Clay Clark | Stephen Petasky | How to Live Life By Design | Interview With the Founder of www.LuxusGroup.com, Stephen Petasky + Learn How Stephen Petasky Built a $100,000,000 Vacation Real Estate Portfolio

Audio Transcription

It’s the Thrive Time Show with my man Steven Potanski. Talking about real estate, rentals, and luxury. Started from the bottom, now at the top of his industry. Grab a pen and a pad, into the lab as Steven speaks. Luxusgroup.com on the web is where he’s gonna be. Next up is the Thrive Time Show intro you’re gonna see. How much have you grown since you and I first connected, or since you connected with our team? Because I mean, you are really growing there at BunkyLife.com. Yeah, so we started two years ago, I believe. And almost, yeah, basically two years ago. I don’t remember exactly where we were at then, but we have grown by probably 50-ish percent top line. And profit has grown by about the same amount. It’s been proportional. This year we will grow 30 percent top line and 30 percent bottom line. And then last year we grew a fair bit too. So I think that’s about 50%. Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Hey, Clay Clark! Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today, I met his dogs, I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. 4,000% from February to February. Now I can better that. Okay, Clay, I don’t think you know this. I don’t think you know this. I’m pinching myself and if I cry, forgive me. In the last two and a half days, we have bettered our entire month of February in the last two and a half days. So, and the phone’s blowing up. Everything’s just blowing up. You’re right, it is like a rocket ship. So, we’re pinching ourselves actually. I learned at the Academy in Kings Point, New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. 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 U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zunich. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. different women. 13 multi-million dollar businesses. wisdom and the good news. 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 Z up on your radio. And now three, two, one. Here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Well, folks, on today’s show, we have a guru, an entrepreneur who really has done well in the luxury and vacation rental lifestyle space. And he is carving out time to give us about a half hour of his time to be here with you. I have got a plethora of questions that I want to ask this man. Stephen, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m great, Clay. Thanks for having me today. I appreciate it. So, Stephen, let’s deal with the first controversy. How do we pronounce your last name? We don’t want to get that wrong here. People all over the Internet are saying your name wrong, sir. Yeah, that’s right. Petaski. People are using it like Petasky. I’m Ukrainian background, so people call me Perogi, but yes, Petaski. You know, when people look up your success now, it seems like, wow, that’s unapproachable. How did you get started? I mean, how did you start? We’ll get into where you’re at now, but how did you get started there, sir? Yeah, no, thanks for asking. It’s easy for me to remember because 17 years ago, when my son was born, actually, so my wife was pregnant with our first. We were recently married, and we loved to travel. That’s what my wife and I kind of built our courtship on, and we loved seeing different parts of the world. But when you have a child brought into your life, travel changes. A lot of our friends would tell us, they’d be like, oh, travel’s going to suck for you now. Like, you’re not going to want to go anywhere. It’s so hard. It’s difficult. And we just kind of refused to believe that that was going to be the case for our family. So at the time, this goes back to late 06, early 07, we said, OK, well, how would we want to travel now with a child? We just can’t take them to Europe and bounce around. So, well, the three big things for us would be, like, we need space, we want, like, bedrooms and kitchens, nothing like a VRBO size, but unfortunately with VRBO at the time, this is pre-Airbnb days actually, is it was so inconsistent. And it still is inconsistent today, and we’ll talk about that later, but we just, as a new parent you just can’t bring your baby into a spot that you don’t know what you’re going to get. Hotels, where we always used to stay, didn’t make sense anymore because of size, and it’s what do you do with your baby? It kind of takes the romance out of the whole experience if your baby’s in the room and there’s no place really to hang out. And then the third bucket was owning your own home, but we didn’t really have the money for that, but it provided certainty. You know what you’re going to get, obviously, if you own your own home. So we thought, wouldn’t it be amazing if we had a portfolio of vacation homes around the world so we can get variety, we can get the size that we’re required, but we can set them up the exact way we’d want it with great beds and linens and bathrooms and playpens and booster seats for our baby. And it was a neat concept, but how would we do it? And we ultimately launched what was kind of a version 1.0 of the Luxus group and Luxus vacation properties. Luxus is just, you know, Latin, Latin word for luxury. And so we kicked off Luxus, we thought, okay, let’s go raise some money, bring some friends and family along for the ride, and let’s go buy some vacation homes. And we ended up having eight very brave, courageous founders because we had no team, no concierge, no nothing and we kind of painted this picture that we’re going to have these homes around the world and they’re going to be set up to a certain standard, a certain level of experience, to have this concierge team to plan your vacations. And we raised three and a half million bucks and bought three homes. We bought one in Maui, one in Interior Bridge, Columbia, like a ski summer property, and then Scottsdale, Arizona. So we kind of had our boxes checked from the ski summer, the beach, and the desert. And that was the kickoff for Luxus. And then we snowballed very quickly and kind of unexpectedly. We’re very excited about raising close to $100 million and bought 50 properties around the world in six or seven different countries. And we have since, in that version, which is now gone, we’re into a new version now, but 20,000 vacations with our investors and partners and kind of like a private club for vacation homes. So that’s a long way to answer how we kick things off just around our own personal problems and challenges of the family we were trying to solve. And we solved it through Luxus. Now, for people that, again, this is, I’m not gonna sound like a backhanded, rude compliment kind of thing, but some people will look at your success and they go, wow, that’s impressive. But what they’re gonna say if they weren’t on the show, if they weren’t on the mic, they would say, I know this because I meet wonderful people at our conferences. They go, yeah, it’s incredible for him, but you don’t understand. Like, I don’t have access to capital, man. I don’t have the silver spoon. I don’t have the golden, you know, tools. I don’t have the ability, the access. So we got to ask, I mean, how did you, you know, raise that first million or 2 million or 3 million? How did you do that? Because that, in my opinion, for a lot of our listeners, it can be almost an insurmountable thing in the minds of most of our listeners. It’s a great question. I think I came from the grocery business before this, so retail grocery, nothing connected to real estate whatsoever. And I’d like to think now after doing this for 17 years and we’ve got multi nine-figure development projects happening now, where it started to where it is now, which we’re very proud of and very humbled. It’s certainly a difficult journey for any entrepreneur. But becoming an expert’s not that hard. You know, I think a lot of people just get overwhelmed with the task, but you can get kind of in the top 1% expert in your area by spending a few hundred hours. And people, I think, just get really challenged with the idea of spending that time to become an expert in something. Now, my personal belief is it’s way easier to become an expert in something if you have a personal passion for it. So for us, I look at like time is almost infinite if you have a passion around it. I think if you, the brain is a supercomputer. If it’s running 24 hours a day, if you’re doing something you don’t really love that much, it’s hard to get excited about doing it at nine o’clock at night or five o’clock in the morning or throughout the day or in your dreams. But if it’s something you love, then ultimately you can condense the time period to a certain degree, get to that 10,000 hours, be the top 0.1% maybe in your industry. And we did maybe 10,000 hours is generally about five years of time. Maybe you can do that in a couple of years. So I think for a lot of people, we didn’t have capital. We went and begged people, but we put it through a passionate play that we believed we could build something special. And we became good at what we did through lots of time, lots of effort, lots of mistakes, lots of fumbling and fixing things as we went along. And I think people just get a little afraid of the idea of it’s gonna take too long. Well, what else are you gonna do? You know, if you’re doing something you love, just spend the time learning that. And the internet’s a great place, and mentors and coaches can all help you get there as well. But it’s not that hard. If you think about over the course of a five-year journey, we went from nothing to something, and the next five years it grew again, and the next last five years have been really quite interesting. So I think people just need to take that first step and go ahead before you’re ready. Now, was there a key mentor that you, because again, we look at your website and we go, ooh, flexxmove.com, this looks exclusive, baby. I mean, people are going, this is the move. This is the golden baby. People love this. Was there a certain mentor? Was there sort of like a Yoda figure in your life? Did you go to Dagobah? Did you meet some hermit kind of figure with wisdom that taught you the moves? Or did you have a mentor in your life? Well, I think the mentors have evolved over time, but certainly the first mentor is my father, my mother and father. They’re both entrepreneurs. They started with nothing, and they built a successful grocery business in that retail space. And so I think that the best luck that was ever served my way was being able to watch their journey from being very young parents trying to raise children to starting their own business, mortgaging their house, getting it started, the ups and downs that come along that journey, and kind of being kind of first front row seat to watching, I would say the emotional rollercoaster, but the effort that goes in becoming an entrepreneur. And I think it took the fear out of it for me, in just knowing that it was possible. So I think when I started my entrepreneurial journey, I was like, oh, well, that’s just, you just work 100 hours a week for six months, or a year, or 10 years, or whatever. It kind of takes the fear out of it. And then as you started, the business started to grow, and we started doing developments in Italy, and we started doing developments in different parts of the world, with a new phase of our company, mentor shift. You know, my parents had built a business to a certain size in their previous world. So now I’m looking for mentors in the real estate space. And now I have a new mentor that has built changes. The gap can only be so big between where you’re at and where your mentor’s at. So my mentor now has had three 10-figure exits. And that’s like an amazing place to be, but I could not have asked him to be my mentor back 17 years ago. But now that’s where we wanna build the business and thereby the mentor shift. So I’m a huge believer, I guess, in three things quickly in this Clay, is mentor in your life, knowing the mentor shift. It might be a year, it might be five years in your life, but mentors evolve as your business evolves and as your life evolves. Then keeping with a mentor, they’re there to give you their experience, not necessarily to be a coach. I think a lot of people get coaching and mentorship mixed up. Then you hire a coach, which you know all about, and someone that holds you accountable to your goals and is constantly adjusting and making sure every couple of weeks you’re on track with things. And the final thing is a peer group where someone that’s in the trench with you at the same time, we’re struggling with the same challenges, the same time constraints, the same capital challenges. And I used originally Entrepreneurs Organization, which was when it was great 10 years and I’ve been in multiple other business groups since then. And I think by having those three things in my life, evolving always through the journey has propelled our success and I guess our roadmap maybe a lot quicker than if I didn’t have those three things in place intentionally throughout the journey. When did you feel like you were gaining attraction with luxusgroup.com? When did you think to yourself, self, this is actually working, this is working well, we may have a go here. When did you have that feeling or have you ever had that feeling? Well, essentially, so we’ve had three, we’re coming up on 18 years, we’ve had three iterations. So the first iteration, as I outlined earlier, we had this really great run between 2010 to 2015. And we just thought we had it all figured out. And then the economy crashed in our local market where the majority of our investors were from, and it dried up immediately. And then I felt like a failure for the next couple of years, just not, just kind of, you know, looking calm on the surface, but the, you know, the duck’s feet are going a million miles an hour below. So I was going to version one. So that getting entrepreneur, you feel like you top of the world, and then you feel like you’re bottom of the barrel. And then we had another kind of run, you know, pre-COVID, and then that kind of came crashing down with COVID and really set down. We really thought we’re done. And then the next iterations now, I feel like we’ve got, we do have some tremendous momentum on the kind of three main entities of the company, the vacation rental side, the development side in North America, and the development side in Italy. And now it’s, and I’m sure at some point again, I’ll feel like it’s come, you know, there’s up and down, but at the same point, I think right now we’re on a really neat trajectory. And I think I’m handling it a lot differently than maybe the previous, you know, challenges we faced, because you know, you can get through them through just working your way through. But when you get your first crash and first punch in the throat, it kind of feels like it might be the end of the world. Now, you know, in my world and in your world, I mean, we actually run real businesses, so we have real problems. I’ll give you an example of a problem here. Say I sat down at my desk and I thought to myself, why is there this Post-it note here? And why did someone leave $2 on my desk and this business card? Who has been on my, and I start looking around, I read the Post-it note and I recognize, oh, okay, we’ve got an HR problem, I got to deal with something. And so there’s just a lot, and that’s every day. So when you look at a business like yours, two questions here, how big is the real estate portfolio today? And then how do you organize your day? So how big is the portfolio? And then how do you organize your day with all the problems that are inevitably gonna come with it? Yeah, you know what, I think our biggest realization was in that trajectory in kind of 2017, 2021, when we just felt like we weren’t getting the traction that we thought maybe we deserved. And the problem was me, to be honest. I had my hands in all the different things and realizing that I just wasn’t gonna be successful by doing everything at half speed because the time was so stretched. I needed to bring partners and leaders in the business and bring them up and empower them to lead. So now we have a partner on the development side, managing partner, we’ve separated the offices. He runs that day to day. And he may report to me, but at the end of the day, he’s got pretty much full autonomy to get after it. And that also freed up this massive amount of mental and physical bandwidth, doing the same thing on the vacation rental side. So now, as my day is organized before, it was honestly like triage for a period of time. And it was, I would say self-inflicted, but we built this business and I was still too in it and I’m still working very hard and certainly not perfect yet, but trying to work on the business more. And that comes through evolutions of the business as you hit certain thresholds. Now the development side is going to be multi-hundred millions of dollars of sales a year, but we have partners in the business and capital partners and some make it sound like it’s all us, but it cannot be done effectively without incredible team members around you. And in particular, when you get to a certain size, you know, managing partners or, you know, vice presidents or presidents that can really run the show. And now they’ve done an incredible job for me by leveraging more of my talents, which is more around maybe the vision of the business versus the actual doing. And I think that’s allowed the team to thrive better. And it’s certainly allowed me to thrive better and allow the business to thrive. How do you organize your day at this point? I mean, how do you spend like the first, let’s say three hours of every day? Yeah, sure. So for me, it’s a, you know, love, big believer in exercise and wellness, biohacking. I think that last three years, we really, my wife and I both got into it pretty heavily and just realizing that health, I mean, health is your wealth. Everyone says that, but there are levels to the health that you can get. And I feel like energy itself, you can almost build an infinite amount of energy, physical energy, by properly taking care of your body. So the mornings are exercise, cold plunger, cold showers, and it’s just something. Sometimes it’s just a cold shower because you don’t have the time necessarily to have to do some of these things, but just really setting the day up right health-wise. When I go into it, it’s meetings with the different departments and the day to kind of kick off the day. And then from there, it’s just generally try to meet, when I’m getting brought into the weeds is intentional now. Hey, Steve, we need your help with this problem we’re trying to solve. Otherwise it’s meeting with the department heads and the presidents of the various companies to help, what do they need for the day? And what can I do to help within that day? So I still sit in multiple seats related to that, but as the seats are getting replaced by more talented people in the organization. I’m able to be a little more working on the business and I’m just trying to stay out of the way of the team so they can execute effectively, which when you build a business from scratch, you had to do everything at one point, from accounting to sales to operations to hiring and firing. It’s hard as an entrepreneur to pull yourself out, but I know that’s what’s required for the business and for us to be successful, so we’re doing that. What would you tell a younger version of yourself if you were going to go back and mentor yourself, let’s say 10 years ago or maybe five years ago, what would you go back and say, self, you need to do more of this, do less of that, quit doing this, start doing that. What kind of advice would you give your younger self? I think it’s a good question. I reflect on it to be like, geez, I’m maybe wiser now than I was five years ago. I’ll be wiser again in five years from now. I think every time I try to put myself in those shoes, say, spend less time worrying about what might happen and because it’s easy to get caught in the future of a challenge that’s coming and what it would be. And you can just expel a lot of energy around that versus just problem solving. And I would say that the biggest thing is just, I hate to say just work, but just get in and solve problems. I mean, that’s really the mission of an entrepreneur every single day. And if you find yourself dwelling on something that has not happened and may not happen, which is just natural as human species to be fearful of what might come, you know, and whatever help you need with that. For some people, it’s therapy. For some people, it’s a mentor or a coach. For some people, it’s really kind of mapping out a path to success that helps free up their mental capacity. I think fear can be actually a fairly powerful motivator, but anxiety, which is prevalent and very difficult, is to be paralyzing. So I am fearful always a little bit of something going wrong, so I’m more ahead of the game being proactive to stay on top of multiple solutions, multiple exit paths. Every time I find myself in a position where you’re anxious, it’s hard to do anything. So it’s really, I think, if someone suffers at all from some of those mental health challenges, is to work on it. And you can work on it through various means. And one of them just is like, what is the worst case scenario that’s going to happen if that problem happens? Then you can come back and say, I’m going to create a solution to help prevent that from ever happening. And that really frees the mind up and allows you to execute on problem solving versus being paralyzed by something that hasn’t happened. Now, freeing the mind up for our listeners here by allowing them to laugh at my expense or your expense. Yeah, go ahead. Do you have a tough adversity that’s happened in the past, like some major adversity that’s far enough in the past you can talk about it now where you look back and go, man, that was a wild adversity? Because I think sometimes people can learn through some of the mistakes that people like yourself have made in the past. Do you have a setback in the past that you look back at and go, man, that was rough? Many, but I’ll give one good one, I guess, is that I think people always, I can laugh about it now, but I would cry about it back then. But we had a project in Hawaii, it was our first major development project on the Big Island where there’s active volcanoes. And so we had this business project, we already ran into some troubles with financing various things which I would say more self-inflicted things that we could definitely learn from. definitely learned from, but we never really planned for something that could be a total spontaneous issue. So on our May of 2018 was our sales launch. We’re very excited, we’ve been spending years getting the project ready for it, and for the first time in 18 years, Hilloway erupted on the Big Island and created effectively a fog, it’s like a volcanic fog on the Big Island. And CNN and other news made it sound like people were running for the hills. And this is nowhere near anywhere possible to ever damage anything related to the real estate that we had, but it was this optics. And it basically shut down the island for a period of time. And it completely killed their sales, which completely killed their financing, and all these various, it created this domino effect of things we never even thought possible, to the point where we didn’t know if we’d make it to be perfectly on, personal guarantees, we were doing everything we could and ultimately to keep it alive. And we like, we just have to get to the other side of this bad news. And I think that the lesson I learned from that is that, you know, oh, well, that’ll never happen again. Well, then a global pandemic happened two years later. So these things actually do happen. And you know, they’re called blind spots for a reason. It’s you don’t know they’re gonna come to hit you. But I think we’ve become a lot better at predicting blind spots, as far fetched as they may be in order to say, okay, what if that actually happened? How would I resolve it? And what would be the solutions? And so at the time it was just triage and survival. But now we actually build into our business plan. What if another global pandemic happened? What would that do? And how would we resolve those problems? And because I don’t ever want to be in that situation again without a plan B, C, D, E, F, if plan A doesn’t go through. I can only have plan A, and plan A didn’t work, then we’re kind of running out of, I guess, room to solve it. So now we’ve got a lot of backup plans, and it was a great learning for us, and great learning for me personally. Now I’ve got three final questions for you, and so the question here is, if I’m listening to today’s show, and I want to team up with you, or learn more about you, or press in to get a little more nuggets of knowledge and maybe invest with you. How do people, what’s the best way for people to connect with you guys there at luxusgroup.com? Yeah, I’ll be honest, I’m not very active on social media personally. We’ve kind of built this business more anonymously in the past, not looking for that. So I’m not the best and highly inspirational. Someone can ping me on Instagram at Steven Patasky if they want. Luxus Group now is the kind of two primary things. If you’re into luxury real estate, we got really cool things on the go. Whether you’re an owner or an investor or whatever it may be, there’s lots of things. Generally, we don’t look outside for investors, but you never know a relationship could strike up with the right person that could be a fit for one of our projects with four seasons or some other things on the go. The vacation rental side though is really exciting. We’re building this new vacation rental platform. Think of it like hotel meets VRBO, so it’s Hotel Quality Standard. That’s at luxusvp.com. This goes for anyone. Everyone loves to travel. Everyone’s looking for certainty when they travel, and we’re providing that with this new model. And you can follow us on all the social media channels and the website, and it’s gonna be a really exciting piece. So if you’re a homeowner maybe that has a vacation home that you might want to rent out and get some utility out of, that’s something you can hit me up with and hit up our group. It’s something maybe we can try to earn your business and roll it into our portfolio and make it a great program for you and the people that travel to it. And what’s that website again? You said luxuswhat.com? Yeah, LuxusVP. So, L-U-X-U-S-V-P.com, as in Luxus Vacation Properties. So, go to the Luxus group, the site you were showing. That’s the one my friend. It’s really exciting. It’s new. It’s had 17 years of like history to build this new startup and we’re going to grow it to 500, 600 properties in the next five years. And if you love travel and you want the best of travel, that’s not all about luxury. It’s about providing a consistent and familiar experience no matter where you go around the world. It is going to be a pretty special thing. We’re very excited about it and we’re putting all of our eggs in this basket for the next five years. That’s lexusvp.com, lexusvp.com. Second question, I know you talked about it earlier, but I wanted to bring it up again. Are there any books that you’d recommend for our listeners? A lot of our listeners are note takers, they’re book readers. Is there a handful of books or a book you’d recommend that all of our listeners would read? Yeah, yeah, obviously love business books. OSHA, Blue Ocean Strategies, one of my favorite books. And it’s, if you go, anyone that’s looking to build a business everything we do is through the lens of a blue ocean versus red ocean Courage anyone to read it’s this very simple read but the concept is like you can use Tesla as an example or Airbnb taking an established industry and Creating and that were everyone’s competing and call it the quote-unquote red ocean They’re fighting each other on price or service or didn’t you know minor differentiators? But then someone comes in like Tesla and you completely change the industry by creating a car, so it gets you from point A to point B, but they’re the biggest car company in the world now as a market cap. And so that’s obviously the really big easy examples. We do that on micro levels to say how do we can do this in our particular space. And I think you can do anything from a hair salon to a garbage pickups. What can you do differently within an industry? And all it’s meant to do is eliminate your competition. It’s harder to get off the ground because you’re doing something different. But at the same point, you have no competition once it gets going. So Blue Ocean Strategy would be my favorite. And final question here for you is, you know, for people out there that are listening to today’s show, they hear about your business, which I believe is a $100 million portfolio now, and they view you as a source of wisdom. Do you have any final word of advice you’d give for all the entrepreneurs out there, most of which are small business owners, business owners of some kind. What advice would you give to all the listeners out there? I think two things. The one I mentioned earlier, mentor, coach, peer group. You know, a lot of people have one of the three, maybe two of the three. You want three of the three, you want to be really intentional about it. So I think that’s one, because they all provide just invaluable content for my life. And without that, and that having that over the previous, you know, 17, 18 years, 20 years, I never would have been anywhere close to where we’re at. The second thing is, take risks. You know what, I had a mentor earlier and I remember this very well, he’s like, you gotta take risks. And it’s hard because you’ve maybe built up a nest egg or you’ve got house paid off or maybe you have no money whatsoever and you just don’t wanna look bad. It’s okay, it’s okay to fail. And I think that it sucks when you’re failing, don’t get me wrong, it’s really hard in that journey, but it builds a resilience and fortitude and grit that you cannot get through reading a book. You have to have the volcano erupt and shut you down. You have to have something fall apart to learn. And I think a lot of people are just too fearful of that, and that stops them from really attributing their really full, true potential. And I get sad about that. And I think a lot of people are not achieving that because they’re just afraid of looking bad on Instagram. Well, that’s silly. Just get after it and you’re gonna fail and you’re gonna look dumb for a while and I’ve looked dumb many times and that’s okay. I’ve dealt the thick skin for it and now we’ve made some really positive impacts in the world with our projects and we’re very excited about what it’s gonna bring us for the future. Steven Patasky, I really do appreciate you carving out time. Again, I encourage everyone to check out those websites. That’s luxusgroup.com, luxusgroup.com, also luxusvp.com, luxusvp.com and luxusgroup.com. Thank you for carving out time for us today, sir. And I hope we will have you on the show again. Koi, that was awesome, man. I appreciate your time, man. Good luck with everything. Take care, bye-bye. 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 Thrived 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… 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? And I said, no. And I said, why? And he said, well, because he’s got these nice cars 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. And I asked Steve, who do I talk to? And he said, you got to meet my guy. And then 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. So I was lit from day one. Now, I remember when you came to the conference and watching you take notes, I mean, you were smoking out that, they had a notebook for taking notes and it was like the piece of paper was gonna 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 gonna 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, you know, pretty simple. You know, it’s actually made me angry. I 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. Or, and maybe that seems like it’s a backhanded compliment. I don’t want it 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, 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. I remember the first time we met individually, you said, well, let’s look at your website. I said, what website? Because I’m a professional, and professionals get new business off of referrals. Dude, you turned on that website and we started getting Google reviews and videos. 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. 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 look 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 went through the process of renovating your office inside and outside. Why did you decide to renovate 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, you know, they’d rather go to their dentist than see me. And, you know, 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, anti-CPA environment, if you will, to, you know, 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, you know, we don’t want to just do tax returns. We want to sell success. And that’s what I jumped all over going to your, I told you one time, Clay, I could like live in your office. It’s, it’s the success and the positive and, and the motivation that’s created. And so I wanted to recreate that in my offices. Now, 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 and, um, is, you know, you and I talked and you said, Clay, I have a desire in my heart to write a book. And 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 were 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 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. The, 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, I’m Clay, I’m waiting for the check in the mail, but you’re not paying me to say this stuff. It’s reality. And 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 verbiage 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. It’s about 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, I’d probably be some drunk Indian smacking a woman around. It wouldn’t be my wife, because she’s German, she’d cut me, she’d hurt me. Now I’ve got a college degree and all my kids have college degrees. 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 to sow those seeds of success in other people. 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, you know, 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. 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, 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 who 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, you know, CPAs, and they looked at reviews and videos. And so, you know, when you and I first met, I said, you know, people don’t look for CPAs on Google. You know, 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, you know, the conferences, Dr. Zellner participates in the conferences. You know, we’ve had Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, we’ve had the head of Harley Davidson. I mean, 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 was 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. And 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. And in your workshops, for the private… 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, oh, I can’t do it. I don’t know what I’m doing, or my mama couldn’t, my dad couldn’t, so I can’t. 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. You proved me wrong. And 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, 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 you? So what you’ve 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, you know, 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. 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. 75% of CPAs are at or above retirement age. There’s about 90% 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, thank you so much for your time today, sir. We’ll talk to you soon. See you, brother. See you. 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. My business, it 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 a technician, but 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 Clay’s 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. We’ve been finishing it. It was partially constructed and so everything’s under construction. So it’s 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, you know, 50-foot ceilings, windows out to the pool, really, really nice kitchen over here. We flew the the Ben 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. It’s got a, 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, and we’re going to have a golf simulator up there so I can play golf for 30 minutes and 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 the 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. This is, I’ll spend a lot of time in here. And of course, right out here, 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 back. of 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. 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 is 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 going to make this a slide because that right there, where we just came from, was the grandkids’ bedroom, so they’re going to be able to come up to our second floor, slide down into their bedroom. What do you think about that? I think that’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 going to be like a little spa room. We’ve got a commercial tanning bed that goes in there and a massage chair, you know, all the relaxing music and all of that. This would be like a library or reading room off of the master. 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’ve been a CPA for 33 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 3 million. This year we’ll do 24 million. Which is more than, 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 sales go. And so if we tell, Paul, from the accounting perspective, I’m going to pass the mic to you. 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? Well, 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 allows us to say why we’re different. That about us from there is spectacular. It’s an industry that has changed. We’re modifying it. We’re going to offer our services in a subscript model to where it’s all inclusive. It’s just been awesome. Well determine the level of success. Success in business is not what you know how to do, it’s actually doing it. 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. This is not, I don’t get anything for selling, 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, and he makes one, and I wanna 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 if 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 Acy’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 Colal with Colal 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 like 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 like Lee Crocker, or 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 uh… business coaches videographers grand graphic designers and web developers and they run a hundred sixty companies every single week so biggest guy with a team of business coaches running a hundred sixty companies so in the weekly he’s running a hundred and sixty companies uh… every six to eight weeks is 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, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, like Clay is like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is 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. But he was a great man. I’m very impressed with him. So Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing and I encourage you if you haven’t ever worked with Clay, work with Clay. He’s 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 for maybe six hours a day and literally the rest of time he’s working and he can outwork everybody in the room every single day and and he loves it. So anyways this is Charles Colaw with Colaw 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 Kohlwa, 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 how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town and so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing and I think for a lot of people they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you if you’re thinking about working with clay. I mean the thing is it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35-year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us and I 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 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 investment. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. JT, do you know what time it is? Um, 410. It’s T-Bo time in Tulsa, Roseland, baby! Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma. During the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024, Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the two-day interactive Thrive Time show business growth workshop. Yes folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Thrive Time show two-day interactive business growth workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, and a lot of people have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field, and off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, 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. And over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. We’ve had the top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we’ve had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question-and-answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15-minute question and answer session. It’s interactive, it’s two days, it’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005, and I’m telling you folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who have been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com, you’re gonna see thousands of people just like you who’ve been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day, we’re gonna 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. Feeling it. 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 can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. You started out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it. And I am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton. I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where’s it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrivetimeshow in Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. Who? You. You’re going to come. Who? You. I’m talking to you. You can just get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com. And again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies and I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California in 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 and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re 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, 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’ve got to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets and if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. We 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. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump, but we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say. First of all, I have to honor you, sir. I wanna 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. I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. I went from being an employee to self-employed, to the business owner, to the investor, and I owe a lot of that to you. And I just wanted to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, 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, changing my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy in Kings Point in New York. Acta non verba. Watch what a person does not what they say.