in alligators you know. It’s because you don’t have systems and processes and every time at Shaw Homes, every time that we have a problem come up, we automatically go okay what step in our system did this fall apart in? And what’s broken in that step and how can we fix it so it never happens again? So we go fix the process. You know, we address the problem for the customer, but then we go back after that and we go, how do we fix the process so we don’t repeat this problem? And the business owners that are running around with their hair on fire all the time, it’s because there’s no systems, no processes. Everything is urgent. Everything is hair on fire. Correct. And it is a chaos world that you live in. And if you’re gonna build homes for a living and build a lot of them, you cannot live in that chaos world. Now this next box, I get excited about all these boxes. This is what I get excited about. This right here is what I care about. The next box is management and execution. You have people on your team and I’m just going to give some examples and I hope this benefits somebody out there listening. You have people on your team, it’s their responsibility every time that you do a new house, they go out there and they design or they get the blueprint on the website. They get the new design of the home because people want to see floor plans. Somebody’s job is to get those up there. Somebody gets photos of every house that you guys are building. Somebody gets videos of every house. Somebody puts them all up for sale. Somebody answers the phone every day. Somebody calls the leads every day. Somebody cleans the bathroom every day. Somebody builds the houses every day. Now this is what I find, and I’m sure none of our listeners can relate to this. Some of our listeners fire people and then nothing happens. So work with me on this. There’s listeners out there that I talk to every day because we do free 13-point assessments. So I talk to two or three people a day who go to thrivetimeshow.com. They want to schedule a consultation. And the other day you heard me talking to Jordan. I said, Jordan, go ahead and keep setting those. He set an appointment with someone who’s definitely not a good fit. And you could tell he had a little question if that was okay. And I said, I would rather you set an appointment with somebody than not, because I don’t know if who’s a good fit or not. But the idea though is, I sit down, I was talking to a guy the other day, and he was like, the reason why my team did not get Google reviews or videos reviews this week is because we fired a guy. And I go, I’m just asking him, where are we stuck, what’s your biggest limiting factor? I have a big process I go through in my evaluation. I said, who calls the leads? He’s like, well normally I have a person that calls the leads, but we just fired her. And I mean this, I’m going, how long have you been in business? This guy’s been in business for over 10 years. And he’s reaching out for help, good person, we’re trying to help him, I think it’s gonna be a good fit. But, so I said, so basically, everybody follows the systems until they don’t work there anymore and then no one does the systems and you go back and forth vacillating from things being done to not being done. And one of my favorite things about working with you guys is that you’re honest people. What does that mean? You do your best to do what you say you’re going to do and you you hold yourself and the employees accountable. But what would happen if every week you if somebody wasn’t performing you remove the for the position and then the houses were built for the week because i was going well or because maybe a salesperson was a performing at the peak you let them go in the next thing you know and what would happen to manage your company that way uh… it would be a disaster i mean i can’t not have i can’t just fire my superintendent without having somebody already ready to take over all of those responsibilities because I’ve got materials showing up at the job site today, tomorrow, and the next day. I’ve got trades showing up who need some supervision, need to know what they’re supposed to be doing. If I fire that guy with no warning, somebody else has to come fill in that position. So, you know, for us, we try to never have that gap happen. And, you know, sometimes it’s like, you know that you’re gonna need to fire somebody and you can see the writing on the wall. Right. But you want to get the next person up and ready to go before that happens. And you guys have a weekly meeting. So we talk a lot of this show from an employer perspective. But how frustrating would it be to be an A player employee and you’re working for a C player boss? You know, a boss that doesn’t have a staff meeting, that’s not organized, that doesn’t pay people on time, that’s constantly emotional. I see that a lot. And so management is a learned skill. And thankfully, when I first met with you, you’d already really mastered, in my opinion, managing people. But this next box is where I thought we needed some help, was to build a system for constantly recruiting new people. Because certain people work for Shaw Homes for three years or four years, and then they want to go move. They want to have a baby. They want to stay home. They want to get a new job. Even though you have a low turnover at Shaw, certain people get to their expiration date and it’s time for them to move on to something else. Because we didn’t have a process in place at Shaw at that time to consistently bring in a pipeline of new people, it made it difficult to do the management that was needed. Can you talk about the importance of implementing a human resources program for hiring, inspiring, training and retaining good people? It’s huge. I mean, that was definitely an Achilles heel for us. And you helped us a lot with that. You know, putting in a, you know, where every single week I’m seeing, you know, potential candidates that could come work for us and their job shadowing and seeing what it’s like to work in our company every single week. It does multiple things. It helps the people who work there to know, hey, there’s other people who desire to come work here. And if I’m not doing my job, I might get replaced. So there’s a little bit of that. And then it’s also a thing of, the people who are shadowing get to see the job being done by people who are happy doing their job. And it helps them to want to come be a part of Shaw Homes. I’ve got a very long list of people right now in every single position that would be excited to come work for us if I did all of a sudden find myself with an opening, you know, because occasionally people leave with no notice or whatever, you know, something happens, family emergency, whatever. And you have that, oh, I need to replace somebody immediately. And the great thing about it is I have a whole bunch of people that I could plug into that position very quickly because every single week I am interviewing. Now the next box here is you got to do your accounting and in order to earn millions, you have to automate your accounting. What does that mean? You have to have a system in place for making sure you price your products and services correctly and that you pay yourself first, that you set aside a set amount of money to pay yourself and your staff. All these things work together. What I find is people ask me, often just not knowing, they come from a place of a good heart. They don’t know. They say to me, Clay, what is the most important step in growing shawholmes? I’ve heard Aaron on the show. He’s a great guy. Clay, I’ve heard PMHOKC on the show. Clay, I’ve seen OxiFresh on the show. What was the most important thing they did? And to me, that’s like asking a hiker, what was the most important step you took to get to the top of that mountain? Mm-hmm. Well, it was the one we took there an hour ago. I took a left step. No, it’s that gasket of Baker. What’s the most important ingredient? Is it milk? Is it sugar? Is it eggs? You know, it’s like asking a farmer, what’s the most important thing, feeding the animals or watering them? What’s the key to your success? There’s just certain questions that I understand people want to know, but all of this has to work together and nothing works unless you do. So I have three final questions for you. For anybody out there that’s thinking about scheduling a consultation, a free consultation with Thrivetimeshow.com and myself, obviously they’re stuck with me at the Phillip DeForeman, I’m the only person that does 13-point assessments. I believe we, I’ve seen it since 2005, we help people decrease their costs, increase their time, freedom, and profits. What would you say is the benefit of scheduling that 13-point assessment? Well, actually, the 13-point assessment was very eye-opening for me. You asked me a lot of tough questions that I probably should have been asking myself and wasn’t. And so as we went through the questions, I was like, I think at every question you asked me, I was like, oh, that’s a good question. I was like, hang on, let me think about that for a minute. So I find that it kind of helps open your eyes to, you know, these are some things that I know I have some areas of weakness. And then there were, I think, a couple of the questions where I was like, oh, I know the answer to this one. I got this one, no problem. But it helps you sort of identify. I walked away having identified areas of strength and areas of weakness, even though that really wasn’t the purpose of the phone call necessarily. It helped me to see that. And then I was like, hmm, I think I have a need in a couple of these areas, and I didn’t really know what to do for myself. I didn’t have the answers. You know, in part three of today’s show, part two, we’re going to show the Ronnie Morales story. In part three, we’re going to do a testimony with Myron. And Myron just bought his first Lamborghini today, and he’s super fired up. And so Myron’s about six years down the path. We’ve been working with you for about eight years, whereas Ronnie’s been with us for less than a year. And it’s at a certain point that we have to take action. Knowledge without application is meaningless. What would you say to somebody who’s like, you know, it’s $1,700 a month and I’m spending that much right now on random ads and that much money on random regrettable purchases at the gas station and iTunes I’m downloading. I’m spending $1,700 a month on various things. I don’t know if I can afford it because I’ve just bought another vehicle that I can’t afford, but I’m leasing it. What would you say to somebody who’s kind of on that fence? I mean, I would say you need to do it. I mean, it has made a it has been a game changer for us. I don’t know why you would sit there and think seventeen hundred dollars a month is too much money to spend. Go find the money somewhere. Go empty out your sofa cushions. Go sell the stuff that you have in your house that you’re not using. I mean, go get, you know, whatever you need to do to get to that place, you need to find that $1,700. And I will say this, that cost was very quickly replaced with the extra money we were making. And I’ve seen, I’ve actually seen, because I’ve been around you for a long time, I’ve seen a lot of your clients come in and right off the bat, they’re real nervous about, am I gonna be able to, you know, because maybe they’re a smaller company or whatever, and they’re like, I’m wondering if I’m gonna be able to handle this 1,700 a month. And then I see them six months later, and I’m like, how’s it going now? And they’re like, man, we’re just hitting record after record. I have referred several business owners. And they’re doing great. That are killing it. And that, you know, I’ll give one example. I won’t name the person, but I did send one of my very good friends to you who was on the verge of losing his business because he just wasn’t able. He had bought another one of the shops of what he does. He opened it and it was not profitable and it was gonna take under both of his shops and I sent him over to you. And I remember about three months later, I asked him, how’s it going? And he goes, man, we just had a record breaking month. This was amazing. And by the way, he said, person just hit another record breaking month, just so you know. Yeah, and I know right now, not only does he have way more income, but he has a lot more time freedom because he’s been working with you for many years now. And so that was, it changed his life, just like it changed my life. I would say, if you’re thinking about, you know, doing a 13 point assessment, stop thinking, dial the phone, pause this video, make the phone call, reach out to Clay, get it started right now. Now, final question I have is, I think people look at oxyfresh.com and they go in, there’s 500 locations now. Yeah. And they look at Elephant in the Room and they go, there’s five brick and mortar locations now they look at Shaw homes and they go you know this these are big success stories I don’t know that I can do it what would you say to somebody out there that just feel like they might not have the like all this stuff they’re gonna learn is gonna be over their head too complicated what would you say I would say the information the ideas are easy it’s the application that is difficult for people the ideas that you share there’s nothing that’s like, oh my God, I don’t have a PhD, therefore I can’t do it. I feel like it’s all very, very simple stuff, but it is a lot of action to get traction. And you gotta get the action going. And I think if somebody has diligence and discipline or can learn diligence or discipline, they’re gonna do extremely well. And it’s not about education, it’s about action. Now, Aaron, I got one thing I want to say, and then I’ll wrap up today’s show with a boom, because boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum, and that’s what’s required to have success. You know, people watching this, they’re going, Aaron, he looks like a normal guy. Well, that’s true. They say, well, he sounds like a normal guy. He sounds like an all right guy. You know, that’s true. But the one thing you can’t quite picture on the show, and I want to just give that gift to you folks who are watching, is Aaron smells tremendous. It’s like a, if you had smell-o-vision, if you could just get up there and just smell that, it’s incredible, and it’s really, it’s his aroma that allows him to achieve massive success. So unless, so if you’re out there and you’re going, what’s the secret sauce? It’s not a sauce, it’s more of just a smell. So I don’t know if you qualify to have the kind of success he has unless you smell like he smells. It’s a really tremendous smell. Okay, let’s do this thing with a boom. Here we go. Three, two, one, boom! JT, do you know what time it is uh… fortune it’s not it’s people time and time temp people is going to call oklahoma during the month of christmas december fifth and sixth twenty twenty four ten people is coming to tell us a little more in the two-day interactive thrive time show business growth workshop yes folks put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business growth workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old. And a lot of people have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russela. 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. And over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcomp.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, you’ve met 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 So 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 primetime 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’ve been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at thrivetimeshow.com simply by clicking on the testimonials link on the screen. And if you’re not a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. And if you’re a subscriber, you can click on the link on the screen right now. 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’ve 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 thrive time show dot com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrive time show dot com. Again you just go to thrive time show dot com. You click on the business conferences button and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you 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. You started out with a million dollars in the bank account. No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that, did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it. And I am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton. I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just 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, Russell, Oklahoma. It says Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell. I’m 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 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. a Because we teach you what you need to know to grow You can learn the proving 13 point business system that Dr. Zellner and Buckman 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 small business along? 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 schemes, 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 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 upset. 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 businesses 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 buy it. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you a free trial. I’m going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you got to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy in Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Robert Kiyosaki, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, 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 all talking about money bricks and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour so clay carcass of very intelligent man and there’s so many ways we could take this thing but I thought to since you and Eric are close Trump what were you saying about what Trump can’t but Donald was my age and I can say I cannot say what I have to first I have to honor you so I wanna show you what I did to one year books here there’s a name of 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 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 didnít know these financial principles. I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor. I owe a lot of that to you. I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, don’t do 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.