Clay Clark | Ritz-Carlton Co-Founder Horst Schulze Joins Clay Clark to Discuss Why Excellence Always Wins + How to Large Teams of People While Delivering High-Quality + Join Tim Tebow At Clay Clark’s Dec 5-6 Business Workshop

Audio Transcription

Alright, guys, I’ve been to the mountaintop and I got something to say, alright? I’m unveiling the new long-term profit goal. Are you guys ready for this? Drum roll please. This is going to blow your mind, okay? This is what we’re going to do. This is good. $30 million? There’s only two of us. We made $63,000 in gross sales last year. That’s everything. Okay, look. I’m a visionary. Okay, what you’re witnessing right here, this is leadership. I’m looking at where we’re going to be 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now. Did Henry Fonda, when he invented the Model T, were they sitting around going, How are we going to build this car? No. Okay, they got their hands dirty, they grabbed the bull by the horns, and then they killed it. Okay, so what’s the plan? Step one, okay, we’re going to maximize efficiency. Number two, write this down, number two. Step three, emulsification. Listen, you guys follow those steps, we’re going to hit our goal by the winter of 2032. Okay, what an incredible Christmas that’ll be. Alright, so you guys know what you’re doing? No. Awesome, alright, I’m going to hit the links. Ooh, daddy likes. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities. Why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zuckner. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hoops, I’ll break down the books. See, bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s the C and T up on your radio. And now three, two, one, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, let me show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, let me show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re interviewing the former president and the co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. In August of 1983, Gerald W. Blakely, who owned and managed the hotel, sold the Ritz-Carlton Boston and the US trademark for $75.5 million to William B. Johnson, who was once the largest owner of the Waffle House franchises. Oh yeah! William Johnson also owned Holiday Inns and Marriotts. You’re about to go hook, tail, hook, tail, holiday, yeah! Then William decided to assemble a four-person dream team in Atlanta to lead the company headed by none other than today’s guest, Horst Schultz. To create the Ritz-Carlton hotel brand and to establish the Ritz-Carlton chain of hotels. Schultz dramatically revolutionized the hotel industry while turning the Ritz-Carlton into one of the most remarkable and recognized international brands on the planet. Horst’s obsession with providing world-class customer service has set the standard for excellence in the hotel industry for over 30 years. Under his leadership, Ritz-Carlton won the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1992. Only one other company has ever won the award more than once, and the Ritz-Carlton is the only company in the hotel industry to actually win this award. Today, Horst is the best-selling author of the book Excellence Wins, a no-nonsense guide to becoming the best in a world of compromise. Chuck, we don’t have any more time to Horst around. And this intro is making me hoarsed. So let’s hear it straight from the hoar… Ha ha ha ha ha!…hoarsted mouth. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men. Eight kids. Co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. Now, one, two, one, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Thrive Nation, I could not be more excited to interview today’s guest. His name is Horst Schultz, and I’m sure you’re familiar with the company that he co-founded and the company that he was once the former president of. The company is called Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Horst Schultz, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m great and delighted to be here. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company has set so many benchmarks for excellence in customer service. Your name has been publicized, and people know you for the success you achieved. But could you start off at the bottom and share with us where you’re from and your background before becoming the king of hotels? King is good. Well, I’m actually not a king at all. I come from a very small background, a small village in Germany. I lived in the village until I was 14 and then I left and worked in a hotel. I had begged my parents to work in a hotel, which was very unpopular at the time, but they found the best job they could find, the finest hotel, which unfortunately was about 100 kilometers away from home. But so I left there, lived there in a dorm room with other kids, starting to work as a busboy. That meant everything at the time, cleaning, washing dishes, et cetera, et cetera, helping for three and a half years, worked in the kitchen, worked in a restaurant, worked in the housekeeping and so on. And after that, I left and worked in the truly, I mean, I’m not exaggerating, the finest hotels in Europe, in Paris, in Switzerland, all the American line, Germany, England. And after that, I came to the US in 1964, San Francisco, working in the Hilton and Hilton, I worked, started, ended up with Hyatt and worked for 10 years in Hyatt. I started as a director of food and beverage operations, director of rooms, general manager, vice president, regional vice president, corporate vice president, and then I was offered to start a job to start a new hotel company. Two hotels were in construction, both in Atlanta. And so the headquarters was in Atlanta. They were developers and financial people. I needed somebody to run this new company and hotel business. They wanted to create their own brand. With the promise, they made me the promise that we could go top end. And so I left SED at the time, my great company hired, and moved to Atlanta and started a new hotel company. A year later, we opened our first hotel, and that became Ritz-Carlton, and that’s the story. Wow! That is a lot. That is a lot. You just flew through an incredible career. Let me reset here. Age 14, you just said that at age 14 you started working, is that correct? That’s correct, yeah. Correct. Well, it’s not an untypical German way of getting into a profession. You work in that profession and once a week you go to a school relative to that profession. That’s what I did. That’s a typical trade career in Germany. I saw a talk that you gave on YouTube. By the way, I’ve been watching way too many of your videos, so I apologize for cyber-stalking you so much. But I watched you deliver a talk, and my kids had a cheerleading event in Kansas City. And so the way cheerleading events go is your kids perform for about three minutes, and then the rest of the weekend you’re kind of hanging out at this arena. And so I went back to the hotel while I was waiting for them to perform and I watched your videos. And one of the things that you said, and I had to play it back over and over and over, is you were comparing your commitment to having excellence in work with your commitment to staying married, if I’m getting that correct. Could you please explain the parallels between committing to bring excellence and committing to stay married? Well, I believe that everything we do is a decision that we make, not a pipe dream, a clear decision. In marriage, I made a clear decision when I got married, I will be in love with that woman for the rest of my life, not just lover, but be in love and I can tell you unequivocally I’m married 40 years and I’m totally in love with that woman, but it takes work. It’s not different than when you take a job, you make a decision to be excellent in that job or whatever is in life. Those are decisions. I can either just go to work or go to work to create excellence. I always say I go to work for two reasons. One is to create excellence in what I’m doing. Two is to be with my friends. If they like it or not, they’re my friends. If I have that attitude, I enjoy going there and I create something. Why waste the eight hours, whatever we are at work now, you know in a leadership position, it’s much more than eight hours, but if it is the eight hours why waste it and just do function rather than whatever the function is Great excellent be a dish washing or whatever this Great excellence in that but that well, how does it come about? Well, it’s a decision a Decision on which you I need to work on which you which you remind yourself of all the time and this So it is not not different with anything else. Horst, I don’t want you to throw anything at me over the phone here. Not that Satan needs an advocate, but I’m going to be the devil’s advocate because I grew up really poor. I didn’t start working until I was 14, but really 16 is when I started my first thing. I am not a stranger of the 60 hour, the 70 hour work week. I’m not afraid to get to work at 4 or 5 or whatever. I’m also going to take care of my body and get sleep. I have five kids. I’ve been married 18 years. So many people I see, they say, well, the reason why I didn’t get to work on time is I just didn’t feel like it. So talk to me about your mindset of committing to excellence versus other people saying, I just don’t feel like it. It’s not different. I have friends a couple of years ago, a few years ago, good friends, and they’re getting divorced. I mean, of course, when people, when friends get divorced, it is a total, you know, friends and everybody gets divorced. It’s very impactful. And when I had to sit down, I didn’t understand. They were beautiful, two beautiful people, good looking people, friendly people, warm people, honorable people. So I had to sit down with them and ask them for I asked him for lunch and said, why? Why we don’t feel like it? What? You’re waiting for feeling. I rather make a decision what my feeling is rather than make a feeling make my decisions. Well, that’s good. Can you repeat that again, sir? That was great. Yeah, well, I’m saying I really rather make the decision what I feel rather than have the feeling decide what I do, who I am, etc. This is so unreasonable to even allow that to happen. You make a decision and then you have to fight the decision. You have to fight against the feelings that try to interfere with your decision. But it has to be still your decision. And on the end, the feeling is your decision and not that your decision is driven by your feelings. That right there is a knowledge nugget that somebody needs to write down. We need to put that on a T-shirt. Many people today should consider getting a tattoo. If you’re gonna get a tattoo, get that as a tattoo. Now, I wanna ask you this because you worked very hard from age 14. You worked your way up at Hyatt. And then, my understanding is that Gerald W. Blakely, he owned the one individual Ritz-Carlton in Boston. Yeah. And he sold the trademark and the brand to William B. Johnson, who I believe was the largest owner of the Waffle Houses and office buildings and by incident he also owned Marriott Hotels and managed by Marriott and Holiday Inns. When he built two hotels which were supposed to become Holiday Inns, he could not come to agreement at the time with Holiday Inn as to the fees, etc. When somebody recommended him to start his own hotel company, his own brand, that put him on the search where I came in and was hired. We then said, when we were here, we acquired a name, I forgot what name, we had a couple of names that we but we said it would be great to have an existing name that already makes sense, that people know it is a hotel. And we pursued two hotels, one hotel in San Francisco, the Mark Hopkins Hotel, and another one. And he came back and said, well, this is also the Ritz in Boston. We didn’t like that because it was a terrible hotel. It was terribly dilapidated. It was only for weekly, for monthly renders. All people lived there, no air condition and so on. But the Mark Hoppings fell through, so he purchased because it was a great location and frankly the name was, everybody knew that Ritz-Carlton meant hotel, even though it was not a good name anymore in the luxury area, we purchased it, we closed it for renovation. In the meantime, we adopted the name now. In the meantime, we opened our first hotel, which was the Ritz Carlton here in Buckhead, in Atlanta. And then a year later, we reopened Boston. But that’s how we acquired the name. Frankly, against the wishes of the operators, of the people around me, because it was so dilapidated, that hotel, and of course the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco at the time probably had a better name at that time. But the rest is history. Why did they choose you? Why did they choose you to do the… Somebody recommended me, and they kept on calling me. Who recommended you? Was it your mother? Was it your wife? Who recommended you? No, no. They hired a headhunter who inquired and there was a guy that worked with Johnson. Johnson was the guy who was running the overall who I had worked for before. So he got a few recommendations. The guy that worked for before is Cogut Holmes, who was a hotelier. I had worked for him in Chicago for a while, so an outstanding man. He recommended me that I run this company, etc. So several other recommendations came out, and they pursued me. I have a question for you about this. I have a theory, and I’d like to see if you could disprove or prove my theory here. As I’ve interviewed, we’ve interviewed Lee Cockrell, who used to manage Walt Disney World Resorts. They had 40,000 employees working in Orlando, a million customers a week. At your peak, how many people, how many hotels were you managing at the peak of Ritz Carlton before you decided to move on? Just over 50. Okay, so you’re managing a large staff of people, and I’ve noticed that when you’re around these top people, Michael Levine, the top PR guy for Michael Jackson or Prince or Nike, you all, when you walk by a piece of trash, pick it up. Yes! But, but, but, but nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody, I have three things I’ve observed. You pick up trash, even if it’s not your building, even if it’s not your trash, you pick it up. Second observation, I want to put this on the show notes, Andrew, because I’m going to grill horse on all these. Second is that you don’t want to be late. You hate being late. Top performers hate to be late. And third, you are working as unto the Lord and not as unto men, therefore headhunters are always pursuing you guys, because whatever standard that your boss sets is always the minimum standard in your minds. So let’s get into the trash thing. What’s going on with the trash thing? That is funny that you observe that. It’s so true. I do this. I clean bathrooms. In a plan, I mean, and I notice it myself, and I stop it. I can’t help it. When things are not right, they have to be corrected. That’s a symbol. That sometimes is very negative. In fact, my wife, Nelly, doesn’t like to go out with me because I always have to correct something. But in my opinion, it should be corrected in order to be right. I can’t help that. I guess that is part of the motivation that it comes from. And not wanting to be right in discussion is simply, that’s not how you learn, you learn only by input. And if you just think you’re right, you’re not learning anymore. That’s the thing, how do you improve? By eliminating your defect, by keep on learning. And if you don’t continuously improve, you’re going to lose. Somebody is going to bypass you. Somebody is going to be much better. You have to continuously learn. I won’t throw this guy under the bus, but it’s a very funny situation. He came to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where we have a 20,000 square foot facility where we host our in-person workshops, which by the way, if you ever want to come present, I know the Thrive audience would love you. We have about a half a million folks that download the podcast every month, and we have a lot of our guests who attend. But I picked him up at the airport. And it was in Tulsa when it snows. Paul, you know how it gets when it snows in Tulsa. It immediately melts. So it’s a weird slushiness. So the inside of my car, I had just had it detailed. I’m picking him up in my Hummer horse. I’m picking him up. I’m driving him back from the airport. And he looks at me with this weird look. And he says, hey, are we going to get this thing washed? And I said, well, yeah, we can get it washed. I mean, it had just snowed. And he was serious. He goes, we need to get it washed There was a white Hummer. I hadn’t auto-wrapped it yet He goes we need to pull over like it was an emergency almost like you had to go to the bathroom really bad He goes, can we please pull over and I thought at first he’s kidding. So we go out for sushi with my partner Dr. Zellner and this guy turns to dr. Zellner and says You I went up to the bathroom, but I could overhear him talking and he’s like have you seen how dirty the outside of that guy’s hummer is? And so it was just, it bothers top performers. And I want to tap into this next question. Being late. I’ve never talked to you before, but I know that you hate it when people are late. Why do you hate it when you or anybody else is late? Oh, somebody must have talked to you about me. That’s right. I mean, it is so, it is so insulting to be late. But the thing, you go into a meeting, there’s 30 people and you’re a minute late. What does that mean? It’s a half an hour. It’s just wasted a half an hour, people, which is totally outrageous. What right do you have to take that away from the people that you’re dealing with? If it is one minute or 30, it doesn’t make a difference. It is just wrong. If you, by the way, if I had a meeting at three o’clock, I would lock the door a minute after three. If I would have meant a minute after three, I would have said it. I’m not lying. I meant three o’clock. Would you lock the door? Would you literally do this? Would you actually lock the door? You better believe it, yes. Yes! Listen! There’s one listener out there. I want to send this to him. I can’t do it. I had a former partner back in the day, and I had majority stock in the business, and I said, if you are late, I’m locking the door. And when I started locking the door, he could not handle it, and that’s what broke up the partnership. I took over and things went well. So that is a… that right there, being late, you can’t… Horst, I don’t believe it’s possible to become the head of anything if you don’t pick up trash when you walk by it, if you’re chronically late. Do you disagree with that? Listen, if you don’t mean it? I’m not lying. If I would have meant 3 minutes after 3, I would have said so. I meant 3 o’clock. That is powerful. Now, this next idea, I’m not sure, were you raised in a Christian background, or was it more of a secular? What’s your religious background? Well, institutional Christians, if you will. We were Lutherans, we were pretty… but today, I don’t want to scare people. Sure, no. People get scared with the earth. I call myself a born-again Christian. It means I have accepted that Christ is higher than I am, and accepting him to be my leader, and anything else for me is arrogant. Well, I want to ask you this because there is a Bible verse that speaks about this concept called work as unto the Lord. And I didn’t figure this out until I was about 19 years old. I was working at Target. And my boss horse told me, Clay, somebody is eating all of the pretzels. And of course, I was eating all the pretzels. I’m like, I don’t know who it is. Well, it has to be you or someone on the shift, because someone’s eating all the pretzels. Well, long story short, I was always late, I was always eating all the pretzels, I was always getting all the criticism, I was always being quote-unquote micromanaged. Then someone introduced me to the book Think and Grow Rich, which is not in the Bible, but it’s written by Napoleon Hill. And I decided to name my son, by the way, after Napoleon Hill. His name is Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark. And after reading that book, I started getting into this crazy book called the Bible, and there’s a verse, Colossians 3, 23, where it reads, “…whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for Ritz-Carlton customers.” Ah, work as unto the Lord, not as for shareholders. Work as unto the Lord, not as unto your manager. “…since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward, it is the Lord Christ you are serving. I want to ask you, where did you get that idea to take customer service to the next level and to revolutionize the hospitality industry? Well, in my story I will tell about that MetaD who impacted me, who said don’t come to work, for example, but then go on being a Christian, I look, Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. Why would you not think that your guests or your employees are your neighbors? My goodness, what a, what a, and what an amazing thing, love your neighbor as yourself, what an amazing, who can say something about Christ, in my opinion, and, and, and so that had very much impact on me. But if you read my book you will also see I tell a story about that by another Christian believer that is Saint Benedict in the year 500 wrote to his monasteries and said, when a customer, when a guest arrived, at that time travelers stopped in monasteries for shelter, when a guest arrived, receive him and them did not travel alone, receive him as if it was Christ himself. And not only that, if you’re on a fast, break your fast and have dinner with them so that they’re not alone. But first, wash their feet. Now if that is hospitality, I cannot come close to that, but that’s the goal, to be as close as possible, to care that much. It’s caring. I mean, everything Christ did was the greatest thing of all is love. My goodness, you mean only for some people? No. Love is the greatest thing. Why wouldn’t you love your guests? Why wouldn’t you love your employees? In your book, which by the way, Excellence Wins, is a great read. It’s a no-nonsense guide to becoming the best in a world of compromise. You talk about these four. You write about. I felt like you were talking to me because I’ve watched your YouTube videos and I’m reading it and it feels like you’re talking to me. I apologize for that, by the way. But in your book, you talk about these four supreme objectives. Objective number one, you write, is to keep the customer. What does that mean? I’m looking at what is a great company. A great company makes every effort to keep the customers what they have. That means they have to say, what is it that I have to do to keep this customers? What is it? Well, what you have to do is give that customer what the customer wants. That means they have to get in their head and understand what they want. What they really want, not what your mother-in-law told you or somebody set beside you in a plane or your neighbor. No, what your market tells you they want. That’s what you give them. Number one, that’s what a company does. Number two, you find new ones. Number three, you get as much money from the customer as you can. But wait a minute, if not at the cost of losing the customer, that means you have to give them value. You have to give them value for everything you charge. And the fact is, a guest that is loyal, that means you don’t lose your customers. That’s a loyal guest. That guest wants to deal with you and buy other things that you produce because loyalty means nothing else but they have developed trust in you. So they trust you to become loyal. And so every effort has to be sure you make sure that they don’t lose them so that they’re loyal. Number two, you find new ones. Number three, you get them. As I say, you charge and you sell. Number four, you work efficiently. That’s a great company. But the key element here, and nothing can interfere in it, is make sure the customer wants to come back and is loyal. Again, loyalty is nothing else but to develop trust in what you’re doing. I want to tap into your brain on this because you said something there that I don’t think the listeners quite understand what you’re saying. You are talking about keep the customer, and there is a guest we’re going to have on the show here. He’s the best-selling author, John Rulon, and he stayed in one of your hotels, one of the Ritz-Carlton’s, and he was having a guest of honor stay in the hotel and he was gonna meet him. And he found out that his favorite guest was a, this is a guy he’s really trying to impress. He found out that his friend and his guest of honor was a fan of a certain clothing line. And this is kind of when he had a startup, a very, just a baby business called Giftology. So what he did was he went into a department store and bought all of the clothes in that guy’s size, the entire line, the entire season’s line. He said he spent $10,000 on clothes for this guy to impress this guy when he didn’t have a whole lot of money. And he goes to the Ritz and he said, “‘Could you guys help me display it like a retail store, “‘you know, like a department store?’ And he said, the Ritz Bellman said, sure. Can you talk to me about the limits to which you would allow your team to go? And how’s too far to go to keep the customer? Well, it’s a very clear limit, we said. Every employee, every single employee, it doesn’t matter who that is, has the right to spend up to $2,000 to make sure the guest becomes loyal. Up to $2,000? That’s correct. Some people and some business people out there will be shocked, but believe me, it was a business decision. And the decision very simply happened. We made an analysis with word analysis study what the guest really wants from us and what they mean when they say they feel at home. And as it turns out, they didn’t want to feel at home. They wanted to feel like they’re in a subconscious memory, they remember their mother’s home where everything was done for them. And here’s the big piece that came to it. example, in that moment they went to their mom and said, ìMom, I donít feel good. This is something terrible happening.î Mom would take them in the arm and said, ìIím here for you. What can I do?î Mom never said, ìI call the manager.î What we do, what you do, when you have a complaint. When we learned that, we realized, ìOh my goodness.î We donít make a decision. That customer that has a problem, for example, or in this case, he did need, that needed just help. That guest, all they want is to be respected, to be heard, to be taken care of, not waiting for a manager. They want to get rid of their frustration. So we taught everybody to be empowered, everybody truly empowered to move heaven and earth. Everyone is responsible to keep the guest. That’s everybody’s responsibility. Not just checking somebody in, but by the way they check somebody in, convince the guest to want to come back. Everybody is responsible. Everybody and for that you have to empower people because sometimes decisions have to be made, like in this case, that cost some money. But it’s worth it because we also knew, as a business person, what’s the value of a lifetime customer. I knew that, I knew how old our customers average was, I know how much they average spend, I know how much they could spend in their life. And believe you me, it was worth spending $2,000 potentially. By the way, no employee ever spent that much. They bought breakfast or did some things like that. Bellman did spend some extra time, got some clothing racks and so on. But it created the image that we had and it created loyalty. Now, the second objective you write about is get new customers. Talk to me about the dangers of running a business and not always being focused on also getting new customers? Well, otherwise your customers sooner or later will be all dead. Otherwise, you have to keep on. Besides that, an organization has to keep on growing. And that means you have to find new customers ongoing. That is an absolute, absolute must. Now, I rely, I rely, we relied, and now I have in our new hotel company, Capella, we rely, we don’t advertise. We rely totally on word of mouth by our customers. Meaning word of mouth that they take back to their travel agencies, et cetera, et cetera. And the PR that they’re making. And it is totally successful. We don’t advertise. It’s totally successful. And we rely totally there. But there are other – we of course, we rely on other selling means. We go to conventions with travel agents, et cetera, et cetera. But so we constantly are very busy and we measure if our customer base is growing or not. And we expect our customer base to grow in each hotel consistently. So we make sure that happens. Now, objective number three you write about is you want to encourage the customers to spend as much as possible, but without sabotaging rule number one. That’s correct. Now, what we meant with that, I said before, flippantly, to make sure the customer spends as much as possible. That is misunderstood, of course, when somebody hears that. We were saying we should be so good that a customer is willing to pay more for our hotels than for another hotel room. That’s how good we should be. And we know that if we accomplish point one, loyalty, in that moment, the guest will buy more from us. In that moment, the guest says, they feel so trusting the organization that we don’t have to go out for dinner somewhere else. I’m sure food in this hotel is good. And this is good for any business. Once they trust you, they will buy other products from you. That’s why this point number one is so important. It impacts the, I try to make a statement there, that number one impacts the financial. Now you wrote here objective number four, you said, in all of the above, keep working towards more and more efficiency. I’d like for you to talk more about that. Yeah, well, there is, in particular in my business, and I believe that’s true in every business, saving money of course and that is rightly so but unfortunately it’s often done by taking away value from the customer. I have seen enough hotels that all of a sudden the soap in the bathroom becomes a little smaller and of course the manager gets applauded because he makes more money suddenly. The flowers are gone from the table, the piano is not playing in the afternoon anymore. That is cost cutting. That is not efficiency. Taking away from the guest or from the customer in order to make more money is cost cutting and it sooner or later will destroy you because it will hurt your name and your organization. Efficiency is something else. Efficiency is finding how you can save money from yourself. If I can improve my work process to give you a given service without taking away from you, that means I find time, I find how to do it more efficiently, I eliminate mistakes. That’s the key piece, to find the mistakes in the organization and eliminate them permanently, one by one because every time, think about this, this is beautiful, every time you eliminate a mistake, you really improve your product and you lower your cost. Now that is efficiency and a great organization is constantly trying to find the smallest mistake, find the root cause, eliminate it so that mistake will never ever happen again. And in that moment, you have a better organization for everybody and you save money. Horst, I don’t know what to get a guy who’s been the founder of a hotel chain. So I’m going to give you one MegaPoint and one Knowledge Bomb. Okay, now, we move on. So you talk in your book, you write in your book, you write, repetition is a good thing. Now you write in your book, repetition is a good thing. Proverbs 10, 4 in the Bible says that God blesses the diligent. Diligence means the steady application of effort, aka consistency. Repetition freaks a lot of people out, my friend. Why is repetition a good thing? In my book, I’m talking about mainly for the teaching of your organization. Because in a way it is a typical thing of management. We tell employees in the beginning when they come what should be done, and then we believe that they know that forever, which is of course ludicrous. They don’t know it forever. I don’t remember everything was told in the beginning when I worked somewhere. So you cannot do that. But we identify, and that’s what I’m explaining, that we identify really the most important things in our organization And we teach that the first day in employee starts and then we repeat them. We repeat them. There are 24 points and Every day today maybe point 11 every day They be we teach one point in every hotel in every department One of the points, one of the points that’s been taught today, maybe point 11, if you get a complaint, you own it. If you’re a waiter and they complain about the washroom, you own the washroom and you accept it, you forgive and you make amends. Now point 11 will come up again in 24 days. And so we repeat these points that are important and differentiate us from the competition. When do you do this? Every day one point is repeated. Repetition is very good. But when some people who rejected it in our company, in the beginning, well, everybody knows that’s kind of silly. So I asked the question of all general managers assembled, because they are the ones who rejected it, does everybody in the room know what Coca-Cola is? Raise your hand if you don’t know it. Nobody raised their hand. So you all know it. So the question is, why do they still advertise? Because you have to keep it alive. You have to repeat it. If it is important, you repeat it. And you repeat it, make it simple, and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. When do you do the repeating? Do you give a set time every day where you have a shift? You cannot go to work today, point 11, nobody in any hotel of ours, that’s Capella in this case, was the same, before every shift, mind you, we’re a 24-hour business, before every shift you cannot go on a shift without going through to a three, four-minute session where that point is repeated and re-explained. Okay, so I’m starting to get a feel for your commitment to excellence. It’s getting very practical. I think a lot of listeners, we’re taking tons of notes. You can get, Thrivers, we’re just giving you like a 5% dose of the book, Excellence Wins. By the way, your book is endorsed by Ken Blanchard, who we just had on the Thrive Time show, the best-selling author of the One Minute Manager. So this book is quality reading. Paul Hood with Hood CPAs, you had a question here for Mr. Horst. I do. Horst, hey, this is Paul Hood, HoodCPAs.com. It’s a pleasure to talk to you. You don’t know this, but you revolutionized my business as a CPA. Back in the day, for years, I was always taught the traditional client service, customer service, guest service, whatever you do. That is one aspect of business, a separate, completely separate part of business is marketing and advertising. And so I rocked along with traditional business, traditional CPA, and then read multiple books. And the way Ritz-Carlton did it kept coming up that basically that they are one and in the same. That people, the way they’re treated and how they feel when they leave a Ritz-Carlton, that’s marketing. So it’s not only customer service, guest service, but it’s also marketing. So was that an intentional thing? Did you start with that or is that just kind of a byproduct? Absolutely, absolutely. We clearly established when the guest leaves, we must, if we asked the guest, what did you like in the hotel? And they said, gee, the food or the room, then we fail. They have to feel good. They have to say it was just overall great. This way we want that guest to become an advocate. We want that guest to want to come back and recommend us. And in the case of ours, mind you, you’re talking a higher market segment, many of those guests are not just just guests, they influence us and some of them control other people. So that’s as simple as that. So we said it’s absolutely sure that we are convinced that that to us is a truly marketing to every single individual. Of course, I’ve got a follow-up to that. It’s not really a question, but just a confirmation of what you’re doing. My wife and I were on a cruise one time, and the cruise was okay. They’re vetted as being just the high-end luxury, everything you want there. We got in the middle of this cruise, and my wife said, you get me off this boat, and you find me a Ritz-Carlton. We literally walked off the boat in American Virgin Islands with our suitcases and they said, you can’t do that. And I said, yeah, we are, and spent the rest of our trip at a Ritz Carlton. So bravo. Bravo. Thank you. Another mega point for you. Now, sir, I have, I’m going to go, this is going to be kind of our lightning round where I’m going to fire through questions at kind of a faster pace here. And there are questions, Horst, that some people could say could be a little bit offensive. So let’s go with the first scenario. You wouldn’t accomplish that with me. Well, let’s say this. Let’s say that you’re coaching a leader, a business leader’s hired you to consult his business. You know, you came in to speak and… I do that quite often. Well, and then you said this line. You said the line, leaders have forfeited the right to make excuses. And they say internally, internal dialogue, they say, ah, but my back hurts. And then you say again, I repeat, leaders have forfeited the right to make excuses. And again, they’re going, but I have a headache. Can you talk to me about why leaders have forfeited the right to make excuses? Leaders have accepted. In the moment when I accept a leadership role, I accept it to work on accomplishing the objective of an organization. If it is a good organization, first of all, a great organization has objectives which are good for all concerned. That means the investor, the employee, the customer and society. If you work for such an organization, you have no right, or now comes an excuse right here, people say, well, my organization is not. That’s not your decision to make when you’re a leader. You have nevertheless accepted that organization’s objectives. And in that moment, you are responsible for finding solutions to the situations that exist. That’s the work a leader does and of course help other people to help other people their employees to to reach that the objectives. I don’t hire a leader to explain me what is wrong and it goes in every if it is the back or every excuse and I called the leader and I said, ìWhat happened?î ìWow, the weather in Boston, the weatherî. You see, he had a great excuse, but he would call it purpose, a reason, he had a good reason. ìNo,î I asked him, ìWait a second, what about the Copley Plaza? What business did they have? They were very slow too. So tell me, did the guest arrive at the airport and said, because it’s snow and Boston and cold, I’m not going to the Ritz-Carlton? It’s not so. We have no right to move immediately to the next trip. We have to find solutions. We have to say, here’s what happened. Here’s what has been, and you know, there is no beauty, there is no reward, there is no pleasure in the excuse. All the rewards lie in the objective. If you’re managing a team, let’s say you are managing a team in one of your companies, and you have a manager that oversleeps for a meeting, shows up late. You know has an excuse has a reason on traffic There’s a lot of weather traffic traffic and weather you know How many times do you put up with that before you fire the person? Oh, I’m clearly if that happens once it’s not an absolute problem of course okay Find a solution how we come to how you make sure that it doesn’t happen in what you maybe ever leave a little earlier But I understand that can happen and it once in a great while But they never but if the grandmother dies every few months, that doesn’t work. Got it. Okay. So if it’s like, you know, every once, like once a year, maybe once every year and a half, but if it’s like once a month, that’s a day you’re going to, you’re going to move on. Well, I think somebody, any employee, a manager or a regular employee should, if they’re good employees, they’re earning more in my opinion than a, than a, than a, than a seller, than a paycheck. They’re earning also the right to make a mistake. You wrote, �Managers push, leaders inspire.� What do you mean? If that discussion comes up, I always want to make clear that managers also sometimes doing it by controlling and forcing and just control mostly in hierarchy. Now a leader makes sure that his employees want to do the job. That means they are aligned, they want to do the job. They also understand the value to them if the job is done well. That has to be all communicated. A leader knows the objectives are good for all concerned as I touched on earlier, but the manager doesn’t really care about that. And by the way, it’s the managers that make you use the excuses, not the leaders. The managers also protecting themselves by saying, even if you ask, how will the year be? Yeah, probably will be great except that there always comes this excuse that hangs around there with managers. But clearly, managers don’t really care how it turns out for the employees as long as the bottom line is forced. That makes sense. You have said in one of your talks, early on at Ritz-Carlton, you knew that if somebody walked up to the front desk and as long as you greeted them, helped them, checked them in within four minutes, they were okay. The check-in time, as long as it took about four minutes, it was okay. But now with the millennials, it’s about 20 seconds. If they’re not greeted in 20 seconds, they’re upset, they’re afraid of gluten, they’re sharing cars, and they’re upset if it takes 20 seconds. Talk to me about how you are dealing with that increased demand for efficiency with time with your newest ventures. Well, we have it all. I can tell you it is traumatic, the change in time that a great company that they does also understands what the customer wants as we said very early. And the customer really wants three things. Every customer wants the same three things no matter what you buy. If it is a bottle of water or hotel stay or CPA work, it doesn’t matter. The three fundamental subconscious expectations by the customer and that’s number one that the product is defect-free. It doesn’t matter what it is, they want defect-free. Number two is timeliness. And number, if you buy a bottle of water, you don’t want it to leak, you want it when you want it. And number three, you want the people who give it to you to be nice to you, which I give the special name of service. But the timeliness has become so important with everything, you can destroy yourself as an organization if you’re not timely. It doesn’t matter what it is, is that if that is calling Comcast and hang on the telephone for two hours, you don’t like that company anymore afterwards. It doesn’t matter what. But this timeliness demand in people has changed dramatically. And we know, we don’t only guess, we know if we can check the people in and rush hour below four minutes, it was okay. Now we know they’re getting annoyed after 20 seconds. We know that. So we have to change our processes. We have to maybe even invest some money and have another person work on the front desk during rush hour. We have to change processes and of course equipment, technology and so on helps a lot. But I assure you and every business person has to know, mind you, I don’t guess those things, we started those things. We have to know that timeliness, if you don’t work timeliness, if you deliver, if you cannot, that’s why Amazon is so successful, because they deliver in time. That’s their real success. You don’t read that. They’re talking about all other reasons. That’s the success. Timeliness. Bang, you get it. You know it. It’s timely. And that is true. And every business person has to say, how can I deliver my product more timely? I’m not sure. I know you’re doing speaking events and you’re writing this new book, you wrote this new book, Excellence Wins, and you’re staying happily married. You’ve got a lot going on. Are you aware of how nice the hotels that you own at Capella Hotels are? Have you seen these hotels? Horst, have you seen how nice your properties are? Have you seen these? It’s difficult to see it because I always see some things that are wrong. Well, I mean, can you walk the thr… I’m not wanting to do a pop quiz where I’m asking you about every single hotel, but can you share with the Thrive Nation of a half a million listeners out there about some of the locations you have in your Capella Hotels portfolio? I can tell you, the closest really is in Europe, in Germany, in Dusseldorf. Breitbarhof, a Capella Hotel, high quality, great location, fabulous service. By the way, we measure total satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10, top box. Top box in this hotel is 96% of the guests that leave. Wow. And said, top box, I want to come back and want to recommend you. 96%? 96%. I mean, you have to comprehend that. That is such world class. It’s mind-boggling to accomplish that in a hotel where the average stays only two nights. In two nights, they accomplish that the guest says, I want to come back here. I want to recommend it. And a great hotel in Singapore, absolutely great hotel that is just fabulous and overlooking the water on 24 acres, a former club of British officers club redone and into a modern style, just fabulous, fabulous service. If I can give you one service incident, a friend of mine, I didn’t know he was there, he was staying in another hotel and then he checked into the Ritz Garden. He walked from his room to a meeting room and on the way there was a landscaper in the garden. He walked to the gardener who said, I hope you have a nice day sir. And he said, I don’t because you don’t have Fox News on your TV. And the landscaper said, what room are you in sir? And he told them and he walked on, forgot about it. When he came back to his room, Fox News was turned on. Oh, wow. Now see, that is service complying to the guest wishes at all times. And this was not just somebody that was a landscaper who was pulling weeds out of the garden. Whom he told that to. You know, in Singapore, they have laws where if you go out there and you spray paint a building or you litter publicly, they can cane you. Do you cane people that won’t pick up trash at your Singapore hotel? I want to sometimes. Okay, okay. Now, for the listeners out there that are wanting to know more about you and your book Excellence Wins and your… where is there a specific website you’d recommend everyone goes and checks out? Amazon and it’s on Amazon and it is it is it can be ordered it is deliverable be delivered starting March 5th. March 5th okay March to March 5th the book is available if you want to pre-order it I believe you can do that on Amazon. Absolutely, absolutely. Then the delivery day, the first delivery day is March 5th. Now I have one more question for you. I know Paul had one more question as well, but I had one more question for you because I’m always curious about the habits and routines of super successful guys like yourself. So I guess it’s kind of a two-part question. Throughout your career, when running the Ritz-Carlton, what did the first four hours of your work day look like? What time were you getting there? What time were you getting up? What did the first four hours of your day look like? Well, I usually came in very early and walked to the hotel. I walked to the restaurants, the kitchens, said hello to the people, the employees area, the laundry and so on, and just walked it and had connection with the employees. That was the most important. When we were small, we’d go next thing you go to your when you’re around the hotel now, not the company, I’m talking about the hotel. When you go to your office, you went to your office and looked at the security report from the night before. And all kinds of interesting things happened. You made sure that there was nothing there that you had to follow up on. What happened during the night when you were not there? Somebody coming in drunk. Invariably, once a month, somebody locked themselves out of their room naked in the corridor. I don’t know what they do in the corridor naked. I have no idea. I do not know it. They used the wrong door. They obviously wanted to go to the washroom. Those reports are there, you go through that. The next thing, I have a planning meeting for the rest of the day with the steering committee. With the steering committee, and then we went in there, and then it was mail, answering guest situations, etc., etc., etc. And again, going into the operation again. So to be close to the employees, constantly close to them, constantly control, constantly be available to them. That’s a key element in a hotel. And be close to the lobby, be close to the guests. If there’s any guests that have something, try and speak with guests. Be a host. Part of the day you’re a business person, and part of the day you’re a leader, and part of the day you’re a host. What time did you wake up back then? Well, I usually was at work before 7. And then went home usually about 7 or 8 o’clock. Went back often at 10 o’clock one more time just to make a round. What time were you waking up? Were you waking up at 5 in the morning or 6? Yeah, 5. Waking up at 5, okay, getting to work around 7. Yeah. Okay, and did you have a certain book throughout your career that really impacted you? Well, I tell you, Kavi’s book, Seven Habits, really impacted me. That impacted me because I was kind of driven with urgencies. Urgencies are satisfying. I take care of making sure that everything worked out fine today. In fact, I got applauded because there was a big party. They thanked me. And every day, the wedding went fine. The check-in of the convention went fine. Everybody’s happy. But I didn’t concentrate on improving. I mean, he really impacted me with the sex station, do also the urgent thing in the future, really impacted me quite a bit. And lately, I tell you what impacted me lately, that’s kind of different, but Bornhofer, the book on Bornhofer by Mataxas and the way he tells the life of Bornhofer. And what impacted me is because of many letters that are in there from Bornhofer himself, I could actually felt I could get into his mind and his soul. What made this man think? What made this man who was thinking totally different than society was thinking at the time and Being right. Are you are you are you discussing to make sure that those listeners know the context you’re referencing Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was the the German pastor and the anti-nazi theologian is that what we’re talking about? Yeah, yes. Okay. How was he able to think totally different at the time? And Metaxas wrote a fabulous book about and explained and I could always not understand and have this strong feeling of yes. It is just a different feeling than what I had in other times, you can do all things with God. You have a hot question here for Horst. I do, Horst. Hey, so in today’s, in society’s terms, you are a massive success. You came from nothing and became something. I counsel a lot of people, usually on the financial side, but I hear a lot, you know, to be successful you have to be a special person. You have to be either lucky or special or something to that effect versus hard work and being consistent. What would you say was the key to your success? Because you did, I mean, you climbed the ropes of corporate American and created a name for yourself. Was that because you were lucky? Was that because you were extra special? What would you attribute that to? Let me answer it two ways. First of all, most of the people ask me about the success of Ritz-Carlton. The success of Ritz-Carlton were many good people. Many good people. Personally, if you have one more minute here, I tell you an epitome that I had years ago when I came to the United States first. I worked in the Hilton in San Francisco as a room service waiter. And I knew I was a good waiter. I worked in the finest hotels in Europe and room service there was nothing and the waiters there had not even closed my experience. And my wish was to be promoted in room service before I got back again to Europe. That was in 1964 and 65. I’m still here, by the way. So my wish was to get promoted to room service supervisor. And I had an in because the manager was German too, and I was a good reader. Why wouldn’t I get it? And sure enough, it became available, but somebody else got the job. And I was so bitter, now, you know, forgive me what I said now, stupid management and all that things went through my mind. And it took me several months before I admitted to myself that the guy who got the job deserved it more. After I got over my ego, after my pride, he deserved it more. I was late once in a while in the morning. I was very tired because I went out partying the night before. And I was inconsistent. I wasn’t always the best. I had the best knowledge because of my background, but I wasn’t the best. And I promised myself that I will never, ever have the coin. I had forgotten, I remember my first medley to go to work for excellence. And I’d forgotten that. And I said, I will never forget it again. I will never again go to work without creating excellence. And I will always be five minutes before everybody else and five minutes later. And I will give a little more. That is not difficult. So I did it. And I got one promotion after the other. That was the moment. That was the moment. And I’m seeing, and then remembering, and then remembering, I was a true Christian already, but remembering, remembering, excellent, remembering caring for your people, caring for people, remembering what my Meditator taught me. Now, I was still very young, I was 24, but I still, everything came back in my memory, what really is excellence, and I applied it from there on. I made sure I made a decision to apply it from now on. You are a wealth of knowledge, my friend, and I’m honored to have you on the show, and I know our listeners are as well. We are so excited. Thrive Nation, if you’re out there today and you enjoyed today’s show, I would encourage you to go on Amazon today and buy a copy of Excellence Wins, a no-nonsense guide to becoming the best in a world of compromise. Mr. Horst, thank you for being on the show today. I was honored. Thank you very much for having me. Chubb, it is just awesome to have a guest of that caliber on the show. World class. World class. And I think, again, we talk about this after every show, but the whole point of this show is that knowledge without application is meaningless. And to quote Thomas Edison, vision without execution is hallucination. So, Chuck, what is the action step that you think that all the listeners should take as a result of today’s show? What’s the one action that you got out of today’s show? Well, I would say that you need to be real self-respective about being a leader. I really like the stuff that he had to say about being a leader and not just a manager. So if you’re someone in charge, there is a difference between management and leadership. The action step that I got out of it as well is I think that we got to write down today, I think we need to write down today, how good of a leader are we being on a scale of one to ten? Let’s rate ourselves there. Let’s say if ten is a horse to Schultz and a one is a terrible manager, how good of a manager are we and what can we do to improve? Oh yes. And the other action item that I thought of during today’s podcast that really prompted my attention was this idea that you shouldn’t let feelings dictate your commitments or what you do. Once you’ve committed to your marriage or to your business or to your team, it doesn’t matter your feelings. I mean, screw the feelings. Feelings frankly don’t matter. Feelings should not dictate your actions because feelings are followers of your actions. So if you’re feeling right now overwhelmed, you’re feeling stressed, the worst thing you could do is spend your whole day hiding. What you need to do is you need to get out there and act in spite of your feelings. We talk about it a lot on the Thrive Time show as well as at our in-person workshops. We talk about how inaction is the big giant. So many people are worried about, oh, what do I do? Just not doing anything is the problem. Inspiration is the reward that you get. Inspiration is the reward, but inaction is truly the giant. Inaction is your sword. Right. Chuck, also, I think a lot of people might have maybe, you know, you’re taking notes, listening to this show. I want to play back that sound clip about feelings one more time. It’s so good. Because it’s so good. I think about making it into like a remix rap song of some kind. Well, it don’t feel like it. What? This is so unreasonable to even allow that to happen. Oh, think about that. You’re waiting for feeling. I’d rather make a decision what my feeling is, rather than make a feeling make my decision. This is huge. You make a decision, and then you have to fight the decision. You have to fight against the feelings that try to interfere with your decision. Chuck, we’ve made a decision here at the Thrive Time Show that 2019 is going to be the year of sharing. The year of sharing. Because the previous three, four years, I only asked people to share the podcast less than 20 times. So if you’re out there today and you learn… Out of 1,500. Right. If you learn something today from Mr. Horst Schultz, I would encourage you to share today’s show on Spotify, iTunes, you could share the link there, you could go to Thrivetimeshow.com, share the link, maybe share it on Facebook, hashtag us or something, share it on Twitter, share it on Instagram, but share today’s show with somebody. Somebody. If you know somebody climbing that corporate ladder or wanting to be a better leader, I know that you want them to be successful, so this is an absolute must listen. And now without any further ado… 3, 2, 1, BOOM! Shush… Shush… If I could turn back time, da-dut If I could find a way, da-dut I’d take back all the words that had hurt you And you’d stay if I could reach the stars I give them all to you I don’t know why I said the things that I said I don’t know why I love this bullet, ha ha, la la la la la la la la la la la. That’s Cher. Well folks, on today’s show I have the honor of interviewing a long time friend of the program, a guy that I do business with and a person that I personally utilize his services for my companies to process all of our credit card fees. We have wonderful clients that choose to pay us via credit card. So about, we’ll just say many, many years ago, I reached out to this particular individual today, today’s guest, and said, hey, could you compare rates for my company so that I could see if I could save some money? I was referred to Tyler Carson, today’s guest, by Steve Currington, a long-time client. And, truth be known, he was able to save me thousands and thousands of dollars per year. You say, how? Well, every time a customer pays me via credit card, I have to pay a fee, a transaction fee. And Tyler reduced that credit card fee dramatically for me. Also, his services of month to month service, if you’re not happy with the services he provides, you’re not locked into a contract. Also, they provide a free consultation, a free rate comparison, which I have found on average takes about 15 minutes for my clients to compare rates. Teller Carson, welcome on to the Thruv Time Show. How are you, sir? I am good, Clay. How are you guys today? Brother, I’m doing great. I’m going to go 90 miles an hour with you today. That’s good. I got some stories to tell you, too, so we’re good. So what’s the website that I need to go to if I want to learn more about you guys? Where can I go to find your website? Our website is integratedpaymentservices.com. Okay, I’m going to pull it up on the screen just so that our listeners can see it. That’s integratedpaymentservices.com, integratedpaymentservices.com. And if you had to describe what integrated payment services is, what is integrated payment services and what products and solutions do you guys provide? Sure, so we are a credit card processing And the solutions that we provide are any way that you can think of accepting a form of payment via credit card or even ACH, we can provide. So whether that’s through a website, whether that’s a standalone terminal, whether it’s through maybe an integration with your software, maybe it’s a virtual terminal for over the phone, maybe it’s an app on your phone, any way that you can think of taking a payment, we can provide. And what makes you different than other credit card providers? Because we all know there’s a lot of companies out there that process credit cards, but what makes you unique? I’ll give you a story just to kind of, you know, what separates us. So my business partner and I are a part of this, just this forum that gets released every week and there was an article in it this week that talked about a competitor of ours that they’re raising all of their customers’ prices from eight to 30 basis points across the board, no matter who you are, eight to 30 basis points if you do business with them. And a lot of their customers are locked into three and five-year contracts. So one thing that separates us, we never do any rate increases. Where you are with us from the beginning is where you’ll always be. And we don’t have any contracts. You know, so, so someone that does business with that particular company, they’re going to be stuck now with a, with a pretty hefty rate increase that, you know, they won’t be able to get out of without a cancellation fee that they’re going to have to pay, you know, to not have to take on this, this increase. You know, one thing that I, I get passionate about with your business is I tell entrepreneurs, you know, growing a business, there’s two parts of it. Part one is it’s how much money do you make? And then part two is how much do you keep? Part one is offense, marketing, generating leads, selling something. Defense is accounting, making sure you have some money left. And the other night, my daughter, my daughter, Leah, she went, she said, Dad, can I go through your van, my white van, I have a large van. Can I go through the van and see if I could find some change?” And I said, well, absolutely. Now, again, we have employees that use that van. We have employees that use that van for work trips, for company trips. And she said, can I go through the van and just see if I could find some change in there? I said, sure. Well, I talked to her last night at Target. True story, my daughter, Leah, 14 years old, she said she found over $50 of change in my van, quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies in the van. And she said, dad, can I keep it? I didn’t realize there was that much money. I said, well, you know, it’s a big van, 12 seat sort of thing used by employees all the time. She said, absolutely, you can 100% keep it. And I think that’s how credit card processing is, but at scale. I mean, if you’re not careful, it’s a quarter here, a dollar here. Most people that I know that have taken the challenge, and I encourage everyone to take the challenge, most people that I know, most of my clients that I’ve worked with that have compared rates with you are telling me on average, they’re saving over $3,000 a year, over $3,000 a year, over $60 a week that they’re saving. Folks, if you’re trying to put your kids through school, that’s maybe this year’s school shopping. If you’re trying to feed your family, that’s maybe groceries for the next couple of months. I mean, that’s a significant savings. Maybe that’s a family vacation. On average, how much are you saving people? And tell us about the process of comparing rates. Sure, on average it’s three to seven thousand dollars a year. On average, some a little less, some have been, you know, substantially more. The process, Clay, is so easy. I know that when, you know, people hear about making a change, they’re, you know, people are always like, well, you know, they kind of have this philosophy of, you know, well, right now, you know, it works and I don’t want to have any downtime. There is no downtime. It’s a, you know, five to 10 minute conversation maximum. We can get you guys taken care of, provide us with some information, which we tell you how to provide us that information. We’ll then provide back a comparison. You can see what the savings is to the penny. And then from there, you make the decision if it makes sense for your business or not. So if I’m watching this right now, final 30 seconds there, why should everybody take the challenge? Because again, we’ve created a landing page. That’s thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. I’ve used your services. I’m very happy. I’ve had clients that have used your services. I can’t speak highly enough about you, but why should everybody take the challenge to go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card and compare rates? Because we’re gonna save you money. And not only that, we do what we say we’re going to do. So when we do save you money, and I tell you that we’re not gonna raise your rates, and I tell you that there’s not gonna be a contract, you know, we have over, you know, 2200 customers that will vouch that will say, yeah, IPS does what they say that they’re going to do, and we do. And we do it because our philosophy is, we like the industry that we’re in, but for some people, it kind of gets a bad reputation because there are companies out there that take advantage of people, and we don’t. Tyler, thank you so much for carving out time for us, and we’ll talk to you next week. That sounds great, man, have a good week. Bye-bye. Hi, my name is Steven. I lead the team at ModScenes. We are a company that does church stage backdrops. Abbey and the team at Thrive in about four months have helped us to get to number one on Google for our keyword, which is awesome. It’s been a huge help to us. It’s helped us to get in touch with a lot of churches who are looking for our product and have a need and we’re able to serve them. It’s been really great for our business. It’s helped us to grow and to serve more people. All right, Thrive Nation, I want to tell you a story today about a gentleman I had the opportunity to meet years and years ago, and he has really scaled his company. He’s been just a great friend, and he’s a guy who, money’s a magnifier, so when you help somebody make more money, it just makes them more of who they are. He’s a generous man, he’s a hardworking man, he’s actually a CPA. Some people tell me, Clay, doesn’t a CPA stand for a certified pain in the ass? I don’t think that’s always true, folks. There are some good ones out there, and we’re joined here with a long-time client. Paul Hood, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? Hey, like my old friend, R.D. Mercer, said, CPA stands for certified professional ass kicker, not certified pain in the ass. All right. I’ve got 11 questions for you in about 10 minutes, so here we go. Let’s get it. Let’s get it. How did you and I first meet? I guess maybe when did you and I first start working together? Back in the day, I had a… I still do, I have a really nice car. I was sitting at a restaurant and the manager came up and said, hey, do you know this guy Steve Currington? I said no. I said, why? And he said, well, because he’s got these nice cards and you really need to meet him. So I met Steve. And the first time I met him, he was dressed up in a Hulk outfit at a fundraiser yelling Hulk smash over the place. And I had been searching, Clay. I had built a business that was doing about $3 million, had about three offices. And I wanted to go from successful to systematic. I asked Steve, who do I talk to? He said, you’ve got to meet my guy. He got me to one of your workshops. I said, holy smokes. I went to one of the best accounting schools in the country and they didn’t teach anything that you were teaching. I was lit from day one. I remember when you came to the conference and watching you take notes, you were smoking out that. They had a notebook for taking notes, and it was like the piece of paper was going to set to fire because you were taking so many notes and you were engaging with all the different successful entrepreneurs. And I knew that your business was going to scale because previous to meeting me, you’d already built a successful business. You were top of your class in college. But I knew you could scale. Just to give the listeners some sort of an idea in their mind, how much have you grown from the time that you and I first met to now, just to give you some context? Yeah, so last year, Clay, so we went from about $3 million in revenue with three offices to now we have 17 offices across four states, and last year we did $20 million. And, you know, we’re poised now, my industry is in a kind of a change or die scenario, and we are literally fighting off private equity companies that are wanting to throw money at us to be a part of what we’re doing, because you helped me create what, in my world, they call the platform firm. How do you take a wisdom-based business and scale it? And it was actually pretty simple. It’s actually made me angry. I’ve told you multiple times, I went to college and they didn’t teach me this stuff. And you’re saying, have a meeting with your people. What does that mean? And you played a massive role in our expansion. Well, Paul, I want to talk to you about this. This might feel like a backhanded compliment, but that’s not the way I mean it. You were graduating near the top of your class. I mean, you have been a very successful accountant before I met you. But I believe that when we met, you didn’t have a website. And maybe that seems like it’s a backhanded compliment. I don’t want to feel that way. I just I’m saying you were like top of your class CPA, but yet the marketing didn’t match how quality of a service you provided. Maybe I’m getting that wrong. I’d love to get your just can you let me talk about that because I believe you were a top of the class CPA with a non-existent website. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it’s, I hear what you’re saying, Clay. You’re saying is, oh my God, how’d this guy ever become as successful as he was before he met me? But the reality is, again, business school, they teach you how to be a technician. They don’t teach you how to grow a business, how to manage people, how to create leads, how to create that marketing funnel, that sales funnel that goes into it. And when I remember the first time we met individually, you said, well, let’s look at your website. And I said, what website? Because, you know, I’m a professional and professionals get new business off of referrals. And dude, you turned on that website and we started getting Google reviews and videos. And I’ll tell you, in the three months of the beginning of this year, my sales team closed 400 new clients in three months all off of inbound calls, meaning they called us. And that’s all because of what you’ve done with social media, with content, and that website. So, bravo. Now, we talked about, you know, one of the things that you did, which I loved, is you – there are what we call passive learners, people that watch information and they don’t think about how to apply it to their lives. Then there’s active learners. You are an active learner. You think if you see something and you think, how can I apply this to my life? And so I remember when you came to the workshop, you almost immediately, we started talking about renovating your offices on the outside and the inside. So basically renovating the brand, like the website, the digital marketing, but also renovating the way your physical CPA practices looked inside. I think in your Claremore office, you renovated your Claremore office. I’m going to try to pull it up on the screen so people can see this, but you actually implemented so many of the things quickly. And so you actually went through the process of renovating your office on the inside and the outside after having been to workshops and conferences? Why did you decide to do that? Because very few people do that. Well, it was two things, Clay. The first thing is when I had clients come in to me and they’d say they’d rather go to their dentist than see me. And people buy what they want, not what they need. And we were selling what they needed, not what they wanted. And so we needed to portray a success-minded, an anti-CPA environment, if you will, with the slogans and the positive saying and the financial things. And it’s kind of weird, though, Clay, because if you compare your office and my office, they strangely look alike. I’m not saying I copied off of you, but they strangely look alike. Well, you know, and the other thing- We want to sell success. We don’t want to just do tax returns. We want to sell success. That’s what I jumped all over going to you. I told you one time, Clay, I could live in your office. It’s the success and the positive and the motivation that’s created. So I wanted to recreate that in my offices. Other things that you implemented successfully, and again, I’m just trying to brag on some of the wonderful things you’ve been able to accomplish, is you and I talked and you said, Clay, I have a desire in my heart to write a book. So you and I worked together on writing your first book, Take a Look Under the Hood, which is a phenomenal book there. You and I did that together. And then the next book here is called Roadkill Tastes Like Chicken. And again, I can’t help somebody to typeset a book or to make a cover if someone doesn’t write the book. And so you are willing to put in the work and then we were able to work together to produce the end result. What would you say to somebody who’s on the outside of the website right now, who’s thinking about becoming a client of ours? And we have sort of a, our business is designed, I only take on 160 clients and so I work with a lot of the same people year after year after year. So what would you say about the amount of effort you had to put in to something like the website or writing the book and then maybe what would you say about how, what kind of work we put in, just so you kind of explain how that relationship works. Yeah, Clay, I’m still astonished at what all you guys were willing to do. You took and you proved to me that you can do this with any business. A business that wants to grow, a business that wants to be seen, a business that wants to measure profitability, a business that wants to start with the end in mind, you have all the tools to do that. And again, Clay, I’m waiting for the check in the mail, but you’re not paying me to say this stuff. It’s reality. I always said, and we’ve sent you a lot of clients over the years, that you’re the offense, I’m the defense. You show them how to make it, I show them how to keep it. I wrote the first book, really, frankly, you wrote most of the book. I went through, you did a lot of stuff, and I added some burbage and made it more towards CPA, the defense side, if you will. In the second book, you taught me that it’s not about making money. It’s about sowing seeds. It’s about changing people’s lives. One of the first things that you and I talked about is, why am I wanting to do this? What’s the intent? What difference am I going to make in the world? And with wealth, when you create wealth, you get attention, and therefore people give you credibility, and they’re more apt to do what you advise. And I have a great lifestyle, but what I wanted to do is with the book, with you, with my business, is how do I break generational sin or generational punishment? Or in my book, I call it, Pigs Don’t Know Pigs Stink, because if my mom hadn’t made a change and said no to being abused and alcoholism, you know, I’d probably be some drunk Indian smacking a woman around, you know? Wouldn’t be my wife, because she’s German. She’d cut me. She’d hurt me. But that and now I’ve got a college degree, and all my kids have college degrees. And so it’s beyond just, I feel like people owe it not only to themselves, to their community, to their family, to people they don’t even know, to be successful and then to sow those seeds of success in other people. And frankly, Clay, I admire you. I am astounded by your knowledge and how you can take a business from where I was to where I am now. And, you know, it’s all about sharing life’s successes, because you can create wealth and benefit the world. But if you can teach other people to create wealth and how to benefit the world, that’s amazing. So bravo to you, Clay. I appreciate that very much. I have three final questions for you. Three final questions. I want to tap into your wisdom on this. One of the things about your business that blew my mind is that if we typed in Tulsa CPAs into Google or whatever market you’re in, we couldn’t find you. So it’s kind of hard for people sometimes to grasp the idea that the best accountant isn’t findable, that the best dentist isn’t findable. People typically, they go to Google, they type in the search term and whatever comes up top, that’s what they call. And I want to ask you if you could share about the impact that search engine optimization maybe has had on your business, because I think a lot of dentists, doctors, lawyers, photographers, web developers, people I meet at conferences, we just had a big conference with Tim Tebow last week. I meet these people who are the best chiropractor in their area, the best neurosurgeon, the best whatever, and people can’t find them. Could you talk about the impact that the search engine optimization has made on the business? It’s immeasurable, Clay. You know, earlier I had mentioned we brought in like 400 new clients organically in three months, two and a half months. All of them were what’s called inbound liens, meaning they reached out to me. They weren’t referred to me by another client. They were actually Googled CPAs and they looked at reviews and videos. You and I first met, I said, people don’t look for CPAs on Google. They call their friends or whatever, and you smiled and shook your head and said, okay, and you set out to prove me wrong, and you did. And so anybody, especially in the service business, you can call me and I’ll tell you that I didn’t believe Clay Clark for a minute, but it has magnified the reach that we have. And what it’s done for us, Clay, it’s allowed us to be selective on what clients we take, and these clients are calling us. They literally, we don’t have to pick up the phone and call them, they’re calling us, and it’s 100% off of Google, Google reviews, Google searches. So I’ll admit it right here, you proved me wrong. People do look for CPAs off of Google. They look for doctors, dentists, attorneys as well. Now, my final 90 seconds here for you in the hot seat, the conferences. Dr. Zellner participates in the conferences. We’ve had Tim Tebow, Michael Levine. We’ve had the head of Harley-Davidson. Over the years, we just continue to bring in new folks. But when you get past the big names, could you maybe describe what the conferences are like or what kind of an impact have the conferences had on your business? Yeah. So the main thing is, you know, as a business owner, you know, there’s plenty of times I felt like I’m alone. You know, there’s nobody that thinks like me. You know, I’ve got great staff, but, you know, they go home at the end of the day, you know, and you fight negativity and all that. And then, and you don’t know what you’re doing. I mean, you know, nobody taught me how to be a successful business owner in business school. And then I go to your workshop, it’s positive. I’m surrounded by forward, positive thinking, hardworking, success-minded people. And then you start laying out the very simplistic methodologies because, Clay, you taught me there is a pattern to success, and here’s what you do. jobs, for the price, my gosh, you need to quadruple the cost of that going in there because if somebody, now here’s what I really like about it. I’m not an excuse maker. I don’t make excuses. And a lot of people like to go and then, oh, I can’t do it. I don’t know what I’m doing. Or my, you know, my mama couldn’t, my dad couldn’t, so I can’t. And your workshops take all excuses away. All you got to do is be willing to put in some effort and show up. There’s a pattern to success. It’s teachable, it’s replicatable, and it’s engaging. I would absolutely recommend anybody and everybody to go to your workshop because one, you’re going to walk out of there, you’re going to be on fire, you’re ready to go. But Clay, you give practical steps on what to do. And all I got to do is do it. And that’s what I did, even though I didn’t believe you. And you proved me wrong. Here we are, we’re five times the size we were when, seven times almost the size we were when we met you a few years ago. Final question for you. People, when they think about growing a business, they think about sales, they think about marketing, they think about accounting, they think about workflow, they think about human resources. They think about public speaking. They think about PR. They think about social media ads. And people always ask me, they go, okay, so you help people with workflows. Or they’ll go, okay, so you’re the website guy. Or you’re the book writing guy. Or you’re the whatever guy. How would you describe what it is that our business coaching platform does or what it’s done for me and what I’ve seen you do for clients is you clearly define the success pattern. The success pattern that you taught me is you define where you’re at, you define where you want to go, you create a plan, you execute the plan, you measure results, you modify the plan. In that plan, there’s a lot of consistencies, no matter if you’re a pool business, if you’re a lawn business, or you’re a CPA. And so what you did was, and I’m a proponent of going to college, especially the CPA, you have to. But if I didn’t have to, I could have skipped all that crap and hung out with you for a couple of years and learned every step of the way. Because every business that I’ve sent to you or that I work with, maybe they’re good in this area, but they’re not good in these areas. And so to be able to bring the thing full circle, regardless, and Clayton, and again, this is a compliment. You’ve done this with many, many different businesses. So you’re the guy that takes away excuses. If you want to be successful, there’s a pattern. Show up, do the work, modify your plan, and reap the rewards. Paul, I really do appreciate you. I want people to know about the resources that you provide. You have a wonderful team there at hoodcpas.com, hoodcpas.com. We have typically about a million listeners that will listen to this show on a typical week or every couple of weeks. What are the solutions that you provide there at paulhood.com, paulhood.com? Well, so what we do is we’re different than most CPAs because my industry is in a really a change or die scenario. Seventy-five percent of CPAs are at or above retirement age. There’s about 90 percent of the firms that are out there are potential acquisition targets. So what we have to do is we have to re-envision, and you help me with this, re-envision what we do. We sell success, Clay, just like you do. We’re not marketing people though. So like I said, you’re the offense, we’re the defense. We teach people how to minimize their income tax, how to maximize returns. How do you keep more, save more, and protect more? And we do it in a format, Clay, that’s a membership type model to where it’s a fixed fee. So every time you call us, you’re not getting a bill. And same thing, it’s very predictable. Keep more, save more, protect more, not just do your tax return. Paul, I really do appreciate you carving out time to join us today again, folks. That’s paulhood.com. You say, what’s the website? It’s paulhood.com. If you need a CPA in a major way, check out paulhood.com. Paul Hood, thank you so much for your time today, sir. We’ll talk to you soon. See you, brother. See ya, bye-bye. My name is Paul Hood, and I’m from right here in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I’m a CPA with offices in Bartlesville, Tulsa, and Claremont. I originally heard about the Thrive Time Workshop through some friends, a guy named Steve Carrington who has a very successful business. He said, if you want to be successful, you need to be here. My business consists of I’m a CPA and a financial advisor, and we’re very successful. I want to go from successful to systematic. I want to learn systems and processes so that the business can run without me. The atmosphere here at Thrive and Clay’s office and the team is very upbeat, very positive, very proactive, very forward-looking. They have very specific things that they can offer. Clay’s delivery is very unique. He’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, but he’s also one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. So he combines those in a very, very awesome way. One of the most valuable things I’ve learned at the workshop is to be very deliberate, to be very specific, to have a plan in mind, and then they can help you put together the processes to get it done. A favorite aspect is probably just how entertaining it is, and the fact that I pick up one or two or three things every time I come to take my business to the next level. Well, if people are missing out on basically a plan, a guaranteed plan pretty much if you’re willing to work it to be successful. Most people, I think everybody should attend one of these workshops at least once because you don’t know what you don’t know. And we’re not taught to be successful in school. What I’ve learned is my college degree is great for preparing me for, to be a business owner and to create a process or a business that can continue without me, I’m not there. I’ve been looking at it, looking for such processes for a while, and what Clay is showing me is how to do that step by step. Well, I’ve enjoyed the entire workshop. What I’ve liked the most is Clay’s presentation style. You go to seminars. I’m 49. I’ve gone to seminars for 30 years. And this is the first seminar I’ve gone to that is entertaining, both entertaining and it’s very usable information. The atmosphere of Thrive Headquarters is really actually kind of convincing me to change the atmosphere of my offices, even though they’re traditional CPA practices. The static, non-inviting environment here, I want to come back. When I came here a few weeks ago, I couldn’t wait to come back. Clay’s presentation training style is really like nothing I’ve seen before. Most business seminars I’ve gone to, suit and tie, very, you know, try to stay awake, drink a bunch of cups of coffee, but plays very entertaining. And the information he has is, I haven’t heard before, I’ve heard pieces of it, but the way he puts it together in a total package and his presentation style is both entertaining and very knowledgeable. Well, I guess what people are missing out if they don’t come to Thrive Conference, it depends on them. If they like working 60, 70 hours a week and barely getting by or making decent money, but you can’t replace your time, that’s fine. If you’re in a position like me, you make good money, but you like to buy back your time. You like to still make the money, but not have to show up, not have a business that’s dependent upon you showing up. Coming here, if you don’t come here, you’re not going to get that. What we’re going to do today is we’re going to give you a little tour of the house that we just bought. In Oklahoma, this is what we call a big old house. So come on in and check this out. We bought this house about a year and a half ago, and we’ve been finishing it. It was partially constructed, and so everything’s under construction. So this is kind of a sneak preview for everybody. So follow me. This right here is the living room, family room, whatever you want to call it. It’s got a bar for watching football, of course. Go Cowboys. It’s got 50-foot ceilings, windows out to the pool, really, really nice kitchen over here. We flew the vent hood in from Mexico. It was handmade. Let’s go this way. This is a really unique room. There’s a six-story tower in the middle of the house. Don’t know why. It’s got six rooms straight up top. You can go 85 feet in the air, shoot deer, take pictures, whatever you want to do. See the sunrise, sunset. This will be a photography studio, actually. But you see, it’s got 25, 30-foot ceilings up here. We had to get a special permit. It’s got an elevator that goes up six floors. Normally in a residence, you can only get like a three or four story elevator. Again, just six rooms like this. On the third floor, I’m going to have, I suck at golf. I love golf, but I suck at golf. We’re going to have a golf simulator up there so I can play golf for 30 minutes. I get mad and I can leave, but it’s all inside and air-conditioned. Over here off of the photography studio, there’s actually a safe room. It’s all concrete walls. We had a steel door made for it and so tornadoes come or people we don’t really care, you know, whatever, it’s a safe room. We can come in. It’s going to have security cameras and everything else in there built in. Now down this hall is my favorite room. Well, two favorite rooms. One, there is a pantry and there’s a stairwell right there in the back of the pantry that actually leads from my bedroom. So if I want a snack in the middle of the night, it comes straight down from the bedroom. There are 109 interior doors here, 33 exterior doors, 25,000 square feet. It’s got five garages, different garages. This is the best room in the place. We teach success principles at Hood & Associates CPAs, and one of them is just to have balance between your personal life, your finances, your fitness, your friends, your family. And so for fitness, I’ve got this. I’ll spend a lot of time in here. And of course, right out here, again, it’s all under construction. There’s stuff everywhere, but about a 70,000 gallon swimming pool. We’ll have, it’s got a swim jet, so you can exercise against the current or it can make waves. It’s got a huge hot tub that you can two places you can stand and it’ll massage you from your neck to your, to your back, you know, cause when you’re out being successful, making money, you get, get kind of tensed up. It’s got a layout shelf, a walk-in, a beach entry, and water shooting everywhere. It’s got about eight different waterfalls. It’s got a cave in it, and it’s got a little lazy river, a little lake thing, pond thing up on top where you can lay out and play in the water. So you know all the necessities of life. Now we’re on the second floor. This is the master suite. It’s actually two stories and has three staircases to the second story, one over here, one there, and then one in another room. It’s got five fireplaces in the whole house, just one here in the master. Second story, the master’s up there, which we’ll go up there in a minute. This is the master bathroom, just a little bathroom. If you notice in the shower, there’s no knobs to turn the water on. Everything is digital. We have to have Wi-Fi for it, so it talks to your phone or a tablet. And you program it for Paul’s summer shower, Paul’s winter shower, or what have you. It also, in the top there, it’s got a builder where if you want to take a shower in a thunderstorm, it has sound, lightning, thunder, all of that good stuff. I guess that’s the thing, take a shower in a thunderstorm. The bathtub is heated. It’s actually heated, not just the water, but it’s heated. And then over here is the bathroom and there’s two things in there. I know what that one does. That one is called a bidet. Does anybody know how to work a bidet? I don’t. This is the master closet. One of them, I think there’s six closets, but this is I don’t know how this probably a thousand square feet or give or take all over here. Keeps going over here. I don’t know who needs that many drawers, but apparently we do. This is the wife’s craft room. She likes to craft. We have grandkids and daughter in laws and this will be full of stuff. And they’ll sit in here and make things and make memories. Of course, it’s off to the balcony. There’s a balcony off to the pool all the way around. Those of you that know me or that will get to know me know, I like shoes. And so there’s tons of places to put my shoes in that closet. That’s what I’m excited about. This is, the house has three laundry rooms. This is the master bedroom laundry room. This is just part of the master suite. So we do laundry right here. This is just a little storage room. You know, you gotta have a place to put suitcases and shoe boxes and stuff like that. Just a little extra thing. It’s wired for the smart home. So this is one of the brains. Now we’re circling back, if you get lost, we’re circling back to the master bathroom. Another closet. Right here’s that stairway I said that goes down to the pantry in case I want a snack. This room here I’m excited about. This is, we have three grandkids and a fourth on the way. And the house is so big that if our grandkids come and stay with us, we want them to be close. So this is just like an extra bedroom attached to the master suite. Now let’s go upstairs to the second floor of the master. This is a stairway, one of the second of three stairways to the second floor, it’s actually third floor of the house, second floor of the master. We think we’re gonna make this a slide because that right there, where we just came from, was the grandkids’ bedroom, so they’re gonna be able to come up to our second floor, slide down into their bedroom. What do you think about that? I think it’s a necessity. This is the third story of the house, second story of the master bedroom. This room right here is kind of cool. It’s gonna be like a little spa room. We’ve got a commercial tanning bed that goes in there and a massage chair and you know all the relaxing music and all of that. This would be like a library or reading room off of the master. It’s still part of the master. It’s got a separate balcony out there. Every room in the house is wired for speakers for entertaining. There’s a lot of speakers, I can tell you why, and they suck putting them up. I’d put a bunch of them up, but there’s a lot of them. These fans are really cool. They spin like this, and then the fans inside of them spin, so it’s got like three different motions going on at once. Okay, we’re now back on the second story of the house over by the tower. This is my office. This is where my office will be. And then we can go over here and you can see the second floor of the tower. Now on the third floor of the tower, I’m going to put a golf simulator, like I said earlier, because I suck at golf, but I want to play. But you can see, we just got to keep our grandkids because we have three granddaughters. They’ll be okay, but I have a grandson coming and I know he’s going to want to be climbing. We’re going to have to be careful of that. This is a, this will be just an entertaining room, a game room. There’ll be a pool table here. Kids play Fortnite. Now, over here is, when you have a game room, you also got to have a place to have snacks. So this is our snack kitchen. This is one of three kitchens in the house. Like I say, there’s three laundry rooms, three kitchens. There are 13 bathrooms. This is kind of cool, but this is for entertaining. I was looking to learn how to take my business, like they’ve said today, from being very successful to being systematic. I’ve got a very successful practice in three different cities. I make good money. I just want to take it to the next level with systems and processes to where I can drive my cars more. Paul Hood. I have been a CPA for 34 years. And what kind of growth have you and your great team had here over the past, let’s say, five, six years? The last five, when I met you five years ago, we were doing three million. This year we’ll do 24 million. Which is more than, which is more than, and he’s an accountant, so we’re going to talk about that. So, Paul introduced me to Bob, because he said there’s a guy that came into my office looking to raise some capital, I think that was the thing, and he needed to get some sales going, that’s how, and so we, if we tell, Paul, from the accounting perspective, I’m going to pass the mic to you, you do accounting, you do accounting, why do you have to have a website that makes sense and all that branding stuff? How has that impacted your brand having websites and all those branding things in place? When I met you, like most CPAs, I thought my clients only come from referrals, but we get five leads in a two-month period every month just off of Google. And so this is my face. We have 17 offices across four states. We have them in every state. But this is our face. Like what you were saying, it’s visual. And it allowed us to say why we’re different. That about us from there is spectacular. And it’s an industry that has changed. We’re modifying it, we’re going to, we offer our services in a subscript model to where it’s all inclusive and it’s just been awesome. Well, determine the level of success. So, success in business is not what you know how to do, it’s actually doing it. And so, the thing that I would tell you is stop it. Get a guy like this guy and let him go after it. It’s insane. Because then you can be doing what you do well and take that time and invest in something else on top of that. On top of that, he has contacts. And I’m not, this is not, I don’t get anything for selling his, just telling you what he’s done for us so that we could focus. And then he’ll come in and I’ll say, you know, I think I’ve got it all. And he listens for five minutes and he makes one and I want to slap myself in the face. Well, why didn’t I think about that? That’s idiotic. But they’re sick freaks. They just get it done. I don’t know. I think it’s just merit-based pay in our office. So the people here, like they get paid. So if we were taking on your account and someone else to do this, but if you hired a different marketing company, I’m just giving you best practices. You want to make sure that they win when you win. So like in our office, if we grow Dave Basie’s podcast, that benefits our company to the extent it benefits them, but we actually benefit if they benefit. Does that make sense to you? Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockerill, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours on the day to day. He does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers and they run a hundred and sixty companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly he’s running 160 companies every six to eight weeks. He’s doing reawaken America tours every six to eight weeks. He’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from start-ups go from start-up to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. Amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. And that’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns, because our clubs were all closed for three months and you have $350,000 of bills you’ve got to pay and we have no accounts receivable. He helped us navigate that and of course we were conservative enough that we could afford to take that on for a period of time. He was a great man. I’m very impressed with him. So Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing and I encourage you if you’re having to work with Clay, work with Clay. He’s going to help magnify you and there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps four, maybe six hours a day and literally the rest of the time he’s working, and he can outwork everybody in the room every single day, and he loves it. So anyways, this is Charles Kola with Kola Fitness. Thank you, Clay, and anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay, it’s a great, great opportunity to ever work with him. So you guys have a blessed one. This is Charles Kola. We’ll see you guys, bye-bye. Hi, I’m Aaron Antis with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate. So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes and then I met Clay and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing 800 million in sales over a 15-year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us and it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses, that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s definitely one of the largest in town. And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you if you’re thinking about working with Clay. I mean, the thing is it’s month to month, go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35 year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1800% increase in our internet leads, going from 10 a month to 180 a month, that would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it, because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years, and my three kids started school, and they were in school full time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide, what do I want to do. My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people, I love working with people, I love building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things. The processes and the advertising and marketing, I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time. And he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago. And in that time, we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents, but I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer to insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient, and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was, I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. The Thrivetime Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re gonna teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re gonna teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because, as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big, get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying. I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research you will discover that the same system that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever. And we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Roseland, baby. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma and the two day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Thrive Time Show two day interactive Business Growth Workshop. We’ve been doing business Two-day interactive business growth workshop. Whoa! 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, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re gonna have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well I’m just saying, Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. 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. Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. We’ve had the top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we have had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes, we’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop, December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes, and then we open it up for a question and answer session, so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes, and then we open it up for a 15-minute question and answer session. It’s interactive. It’s two days. It’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005, and I’m telling you, folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show 2-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 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 thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the business conferences button, and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you could afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that, I had to work for it. And I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russia. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa Ruslim, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office and so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com and again you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford and we do have some select VIP tickets which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things and those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop over 20 hours a business training we’re gonna give you a copy of my newest book the millionaires guide to becoming sustainably rich you’re gonna leave with a workbook you’re gonna leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company it’s practical it’s actionable and it’s T-Bo time right here in Tulsa, Russia get those tickets today at thrive timeshow.com again that’s thrive timeshow.com Hello I’m Michael Levine and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California Where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners 34 Grammy Award winners 43 New York Times bestsellers I’ve represented a lot of major stars And I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California in the beautiful sunny weather of LA come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing, and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine. I’ll see you in Tulsa Thrive time show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business Workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow You can learn the proven 13-point business systems that dr. Zellner about I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, and they would never teach me anything It was like you went there, and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it It was a hollow nothingness, and I wanted the knowledge They’re like oh But we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop and the great thing is we have nothing to upsell at every workshop We teach you what you need to know there’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner, and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses? Or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person, two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop, all you got to do is go to thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York, octa non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Keosok University Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. The 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 Mr. Clay Clark, he’s a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hours. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump. What were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who’s my age, and I can say or cannot say? Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. He said, �Have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad?� I said, �No.� My father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor and I owe a lot of that to you and I just wanted to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump, but I just want to tell you, thank you sir for changing my life. Well not only that Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Yeah. So anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.