Clay Clark | The Mailbag Questions of the Week – How To Implement Shadowing

Audio Transcription

So many different times in my life, I’ve played with broken or hurt things, broken foot, broken leg, broken hand, broken arm, broken sternum, broken collarbone. I could keep going if I just thought more about bones. Why, man? Because I loved it. I loved playing the game. I was passionate about it. One of the reasons I even get encouraged at seeing all of you here, you know why I get encouraged by that is because you could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here 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? 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. This 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 Zulman. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen 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 break down the books Z’s 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 CNC, up on your radio And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! Started from the bottom, now we’re here Started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get there Alright, Green Country, welcome back to Oklahoma’s number one business radio show. It’s the Thrive Time Show, where we teach you what you need to know to make your wallet grow. And every day we get a chance to spend time with you. We are super duper, unbelievably excited to be here with you, because I understand there’s this huge need out there for practical business education. We had a Thriver on the show the other day who went to the University of Tulsa, although I think it’s a bad idea to go there, but it’s $56,000 a year to go there. And he’s amazed because Thrive15.com, he went on the site, it’s a dollar for the first month and you get to choose your price if you can’t afford it. So he chose the price of like five bucks a month or something. He’s like, dude, I’ve learned more in like a month on Thrive than I’ve learned in like three years of college. And that is indicative of the overall experience. We had a Thriver who went to Cornell University and studied business and said, I’ve learned more in five months on Thrive than I learned in four years there. I hear it over and over and over. But the good news is if you do want to go for four years to study business, not only can you do that, but they also give you a bonus gift of a ton of student debt. That’s exciting. And so inside the box that rocks today, we have some great people inside the thrive15.com world headquarters, our box that rocks studio here. We’ve got kind of a cast of characters here. Mr. Robert Redmond, who is a business coach, and really America’s, are you third or fourth most beautiful man at this point? I’ve been tracking. You keep on ranking me down. You keep on decreasing my ranking. Last time I was second. It was definitely second. 47th now. 47th most beautiful man. Sorry about that. You just aged a lot since the last show. Yeah, it’s been a while. You probably just want to exfoliate more and you’ll be just fine. And then we have Melaina Wright on the show. Now Melaina Wright is the founder of Melaina Wright Photography. She’s a great American. She’s a whitewater rafting extraordinaire. She’s a super wife. She really does it all. I don’t understand how she has it possible to do everything that she does. But Melaina, how are you? I’m awesome. Now we have Megan on the show. Now, Megan is, she is the founder of Bow and Arrow. People are listening like, Bow and Arrow? So, do you like work with Bass Pro Shop to make the bow and arrows? You’re big into hunting. Or what’s Bow and Arrow there, Megan? What is it? What is that business? So, Bow and Arrow is a women’s clothing store. How did you get the idea to start Bow and Arrow? I kind of fell into it. I was working in retail and my former business partner that I was working for at the time offered me partnership so that I would stay with her when I graduated. And so I took her up on it and we opened another location and then I bought her out. Boom! Wow! So how many years have you been self-employed at this point? Five years. And you’ve kind of achieved that financial freedom and that time freedom that people are always looking for. How have you done it? I mean, if you could explain to the thrive right here who’s listening this is, I want to know what’s the secret to achieving financial and time freedom? How have you been able to do it? You’re 25. Is it fish oil? Is it Sushi Wednesday? How do you do it? You know, what potions do I need to buy? What vitamins do I need to take? What seminars do I need to go to? How did you learn how to do this? Maybe burn some more pinion wood. Oh, well, I got that taken care of. Let me get the lighter going here. No, so it took me probably about a year, year and a half to learn it, but delegation was my best friend. And getting an awesome team in place and trustworthy employees and finding out what their strong suit was and putting them in charge of tasks. How were you getting delegation wrong? I mean, what were you screwing up with before you learned the delegation you could master? What were you doing wrong? I wasn’t doing it at all. I was wanting to be in control of every single aspect of my business and not trusting that someone else could do the job as well as I could. Oh, wow. Okay, so if someone’s listening right now and they’re struggling with delegation, your tip to them would be what? My tip to them would be step back and let it happen and see how it goes. And, you know, if they’re failing, then step in and teach them the right way to do it. But you never know. Sometimes they do it better than you do. I think there’s a lot of people listening right now who are going, how is it possible? You’re 25, you have financial freedom. I’m 55 and I’ve not achieved that yet. When you, I guess I’m putting words in your mouth, but when I say financial freedom or time freedom, how would you describe the level of freedom you have for time or financial freedom? How would you describe that? I would describe it probably best as being free to do what I want with my time. And if that’s working or if that’s doing some hobbies that I enjoy or spending time with family and friends, I have the ability to choose what to do. Okay. Then, Indicting Thrivers, that’s where we all want to be. You have time, freedom, and financial freedom. And so, Robert, I want to start with you. We’ve got this with the mailbag questions. The theme of today’s show is the Mailbag Questions. We have thrivers from all over the world, currently in almost 50 different countries that download the podcast each time. You guys have great questions. We had 25,000 downloads recently of people all over the planet that have different questions. It’s kind of fun because you get a question from someone in Australia, someone in Arizona, somebody in Ohio, someone in Michigan. We’ve had Singapore, Mexico. I’m just at this point listing geographical territories that I know about. There’s so many of them, it’s fun. So I want to ask you, Robert, we’ve got a mailbag question. Let’s kind of get into it. What’s the first mailbag question? And I think this mailbag question is a great transition from what we were just talking about, delegation, time freedom, financial freedom, because if you’re ever going to reach that point, you got to have someone running the systems in your business. You can’t allow your business to be completely reliant upon you. And so there’s this one client that I work with, an awesome organization out in Dublin, Ohio, right near Columbus, called Kauffman Media. They’re a digital signage solution provider. They do the install, they do the hardware, they do everything. And recently they were working with me and they’re wanting to bring in a new employee in order to take over some of their internal sales or building an internal sales process for them. And so in the meeting, we were talking about the importance of shadowing and making sure before you make the hire that you bring in a quality, honest and digital, excuse me, a diligent worker. You don’t wanna bring in a digital worker. You don’t know robots. Yeah, no robots. You want human humans. And so something we were talking about and there’s a lot of moves going over, Jack Welch is a 4 Es and a couple of other things. But the question we were talking about is, what things should I be looking out for when a potential new employee comes to Shadow? What should I be looking out for? Okay, Thrivers, well, there’s the 4 Es. I encourage everyone to write these down. They’re documented in Jack Welch’s book, Winning, which I believe is on your desk, or you’re filling it for Dr. Robert Zellner today, which is a tough thing to do, by the way, but he had the book winning. I believe there’s on the desk and the point being there. Jack Welch was probably the most successful CEO in American history. He grew the company at such a rapid rate when he took over GE, which was kind of stagnant at that point. And he says, you need to identify these four E’s. And I’m going to encourage you to write them down. I’m going to give you some time to kind of marinate on them and Rob will unpack them one by one. OK, but the four E’s are energy, you want to have people who have energy, they’re energetic humans, to people who can energize other people. You just said energy twice, did you forget what they were? No, no, it’s energy and energize. The next is execute, you know, they can get stuff done. And edge, meaning they can make the right call even when it’s not popular. So let’s kind of break them down one by one here. So, energy thrivers. You’re listening right now. What does it mean to have energy? There’s people who are yawners. I would encourage you to fire them. That’s my world view. But if you wanna hire a yawner, go for it. But you have yawny working for you, unless you’re looking for someone to do like modern, new age, classical music, it’s probably not a good thing to have yawny working for you. Because the people in the meetings are going, okay, let’s see. They’re not making good life decisions, which is why they always look tired. So I would encourage you to sit down with them, talk to them, say, hey, I need you to bring energy to work every day. But bottom line, nobody wants to be around people that don’t have energy. Robert, you’ve seen it in the world of business. People have no energy, they just can’t get it done. Right, and that’s one of the main things as a business coach that I really try to emphasize is bringing that concept of the boom. Big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum, energy, enthusiasm. And I remember, Clay, I sat in Elephant in the Room sales training, and I’ll never forget this, you went over the meaning of enthusiasm, and you broke it down. You went back to the Greek root words. It sounded like something you might have learned in college, but you want to explain that? Well, even though I look dumb, I do love to study the origin of words. And so the Greek is where that comes from, but the word enthusiasm comes from the Greek word theos. So theos means God, and so enthusiasm means God within. So in the literal, it means God within. So the idea was that if God is within you, how would you sound? And so here, a lot of people, they say, I mean, this is an example. I talked to one guy recently, and he said, Clay, I’d love it if you’d invest in my business. I said, what is your business? He goes, well, we kind of, we kind of, sort of, are gonna do something I think might work. And I go, hey, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Tim, I’m gonna give you a little coaching moment. Whether I invest in your company or not, I’m not interested. You need to be 100% confident that your idea is awesome sauce, it’s going to work, and you’re not going to stop until it does work. Because if you don’t have that kind of energy and passion for your business, I certainly will not. So you’ve got to have that enthusiasm. And so Mel, I want to ask you, you’ve done wedding photography for a long time, right? And you’re doing like a bridal shoot, let’s say, okay. Or you know, since the bride, let’s do like an engagement. So it’s the groom to be and the bride to be, right? Yeah. And if you’ve ever seen, when you were maybe first learning the dark arts of wedding photography, you’ve been to a shoot where the lead photographer didn’t bring enthusiasm and it was kind of awkward. So awkward. How awkward? Explain the awkwardness what happens when there’s not an energetic person leading the engagement photos? People aren’t smiling, they’re not looking at the camera, they’re twiddling their thumbs, they’re literally all doing different sorts of things. So what kind of things would the photographer say if they weren’t doing things right? If they’re trying to pose, imagine you’re trying to pose a couple and you’ve been there where they’re doing it wrong, what kind of things, how would that sound? Oh, well it would sound like, okay, can you guys, okay, yeah, that’s good. Okay, smile. Having built one of the largest wedding photography companies on the planet called Epic Photography before I sold it, I could tell you I used to go out sometimes to shoots for building a business and knowing nothing about photography and I always got the best photos with the people just because I had fun. I said, all right, so you, sir, I’m going to have you stand next to her and sir, can you kind of snuggle in there? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, look at, oh, beautiful, beautiful. And then we were taking photos. That’s the photographer’s taking photos. I’m just talking to him. Oh, that looks good. Sir, that looks too good. Now imagine you’re being chased by a bear. And he’s like, what? And I get that facial expression. Now imagine that you’re so in love, but your mom just walked in on you being so in love, if you know what I’m saying. And they’re like, oh, he’s crazy faces. And they’re laughing, they’re having a good time. Pretty soon, the photos capture their personality. It’s photojournalistic, they look great. But you gotta be enthusiastic. So what advice would you have there, Mel? Because you’ve worked with people who’ve struggled to be enthusiastic. What advice would you have for the person listening right now who’s struggling to be enthusiastic in their daily work? You need to have fun. You need to remember why you’re doing what you do and have fun with it. And you’re working with people, so they don’t have to be strangers. You can kind of get to know them and show them your personality and have a little fun with them and then they relax also and have a good time at their photo shoot. Now Megan, your business is dependent on selling things to customers, right? Up there at Bow and Arrow, I mean you sell products to women. Why do you have to be, if not like over the top enthusiastic, but why do the people who work there have to seem like they have a genuine interest in the customer’s, you know, needs and goals, that kind of thing? Well, first off I’d say the customer probably walked straight out if they didn’t. But I think it’s really important to just put on a friendly face and make the customer feel like they are the most important person and thing in the shop at that moment, which they are. It’s dependent upon the sales of the company and you want them to feel comfortable and to not feel like they’re going to be judged for anything that they try on or something doesn’t fit right. That, you know, that it’s not a big deal that we’re not judging them and they should feel comfortable. I will just tell you what our elephant in the room men’s grooming lounge we now have close to 80 humans work there it’s getting bigger you know I go to these meetings I used to go it’s cool if the people aren’t doing a good job I could fight them and win you know because like four of them I feel like I’m sort of a wiry guy you know and there’s like five of them I could still take these five people. Then there’s six. I’m like, I can make ninja fighting. You know, seven, I could do like some Chuck Norris crane kicks. Eight, I could do some of this. Then there’s like 80 of them, and I’m going, oh no. And so I can’t lose control. We’ve got to have an awesome group of people. But I’m telling you, we have the most enthusiastic staff we’ve ever had, and we’re so intentional about hiring people who really are happy people. I’m telling you what, if you’re struggling to find a job out there apply at eitr lounge.com If you’re a shiny happy person, we’ll hire you stay tuned. We’re getting back into the mailbag thrive timeshow.com All right thrive nation welcome back into the conversation it’s the thrive time show on your radio We’re coming into a little bit of one Republic here off their new album Oh My My. Ryan Tedder, he’s a Tulsan, he’s a Grammy Award winner, he’s writing songs for Beyonce, Adele, what? Bono? He’s writing songs for U2? Are you kidding me? Oh yeah, big guy, I’m telling you what, he’s a guru, he’s writing songs for Jennifer Lopez, which involves basically compensating for somebody who cannot sing. I mean, this guy’s got super talent, okay? So, Ryan Tedder is an unbelievable, he’s kind of a Tulsa living legend here. He went to Oral Roberts University. I used to know the guy back in college there, he sang at our wedding. And so I’m going to play on all the OneRepublic lineup today. Every song coming in and out is going to be all OneRepublic. And Robert, we’re talking about these mailbag questions. And kind of reset the question, what was the question that the Thriver asked out there? Was it Dublin, Ohio? Dublin, Ohio, working with an awesome client, a Thriver Kauffman Media digital signage solution provider. They’re bringing in a new hire, going to help them out with their sales, and we’re running the five-step hiring system, and one of the steps is shadowing. We were getting, in our last coaching session, we were talking, and they were asking me, hey, what are the most important things that I should be looking out for when I bring in a potential candidate to hire? Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, would encourage you that there’s four E’s. You have to hire people who are energetic, they bring energy to work, two people who can energize others, three people who can execute, they can get stuff done, and four people who have edge, meaning they can make the tough call. So let’s talk about the next one here, which is energize. You’ve got to be able to pump everybody else up. You’ve got to pump the people up, you’ve got to get excited, you’ve got to get everybody all excited about the look because you know a lot of times like you get to work and in people like oh my Gosh, my weekend was so terrible. That’s one of my pet peeves now I can tell you this now that you no longer work with that photography contents What are my biggest pet peeves be like? Oh my gosh, Monday’s my week. It was so Was doing weddings all weekend you know I mean because it’s like a down energy and then as the owner you feel like this need to pump the energy up. And now that you’re self-employed and doing your own thing, have you noticed there’s very few people calling you on Monday trying to pump you up? I mean, now that you’re self-employed, are very few people calling you going, Mel, you’ve got to pump it up. You’ve got to bring it. You’ve got to make it happen. I mean, have you noticed that? As a self-employed person, you have to be able to self-motivate. I have noticed, yes, the lack of motivational words coming at me since I left. And now that I’m on my own, I think about all the coaching I’ve had from you and it’s been carrying me through because I need that motivation for sure. Now I will tell you this, if you’re struggling right now to find a source of motivation or someone who can energize you, you’re not an idiot. Check it out. Before I energize the members of our team, I have to energize myself every day. What? Yeah, so I have this move I do. I have moves I do. One is I listen to T.D. Jakes in the shower all the time. You’re like, I don’t ever want to think about you in a shower at all, you sick freak. Fine, but that’s what I do. So T.D. Jakes, I mean, he’s an unbelievable inspirational speaker, and I’m just telling you what I have to get myself excited. This is how I tell people. You can imagine like a rubber band. Robert, can you imagine a rubber band, okay, so we’re pulling it back, you’re pulling it back, you’re pulling it back, maybe a slingshot is a better example. Getting tight. And if you pull it back, pull it back, pull it back, and the tension, and then I want to get myself so motivated that I let go right before I walk into the door. So I usually get to work in the office, I usually see John, the first guy I see every morning, I usually see John, usually 5.30, 5.15, I’ve already been up for like two or three hours, so when I see him I’m already ready to go. I don’t walk in like, oh man, I’m so tired, just trying to wake up. No, you can’t be cleaning out the cobwebs in front of the ED employees. You got to have that energy source. So I want to ask you here, because Megan, you’ve obviously started a successful business, you’ve been able to achieve time and financial freedom at the age of 25, which by the way is fairly impressive. I want to keep you humble, so I’m just going to find things to criticize you about. But no, seriously, so you’ve been able to have some success in that area. How do you motivate yourself on a daily basis? I guess even better, when you were struggling to start it or when you were first starting it, how did you motivate yourself on a daily basis? I think one of my biggest pitfalls is actually self-motivation. It’s really difficult for me. And it’s different when you don’t have those people around you kind of motivating you. So you have to find that from within. And at first, you know, I think when I first started, it was the business that was motivating me. I was super excited. It was kind of like, you know, okay, well, is this going to fail? And I don’t want it to fail. So I have to make it happen. And, you know, it just kind of sustained itself. And that’s what was sustaining me. But now that it’s to the point where it’s kind of, you know, rolling on its own, it’s been really tough to find that self-motivation. So I actually would love to ask you how you motivate yourself other than listening to T.D. Jakes in the morning. Well, let me read you a notable quotable first, and that way I seem kind of smart. Andrew Carnegie, he’s obviously the world’s second wealthiest man during his lifetime, but he started working at age 12 because his parents couldn’t afford the cost of living. So at age 12, he started working. And he says, people who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity no matter how impressive their other talents. So thank you. Thank you, Andrew, for making us all feel bad. But my thing is I had some really unreasonable goals at first. So one is I wanted to be a millionaire before age 30. So I wanted to have a multimillion dollar business. And when I did that, then my goal was to hire my father. And so I hired him when I was 27 years old. Because we grew up where we weren’t homeless or anything, but we struggled financially from time to time. And I wanted to hire my dad. And then I did those two, and for a moment there, I didn’t have any motivation. For about, I’d say, three days. And I realized, I’m serious, I realized, okay, I hired my dad, now what’s next? And so I had to think about that. And so my wife and I, we moved into a massive house and we had the DJ empire there. And I did something wrong. I did something that was stupid. I did something that a lot of people do. I went ahead and let society set my goals. So society says you need a bigger house, bigger car, more cars, more houses, bigger houses, and you need vacations. And I discovered after like 50 different trips all around the world traveling, I don’t like it at all. I don’t like traveling and I don’t like cars. I don’t really like going out to dinner with most people. I enjoy some people, they go out to dinner, but I did realize that like, I guess, I always thought that when you get successful, you should go out to eat a lot, you should buy a lot of cars, you should build a house, you should, and only kind of stripping that down to when my son was born blind in 2007, and if you’re listening right now, you know what it’s like to have a kid that’s struggling with a physical disability or a family member. When Aubrey was born blind, I realized, man, the one thing I want is time freedom with my wife. And so my wife is now my source of motivation. So that’s my whole deal. So I sort of, I met her in college, she was a cheerleader, but I feel like now I’m kind of like her cheerleader. So my whole deal is I feel like my job is to try to be, make her life the best it can possibly be. And then we had our five kids, now it’s like my goal is to try to help them be the most successful they can be. And so I think my kids now become my source of motivation and my wife and finding out what their goals are and trying to make those goals big and figure out what their big goals are. That’s exciting to me. You know, so my goals are no longer my goals. They’re more my wife’s goals and my kids’ goals. But I can tell you what, I didn’t for a long time, I kind of lost that because I bought into this goal of consumerism where you buy more, have more, get more, pay more. And then when I sat down and thought about, man, time freedom and financial freedom, that’s what I really want and to be able to spend the time with my family. So I would just encourage you right now, if you’re struggling with self-motivation, I would encourage you, just think about like a bigger cause, somebody out there who doesn’t have financial freedom and time freedom, or maybe your kids or your spouse, and think about how you can help them, how you can help others, and that’s the kind of thing that I think will keep you always energized when you start thinking about the goals of other people and how you can help make a bigger impact on the planet and specifically in my own nuclear family. Stay tuned, Thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversations, the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Today we’re getting into the mailbag, the stack of stuff that matters from great people like you. You realize if you email us, info at thrive15.com, we answer every single question. I can say that right now until I can’t say it anymore because eventually we won’t be able to keep up. Right now you’re keeping us kind of busy. I like the challenge. We’re answering mailbag questions from Thrivers like you. One Thriver was asking us, what are the things you look for out of new hires? We’re talking about Jack Welch’s four E’s. He’s the former CEO of GE. Basically, the four things he looks for is people who have energy, people who can energize others, people who have the ability to execute, get stuff done, and people who have edge that can make the tough call. Inside the box that rocks today, we have a wonderful cast of characters. Megan was asking me, what are some tips to stay motivated once you’ve achieved financial freedom and time freedom? I want to give you one more tip. This is the big one here. This is kind of like the never-ending move, find a never-ending renewable source of motivation for your business where you can tie your passion and your profits together. And so one of the companies I work with right now is called Oxifresh, O-X-I fresh. And what he does is every time that you hire someone to clean carpets online, then they donate a certain amount of money to drill wells for people in Africa that can’t have fresh water. They teamed up with water.org. Elephant in the room, we donate money to the boys home. But there’s a cost. It’s kind of like, you know, Warby Parker. Every time you buy a pair of glasses, they give a pair away. Or Tom’s Shoes. Have you ever watched the Tom’s Shoes? Have you ever seen that online? Are you a sucker for the Tom’s Shoes there, Megan? Do you like Tom’s Shoes? You know, we actually carried them for a few years at the store. Really? Yeah. Okay. And so the Tom’s Shoes, every time you buy a pair of shoes they give a pair away They do well how it works is technically whenever the company places a wholesale order with Tom’s, okay? That’s when they delegate those you know however many pairs aside, and so the whole idea is that when you tie your Source of your passion or something you care about to your profit center. It never gets old Giving something it’s kind of weird, but like as you get older. You’ll see this when you give somebody a gift, and I’ll just give you an example. There’s a guy named Nate Waters who is from Tulsa. Horrible, horrible story. So Robert, I’ll look at you because it’s less awkward looking at you and telling a horrible story. But the thing is, is that, so Nate, my kids, I think it was Aubrey that asked or was it you that asked? Did you ask Nate Waters? Do you remember Nate Waters? Do you remember Nate? So we were at a Mexican restaurant and my daughter’s on the set. And so my daughter, one of the kids asked him, how come you can’t move your legs? And I don’t remember who it was. We were at a Mexican restaurant over there, 61st and Yale. And they said, how come you can’t move your legs? And he’s in a wheelchair. And I’m like, I’m so sorry. Sorry they asked you, but they’re like five at the time or something. And he said, oh, it’s okay. Well, I got to, he said, I’d love to tell you more about it. Yada, yada. So he gives me his number and he’s a quadriplegic. So I took his number and I called him. He said, I’d like to invite you to my house. So I go over to like 21st and Memorial to the address and it’s a nursing home. And I found out that there was a man who was sexually abusing his sister and he tried to intervene and the man broke his spine and left him on the floor. But the man was dating his mom. And so his mom refused to testify in court. So he had lived alone in a nursing home since age 18 and he was now like 30. And he said his goal was to become a motivational speaker. And I remember going, oh, you know, what do you do with that? And I’m going, I have time freedom and financial freedom. So I’m gonna help him do that. I remember just like mentally committing to that. And by the way, Tulsa has a lot of need, a lot of people out there that have needs everywhere. Every city has that. So my wife and I bought him a computer and we began to teach him how to get his website optimized. We built him a website. The last time I saw him alive, I was at the airport, at the Tulsa airport, and I saw him there. He’s going to the airport and I’m like, dude, where are you going? He goes, I’m going to New Orleans, man. I’m a speaker. It’s working. That’s awesome. I remember going, oh my gosh, it’s working. I felt so good because I’m a selfish jerk and I bought him a computer. You know what I mean? Because I taught him search engine because he helped him optimize his website, whatever. Well, Nate, if you Google Nate Waters, Tulsa, he changed so many people’s lives by giving this speech he gave about becoming better and not bitter, even though his mom never visited him in there, never visited him in the nursing home and she refused to press charges even though he was a quadriplegic, he said, I’m not bitter, I’m gonna get better. And that, it was unbelievable. And then when my daughter went, I don’t know if you remember this, but when you wanted gymnastics, you want something in gymnastics. And so, Vanna gave him her medal that she got. And he kept that thing. And I go into his nursing home there to visit him one day. And I noticed there’s a picture of T. Boone Pickens there, you know, the billionaire. And I’m like, that’s Rudy Giuliani. It’s like the whole Republican Party. I’m like, why are they all in your room? And he goes, oh, well, I’ve been calling these people and just kind of doing the moves, you know, calling these people, doing the Dream 100. And T. Boone Pickens, they said he’s gonna help buy me a wheelchair. You know, T. Boone Pickens actually paid for my college. And by the way, this person’s giving me a house and I’m doing this and that.” And so he ended up raising an insane amount of money for charity. And if you look him up, they actually named a center for people with physical disabilities after Nate Waters. You can go, that’s a historical fact. And so I’m just telling you, if you kind of lose motivation for yourself, look for others who are in a less fortunate situation than you and figure out what’s an impact that you can make that you’re excited about. And on kind of a lighter note, I really, really don’t care about saving the coral reef. I mean, we should, but I don’t really care about it. So if I donated my time to going down there and scuba diving and, you know, helping support it, I wouldn’t feel so, you know, energized. But helping a guy in Tulsa that I knew who wanted to become a speaker, which by the way, that was a desire I had, it was kind of fun to merge those two together and I felt good. And I don’t know if that’s helpful at all. Was that helpful for you? Definitely. Okay. So Robert, we’re moving on to the next E, okay, which is execute. Bro, why is it so hard for many people, you coach clients all over the world, why is it so hard for many people to execute? If you had to say, here are maybe the few common patterns I’ve seen with clients that struggle to get stuff done, what are those things? So there’s a few different things. I think the one of the first things I see the most consistently is that people try to do too much and they try to tackle too much at once, which doesn’t allow them to actually get one single thing done. They’re running around, their hair’s on fire, trying to tackle everything at once, and then they don’t really make any significant progress because they’re trying to do just a little bit of everything. Another thing I see, and we just talked about this recently on the radio show, but what doesn’t get scheduled won’t get done. This is huge, you said two things, I don’t want to rush through these here. So you said, you know, struggling to get things done, they want to get everything done at one time. I would say the big task I had to learn was how to take a big idea and break it into small steps. Because this is, oh, this is deeper than you wanted to go, Thrivers, but I’m gonna give it to you. Dissonance is a psychological term that refers to when what you say you believe is different from what you’re doing, when your actions don’t correspond with your espoused values. So you start to feel guilty, because you’re like, I said I was gonna definitely run a mile every morning. But then you didn’t, so now you’re like, I’m an idiot, because you’re lying to yourself, which makes you feel like an idiot now when you Make a commitment. I’m gonna run five blocks today and you do that and then you feel energized you say I have confidence I’m gonna run six tomorrow. I’ll run seven next week. All right over time you build confidence So confidence is when you make a promise to yourself and you keep that promise and you do it Then therefore you become a confident person but if you make a commitment to yourself that you don’t honor, you start to feel like you’re being dishonest with yourself. That is not a fun feeling to have. If you’re struggling to break your big goals down into small action items, when we come back we’re going to talk more about executing. I want to really get deep into the cranium of Mel because you’re starting your own business. I know you probably have tons of dreams, aspirations, things you want to get done. It’s kind of like, oh my gosh, where do I start? There’s so many things I want to do. How do I break it down to the small steps? Stay tuned. Thrivetimeshow.com. Okay, he’s Brian Tedder, one of Oklahoma’s living treasurers here. He’s the songwriter, the lyricist for One Republic. He also writes for Beyonce. He writes for Nickel. He writes for Bono. He writes for Jennifer Lopez, he wrote for Jackie Velasquez, he writes for Grammy award winning artists. And I’m just telling you what, he says, lately I’ve been, I’ve been, think about that, he says, lately I’ve been dreaming, he’s talking about dreaming, okay, and then he says, one day, you know, he’s going to be chasing, he’s going to be basically counting stars, no more counting dollars. What he’s talking about in that song, Counting Stars, is that he has big dreams and one day once those dreams come into fruition he won’t be chasing dollars anymore because he’ll just be enjoying life and that’s what today’s show is all about and we’re to answer the questions that you have thrivers and one of the thrivers asked this question he says hey how do I know what to look for when I hire people we said we got to look for the four E’s. People that can bring energy to work, people that can energize others, people who can get stuff done, and people who have edge. So it’s energy, energize, it’s execute, and it’s edge. We’re talking about execute, and Robert, you had said people struggle to get stuff done because one, they struggle to kind of break their big idea into those small steps, you know? Steps, yep. And the other thing you’d mentioned was they have a hard time, what? You said they have a hard time schedule hard time scheduling what needs to be done they think they can just stay on top of it they’ll put in their head oh yeah I’ll remember that later life happens burning fires come up and then the thing never ends up getting done which causes them to lose energy and lose confidence Havana could you grab the clipboard off of the the bar of awesome there real quick there I’m gonna my daughter she’s on the show she’s inside the box that rocks today. I’m have her grab the clipboard so I can give you some specific examples from my Current to-do list that kind of thing, but Mel you’re out there starting a business. This is Milena, right? She’s the founder of Milena right a photography an upcoming photography company Talk to me about what have been some of the struggles you’ve run into as you’re trying to turn your big idea to turn your big photography visions into into reality? It’s totally balancing my time with all the things I have to do like the sales and the marketing, branding, setting appointments, following up, and the photo shoots, the editing, everything that’s involved all by myself and I definitely am just bouncing all over the place every day and like one day I have all these things I need to do and I’m like well I didn’t do most of that so I guess I’ll do it tomorrow you know just all that stuff and I’m like, well I’m gonna share my to-do list with you. So you feel less bad. Okay, so here we go The elephant in the room if you look at here, I’m working on these agreements We have members of our team who want to buy into our next door. And so my whole thing is like We are making copious amounts of money. We are doing well And so the employees I want them to do well Like I want my teammates to feel like I they they die because there’s a deal that I couldn’t do what I do without them, and they couldn’t do what they do without me. A lot of these people used to work at other hair salons, other businesses, and they’re going, I’m making a lot more money now because of you. But I’m going, yeah, but I’m able to make more money because of you, so I wanna reward them, I wanna find a way to engage them. So I’m working on these employee, it’s an employee buy-in agreement. So each member of our team can buy 1% of the profit for the duration of their employee, and they’re telling they work with us for $3,000. And so I’m working on an agreement. Well, I highlighted it yellow, and you’ll see all these ones are yellow. These are all deep dives. So these are things I have to do that require thinking. And I don’t, everything that’s white, that’s also a deep dive. That means those are things that require me to think during my, I call it meta time, from the Greek meaning above. Do you love the Greek? No, but they were kind of, you know, some of the smartest people at the dawn of the intelligent planet, you know, where people started to think and organize their thoughts and become a modernized society, okay? But the thing about meta-time is you gotta schedule time to work above the reactive stuff and to get into the proactive stuff. So, other things on my list, one of our clients, it’s called SSB, Spirit, Soul, and Body, I’ve gotta make their search engine campaign. And there’s like, I think there’s 14 variables on the checklist I have to factor in. I can’t think about 14 variables. I’m going like I got a lot of stuff going on, so I got to deal with that. You know, then we’ve got the Sierra pools and spas. These guys, I’m writing their search engine plan, and then there’s pride soccer. I’ve got to write theirs, and then, Robert, I think my wife has to pay your dad 2,000 bucks. You know, we got an unbelievable. He wants to be paid for the work he does. What’s his deal? And then I’ve got to let somebody know. I mean, these are things I’ve got to, right here, I’ve got to finish editing the boom book. I’ve got to listen to the recorded calls from Eric Chupp. I’ve got to fix the back tires of my Hummer, which has currently been parked on my lawn for I think seven months at this point, six months. I haven’t moved it at all because I haven’t had time to do that. And so I just look at this and I’m like, man, these are some things I’ve got to do. So I have to schedule time for those. And so I typically do anything that requires deep thought between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. But the problem is now I’m scheduling my workout starting on Monday at 4 a.m. So I got a 4 a.m. so I had to get the shower work in there in Matt’s office. And so from 4 a.m. to 5, I’ve gotta do that. So now, anyway, long story short is my weekend mornings before the kids wake up from 3 a.m. to 9 are the only times I have to do those things. So all week, and even if it’s deep, I’m like, I’ll deal with it on Saturday. I just keep piling up that list, and then Saturday and Sunday before the kids wake up, that’s when I’m gonna do it. So I would just encourage you to think about the tasks you have to do, and next to them I would write when you’re gonna do it. You know what I mean? And then like how long it’s gonna take to do it. Right. So this employee agreement, I might be mildly retarded, but as an example, it will take me about four hours to fully digest that employee agreement. To make sure nothing is spelled wrong, it’s legally correct, about four hours. And when do I have four hours? Never. During the work day. So I have to do it between 3 a.m. and 7. So just kind of those things, Robert. Does that make sense, Robert? That makes total sense. And something I noticed that you said is you don’t want to make it seem like you’re a retard, but you’re going to block out four hours. But something a lot of people fail in doing is being realistic with how long a task it may take. I know you talk about it at the conference. I know it’s in the boom book, but do you have any more tips about how to be realistic about setting the time it will take to complete a task? Well my daughter had to put up with me recently on vacation, so she knows this. I just really struggle when things are inefficient because I’m so freaking efficient I just get stuff done. I’m a foot tapper. So we went to Florida with the kids on vacation and I’m just like, we’re just gonna go ride the jet ski for like an hour and the next thing we’re gonna do is, and she knows, I start walking around, looking for things to do, try to plan the next thing, because I’m a really efficient guy, but I’m just telling you is it took me a long time to become efficient. With the kids, we’re more of like a glacier. Are we not kind of a glacier here? Because someone’s always touching someone. When you’re like five, six, and you’re 12, my 12 year old, she’s kind of at a point where she’s no longer in that game of touching people, messing with them. But if you’re under the age of 12, the whole game is like, stop touching me. Why are they touching me? Would you stop touching me? I will touch, if you touch me again, I will eat all the stomachs. Do you want me to pull this car over? And when you pull over the car, things get crazy. And so it’s like it takes a long time to get anywhere because it’s like we’re on a terrorist negotiation anytime we hop inside that rented minivan on vacation. So family time and efficiency is different from work time and efficiency at work. It’s like Viking culture. I just get stuff done. But at home, it’s different. So you got to factor that in, you know, driving to church, I used to get super stressed out like we got to get in the car. But now I realize if we don’t leave at 8.15 to get over to the Metropolitan Baptist Church by nine, it’s not gonna happen. And I can’t drive light speed without getting a ticket. And so it sounds like you have applied the lean start of a Thrive 15 method of, you’ve defined how long you think it may take, act, measured the results, and then refined a realistic expectation after you fail or succeed. Yeah, and you have to lie to certain family members about time. Okay, yeah. So you say like, you know, hey, we’ll have dinner at six, which is code for we’re having it at 6.30 and we know they have no, they don’t have the space time continuum hasn’t been something they’ve mastered yet. So you tell them, we’re gonna meet at five because you’re gonna have dinner at six. Certain family members you tell them it’s at six. This is the deal. If the dinner is legitimately at 6.30, certain people you tell them it’s at 6. And certain people you’re like, it’s at 1 p.m. Because you know they can’t get anywhere within a five hour window. So that’s how it goes. That’s how you do it. That’s how you get things done. You just gotta be realistic about your time. Robert, now the next one here, okay, is you want to energize, okay? You wanna bring the energy. You wanna find people who can energize others. You wanna find people who can get stuff done. But this edge one, this edge one, I want to kind of pick on our pseudo-celebrity here today, Ms. Megan, the founder of Bow and Arrow. Talk to me about edge, because you have to eventually say difficult things when you manage people. You have to have those tough conversations. Was that ever hard for you? Have you always been like, nope, it’s not hard for me, because I’m a genius. It so is. I think that’s another one besides health motivation. It’s so hard for me to be critical to my employees, because I don’t want to hurt any feelings, you know? But I have realized over time that, you know, if you’re not telling them kind of ways that they can improve, you’re actually hurting them. And in addition to not helping your own business grow, you’re not helping them grow. And so it’s almost better to just pull off the band-aid and get it done rather than spend time, oh, how should I do this? You know, what’s the best way to phrase this? It’s kind of like just be honest, get to the point, and move on. Well, you know, Tim Ferriss, he’s the author of the best-selling book here, which is a phenomenal book called The Four-Hour Workweek. And he says, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. And that is just, I think that’s something we could all marinate right there. What uncomfortable conversations do you need to have? I mean perhaps, you know, you need to go talk to someone this week and say, would you stop not washing your hands? It’s crazy. Would you show up on time? Would you just follow the checklist? Stay tuned, Thrivers. We’re going to answer more questions from great Thrivers like you. Stay tuned. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, sent here to both entertain and educate, to help enlighten you about how to grow a successful business. What I lack in human skills, what I lack in athleticism, what I lack in really every discernible area outside the world of business I make up for by being very good at growing businesses. And so I’m going to teach you what I know, the proven systems to build a successful company. I’m going to answer the mailbag questions that you have. And so Robert Redmond, one of the business coaches here with our team, Robert, you have some mailbag questions from some great, real thrivers, real people out there with some questions. What’s our next question, my friend? I sure do. So, working with Kerry out in Owasso, he owns a company called Darwin Industries. Real quick, I want to make sure you’re pronouncing it right because a lot of Oklahomans, a lot of Oklahomies are going, that’s a wasa. It’s a wasa. Hi, man, that’s a wasa. I feel like if I mispronounce that, I totally just disgraced my heritage. Yeah, out on a Walsa. Yeah, Walsa. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s somehow got kind of European almost. Walsa, Oklahoma. Okay, keep going. Still working on the accent. So he owns a company called Darwin Industries, which they sell industrial transmissions and planetary drives. Darwin transmissions? Darwin Industries planetary drives and industrial transmissions. So they’re into evolution. Is that what you’re saying? I’m not following. Okay, fine. So it’s called Darwin Industries. And what do they do again? Walk me through this. They sell different equipment to large industrial manufacturers. So things like industrial transmissions and planetary drives and the hydraulic pump drives. So these are things you just go over these so quickly and I’m going, what’s a hydraulic drive? What are these things? I mean, so who does he sell to? I’m still learning, but he sells to different industrial manufacturers, people who have very large equipment, the very large engines and machines that they need to run the equipment. Okay, okay, continue. So step four in the 13-step system that we do is determining your unique value proposition, your purple cow. And he was asking me, how do I find my purple cow if there really isn’t anything unique about my company? Okay, well, you have a lot of different options here for you. I’m going to just go through them and then, Robert, you kind of can unpack and we’ll get kind of into it, okay? One is you could just go with a name that’s memorable. So there’s a company out there that makes huge fans, lights, and controls for industrial, agriculture, and commercial and residential use, including, it’s big fans, okay, big fans. And they decided to eloquently, they decided to name the company something eloquent, something nice and sophisticated. And it’s called Big Ass Fans. Yes, Big Ass Fans. And so the thing is, it’s like the biggest company in its class, and I’ve been to these huge manufacturing facilities, and I’ve got it pulled up right now. They’re huge. They just came up with a name that was insane. So you go to these huge manufacturing complexes, and you look up, and you see a sign that says Big Ass Fans, and you’re like, no way, that’s not really their name. But that is their name. Can I just say one quick thing? I recently saw Big Ass Fans in church. Really? Really. What church were you in? It was First United Methodist and it was in that gymnasium. They have like a family center and you see the fans up there, the big ass fans in church. Holy cow! Unbelievable! Holy cow, dude. Wow, and that’s up in the church’s ceiling? That’s up on the church’s ceiling. So you mean if you’re at church, you’re looking up there and you’re like, someone feels oddly spiritual about this moment. I’ll look up. And all of a sudden it just kills the momentum because it’s just the name of the thing. So the naming can be big. Naming can be big. Elephant in the Room, we named our company Elephant in the Room. In Screaming Lounge, people ask all the time, what is the elephant in the room? We can get into that, but go to eitrlounge.com to learn more. So the naming can be huge. Robert, what’s another move? I’m struggling to come up with a way to differentiate my business, to come up with a purple cow. What’s another move? So one of the most powerful moves. The powerful moves? Well the most powerful moves. It’s a move. It’s the move of moves. It’s the move. And it’s something that you get into in the conferences and what you do is you say, who are the best in my industry? Who are my biggest competitors and what do they do well? What are the different variables that they do in order to gain new business? Do they make special offers? Are they able to offer special services or products? What do they do very well? You outline those variables and then you determine, okay, which one can I win on? What can be my purple cow? Which parking space can I take over? Let’s talk about purple cows, Robert. Can you kind of unpack for the listeners, like, what are you talking about? You know, they’re going, hey man, I’ve been listening to the show for a few minutes here, and one moment you’re talking about church, next moment you’re talking about big ass fans, and now you’re talking about purple cows. This is like one of those alien late night shows where you call on in if you seem like an alien or something, because this show is weird, man. What are you talking about with that purple cow, you know what I’m saying? Yeah, so, purple cow. Purple Cow. Yeah, in business, we use a lot of creative alien terms to help grow your business. It’s totally normal. Yeah, it’s what we do. But the concept of the Purple Cow was actually developed by a guy named Seth Godin. Seth Godin, he is the bestselling author of the book called Purple Cow. He built a big company called Yo-Yo Dine, sold it to Yahoo for I think $30 million, Clay? He did well on it. but I will tell you, you are correct. He did very, very well with it. He comes up with this idea of the purple cow. In Oklahoma, there’s a lot of brown cows, right? I’m driving every morning, I’m driving, I probably pass at least two herds of cattle, and it kind of becomes the same thing over and over, where kind of the days just mush together. There’s nothing noticeable about the days, nothing distinguishable about them. But imagine if one day if I saw a purple cow. There’s a purple cow! Hey man, there’s a purple cow. You see that? Man, that’s crazy. If I saw a purple cow, I would probably remember that day. Not only would I remember that day, but Clay, I’d probably come running in the doors. Clay, you’ll never believe it! A purple cow! Did you see that? Man, that’s crazy. Let me put some pants on and get out there and look at it. Yeah, and then Clay might say, I did see the purple cow. We would remember that day, but not only would we remember the day, we’d be talking about it together. We’d be talking about how amazing it was to have a purple cow. Man, we should get up on Facebook and post about that purple cow. We’d be posting. Once I find my pants. Where are my pants? Where are my pants? And the concept is a lot of businesses don’t have that purple cow. They don’t have that unique thing that sets them apart in the marketplace in a memorable way. And you know, Seth Godin, this is one of the things he says, I’m going to read you the Seth quote here. He says this, you’re either a purple cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice. I mean, you’ve got to be remarkable or invisible. So I want to ask our guests here, I want to ask our guests, I’m going to pick on, we’ll go with, you know, our first guest I’m going to pick on here. This is Ms. Megan. She’s the founder of Bow and Arrow. You have two locations. What do you do, by the way, for people who are just tuning in, saying what is Bow and Arrow? Because I got a bow and arrow. I mean, what’s a bow and arrow? I mean, you out there killing animals with a bow and arrow for sport? What is bow and arrow? I sell women’s clothing. Okay, so what is your purple cow? What do you do differently from most places? This is actually something that I’ve been trying to work on developing what my purple cow is. Really? Yeah, up until probably a year ago I hadn’t ever heard the term. I mean I knew what it was because I know certain businesses have a value proposition that they offer, but I have been still trying to discover what I want mine to be. So lately I’ve been trying a few different things with giveaways when customers come in, certain amounts that they spend. But someone recommended to me, they were like, okay, well, in your industry, what does everybody else do? You walk into the retail stores, large retail chains, and most of them give away a free gift. You spend this much, you get a free gift. And he’s like, well, try that. See how that goes. I’m going to fire off a bunch of Purple Cow’s ideas for the listeners right now just to kind of help you get going. Starbucks has decided, the founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, says, I’m going to create the third place. It’s not home and it’s not work. It’s the third place, which means it’s going to have a certain ambiance, certain decor, certain smells, certain aromas. I’m going to refer to everything as, you know, it’s not small, medium and large. What’s a small at Starbucks? When you order a small something, Robert, what’s that called? A small is a tall. A tall. Oh nice. What’s a medium Mel? What’s a medium at Starbucks? I have no idea. What’s a medium there? What’s a medium there? That would be grande. Oh wow Mel. So he’s got all these different names. He doesn’t call them you know coffee makers. He calls them baristas. There’s so many things unique about Starbucks. They changed the game in that niche. So it’s the combination of all those things. But creating a place where people want to gather a gathering place that he called the third place or Starbucks That was his purple cow Tom’s shoes. We’ve all heard about Tom’s shoes buy a pair of shoes and they’ll give a pair away That’s Tom’s shoes. Maybe you can have a sustainable give back program move number three Dr. Robert Zellner and associates his move is he does a 99 dollar first exam and a pair of glasses So it’s just an unbelievably low price. You’re going, how is that possible? Well, he does it because a lot of people come back and buy more and more and more and it makes it affordable. So it’s the low price thing. Elephant in the room, the business I’m a part owner of, we do a dollar for your first haircut. So you could do price, maybe your first purchase. You know, you come in your place, it’s always home with your first purchase as always. Because you’re in the box, the box, what is it called? The box? The box yard. So there’s what hundreds of people out there shopping every weekend. Yeah, we get pretty good traffic Okay, so I’m just saying that might be a move where like your first part where your first purchase is always 75% off Just you know, I mean through like crazy. Yeah, and then people are like, well, I probably should go buy something That’s the Hobby Lobby move. By the way, if you were bought something mail in Hobby Lobby because it was on sale I’ve never been there. Are you kidding? Mel? Do you never gonna Hobby Lobby ever? Really? I used to live in a tent. Really? Okay. Have you ever been to Hobby Lobby there? Just a few times. Okay. Did you ever buy something that was on sale that you didn’t need, but it was like 80% off? So you’re like, I’ll go ahead and get a decorative mirror. Every time I go in. Okay, so that’s their move. But there’s still a margin in there. So that might be a move where you say your first purchase is always 75% off. And the thing is you’ve got to log them into the database, and you’ll know if they come back again. But you have to believe in your product enough to know they want to come back over and over. So that could be a move. But if you’re listening right now, don’t get stuck. Robert, what’s another way to come up with a purple cow if I’m stuck and I can’t differentiate my business in a meaningful way? One of the easiest ways to come up with a purple cow, the quickest, is to just ask yourself, what are the most important things to my customers whenever they’re making a buying decision. Is it they want to have the security of an extended warranty that you can offer? Is it price? Is it fast delivery? Are they wanting to get the product the quickest? In and out burger, their whole thing is they’ve realized that people are certain people who want a high quality organic meat. That’s what they want. They want organic, high quality, and they want fast service. So they said, you know what, we’re not going to complicate our menu. We’re not going to try to make McRibs and McGrill and McThis and Mc… We’re going to just focus on a high quality product, and it’s going to be organic, and it’s going to be fast service. And In-N-Out Burger really has a very simple menu, but they just dominate their category. Jiffy Lube has come up with a system that makes it super affordable to have your automobile maintained. I would just encourage everybody out there to come up with a Purple Cow. Robert, if I’m listening right now and I’m going, oh my gosh I cannot come up with a Purple Cow, what advice would you have? I would say take the advice that we’re giving right now, but I’d also say come to a Thrive15 conference because we actually spend an entire session going over how to find your Purple Cow where we deep dive in the moves. Okay, actually start creating a spreadsheet. What are those variables that are most important to your customers? What things can you win on? At the end of the day, just do something unique. Just do something memorable. If you have unique branding that’s different from everyone else in the industry, even if it’s kind of like a funny name like Big Ass Fans, that’s a way to develop a purple cow. So you always have an option. Thrivers, I want to encourage you. This is going to be your year where you make the biggest gains in your business ever. Why? Because you’ve decided it. You have to decide it. You have to ordain your destiny or you’re going to kind of drift around and all of a sudden you’re going to look up and go, Oh no, I’m 40. Oh no, I’m 50. Wait a minute, I’m 70. All of a sudden, just life happens so fast when you’re not intentional about how you spend your days and your minutes and your weeks. So I encourage you to go to thrivetimeshow.com and sign up there for in-person workshops. Your first month of our Thrive15.com business school is always just a dollar and that includes tickets to an in-person workshop. You want to go to Thrive15.com, check it out. It’s the world’s best business school and it’s just a dollar for your first month which this just in. It’s like $55,999 less than Tulsa University’s business school. University Business School. Wow. I’m giving this some heart. I’m giving this some heart. I’m giving this some heart. Okay, I’ve got three things to look for when you’re looking for a bookkeeper. Mel, have you hired a bookkeeper yet for your super business? No. Have you hired a bookkeeper there to work with your business? I mean, you guys at Bow and Arrow, have you hired somebody yet? It’s my mother. Oh, okay, okay. Well, then this doesn’t apply to you too, but fine. But here’s the Mel, when you hire somebody, this might be a move for you, okay? So there’s three things to look for. One, understand that bookkeepers, as a general rule, are disorganized and dishonest, because they’re most people. So, according to the US Chamber, 75% of employees steal. I don’t care if you’re a bookkeeper, you’re a real estate agent, you’re a photographer, you’re a limo driver, whatever, most people are not accurate. So, a lot of, there’s a thing I want you to write down. Robert, this is big, all the thrivers should write this down. Got it. Move number one, when you delegate, don’t abdicate. Ooh, I remember the first day of me shadowing, you told me that. Okay, so abdicate is where back in the day, when you abdicated, that would be like you vacate your throne. So here’s an example. Robert, let’s say that Mel and her big army is attacking our castle. Okay. And you’re second in command, I’m the king. All right. You’re like the prince, okay? So, like the prince, you’re somehow like, you’re second in command, but you’re not related to me somehow. That’s how it works, okay? And you’ve always wanted to become the king, and I see Mel and this big army attacking, you know what I mean? I look out over the walls and I’m like, Robert, Robert, hey, quick, quick deal if I could just grab your attention for just a second. Alright, alright, alright, King Clay. I know I’ve been king for 27 consecutive years, and I realize that I’ve always said that, you know, I would never let you be in charge of the throne. Yes, sir. You know, because I’ve, you know, but I decided just a moment ago, I was just thinking about some things, and I’ve decided that it’s time for you to be the king. So just wear this little thing on your head. I’ll be, I’ll be, I’ll be, you’re in charge now. Good luck. We’ll see you later. And then I just run out the back. I disappear. I just run out. And all of a sudden you see me running, going, ah, and I run away, right? Because I don’t want to get killed by the attacking army. I want you to be killed. Okay. You’re the new king. So thank you, sir. So the abdication was where a king would just abdicate his throne. That was a move. You didn’t want to be, you just said, I’m done with it and you almost like retreat, you just run away, you know, you’re done. Kind of cowardly, Clay. Yeah, that would be the move though. So that’s the deal. So the thing is, that’s abdicate. Now delegate is where you assign something and you follow up assuming that it’s wrong. So you trust but verify like Ronald Reagan. Even if they’re honest. I don’t know. I mean, I think honesty is something that you have to prove over time. Yes. So I can say this. Mel worked with us for a long time and Mel, somebody I could say is an honest person, not by being not by virtue of Mel being born. I mean, I frankly don’t care whether she’s born. I think I met her mom one time, but I have to assume that she’s not honest. And over time I realized she was. And all of a sudden I’m like, she’s a good people, you know, but you have to, you can’t abdicate and so many people hire a bookkeeper and they get a huge tax bill and they go, what happened? And their bookkeeper is like, well, I got a little behind on the numbers. You can’t, you can’t abdicate. Mel, does that make sense? Yeah. So you can’t hire somebody because you’re the one liable for the taxes. So do not abdicate your taxes to somebody else. Is that my connecting there? Yes. Okay. Move number two, when you hire a bookkeeper, ask for 10 references. 10. 10, you know, but don’t give them time. Don’t give them time to produce them. Just say, hey, can I get 10 references? So let’s imagine we’re role-playing this. Okay, here we go. You’re a bookkeeper. You want my business. So Robert, real quick, before we go, I love your presentation. I need you to get 10 references. But I mean, just real quick, if you could just give me their numbers real quick, I’ll call. Why don’t you just give me your email and I’ll get back to you in a month. I want them now. You know what I mean? I’m comparing between you and a couple other people. I just want to get them. You know what, my wife is calling me. Pause, because anybody give them like a week, they’re going to produce a bunch of references, right? I mean, you know, my cousin, you know, my neighbor, my, but you want 10. Got it. 10 references. Move number three, I call this the rule of three. You want to interview three of anything for anything in your life, except for girlfriends or wives. So as an example, when you’re married, don’t be going, well, I’ll just try this wife and I’ll try this other wife and I’ll try this other husband. You want to be committed to that one thing, the one person. But I’m just saying, if you’re going to hire a contractor, interview three. You’re going to hire a new key employee. You could probably speak to this there, Ms. Broken Arrow. When you built your, not Broken Arrow, Bo and Arrow, when you grew your business here, you’ve obviously grown your business by hiring very trustworthy people. I’m sure you’ve made a couple mistakes along the way, but you’ve been able to achieve time freedom and financial freedom by having some good people here. So Megan, I want to ask you, do you try to interview a lot of people or do you just hire the first human that applies for the job? No, a lot of the employees that I’ve hired have been references of other employees. Not all of them worked out, but I did find some good ones along the way. Another thing is I have a lot of siblings of employees. One employee that I found, she’s awesome. She actually moved to Nashville, so she’s not with me anymore, but her mom came into the store one day and I got to talking to her mom. Right away, I could just tell that she was awesome and she got to talking about her daughter and I said, you know, this is really strange. I said, but when your daughter comes back for school, you know, on her break, can she come in and you know, I’d love to talk to her. And sure enough, her daughter came in three months later, exactly like her mom. I hired her right there on the spot. So I would just encourage you to have a little learning lesson here is good people know other good people. OK, but if you’re going to hire a bookkeeper, I’m just telling you one is do not abdicate make sure you’re delegating Rule number two though is make make sure you get those ten references and call them all call those references and three the rule of Three you want to make sure you check at least three options now the court question was should I hire a bookkeeper or an accountant? And we come back we’re gonna get into the nuances and the differences of that But I’m just telling you right now, if you’re an entrepreneur and you sell a certain product, your core focus must maintain, you must maintain focus on your main thing. Your main thing has to become your main thing. So for Mel over here, you know, she’s a photographer. So your main thing needs to be photography. You don’t want to spend all your time being distracted, running around doing accounting, but you also don’t want to get to a point where you’re so overwhelmed that you just hire the first living human that you run into, the first person with a pulse. You’re like, well, you have a pulse, and so I think you might be a good fit there. No, you’ve got to hire people that know what they’re doing, and you’ve got to do your research because you don’t want to hire the wrong person to handle your books. So we come back. We’re going to talk about, you know, should I hire an accountant? Should I hire a bookkeeper? Should I hire both? How do I do it? Stay tuned. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Learn more at thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Inspiration Station. This is the place that you go to help you increase your financial compensation. It’s the Thrive Time Show on the radio, and we today are answering the mailbag questions from great Thrivers all around the planet like you. We have one Thriver who asked a question about bookkeeping and accounting. Robert, can you kind of reset the question that we have from a Thriver? Yes. So after deep diving into the finances, it’s a client of mine, Mason Transport up in Nashville. We realized that, okay, we got to get some better control here. And what we started to get talking about is, what’s the best move? Is it a bookkeeper or accountant? What things should I be looking for? Can you kind of help them out here, Clay? Yeah, well the whole bookkeeping and accountant game is, I’m telling you this, Thrivers, everybody, if you’re a business owner, you need to have either a bookkeeper, you need to have a bookkeeper to help you keep your books, and if you can’t afford one, then you need to keep your own books using a program called TurboTax, I recommend that, until you can afford to hire one. That’s one of the first hires you want to make, is you want to get your numbers right. We talked about some rules. The big three is one, don’t abdicate. Make sure you delegate. Don’t just passively, blindly trust a random person. Make sure you delegate, meaning you ask the person to do the job and you follow up with them. Two, make sure you get at least 10 references before hiring somebody. Three, make sure you choose your rule of three. Interview at least three options before moving forward. But then the accountant, I want to clarify, the accountant is the one who communicates with the IRS. Those are fun people. So what happens is the IRS, their job is the Internal Revenue Service, is to make sure that the United States has enough money collected to pay the bills. And because every president we’ve ever had, a Republican, you’re going, well, that’s not true. President Obama was good with the budget, wasn’t he? No he wasn’t. Well what about President Bush? Was he good? No he wasn’t. What about the other President Bush? No he wasn’t. What about Bill Clinton? No he wasn’t. These guys brag about how little of a deficit. Now let’s imagine, let’s just look at the, let’s go into the wallet of Mel. Mel, if you operated where you, let’s say you made last year, I’m just making up an example, but let’s for even numbers, let’s say you and your husband made $100,000 last year, and you’re running around bragging to the other people in the room. Okay, so we’re inside the box at Roxo. The lower people. Yeah, so let’s just say, so Megan and Robert and I were hanging out, we’re going out to dinner, and Mel throws this idea. She says, I generated a very small deficit. I only spent 30% more than I made last year. I mean, what would be our, I mean, Mel, does that even seem like a logical argument amongst people who don’t work for the government? No. But yet, but if you ever watched like political shows, you ever watch like CNN or Fox, you ever watch those shows? My husband does, so by default. And these homies brag about how they decreased the deficit, right? So what happens is, Thrivers, is the more money that the government spends, they realize, uh-oh, we don’t have all the money. So what we need to do is we need to print more money. How cool would that be if you could just go print more money when you needed it? Right. So they’re pouring water into the currency Kool-Aid, which, by the way, if you ever had water where you ran out, you kind of ran into the Kool-Aid mix. So you pour more water in it to make more. Have you ever done that, Mel? Yeah. And it kind of gets more diluted over time. I mean, do you I mean, you remember that? Do you have any harsh memories as a kid of diluting the Kool-Aid to the point where it no longer tasted like Kool-Aid. Did you ever play this game? Yeah. Yeah. Mel, I mean, was this a big trouble spot for you, was Kool-Aid dilution? Yeah, because, you know, I thought the sugar was too much. Oh, okay, so the thing was intentional for you. Intentional dilution. Okay, so here’s the deal is, our government is diluting the value of our currency over time. I don’t want to get too deep, but we have this thing called a fiat currency, which is a currency via decree, meaning there’s no real value. It’s not backed by a gold standard because President Nixon got the good idea to move us off the gold standard and we won’t go down that rabbit trail too much, but our money’s losing value all the time. Okay, so what happens is, is the government goes, hey, wait a minute, we gotta collect all the money we can. So check it out. Have you ever got a tax refund from the government, Robert? Yes. Has it ever been wrong where they actually owed you more and you got more money back than what you thought or they aired where they owed you money? Has it ever happened? Yeah, it’s happened a couple times actually. And did they ever pay you interest because they forgot to pay you your own money back faster? I don’t believe so. Oh, but if you don’t pay them on time, you have taxes and penalties and fees they add on there. Nice. And so what happens is the IRS, when the IRS comes calling, it’s usually like a, it’s kind of a, and you’re going, yeah, hey, how’s it going, Mr. IRS? We’re here to collect all your money. And by the way, they can seize your bank accounts. Oh, by the way, they can automatically take money out of your account. Oh, by the way, it’s sort of not a good thing. So an accountant is who deals with the IRS. Please hire a legit accountant. Everyone needs a, that’s who communicates with the IRS. If you do not hire a professional accountant, you are suffering from Jackassery, which is a wealth-repelling disease. What is that term, Jackassery, for anyone that may not know? Well, like some people, they say Oprah, you know, has talked about the law of attraction, where you attract money, you’re like a money magnet, and your wealth is attracted to you because of the kind of person you are. The opposite side is a wealth-repulsion disease that repels money, it rebukes money, it says, I don’t want money. Money run away from me. The best example I can have for this is if you have a mullet, and you’re listening right now, you can still get by with a mullet. I used to have a mullet. Let’s say you have a mullet and you like to wear, you know those target, it’s like the practice jerseys that you wear when you’re playing football, you know when you’re trying out for the football team and you don’t have a real jersey? It’s kind of a see-through football jersey? If you’re wearing that with no undershirt while taming your mullet, you’re taming your mullet while wearing that, and you don’t brush your teeth, and you may or may not be suffering from Jackassery. It’s a wealth repulsion disease. If your armpits smell like onions all the time, that might be a sign of Jackassery. And I think if anyone is qualified to talk about Jackassery, it’s the residential Jackassery scholar. Didn’t you write an entire book about Jackassery? Yeah, I was trying to go back in time and help vaccinate my younger self from the dark art of Jackassery, because Jackassery, I meant to tell you, it can hurt your wallet. Get the book on Amazon. It’s called Jackassery. It’s a game changer. But I’m just telling you, you’ve got to hire an accountant to communicate with the IRS and a bookkeeper helps you keep your numbers in Line on a monthly basis you feel me me with your bookkeeper once a month Make sure your accountant files your taxes Robert my answer those questions. I think so what other what other what other questions Do you have from some thrivers? They’re giving requests from some thrivers here, mr. Robert so another big question that we have from a thriver here in Tulsa Oh starting a brand new business and this thriver was actually inspired by us. He left school. He said, you know what? Yes! I can get started on my business now. I don’t need college to get started on my entrepreneurial success. Are you saying that we encouraged a Thriver to actually drop out of college? Did I say that? Yes! That’s what I love. Every time someone drops out of college it makes me so happy for the same reason that you should be happy. Divers, if you see someone who’s in line and you go, what’s at the end of the line? And you go up into the line. Remember, if you ever see that, Robert, if you ever pictured yourself, if you’ve ever been in a line that was a monstrous line where it was wrapping around things, maybe a state fair. I was in a Bath and Body Works recently where I experienced a little bit of that. You’ve experienced a line that starts to snake though? Yes. Imagine you went to the end of the line and you said, hey, what do you get at the end of the line? They go, oh, you get about $100,000 in debt and you end up retiring with less than $400 according to Time Magazine. It’s called a degree. But I get to learn about the Tigris and the Euphrates. I run back and I run to the back. I go, it’s a scam. Get out of there. So unless you’re studying a professional something, you become a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, I strongly encourage you to drop out of college. You’ve got to get out of there. I’m telling you what, it’s a wealth-repelling thing. You get so far in debt, you can’t borrow money to start a business, you can’t get ahead. It is not a good thing. But Thrivers, when we come back, we’re going to get more into the mail-back questions that you have. Once again, we come back, we’re going to get more into the mail-back questions that real Thrivers like you have on this fabulous Thrive Time show. Stay tuned, thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. This is a Thrive Time show on your radio. It’s business school without the BS. And yes, my name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, sent here to help you learn how to grow and start a successful business. We’re answering mail-back questions from Thrivers just like you. Robert, what is the next question we have from the Thrivers out there? This is a Thriver here in Tulsa, I understand, has a question. Here in Tulsa, he came to a conference. He was inspired, realized that he could get started on his entrepreneurial journey now and didn’t have to wait until he was tens of thousands of dollars in debt. And his question is, he’s starting a brand new business, okay, brand new business right from scratch. What is the first step? What is the first thing that I need to do in order to make that first step moving forward to building a successful business? I’m going to fire off all the steps. You ready? Oh, there’s a lot of steps. If you can kind of jot these down so that we can kind of interrogate me about it. I want to make sure I’m going all. I do this all day, every day, so it’s sort of easy, but I just want to make sure I get into it, okay? All right. Step number one, decide on the name. Step number two, build the brand. That’s like the logo, the website, the business cards, that kind of thing. Step number three, agree on your, it’s called a purple cow, or your differentiator. Okay, what makes you different from other people? Step number four, attempt to sell 100 somethings Don’t form an LLC Don’t talk to an attorney. Don’t talk to anyone else. Don’t get distracted Don’t worry about what if what if what if just try to do that part first? And if you can’t do those first parts, then the other steps don’t matter. So let’s let’s kind of unpack those one by one Okay, let’s do it Clay another question here, what step do you think people get caught up in the most? If you went to a lot of college, you typically want to reduce step one because you’re going to go, do I need to form an LLC or an S-corp? And do I need to, how do I do my dissolution, do I do an operating agreement or should I partner or should I get venture capital or should I, I’m going to go, stop doing that, choose a name. What do I do? Just choose a name. I just want, choose a name! You have to choose a name. So I’m going to ask our entrepreneur in the room here. There are a couple of entrepreneurs in the room here today, but I want to specifically I want to pick on Meg Roll. The Meg Roll. Megan, how are you? You like that Meg Roll? You like that kind of? Not really. Okay, nice. I’m going to start using that actually. No, you’re not. Yeah. The thing is, here’s how I look at it. You know, I consider you to be kind of a Caucasian sensation. And then I think of Asian, I think of egg rolls. And so I think of Meg roll and then all of a sudden Meg roll was born. You don’t like it? Okay I’m so sorry I won’t do it again. Okay so Megan I want to ask you when you came up with the name bow and arrow where did that idea come from? Okay I’m gonna try to make this as short as possible. So I was actually in the middle of a buyout agreement with my former business partner and she told me that I could keep the name if I wanted to but there was another location in the Tulsa area so I just foresaw future complications so I was driving around one day actually and I was just like oh my goodness what am I going to call this place and so born and raised in Oklahoma and I kind of wanted something that incorporated Oklahoma so I like the name bow and arrow that came up with that I was like okay that’s cute. But I wanted something that was a little more unique about it. So I’m the youngest of five. I have a brother who’s the oldest. And my mom really wanted to name him Shane. My dad wanted to name him Bo. So my mom won. And my mom said, well, we’ll have another boy and we’ll name him Bo. So four girls later, they didn’t have their boy for Bo. So I have many kids. It’s kind of my baby. So I named it. It’s kind of your dad’s baby. Yeah, it’s my dad’s grandbaby. Now check it out. I want to encourage you. If you’re listening right now and you’re like, I just don’t know my idea. Well, I’ll give you two examples. Facebook didn’t start out as Facebook. If you get a chance to look up into their lineage, it wasn’t their first name or their second. It was their third name. A lot of companies, Google started out as a company called Back Rub. It started out under the name Back Rub because it was all about back links and I don’t want to get into it. And massages. There you go. But then over the time they changed it. So just choose a name, don’t get overwhelmed, just choose a name. You might change your name later, but just choose a name. What’s the next step there? Next step is build a brand. How does someone build a brand and what’s the importance of building a brand when you haven’t even sold something yet? Well, Elon Musk is a guy who a lot of people will say, okay, you know, Elon Musk, he probably knows a thing or two about business because, oh, you know, he started Tesla, he started SpaceX, he started SolarCity. And one of the things he talks about, which I love, is the importance of branding. And if you don’t have a brand that looks world class, people really aren’t going to believe in you. They’re going to start to say, they’re going to question you. And so there’s a notable quote, I want to read to you from Elon Musk where he says this. He says, brand is just a perception and the perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind, but brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product. You just have to look first class or people start to wonder what’s wrong with you. So Mel, you’re starting your own business, you’re getting things going there. Talk to me, what are some of the challenges from your perspective of building a brand as you’re growing your young business? I’m trying to differentiate myself from other photographers. If you go on any photographer’s website, we kind of all look the same. Like, it’s very clean, and there’s some pictures of people smiling. So, I mean, I’m just copying that, and I’m just doing that right now until I can figure out what to do, differentiate myself. And the thing is, you just have to start. It’s like being an entrepreneur. It’s like walking through the fog and you’re looking for lampposts, you know, so you’re just going to get to one, you choose the name and now you’re going to move forward with branding. And you’re like, okay, I made it to branding. And now I got to go to my three legged marketing stool. And as you go into your marketing, you might discover, oh my gosh, as I’m doing my research, wow, here’s something I should go back and fix about my brand. You just got to stay connected with proactivity and action. So, Rob, let’s get to the next move here. Next move, we got in touch from Purple Cow, but a move I really want to deep dive into. It’s the most important move. Attempt to sell 100 somethings. If someone is low on cash, if they’re just starting out there, they don’t even have an LLC formed yet, how do they go about selling a hundred somethings? I have so many examples of this, but my favorite example was when I started Epic Photography, I didn’t have any cameras and I didn’t have a portfolio. And some of you might go, you are so shady. You are the shadiest guy. Well, maybe, but here’s what I did. I took photos from other photographers’ websites and put it into a book and I went to the wedding show and I asked brides what they were looking for out of their wedding photography. And they would say, oh, well, I’m looking for this and that. And I said, now, if all the photographers charge the same price, I mean, what’s the main thing you’re looking for? You know, let me ask you this. What are the five most important things you’re looking for from a photographer? And I’m just learning from I’m not selling them anything. I’m just asking. And then I said, now, as far as our package goes, we have a lot of different packages. What kind of budget are you trying to stick within? And I kept hearing the same things brides wanted to stick within. This budget, about 2,000 or less. They wanted their photos within two weeks or less. They wanted photojournalistic, which is more of a casual feel as opposed to the traditional portraiture. And then after I realized it, well I tell you what, then Mel, I’ll pretend I’m Diego the bride at the wedding show, okay? So Mel, basically you’re saying if we could do two-week turnaround time, photojournalistic, and it was under $2,000, you would move forward. Is that right? Yes. Well, here’s what I’d like to do. I want to go ahead and schedule an engagement shoot where we could meet with you guys, take photos, and if you like it, then we’d love to do your wedding. But the engagement shoot’s free and you can have the photos regardless. I just want to, so that we can see what we’re all about and there’s no obligation. So what would be a good time to schedule that free engagement shoot? Does your day work? Do you work during the day or night? I’d try to book a time. Well, when we went out there and took photos, we were awful. I remember I was out with Cody and he had never taken engagement photos and we had just bought a camera and we were just wrecking people’s engagement photos. We weren’t charging them anything, but we were trying to figure out what they were willing to pay for. And I remember finally we took some engagement photos and Cody’s in the presentation office and he goes, now which one of these do you like the most? And for the first time someone said, we like that one. Because typically they’re like, we don’t like any of them. Or they would just stand there in awkward silence being like, I would love to get back with you. He comes out of the hall, because I was listening to the, I’m listening in the hallway to his appointment and he comes out and he goes, dude, they actually want to buy something. And I’m like, oh, so we finally found out what they wanted. I’m like, well, let’s do that again. And once you do it a hundred times, you realize, okay, that there’s a market for this. But everything else isn’t necessary. If you can’t sell, your business will fail. If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell. You know, if there’s no sales, your business will, according to Marshall Morris, fails. So here’s the deal, Thrivers. If you’re listening right now and you are struggling to sell something, if you’re struggling to build that successful business that you’ve always dreamed about, don’t feel like an idiot. You’re not doing anything wrong. What you are is you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve got to just learn through trial and error. And the only way to learn is you’ve got to go ahead and take that first step. You’ve got to get out there and take action. So if you’re stuck, don’t get, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t stay stuck. Go to thrivetimeshow.com and sign up for the world’s best business school. It’s only a dollar for your first month, and book a ticket for one of our in-person workshops. And at those 15-hour, two-day workshops, we’re gonna teach you branding, sales, marketing. It goes on Friday and a Saturday. It starts at 7 a.m., and it goes until 3 p.m. And I promise you, at these workshops, you can ask questions. We’re available during the lunch hour, during the breaks. And our whole focus is to help you learn to grow a successful business. Robert, you’ve been to an in-person workshop. They’re fairly fun. They’re fun, they’re exciting, they’re interactive. You answer questions, you have time to go deep. It truly is the best business workshop. As always, Thrivers, three, two, one, boom! JT, do you know what time it is? Um, 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Rosalim, baby. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024. Tim TiVo 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, 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 going to 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, Russela. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rustic cuff.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 gonna blow your mind Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the thrive time show today interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop See the thousands of video testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com. You’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrivetimeshow.com. Thrive is cool. And 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. 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 any 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, Russell Oklahoma. It’s supposed to be 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 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. 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 Tebow time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California, where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies. And I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California in the beautiful sunny weather of LA come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine. I’ll see you in Tulsa. 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. 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, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big, get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses? Or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person, two-day, interactive, Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop, all you got to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy in Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. nonverbal. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Kiyosaki Newsstand Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, but they’re completely different worlds. And we have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric, 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 uh… since you and eric are close trump what were you saying about what trump can’t what donald was my age and i can say i cannot say what i have to first of all i have to honor you sir i want to show you what i did to one year books here there’s a lot of name of jeremy thorne who was my boss at the time, I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway, I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, and he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books, and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor, and I owe a lot of that to you. And I just wanted to take a moment to tell you, thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. You know, more than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there too, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, at King’s Point in New York. Acta non verba. Acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.