Clay Clark | Time Management | What Gets Scheduled Gets Done. You Can Expect What You Inspect. + “The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.” – John Maxwell (Best-selling Author of 84 Books)

Audio Transcription

So Excuse me, Thrive Nation, I have to take this call real quick. Hello and thank you for calling Clay Clark’s podcast and taxidermy. If you’ll kill it, we will make it look great for a very long time. How can I help you? Hey Clay, John Maxwell. How are you doing today? Great. I didn’t recognize the number and so I thought you might have been calling about So how are you doing today? Uh, great. I didn’t recognize the number, and so I thought you might have been calling about my other side hustle there. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. 3, 2, 1, here we go! Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Thrive Nation on today’s show, we introduce you once again to Mr. John Maxwell! And John, we have a live studio audience in the background who is fairly excited for you to be on the show. Wow! That’s our office staff here. Hopefully you can hear them on your end. Oh, I can hear them. They’re wound up. They’re ready to go, aren’t they? Absolutely. Absolutely. They’re excited for me to mute my mic and to just let you talk my friend. Again we’re so excited to have you on the show since we’ve talked to you last. You’ve been working on a new book here. Can you tell us about the new book? Well I’d be glad to. Thanks first of all. You do just such a great job on Thrive Time and so thanks for having me. This is an interesting idea. I’ve written a lot of books But this one, the creation of this book was very interesting in how it happened. 25 years ago, well, about 28 years ago, I wrote a book called Developing the Leader Within You, and then afterwards I wrote a book called Developing the Leaders Around You, and my publisher, Harper Collins, came to me and they said, John, we’d like you to, if you would, I mean, it’s 25 years old, we’d like you to revise developing the leaders around you. And I said, oh, I’d be glad to. So I went back into the book, and I hadn’t, of course, looked at it for a long time, and I’d written it 25 years ago. So I went into the book, and I thought, oh, my gosh, this isn’t very good. I mean, wow, I’ve learned so much more than what I mean. It’s always disappointing to read a book that’s not very good, but it’s extremely disappointing when it’s your book. You know, it’s kind of like, wow, I’m the author. And I had just developed and grown so much in the 25 years. So when I started revising, and when I started revising chapter one, there wasn’t one thing in the original book that I used in this one. And I got to the second chapter, there was a story and a quote I used in that one. The third chapter, again, nothing. And by the fourth chapter, I thought, I’m not revising a book here, I’m writing a new book. And so this is how really the Leaders’ Greatest Return really evolved. It was going to be a revised Developing the Leader Around You, like a 2.0. I’ve learned so much and I’ve grown so much. And in developing leaders, when I wrote that 25 years ago, I was kind of a young leader, and I didn’t have a lot of experience in developing people, but I’ve had an amazing amount of experience in the meantime. And so, I just wanted to write a much better, more mature book on how do you develop leaders, because I’m passionate about this. Because when people walk to me, and they’re in a leadership position, or they’re a leader, and they say, Clay, they say to me, John, I really want to become a great leader or a better leader. What do I do? And I tell them that you become a better leader by developing better leaders. And there’s a self-development part of my leadership, which is very essential, and that adds. There’s an addition there. But when you really develop other leaders and you develop better leaders, there’s a multiplying, compounding, ridiculous return from that. So I’m very excited about the book and I’m very excited about the book because there’s a lot of leadership books out, but you won’t find very many leadership books that talk about developing other leaders. Most leaders, Clay, don’t develop other leaders. They just develop themselves and then they have followers. They’ve got a lot of followers. That’s good. Nothing wrong with that, but there’s no multiplication with followers. There might be some addition, but there’s no compounding. But the moment that you start really working and developing intentionally other leaders, then everything begins to compound. So I’m very excited about the book because of that. One of my clients, Pastor Brian Gibson, is a big fan of yours. He has four campuses. His church is called His Church. He has four campuses. And I know he has a ton of leadership questions for you. He has thousands of members. But one question that I would ask on behalf of Brian and all the pastors out there listening and all the business leaders is, where do most people get it wrong when it comes to attracting and developing and multiplying leaders as opposed to followers? Well, where they miss it is, well, there are a couple things that they miss. First of all, Clark, you know there are some leaders that they don’t want other leaders around them. You know there are some leaders that they don’t want other leaders around them. You know there are some leaders that they don’t want other leaders around them. They’re insecure and they’re maybe a little bit threatened by other people who maybe have a better idea. And so there’s a certain amount of leaders who just want followers. That’s one. Number two is we miss it in the fact that developing leaders is not easy. If you yourself are a pretty good leader, attracting followers is very easy. You can do that very quickly. But there’s a difference between attracting followers and developing leaders because followers, they’re just looking for somebody that has a vision and they want to get on that leadership train and take the trip. But you start developing leaders. I have always said leading leaders is like herding cats. It’s just not an easy thing to do. They don’t fall in line. They don’t get up every day and say, what do you have for me today? They’ve got their own ideas and they’re doing their own thing. And so many leaders don’t develop leaders because it’s much more difficult. It takes more time, it takes more energy, and you’ve got to be a pretty good leader for another leader to follow you or to be developed by you because they’re not going to do that if you’re not a good leader yourself. Like begets like. The law of magnetism in my book, the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, just says we attract who we are, not who we want. So for me to develop other leaders, I have to be, one, a good leader myself and then I have to put up with the uphill issues of developing leaders because it’s not easy. But what, you know, my friend Art Williams who started Prime America, I love it when he would develop his leaders and he built that incredible company. He would tell his leaders, he’d say, I’m not telling you this is going to be easy, but I am telling you it’s going to be worthwhile. There we go. There we go. And that’s what this book’s all about, Larry. You know, chapter one of your book, you write about identifying leaders. Find them so you can develop them. What can readers expect to find in this chapter, and where do people get it wrong when it comes to identifying leaders so that they can develop them? Well, it’s in the area of awareness of what a leader looks like, Clay. Because I have people all the time that say, you know what, we’d like to raise up a bunch of leaders in our organization, or we’d like to, you know, we need to recruit some leaders. And the question I always ask them is, well, I love that. I say, do you know what a leader looks like? 90% of the time, they want leaders, but they have never had a clear picture of what a leader looks like. So in the book I talk about, I talk about you’ve got to have a clear picture. If you don’t know who you’re looking for, you don’t know if you’re going to find them. And it’s kind of like when I go to the airport and people don’t know who I am, so they have some chauffeur to pick me up. And so that person’s in baggage claim and they’re just standing there by the bags and they’ve got their hand and arm in the air And they got it on the end of their hand they got my name And you know I get off the plane get through security go down the baggage area I look for hands in the air, and I see my name. I go up and say hey I’m John Maxwell, and you know I look they’ll look at me. They said this whole time. They’ll say oh, oh I found you They’ll say I found you and I want to say you didn’t find me at all. I found you. All you did was stick my name in the air and hope. I could have walked right by you and you would have never known that you missed me because you didn’t know what I looked like. For all the chauffeurs out there, I just want to put this out here. Just look for a beautiful man. Just look for a beautiful man and you’ll find John Maxwell. Just look for a beautiful man. There he is. Okay, back to you, sir. Look for an old man with a smile and you’ll have it. But they didn’t find me, they just put my name up there and honestly they hoped I would find them. And hope is not a strategy. But I have other people, they pick me up and they either have a book with my picture in it, so they know what I look like. So all of a sudden they say, hey, you’re John Maxwell, or hey, I am. Wow, how’d you know me? Well, I got your picture here. Well, they found me because they knew what I looked like. In chapter one, I talk about what does a leader look like, and I talk about awareness, and I talk about six A’s there that you kind of look for that just helps you know what a leader looks like. Chapter one is all about helping the reader know what a leader looks like so they know who to go get. For a guy like Pastor Brian Gibson, I want to harp on this because his church is exploding. I mean, it is growing. His church, they have a campus in Amarillo, one in Owensboro, two other locations. I mean, they are just growing on a very practical level and maybe even on a daily schedule level. I know you’re a big fan of having a calendar and a very intentional agenda. How does a guy like Pastor Brian go about developing leaders? Should he have like a weekly class? Is it a monthly class? Is it a daily thing? How can he develop leaders? Well, he first of all doesn’t try to develop leaders. He develops a leadership culture. He creates an environment as a leader that is conducive for people to learn leadership, practice leadership, that’s also a kind of a magnet that attracts people who like to lead and he sets that leadership culture up. And a leadership culture, wow, it’s kind of like Chick-fil-A, who has done such an incredible, outstanding job of developing a leadership culture. A leadership culture is a place where people really can find leadership development conducive. Mark Miller, who’s a key executive at Chick-fil-A is, leaders made here. And how does that happen? This is a fast food restaurant, how does that happen? Well, you develop a leadership culture by letting people, I talk about this in chapter three a little bit, about inviting them to the leadership table and allowing them to come and be a part of an environment of leaders. And you develop leaders and develop a leadership culture by letting them practice leadership. So leadership is not learned in a classroom, although you can learn characteristics of a leader, but leaders become leaders because they get to practice leadership. And they get, so there’s, a leadership culture is a place where you take people and give them a chance to lead. And say, okay, here’s your responsibility, and I just empower you, go for it. And you help them, you really just help them engage in practicing leadership, of which they learn what’s good, what’s not good. Let me give you an example of that. We have a non-profit organization, Equip. I have two non-profit organizations, John Maxwell Bishop Foundation and Equip, that does transformation of countries. We’re invited by the presidents of countries to come in and teach values to the country to help bring positive change. So we’re in three countries now. We’re getting ready to go into two more countries. We have 22, literally 22 presidents of countries who have sent us letters. They’re on the waiting list. We have a very effective process of knowing how to bring positive change in the community. We start by getting permission from the top of the eight streams of influence, government and then business, education, media, arts, religion, health and sports. We get buy-in from them that they’ll let us come in and do these leadership roundtables. We have millions of people in these roundtables now. It’s an amazing story, but I don’t want to get sidetracked when I’m talking about how to develop a leadership culture. Yeah, so so one of the things we do is We have a junior high curriculum for kids on three years of curriculums for a 7 8 to 9 4 on values and The whole thesis is when a person learns good values, and then they begin to live them out They become more valuable they become more valuable to themselves to become more valuable to the family become very more valuable to their community. Their whole value increases because they’re learning and living on good values. We do them in roundtables, and so we do them in classrooms, again, roundtables of six to eight, but the kids lead and facilitate the roundtables, not the teacher. What’s happening is these kids in school, and this is not before or after school, this is in the regular curriculum of a class, they’re practicing leadership. And all of a sudden teachers are just seeing kids, some kids are popping up and they’re saying, wow, this child has some leadership potential. Well, how did they discover that? They let them practice leadership. And so when anybody comes and says, I want to have a leadership culture, you’ve got to give them, you’ve got to do two things. You’ve got to let them practice leadership and you have to equip them. Chris Hodges is a very close friend of mine and has Church of the Highlands and has an enormous church. I think it’s the second largest church in America. I think they average about 55, 60,000 or something. And they have many campuses. You were talking about Brian having four. Well, he has maybe 15. What they do is at each campus, it’s another chance for them to put people in leadership positions to practice leadership. He said, John, we found two things. If we let them practice leadership and then we speak leadership into them as far as we these things happening to you as a leader. He said, we just find that they’re just raising up and we’re raising up hundreds of leaders. So you’ve got to develop a leadership culture. A leadership culture is where there’s a bias towards leadership and everybody gets to practice it. And when you say practice, would you advise maybe to let somebody lead maybe a youth group service or to lead like a home fellowship group or what all of it yes yes yes all of it all of it all of it whatever that see what I tell person whatever you’re doing has leadership potential and and and leadership is the ability to influence people so let’s look at your job and ask ourselves a simple question how can you do your job well and while you’re doing your job well how can you influence people in a positive way? And one of the ways we do we help people say we want to empower you to make decisions So you’ve got a receptionist out there, but we say okay. Yes, you have a job of kind of Directing traffic in this company and in and out of the lobby that that yes, that’s your job But but now let’s talk about how can we help you to lead well in this job? And what I do is I let him have the job for a few months and then we come around and we say, okay, talk to me. What doesn’t work here? What do you love about your job? What’s not working? What frustrates you? This front desk here. And they’ll tell you what frustrates them and almost everything that frustrates them is because they haven’t been empowered to be a leader. They may say, I’ve got a person waiting in the lobby sometimes for 30 minutes and I’m kind of embarrassed about that. And so we said, well, we’re going to empower you to do some leadership with them. Go over there and serve them. Ask them, can I get you a cup of coffee? And we just empower them to make decisions on the job which positively influence people, which is practicing leadership. And every job has that. And the problem is too many times we look at our job as a job and don’t see beyond the things that we’re required to do. And in fact, I had a, you know, in the book, in this book, there’s so many practical things I have in the Leaders Greatest Return, but one of the things I teach is the fact that in our companies, I have seven of them, but in our companies, we teach our people to, when we give them a job, we say, now, we want you to do your job with excellence, but we really want you to work yourself out of this job. When we give them a job, we say, now, we want you to do your job with excellence, but we really want you to work yourself out of this job. When we give them a job, we say, now, we want you to do your job with excellence, but we really want you to work yourself out of this job. So, you do excellent, but while you’re doing excellent, go start developing people to do your job and find somebody of that group that you develop that can do this job really good. And when you can develop somebody to do your job, you come and see us, and if we agree with you, we’ll give you another job. And, you know, it’s the saying has been, you know, work yourself out of a job and I’ll give you another one, but if you can’t work yourself out of a job, you have to take it away from you. That just develops a huge leadership culture. Mark Cole, who runs all of my seven companies, has had nine different jobs. He started in the stock room, but he worked himself out of a job, worked himself out of a J.D.O.C. and practiced leadership, practiced leadership, and he practiced leadership all the way I can’t find the time to do it. I’m just overwhelmed. I can’t find the time to write my book. How do you find the time to write 84 books while running 7 companies? You’ve written 84 books? Yeah. Wow. Okay, back to you, sir. Which is nothing except it proves you’re old. I mean, you can’t write that many books if you’re young. It takes a while. So it just means I’m an old man. But also, when you ask how do I do that, I’m very much a young man. I’m not a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m a young man. I’m very intentional. And every day I do five things. Every day I read, every day I think, every day I file, every day I ask questions, and every day I write. I’m very intentional. And every day I do five things. Every day I read, every day I think, every day I file, every day I ask questions, and every day I write. And the reading, the thinking, the filing, the asking questions are all resources for me to write books. So every day, every day I read and I take what I read that’s good and I file it so that I don’t lose it. And then I think about what I file and I think, I say, okay, how can this help people? Sometimes I immediately know what the answer is and so I put it in somewhere where it’s a potential book somewhere down the road and I ask questions continually because whatever I’m writing on, whatever book I’m writing on, I ask questions on that subject. So when I was writing The Leader’s Greatest Return, when I was with the leader, I’d say, now talk to me how you develop leaders. What do you do? And I just ask questions and I get more answers and get more enlightenment and become more aware. But then the key is every day I write. And then somebody says, well, what do you mean by every day you write? What I mean is every day I write. I don’t ever miss a day. Where do you write and what time of the day do you write? Well, I write everywhere because every day I write and I travel. So, I write in hotel rooms and I don’t even use a computer. I just use a legal pad and a four-color pen. I prefer, I don’t always get to do this, but my preference is writing in the morning. I’m up. And, uh… Four o’clock to five o’clock in the morning sometime there I’m up. And, uh… Four o’clock to five o’clock in the morning sometime there I’m up. And, uh, I get in some good writing. You know, nobody wants to talk to me at four thirty in the morning. Oh! Yes! Real quick, I love this! I love this, John, because I’ve interviewed so many super successful people and all of you guys are up before 5am. Can you help somebody out there who says, John, I want to be successful, I’m just not a morning person. What would you say to them? Well, I tell them that they can be successful and not be a morning person, but they increase the odds of not doing that well. Because first of all, if you’re a night person, then write between midnight and 3 in the morning. I don’t care. Nobody wants you at that time either. But you’ve got to ask yourself, what am I? Which I happen to be a morning person. But here’s the key. The fastest person doesn’t win the race. I was with Gail Devers having dinner one night and of course she was a big Olympic champion, won medals in three different Olympics, and probably a female track star in America, probably the number one athlete in Olympic history. So at the end of the meal I said, Gail, I’ve been thinking about the dinner. I think if you and I ran a hundred yard race I could win. She looked at me and said, you’re kidding. I said, no, I’m not kidding. I think I could win. She was with her husband. She said, did you hear him? Yeah, I heard that. Anyway, I got her competitive juices going. She’s about ready to take her high heels off in that restaurant and go take me out in front of it. We’re going to run a block. I mean, she was ready to let me eat dust. I got her right to the tibia point. I said, Gail, listen to me carefully because I have thought about this. If you and I had a 100-yard race, I said, I think I could win if you gave me an 80-yard head start. And she started laughing and said, well, of course, if I gave you an 80-yard head start, you could win the race. And by the way, Clark, I wanted to say 70 yards, but I wasn’t sure I could win with 70 yards. But hey, at 80 yards, this fat boy could get across the line first. I knew that. And here’s the whole point. This is what I want your listeners to catch today. It’s very simple. The fastest person doesn’t win the race. It’s the one who gets started first. Always. That’s good. You mentioned that you write your books methodically using a pen and a pad. You’re using a pen and a pad. Is that the technology you’re using to write your books typically? Yeah, it’s just a legal pad and a four-color pen, black, blue, red, and green ink. And each color means something different. Yeah, I just, you know, when I finish a book, I’ve got, you know, 240 legal pages written. And that’s how I do it. I love, I love. How many times do you typically edit a book before it’s ready to go? I mean, how many times does it go back between you and an editor before it’s ready to ship? Twice. Twice? Just twice, yeah. Okay, you are blowing my mind. My mind might explode. I love this. I love this. I’ve done it a long time and pretty well. I don’t give them a product until it’s already pretty good and done. I’ve got a team of three people that help me with the book. It’s different eyes looking at the book and different input. So it’s not just me. If the four of us can’t get a book, a manuscript pretty well done for the publisher that is pretty good, then we’re in the wrong business probably. Well, John, we have so many of our listeners that love your books. And one of our listeners who really loves your books, his name is Cory Minter, M-I-N-T-E-R, and he owns a company called Trinity Employment Specialists. These guys do staffing for hospitals, so hospitals needing doctors and really high level professional staffing. And so, Corey wanted to ask you a few questions on today’s show. So Corey, meet John Maxwell. Mr. Maxwell, it’s great to meet you. I can’t believe I’m talking to you right now, actually. It’s my privilege, Corey. Nice to meet you. I think I’m the one that’s privileged. I want to jump into this real quick because we only have so much time. I love asking really great leaders this one question, what are your limits? And so that’s such a big deep question but for this show, how do you set your limits specifically with your schedule? Well, first of all, Cor, I probably would disappoint you. I have a lot of limits. I think the first thing that a leader needs to do is be very aware. I’m very aware of what I do well and I’m very aware of what I don’t do well. And basically, I do three things really well. I lead well, I create well, and I speak and communicate well. Those are the three things I do well. So I do those three things, Corey. Period. And people say, well, what do you mean you just do those three things? What I mean is I just do those three things. Everything else, everything else is done by people that are just better than I am. And they come around me. The people around me complete me. The people around me compliment me. The people around me allow me to stay in my strength zone so that I can be productive. And I’m incredibly grateful for those people. My executive assistant Linda has been with me for 32 years. Mark Cole who runs everything with me has been with me for 20 years. Charlie Wetzel, the lead guy on my writing team, he’s been with me for 24 years. They just really make up all the difference. And I allow them to, I don’t try to control. I just basically say, you do this better than me, so you do this. And then we come together and we just add value to one another. And I just stay in that sweet spot. And so when people ask me, again, how can you write that many books? Well, it’s very simple. I do it every day. Well, why do I do it? Why can I do it? How can I do it every day? I don’t have 17 things to do. That’s why I do three things. And I do them well, and then I bring everybody else around me, and they do the rest. And then I point to them, and I give them the credit, because they’re the ones that deserve the credit. Great leaders take the vision or the work from me to we. And so I don’t have any me work, I have we work. Everything that you see that I do is a result of a lot of people who care for me and are very competent that just allow me to be good. And it’s that, really, Corey, it’s that simple. John, I want to ask you this because I’ve heard you say that we all have uphill hopes and downhill habits. Yeah, habits. What do you mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is that… I start to say everybody. Most people have hopes for their life and dreams for their life. And all those dreams and hopes, whatever they are, they’re all uphill. It’s not easy. It doesn’t happen fast. If success were easy, everybody would be successful. And so it’s all uphill. All the good stuff, everything worthwhile, it’s uphill. There’s nothing worthwhile. I mean, if you have a good marriage, it’s because you worked at it. Marriage is difficult. Building a business is difficult. It’s all difficult. There’s nothing easy about it. I don’t understand anybody thinking, well, it’s easy to make a lot of money. Well, if it is, then everybody would have a lot of money. If it’s easy to have a great marriage, then people would be married for 50 years. It’s not easy. So it’s all a struggle. And by the way, to go uphill, Clark, you have to be intentional. Right. You don’t accidentally, no one ever accidentally climbed a hill. I mean, nobody ever got to the top of the hill and then looked at their friends and said, now, my gosh, how did we get here? Now you. It’s intentional. You are very intentional. You’ve worked uphill to write this new book, The Leader’s Greatest Return. And in chapter two of this book that you worked tirelessly on to create, you talk about attracting leaders and inviting them to the leadership table. What does the process of attracting leaders look like, and where do you see people getting it wrong? Well, I think where people get it wrong is that I think leaders stay too isolated. And you know, there’s something beautiful about a table. I mean, I love the table. And I could go on for a long time lecturing just on the beauty of a table, whether it’s a table where you sit down and have a meal together with friends, or whether it’s a table where you sit down and think of ways to improve people’s lives, you know, to have a creative table. But there’s a leadership table and that’s where you invite people to sit down and talk to other leaders and discuss the subject of leadership and ask questions. I think it’s a very engaging term and in this chapter I talk about everybody needs to create a leadership table and it’s just a place literally where potential leaders, they’re not there yet, but potential leaders can sit close to better leaders. And while they sit there, they can learn from them, they can listen, they can participate, they can ask questions. And so I just think it’s very important in a leadership culture to not exclude anyone, Just let them sit at the table. Now, once they start practicing leadership, they begin to set themselves apart as far as who are what you might call your A-list leaders and your B-list leaders, maybe even your C-list leaders. But they begin to set themselves apart. But they don’t set themselves apart until they get to practice leadership. And I say the first step of practicing leadership is let them get into a leadership environment where They hear lead discussions because what happens is people grow into the conversation that you have around them and so if I’m around conversations where leaders are talking about solving problems and and And and and creating solutions after a while I’m going to think about solving problems and creating solutions. And so it’s that environment. And I love this second chapter of the book because I’ve never read anybody else talk about it, but it’s just a very simple, practical idea of to have a table and you get somebody new on your team, say, hey, you know, sit for a couple of months at our leadership table and let them hear the questions and let them participate and very soon you’ll see the ones who kind of lean in toward leadership and you’ll see the ones who kind of lean back and lean away from it. They’re not anti, it just doesn’t attract them. And so you begin to visually see who your potential leaders are going to be and then that’s when you begin to invest time in those potential leaders to get your return. Well, John, we’ve got kind of a virtual leadership table here and Corey has another question for you. He’s just a huge fan of yours. Corey, just feel free to see if you can paint John Maxwell, the leadership guru, into a leadership corner. See if he can fight his way out of it with his ninja leadership skills. I’m going to try. I’m going to try. Thank you, Clay. At this point in your life, John, who do you most want to help do what? Just Cubans or Americans? What do you think? Well, first of all, kind of my mantra is that I add value to leaders who multiply value to others. So everything I do has a bias and an intention toward developing leaders. I have a non-profit organization that for 19 years just trained leaders around the world. We were pretty successful. We trained six million leaders in every country in the world and became the largest leadership training company in the world. And when we finished that, we went back to the table and said, ìOkay, letís help these leaders know how to lead now. So they know leadership skills and leadership principles, let’s help them become transformational and bring positive change into people’s lives, which is beyond just knowing how to lead. So we now are focused on transformation in countries. We started seven years ago in Guatemala as our first country. We only come into the country when the president of the country invites us in. We’re now in three countries. We’re going to go into two more this year. We have 22 presidents and prime ministers of countries that have invited us by letter in to come in and do leadership transformation. We do that through small groups, through what we call transformation tables, group of six or eight. And over the course of time, they discussed 16 different values. And what we’ve discovered is when people learn good values and they live them, it begins to make them more valuable. Makes them more valuable to themselves, makes them more valuable to their family, to their community. And so we’re doing country transformation. And then next year, I’m going to launch community transformation in America. I have a coaching company that has 30,000 coaches. It’s the largest coaching company in the world in 162 countries. We add 150 new coaches every week. So it’s amazing. If any of your listeners want to know more about it, just tell them to go to johnmaxwell.com and look up the, you know, we have what’s called the John Maxwell team. But I’m mobilizing those people that, you know, they’re, Jack Welch and I had a conversation several years ago in which we were talking about legacy and he and I came to the same agreement that legacy is not in a company or an organization, it’s in people. You continue your legacy through people and so I literally started the John Maxwell team, which is our coaching company, to literally, literally to develop a legacy of leadership and values. And so we’re going to start community transformation next year in America and we’re going to mobilize those coaches to be catalytic in their communities to bring about transformation. We’ve got curriculum of roundtables for adults. We have we have leadership curriculum for junior high kids We’ve got over a million and a half kids going through our curriculum in high school or junior high right now and it’s value it’s all it’s about values and so That’s my passion Cory. That’s you know, if that’s the if there’s one thing I’m putting my time in is is transformation of countries and and and then I want to bring it back to America because you know, the answer is not going to happen in in in government or in DC. It’s going to happen when People take their own communities back and say I’m going to be I’m going to make a difference right here where I am With people that I already know and so it’s very exciting Cory and Is it good night as much as you? Read and hear my stuff. You need to become one of my coaches. You need to quit fooling around. I need to get busy, right? John, I want to ask you this real quick. You talk a lot about the power of intentional living. I’ve heard you talk about it, write about it. You’ve definitely talked about it. And what happens, I find as a consultant for people, I work with a lot of churches and business owners, is a business owner says, you know what, I’m going to be intentional. The pastor says, you know what, I’m going to be intentional. And then they get to work at, let’s say, 7 a.m. They’re bombarded with 13 hours a week of emails on average. They’re bombarded by got a minute meetings. They’re bombarded by everyone’s got a different opinion. What advice would you have for the pastors out there who have a church of a thousand plus members and they’ve become reactive? They used to be proactive, now they’re very reactive. Because you come from the ministry world, what advice would you have specifically for the pastors out there about being intentional about their church after they grow over a thousand members and it can become easy to become reactive by default? Well, that’s a great question, Clark, and the answer is that you have to be intentional in your priorities. Just living an intentional life, I can intentionally go do errands every day and say, I know what I’m doing. I’m doing errands intentionally, but there may be no return there. So this is going to be very helpful. When I went to San Diego, and for 14 years I pastored a large church. In fact, it was written up as one of the 10 most influential churches in America. I sat down with the search committee before I ever became the lead pastor there. They asked me questions for three hours. I answered their questions and finally they said, ìWeíre done. Do you have any questions?î I said, ìI just have one.î They said, ìWeíve covered most of the stuff.î I said, ìThis is a very important question and it may take us a while to answer it tonight, but I’ve got to have an answer. I said, if I become the lead pastor of this church, what do I have to do that no one else can do except me? That’s the question. Now this is a huge question. This will change everybody’s life. All of your listeners, I don’t care what business, whatever you’re doing, this question changed your life. And of course, in the beginning, they gave me a whole bunch of stuff that I had to do. And I followed the founding pastors, so anybody who knows anything about a founder, founders do everything. And I knew I couldn’t build, the church had stagnated for a dozen years, I knew the problem. The problem was that they weren’t intentional in their priorities enough. That became a two-hour discussion, Clark, and when we finished, basically they said I had to be responsible for the health of the church. That’s fair. They said I had to obviously be responsible to live a good life, a good moral life, etc. Only I can do that. That’s fair. And then they said I needed to be responsible to develop the staff. And that’s fair. And that’s the only four things I had to do that I couldn’t delegate, equip, empower someone else to do. So now that’s on my list. That’s my list. Got it. Maxwell has to do those every day, be intentional with them. Everything else is not on my list. Everything else I’m going to find people, equip them, develop them as leaders, and they’re going to have it. It’s going to be theirs. And so I spent the first 18 months getting all those other things handled by other people, of which I didn’t do any of it, didn’t do any of it, and then I just stayed in my sweet spot of those four things. And I never had to be reactionary because I had everybody, you get reactionary when you don’t have anybody else to carry the load except you, and that’s a leadership issue. Hey, that’s the reason I wrote the book, The Leader’s Greatest Return. You’ve got to develop other leaders to help you carry that load. John, you know a smartphone can make people dumb. Again, a smartphone can make people dumb. According to Nielsen Media, the average person is now interrupted by or interacting with their smartphone 11 hours per day, which to me seems just crazy. 11 hours per day. What would you say to a business owner out there or a leader of some kind who has found themselves surgically attached to the smartphone which is interrupting them constantly? What would you say to that business owner who’s trying to lead a staff meeting but can’t stop looking at their phone and all the emails coming in, all the interruptions? What would you say to them? I would tell them that they don’t prioritize well and they’re very discourteous to the people that they’re trying to give their attention to. What would you say to that business owner who’s trying to lead a staff meeting but can’t stop looking at their phone and all the emails coming in all the interruptions what would you say to them? I would tell them that they don’t prioritize well and they’re very discourteous to the people that they’re trying to give their attention to. What would you say to that business owner who’s trying to lead a staff meeting but can’t stop looking at their phone and all the emails coming in, all the interruptions, what would you say to them? I would tell them that they don’t prioritize well and they’re very discourteous to the people that they’re trying to give their attention to. This isn’t a complicated question. Every distraction keeps a person from having traction. Traction is to pull in for a cause, and distraction is to pull away from the cause. I have no idea why people would do that, except the fact that they’re with. I mean, when I see people, they’re trying to talk to me and they’re looking at their phone a dozen times after a while, I look up and say, no, let me just, maybe we need to shorten the conversation. Do you want to talk to the phone or do you want to talk to me, but let’s make a decision. It’s OK, if you want to talk to the phone, I’ve got other things to go do. That’s powerful. Well, it’s ridiculous. So I want to say it’s stupidity, but it’s probably just discourteous. And so when people have their phone attached to their… I mean, I’ve got an iPhone and I’ve got people wanting me… When you have seven companies, you probably have enough people who would like to have your attention for something. And so you’ve got to really… You’ve got to say, for the next three hours, I don’t even have my phone with me. It’s not complicated. It’s very easy to do. I always tell people they get distracted because they’ve never gotten enough traction on what they really want to accomplish in life. When you know what you want to accomplish in life, you really don’t care about that other stuff. True. That is powerful. You are just full of knowledge bombs. I want to respect your time and we have a chance here for 90 seconds and two final questions. Corey, you’ve got one more question for John Maxwell. Thanks Clay. This is a Corey show today. Oh man. He’s a huge fan. Hey, and thank you Clay. I really appreciate it. Corey, Corey, you need to be a coach. Go to JohnMaxwell.com. I’m going to zoom my internet there as soon as this show is over. Hey, if you were a coach, I’d certify you and you’d get all these questions answered a lot quicker than being on Clark’s show. I’m having fun. I’m having fun. I love it. I love it. You have moved over into the business world, but you’re a man of faith. What is the best advice that you would like to share with other businessmen who are also very strong in their faith, but they work in a secular world? Well, you know, I love that question. I honestly wish I had a narrative to discuss it with you, Corey, because it’s the world that I live in and it’s the world that I love. And I would say three things quickly. One is you unconditionally love people, period. End of story. And so I said, well, what does it mean to unconditionally love somebody? It means that you don’t put any conditions of love on them. You love them, who they are, as they are, where they are. Period. Discussions over. That’s the first thing. Because you can never be salt and light into a secular community if you’re drawing lines and judging and trying to fix people. I love it. Christians love to fix people. I don’t know. Last time I knew Jesus saved. But anyway, they’re trying to fix people. So unconditionally love people. That’s number one. Number two, become excellent in your field of business. In other words, with fellow believers, the relationship we have through Christ pulls us together. That’s not true in the business community. You don’t get a relationship first, you get respect first, and then you get the relationship. And you get respect from being able to help people and provide and meet needs and being excellent in exceeding expectations. So, unconditional love people, get respect through exceeding expectations. And number three, intentionally add value to them every day. And this is what connects you relationally to people when they wake up one day and say, you know, John is just, he’s an asset to me. He’s an asset to me. He’s constantly helping me and making a difference in my life, and that’s the relational connection you get. Then hopefully, in the right time and the right place, you have an opportunity to share faith with them. But those three things are essential. John Maxwell, I appreciate you so much for taking time out of your schedule to invest in the lives of our half a million listeners. It’s just been an honor for John Maxwell Part 2. Again, thank you so much. Thank you, Clark. Have a great day and blessings to all your listeners. And if you’re out there today and you’ve learned something, I encourage you to buy The Leader’s Greatest Return. Maybe you need to not buy a regrettable burrito today at your local convenience store. Maybe you need to fast for one day in a row. Save the 20 bucks. Buy the book The Leader’s Greatest Return. I’m not going to say, John, I’m not going to say people out there are being cheap if they don’t buy the book, but I would just say some would suggest, I should say, that you’re being cheap. If you don’t buy The Leader’s Greatest Return, what an incredible book. Pick it up right now. John, you take care, my friend. Thank you, Clark. Blessings. Happy New Year. Thrive Nation, that was the goat of leadership development, the number one, the greatest of all time in the field of leadership development, John Maxwell. You know, a lot of times people get fired up about what somebody says, and then they want to get a tattoo of their favorite Bible verse or their favorite quote. I want to embroider those knowledge bombs on my forehead. The stuff he just taught was awesome. I mean, he talks about how, as a leader, you’ve got to turn your smartphone off in your staff meetings or you’re being discourteous or prioritizing. He talked about turning your phone off in the meetings. He talked about how to develop leaders. He just explained to you that he gets up at four in the morning to write his books. He just explained to you every day he does five things every single day. This show was hot. However, it was Napoleon Hill that once said that action is the real measure of intelligence. Again, action is the real measure of intelligence. So don’t be just a hearer of this show, because Thomas Edison once said that vision without execution is hallucination. Remember, action is the real measure of intelligence, according to Napoleon Hill, and vision without execution is hallucination, according to Thomas Edison. So let’s not hallucinate. Let’s not be unintelligent. Let’s go out there and implement what we’ve learned. Let’s be both hearers of these words and doers of these words. And I just, I encourage you to take notes today, put it into your calendar. What gets scheduled gets done. You can absolutely live an incredible, epic, super successful life, or you can just be the guy who knows a little bit about everything, but who never actually implements anything. Let’s go out there and be hearers and doers. Share this show with a friend. And now without any further ado, let’s end this show with a big Thrive Time boom. A big boom. Because boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. It’s big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. And now without any further ado, here we go. Three, two, one, boom. Oh, frick! What time is it? Where are my pants? Blah! This jerk! Aw, yes, it’s time to rise and grind. Aw, yes, before the rooster crows. Aw, yes, it’s time to rise and grind. Aw, yes. I wake up at three to get it all done. Money on my mind and my wife’s number one Gotta coach a role cause I am a Christian In it for the long game or nothin’ Get rich quick nah, I don’t do it But if you got a real girl I’ll help you pursue it Like Robbie Snyder I’ll be sayin’ you can do it You can do it, you can do it You have to seize the day and cover G, I’m son You ever wanna make them vigilant? Success requires self-discipline Self-discipline, self-discipline I just said it three times in a row Cause if you’re looking for a real hero, you gotta look into me and my bro, will you be a victim or a victim? I think we’re missing it all, the resources you need aren’t there anymore, you gotta get three jobs like I once did, target Applebee’s and direct TV, which meant I never watched TV, cause I was on my grind like a 2-3, or like that 12 to the TV, do you feel man, like a pet in zoo, stick to your goals like glue, like 80 hours per week, but soon, man I am speaking to the serious Because I ain’t talking delirious I’m aware of cause and effect And I know that your life could be ripped Or your life could be good and great So what will you do today? Will you fill the schedule with nothingness Or the middle with somethingness? What you’re waiting for, Santa and an elf? It’s just in, you can be, I’ll work on the other guy. Yes, ah yes, it’s time to rise and grind. Ah yes, before the rooster crows. Ah yes, it’s time to rise and grind. Ah yes, everybody sing it now. Ah yes, ah yes, it’s time to rise and grind. Ah yes, before the rooster crows. Oh, yeah. It’s time to rise and cry. Oh, yeah. Verse 2 gets short and life is due. We better get started because there’s no redo. 38, 80, great, I’m half dead, dude. I’m half dead, dude. Well, hell’s bells. I’m going to go take a nap. I mean, I remember some bills of $4,500 a month just to get leads that I was having to pay and that’s only get a lead and a contact to where now I’m paying you $1,700 a month and I got 80 some leads last week alone and I paid you $1,700. And to me, that was huge for my industry. That was one huge thing that just blown me away. Okay, folks, money is a magnifier. That’s what it is. Money is a magnifier. It’s an amplifier. It just makes you more of who you already were. So as an example, if you’re a complete jerk and you make a lot of money, you’ll become a bigger jerk. And on today’s show, we’re interviewing a longtime client who’s a really nice, kind, decent person. He doesn’t claim to be perfect, nor do I think that he’s perfect, but he’s a guy that I use over and over and over. I utilize his services to plant trees and do landscaping for my family, for my business, because I really enjoy him as a person. I consider him to be a friend and it’s been awesome helping him magnify and grow his business. And without any further ado, we have the founder of Outside Inc, Paul Sullins. Welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? Doing good, Clay. Thank you for having me. So Paul, I gotta ask you here, and correct me if I’m wrong. I’m looking at your tracking sheet, which for anybody out there who’s a client, we look at the tracking sheet. And last week you had 89 leads. So 89 people reached out to you to inquire about hiring you to do landscaping, pool maintenance, backyard work or them outside remodeling kind of work. And then I’m looking at your tracking sheet like a year ago and you were getting like four or five leads on a weekly basis. Can you maybe walk the listeners through what it feels like to be on the receiving end of 89 inbound leads in one week? It’s a little scary to be straight honest with you. It’s awesome just to know that the amount of work up front that we put in is actually paying off. You know, you see these people, you hear all these things and you’re like, hey, it’s going to be there, it’s going to be there, and it’s been kind of mind-blowing to sit there. One of my office ladies comes in and goes, we’ve got 56 calls in one day, right after a rainstorm. And to actually realize the work and the effort that we put in is actually coming to fruition, it’s been amazing. What I’m going to do is I’m going to pull up your website, and I’m going to showcase what you do so people can get a little context and know you’re not a hologram. Outside Inc. Irrigation, Outside Inc. Irrigation is one of the websites. Also folks, if you do a search on Google for Outside Inc. and the word HULSA, you can find the website outsideinc.co. So two different websites there. And when you go to outsideinc.co, we look here, we look at the services you provide. It’s French Drainage, it’s Landscaping, you do monthly home maintenance. If you look at the irrigation services, you guys are doing irrigation system repair and installation. So you’re not the only guy in your market who’s providing irrigation systems or French drains, but you’re consistently getting a lot of leads. So I want to focus on the four aspects of business growth. There’s a lot of them we could focus on, but I want to focus on four today. The first is marketing. You’ve got to get reviews from happy customers. Every single week I harass you about this, and every week you show up with more, but these are actual customers that have actually done business with you. Can you talk about the importance, and I’ll hit play, but I’ll hit mute as I’m playing these. Can you talk about the importance of gathering objective video reviews from real customers each and every week. What kind of value has that made when you’re even talking to prospective clients? It’s made a lot of difference. I mean, a lot of the phone calls, we’ll sit there and go, hey, we’re the highest rated, most reviewed company in Tulsa. We’re doing all these things. And they’re like, yeah, we know, we went to your website. And we saw the clients speak about what you had done around their houses and how well you Communicated with them and that’s how we decided to work with you guys. So it’s just you know, I’ve put on I’ve put on so many different client reviews and interviews on the on the web page and it’s it’s been completely different You know Through some of your training and seeing some of your different videos from business from the business shows that you put on, Clay, I’ve noticed that we don’t have to have the best looking and the most entertained TV produced videos. It’s just getting videos of real people in their backyards, in their yards, and actually talking about you as a person and the products that we’ve done for them and how they’ve enjoyed it. How often, when you meet somebody, and again, we’re focused just on marketing right now, when you meet with somebody how often does the potential buyer reference the fact that you, they’ve watched a video review or have looked at examples of video reviews on your website as a percentage? How often do they reference, yeah I’ve seen some of the videos or I’ve seen some testimonials? Percentage wise I would say at least 25 to maybe 50%. You know, I have a couple different sales guys and I have some ladies entering the phones here and I mean, I’m hearing it all the time. I’ve got an office right next to the lady entering the phone and you know, she goes, hey, how did you hear about us? Well, you know, we Googled you and then it’s like, oh, hey, you know, this, this, this, and they were like, oh, yeah, we saw it. We already looked at your website and saw the saw the views, all the video reviews you’ve done. So, I mean, it is it’s all the time. It might be more than that, but I would say in the neighborhood of 25 to 40%. And again, if you’re talking about marketing, folks, we’re talking about marketing, it’s VISM. There’s other details, but everyone needs to remember this, VISM. Video reviews, images, search engine content, more reviews. Let’s hop on to I, images. You’re constantly gathering images of your projects. So it’s not an event. I think a lot of people think planting a garden is an event, and it’s not an event. I think people think that getting married is an event, it’s not an event. I think people think that raising a child is an event, it’s not an event, it’s a process. Every week you’re gathering images, before and after images of projects you’ve done. How has that paid off? Just the consistency of adding before and after images of projects. It’s been a, it’s actually done quite well. It gets my guys, number one, it helps my staff and us know that, number one, you know, because as the owner of the business, you can’t be on every job, you know, as you grow, it helps me know that the guys are doing what I’m wanting them to do in the field. My company is actually being portrayed the way I want it to be portrayed. But then also, people always look at a company and look at, you know, we pull up at a nice fancy track and they’re like, oh, these guys, all they’re going to do is the big fancy jobs. And not all our jobs are big and fancy. I mean, we talk and we work for the average Joe, the average person in the background. So when they’re able to look on, you know, and see some of these photos of it’s just a little small French drain, or we poured a little 10 by 10 concrete patio, it actually helps us relate better to the clients and the customers in the field. I feel just having all those videos and pictures. Just to be super clear, again, video reviews, got to get them every week. Images of projects, you do a great job with that. Search engine content, our team handles the optimization, the ongoing updates on the website, so you don’t have to mess with that. How much does that help for you knowing that you don’t have to go in to your website and figure out how to code and update a website every week? There’s no way I’d be where I’m at if I had to sit there and mess with that. Running a company, a lot of people always say starting your business is an easy thing. It’s managing it and keep on top of it. These little details like this, I mean, we’re in the age now, word of mouth is one way, but most all everybody’s going to Google and go on your websites to see what you’re, see how to, you know, how to get hold of you. And that’s how, that’s the marketing we are in today society. And I think that is super important to have that up and running. And when I don’t have to mess with it, it is blown me away. Cause I mean, I’ve got to deal with my employees. I got to deal with all this other stuff. And so it’s just a huge piece of mind to know that that’s just taken care of. I don’t have to mess with it at all. Now, so again, we go back to this VISM. And I think one way we learn is through repetition, video reviews, images, search engine content, the ongoing optimization of the website. We handle that for all of our clients. And then M, more reviews. We’re never done getting reviews. And so right now, if somebody goes to Google and they do a search right now and they type in Tulsa tree planting, which is how I originally heard about you was I was looking to plant trees at one of my properties. I went to a church called Church on the Move, a really wonderful church that at the time was led by Pastor Willie George. And the trees looked incredible on the property. And so I kept asking people, who does the trees? Who’s doing the work? And I kept hearing your name. And that’s how I first met you. And now today when someone types in Tulsa tree planting, you come up top in the search results, 703 reviews. You’re constantly getting video reviews, images, search engine content, more reviews. Let’s talk about that for a second. How much has it helped you to have the most Google reviews? In addition to video, but the most Google reviews. It gives you validity. I really think with people, I kind of tell this to people all the time, is like, I talk to my buddies of mine that own businesses or in any kind of a service industry, and I’m like, what do people do nowadays? They go to Google, they Google. They’re Googling for French grains, they’re Googling for this, they’re Googling where to go eat. And to be at the top of Google gives you the opportunity to actually talk to a client and to bid it. Now, we still have to go out and sell the job to the client, but it’s been very important and very helpful to be able to be at the top to be able to get that. I don’t know if I quite answered your question. No, this is great. And you’ve got the four aspects of business I want to focus on today. Again, step one, marketing and branding. We covered that. Branding is just anything people see, the website, the print pieces, the logo, the auto wraps. We handle all that with you. We do a lot of that work behind the scenes. That’s marketing and branding. The second step is sales. Sales is converting an ideal and likely lead or an ideal and likely buyer into an actual buyer. And I believe that a lot of times, and I’ve worked with companies in the past that helped me with my marketing when I was first starting DJConnection.com, and I would say, well, yeah, I’m getting a lot of leads, but I’m not selling anything. And they would say, uh, we don’t really help with that. We just focus on the marketing or just the branding, or just, I want to get your thoughts on the sales thing. You do a very good job of tracking. I won’t show your tracking numbers on today’s show, but you know, you do a very good job of tracking. This is how many leads that came in. This is how many people bought. How has that helped you measuring and tracking your sales? Number one, it helps me because as I’ve grown, I’ve got multiple salesmen that work with me. Number one, I’m able to see what my guys in the field are selling every week. It also gives me time to see, or not time, but gives me the capabilities of looking and seeing how our ebbs and flows are in my business because I’m, you know, I’m an outdoor service company. So in the springs and the falls, it’s able to see when I need to gear up for employees, when I need to gear up and get guys ready for stuff, when our down times are. So, you know, over the last two years, I’m able to go back and look at it going, hey, you know, January and February is going to be real slow December. So I really need to start as a business owner in October, you know, September and October start pushing sales and start finding different ways to be able to get more business to keep my guys going so we can book out over that time. So if I wasn’t able to track my sales, my leads coming in, the jobs were sold, I wouldn’t know, you know, you get so busy in your day in day out you don’t focus on that stuff and you know me meeting with you every week as a business coach and able to sit there and look at that stuff every week, you get trained to be able to look at that stuff and be able to see stuff ahead as you’re growing your business and not looking in the rearview mirror going, man I wish I would have kept that going or wish I would have known about that six months ago because then I would have been able to adjust then to help us now. Now I’m sitting there going, hey I’m gonna make money to pay bills and we got to get some jobs sold. And I’m working in the rearview mirror trying to get stuff closed that we should have been working on three to four months ago. Now most of the clients I work with, I charge clients a flat rate of $1,700 a month plus a small percentage of growth. And the idea is hopefully I’m the cheapest employee that you have. You know, so look at it and you go, okay, hopefully I’m the least expensive person on the payroll, the least expensive line item. But over time, once we produce fruit, hopefully that small percentage of the growth makes it all worth it. You know, and so that’s the idea is to achieve that true win-win. And so the next, the third aspect of the business coaching I wanted to cover on today’s show is management. So you look at a great project like this, you got to do marketing, branding, true. Step two, you got to do sales, but three, you got to manage. And I think that most people who are self-employed feel sort of isolated and annoyed. I feel like most self-employed people feel isolated and annoyed. They feel like, am I the only one seeing the level of jackassery that is often allowed in the American workplace today? And I have to work with all my wonderful clients to teach best practice management systems. I think you do a fine job of that. That’s something that you, in my opinion, is one of your strengths. You do a very good job of communicating the expectations directly to the client and you manage those expectations. You tell the client, hey, Mr. Smith, hey, Ms. Smith, we’re going to have your pool remodel or your pool fix or your pool house fixed or your outdoor siding project, your outdoor landscaping. We’re going to have your retaining wall. We’re going to have whatever the project is. We’re going to have it done by this particular day. It’s going to cost this amount of money. And you do a very good job of managing that relationship with the client and then managing those employees by the behind the scenes. Can you talk to us about the importance of just mastering management techniques? Well, I don’t know if anybody’s ever a master. What one of the things I’ve learned, you know, and I’ve had clients over and over in my field sat there and go, man, when you said you were there, you were there. You were there every time you said you were going to be there and you did what you said you were going to do. And that, you know, number one, I like to be a man of my word. I mean, I like to be able to tell people when we’re going to be there. You know, I work in the outdoor industry. I mean, it rains. We’re in Oklahoma, so, you know, you’re going to have delays. But setting those expectations with the clients, number one, helps me for, you know, to be able to go, hey, it’s rain. I had just, I can’t get it. We’ve been delayed because of this. And setting those expectations up front makes for a happy end product with your clients. And just go through the process, say, hey, even when I sell the job, I’m like, hey, we’re the highest rated, most reviewed company in Tulsa right now, and here’s the reason why. But that also comes with, we’re really busy. We’re not going to be able to get to you tomorrow. And the thing is, the people that can get to you tomorrow are probably not going to give you the best product. And setting those expectations with the clients up front, letting them know, hey, we’re gonna be a little behind. We’re six weeks out, we’re eight weeks out, and letting that client know that, and then keeping them up to date. Then the client knows, hey, they just didn’t take my deposit, or they just didn’t take this and just disappeared. They know that, hey, we’re coming down, we’re there, we’re still there, we’re gonna get it done. So I think that’s one of the things that’s helping really to set that set with your clients. And it makes it important to them at the end because they know, I mean, a lot, some of these jobs are an investment for the, you know, their backyard. It’s a lot of money for them on some of these projects. And it’s just like, you know, buying a house, you want to know that you’re getting what you’re paying for and it’s going to be there when you expect it to be there. And we could share just hundreds of video testimonials or Google reviews. I’m just showing some examples here. But again, the final area I wanted to cover on today’s show, again, I’m just making sure we’re recapping, marketing and branding, that’s how you generate leads. Second step is sales, you convert ideal and likely buyers into sales. Three is management, you have to manage the expectations. And then the final step is accounting and what I would classify as merit-based pay. At the end of the day, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much you keep. I just don’t think that most people think about that when they’re growing a business. That’s becoming an increasingly part of our ongoing conversations, is making sure that you know, because A, you’re the kind of guy that quotes a customer a price and you hold yourself accountable to not changing your bid on the client. But that doesn’t mean that subcontractors or employees won’t try to change the game on you and all of a sudden drive up your expenses. Can you talk about that, that final step of just the accountings? I think a lot of entrepreneurs, when they reach out for a business coach or a consultant, they don’t think about the accounting. But I would argue, as we continue to grow outside Inc., the accounting aspect of your business is becoming a bigger part. I firmly agree. I just actually just came out of a meeting talking about accounting and bills and what’s coming in, fresh on my mind, you know, and as you grow your business, one of the things I think as you’re young, you’re just trying to get jobs done. You’re just trying to get whatever you can go. But as you grow, it becomes a huge part. It becomes, I think, more than what most people think it’s going to be. And getting, you know, keeping the money and keeping the accounting, it’s just like this last year, Clay, me and you had been talking about, you know, doing merit-based. Because I think once, if you give, if you pay people enough where they’re comfortable, they stay there. They don’t want to grow. You know, as your business grows, you want to grow. You want to give them more money. You know, most people want more money. I think everybody would, you know, not frown against getting some extra money, but as a business owner, you want your salesman, you want your guys out there in the field wanting to be able to make more money. And if you just keep them on a hourly basis, there’s no growth for them to perform better and to make more money. So this last year, I’ve switched my sales guys to 100% commission. I used to have them above base and I put them over to commission. And the amount of calls of clients looking for their bids has got cut down in over half. He’s selling more jobs by, I would say, 30% to 40%, maybe more than that, since we’ve been tracking it. And it’s maybe a huge, huge thing. Because the thing is, if he doesn’t sell, he doesn’t get paid any money. And so, especially when you find people that are eager to make more money, they’re going to sell more. You know, this is one thing I wanted to bring up and I’ll let you go here because I know you’re a busy guy here. For anybody other that doesn’t know this, you know, when I built my first company called DJConnection.com, after every event we did, I was obsessive about calling the bride after the wedding and asking them to leave us an objective review. Now, this is before Google was super relevant, so we had WeddingWire and TheKnot.com and those kind of things, or we would get video testimonials on an old-school video camera we had back in the day. We would archive them and at a certain point I remember I talked to a bride and she said to me, you have thousands of video testimonials and I said oh yeah absolutely and then now today people go to thrive timeshow.com they click on testimonials and I had a call I had the other just the other day with a wonderful man and he was saying to me I was going through your testimonials and I had to stop around like page 30 because I kept looking at the testimonials. I realized there is really no end in sight. I mean, I’m looking at this and there’s like years after years after years of video testimonials. And I said, well, yeah, because we document that. That’s a very important thing that we do. But I want to ask you this question for anybody out there that’s thinking about coming to one of our workshops or scheduling a free 13 point assessment with myself to go over how to grow their company. What would you say or maybe what kind of impact do you think that business coaching with our program has made on your business? It’s been huge. One of the things I love, the problem is a lot of times with business owners is they’re, I feel, especially with me, we come from, for my instance, I come from, I call it W2 employee status, working for somebody and said, hey, I’m going to go out here and start my own business. Well, I didn’t go to business school. Nobody’s told me the next steps. What, what I really need to focus on because, um, as you grow this business, I’m like, what is it there? You know, you can read a thousand books and what’s made it huge for me is to be able to come along, you know, have you come along beside me and something to go, Hey, you need to focus on this and this is why because when we get when we get down in what I call the trenches of the business owner you’re sitting there going man if you all you do is focus on that you can never focus on what you really need to do you can’t focus on your accounting and stuff like that and it’s been amazing it’s actually I don’t know how much it’s grown my company so far in the last two years but it is the peace of mind is unreal because I’m not looking at my numbers at the moment. But it has been huge. It’s just like I used to have to pay, I think we were paying in the neighborhood of $4,000 a month just for leads, just to get leads in now, two years ago. I mean, this time of the year, I remember some bills of $4,500 a month just to get leads that I was having to pay for. And that’s only get a lead and a contact to where now I’m paying you $1,700 a month. And I got 80 some leads last week alone and I paid you $1,700. And to me, that was huge for my industry. That was one huge thing that just blown me away. And I’ll say this too. You are a client that’s more private about your numbers. That just goes with your personality. Talk about some of my clients are a little bit more flashy. They love to talk about their sales and their sales. But I can say this, I was looking at year over year. So you take the month of May when we’re recording this and you look at this week last year. And last week you had eight leads. So last year, this week you had eight leads from what I can tell on the tracking sheet. And this week we had 89. So whatever that’s worth for anybody out there. And again, we have some of our clients that like to talk about gross sales, and Paul keeps it more private, and that’s totally fine. So I just encourage everybody out there, you can have a tenfold increase in your number of leads, your amount of activity, you can do it, but you gotta be a diligent doer. You can’t just be a hearer of these words. You have to implement what you’re learning. And Paul, I really appreciate you for making the Thrive Time Show World headquarters look incredible. Thank you for the maintenance you provide. Thank you for the work you provide. And again, it’s been awesome serving you. So again, thanks for your time today, sir. Hey, thank you, Clay. Have a great day, buddy. Take care, bye. All right, bye. I’m Glenn Shaw, owner of Shaw Homes in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Started the company in 1985. At that time, it was one employee doing everything, me. I met Aaron Antus in 2007. The top three things that Aaron did for Shaw Homes was he brought in processes that helped us be able to repeat over and over. He brought in unique hiring skills. He was able to find the right people for the right seat on the bus. And Aaron brought sales techniques that we weren’t familiar with up until that time. When Aaron came, we were selling about 80, 85 houses a year. And during the 16-year period, we sold sales, get up over 400. And before I met Aaron, the only sales manager we had was myself, and I was completely unable to perform that job. And so, Aaron brought major changes and great results with him. In the many years that I was building houses before Aaron, I was great at selling if somebody wanted to buy. But they had to be knocking on my door asking me to sell my house before I could actually make that sale. I had no sales techniques and no ability to generate sales. Aaron coming in as a natural salesperson just absolutely transformed that and made the sales experience better for the company. I’d sit in a model home over the weekend, and I had a salesperson or two, but I was actually out there all weekend working that. Since hiring Aaron, I was able to take my weekends off, even reduce my workload during the week. in 60, 70 hours a week to almost a normal workload. So I’ve been a member of the Builder20 program in the National Association of Home Builders for 25 years, 20 years. And during that time, I’ve seen a lot of sales managers with the other companies that have been involved. And in my opinion, Aaron is smarter and sharper than any sales manager of any builder that’s ever been in our group. Now, some markets, they don’t have to try to sell, they just sell themselves. But with the ability to sell and to train and hire, Aaron was better than any of those sales managers that were in my program. Well, I remember when I considered hiring Aaron many years ago, the thought of spending the extra money was a little scary. But in hindsight, it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. It freed my time, increased our sales, and at the end of the day, increased our profitability beyond my wildest expectations. Years ago, I was concerned that if I didn’t do whatever a customer asked me to do, it might be the last house I sold. And so over time, we were able to move away from unlimited customization to pre-designed options. The problem that we were having in those days is that the customer would tell us what they wanted, but they didn’t really know what they wanted. And we would deliver exactly what they told us to do, and they wouldn’t be happy with it. So, as we became more standardized, we give lots of options, but we don’t customize. And in the end, that allows us to sell more homes for better margins spending countless hours trying to customize in just every avenue of the sales process. We get weekly reports on sales, on profitability, on production and it provides all the manageable tools that I need to review the company from a 10,000 foot level. Alright Thrive Nation, on today’s show we’re going to focus on is how to grow a successful company. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to pull up a graphic that is the theory of how to grow a successful company, but vision without execution is hallucination. And so if you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, you can download a book that I have written called A Millionaire’s Guide, How to Become Sustainably Rich. You can download it for free at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, but you have to actually implement that which is in the book. And so on today’s show we’re joined by a very successful person in the home building business, a great friend of mine, a man by the name of Aaron Antus. Aaron Antus, welcome on to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m doing great, Clay. Thanks for having me on. Hey, so I’ve got to ask you this for the people out there that want to prove you’re not a hologram. First off, what’s the website for your company so people can verify that you are in fact a real business? You bet. It’s ShawHomes.com. S-H-A-W-H-O-M-E-S dot com. Shawhomes.com. I’m pulling up Shawhomes.com. That’s the website. Shawhomes.com. And when you and I met, before we met, you had been already very successful as a home builder. You turned your dream of being a home builder guy into reality. And so how many homes had you sold or what kind of sales had you done in your career as a home builder guy before you and I even met? Before we met, probably about $750 million in sales prior to meeting you. And then you did, the year we first started working together, what were the sales totals that year? We were at like $19 million. $19 million. And then when you ended 2022, obviously we’re in 2023, and so we’ll see how this year ends. But as far as ending 2022, how much sales did you do last year at the end of 2022? 2022 we were at like 84 million. Okay, so from 19 million to 84 million. 84 million. So you’re doing some things right here and we’re going to try to do is kind of demystify the plan here. Okay, so here we go. So establishing revenue goals. Yep. When you and I first started working together, we started off with a 13 point assessment. We went over your goals. I’m not going to ask you to share your goals on the air, but why is it important that you have goals? Well, I mean, goals are sort of your guideposts that, you know, you set something out there in front of you and you start chasing after it. And without that, you’re just kind of floundering in mediocrity. You don’t have any reason to get up in the morning and really get after it. And so, you know, I think goals are, you know, it’s, you can have lots of different types of goals. And we’ve talked about a lot of this. We’ve talked about, you know, having financial goals and having, you know, fitness goals and having friendship goals and just all these different areas. I know you’ve got the F6, you know. So that’s kind of something that, you know, we touched on very early on. You asked me like, is the goal, is one of your goals more income or is it more time? And so I said, well, really at this point it’s more income. And then later it became more time. So you know, it’s changed over the time I’ve known you since 2016, we’re going on seven years and the income went up considerably. So now it’s, you know, turned in the last couple of years towards more time. Now the break even numbers, again, I’m not asking you for the numbers on the show, but you guys have a lot of fixed costs. I mean, if you go to shawhomes.com, you’ve got framers, you have plumbers, you have tile people, you have so many skilled people, you have a full-time sales team, you have an admin staff, and if you don’t sell a house, you still have the service of the land, you still have all the overhead. Why is it important for every listener out there to know their break-even point, how many deals they need per month just to break even. Well, yeah, because you’re going backwards real quick, and it doesn’t take very long if you’re at the beginning of your businesses, it doesn’t take very long for you to be in a place where the creditors are knocking at your door, and you can’t pay your bills, and all of a sudden you’re going to lose all your… For us, all of our trades, all of our suppliers are going to start backing out. So you’ve got to know what that number is that lets you tread water so that, okay, this is the worst case scenario, everything above that, at least I’m into the profit zone. So you go out of business pretty quick. Most businesses don’t last more than just a few months if they get below that break-even number. Now, folks, again, these might seem like simple steps, but they’re all the linear steps you have to take to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And if you want to grow your company, this is how you do it. Box number three, though, is you have to know the hours you’re willing to work. Your incredible wife is here off camera for accountability, so at any point, she could yell like, amen, or boo. You guys are on the same page with the hours you’re willing to work. You guys, as a couple, I want to brag on both of you. You guys both committed to sacrificing time and energy and a lot of things to get to where you’re at in life. And then as you had your children, you raised them, you decided to devote time to raising said kids. And now that your kids are older, you’re devoting time to raising these kids. So it’s not like you advocated being a parent while also growing a company. You did both well. I’d love to get your thoughts on sitting down with your spouse, if you’re watching this today, or your significant other, and making sure you’re on the same page about how many hours per week you’re willing to work. Well, yeah, I mean, you don’t want to grow a business to, you know, make a whole bunch of money just so you can split it in half later. Oh, because that’s kind of what happens when you don’t work out those details ahead of time. And so my wife and I have been married 25 years. We’ve been together for four before that. And so, yeah, 20 sorry, 26. Did I just say 25? Just like I hate to do this to you. Your wife just turned 27 on Thursday, and what you said is 100% false. The unique value proposition here, now let’s talk about this. Whether it’s growing a home building company or a dog training business or a haircut chain or a carpet cleaning franchise or whatever business we’re involved in helping to grow, you have to sit down as a listener out there, as a business owner, and you’ve got to figure out what makes your company unique. Absolutely. So I want to ask you, what makes Shaw Homes unique in the marketplace with other home builders? Yeah, we have more furnished and decorated model homes than any other builder in the market. So, you know, a lot of times people, when they walk into a home and they’re trying to decide if they like the floor plan, the layout, whatever, they usually, most builders in our market have an empty house that they walk into. It’s just kind of echoes when you walk through it. There’s no furniture or anything. And we completely, as you can see in this little video here, we completely furnish and decorate it, make it beautiful. We are the most award-winning builder in the state of Oklahoma. We’ve won like five times as many awards as any other builder in the market. So definitely that is one of our big takeaways. Now I’m going to throw you under the bus real quick, and I don’t mean to do this super passively aggressively. It’ll just be more of a subtle passive aggressive. When I met you, you guys had all these awards, but no one knew. That’s true. It was like this weird, bizarre thing where you had all these awards. I remember talking to you, and I’m like, what makes you guys different? And you’re like, you know, we do a good job, and you’re going to be nice about it. You’re a good salesperson. But I said, well, I mean, tell me about the awards. And you’re like, well, we got this award, that award, this award. Like 45 minutes later, it’s like that award, this award, I need to shave now, this award, that award, I need to go brush my teeth, this award, that award, I want to go mow the lawn now, this award, that award, I’m thinking about retiring, this award, my kids are turning 18, I can see it, this award, you’re just going, and this award, and that award, and so we put those on the website and that helped, and the other thing you guys were, we needed to change was all these people were saying great things, but we didn’t have video reviews of them saying it on camera. Right. So it was like your online reputation didn’t match your real world reputation. It’s so much good momentum there and so many people love you guys. And now you guys have, would you say a hundred video reviews? Oh gosh, I would say more than that. We’ve got, yeah, we have a lot. Everyone can just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. I was scrolling. And this is actually all that’s on this page. If you go to our YouTube channel, we have way more than this. So again, and this is all the stuff. You’re going to grow a successful company, folks. Step one, you’ve got to figure out your revenue goals. Step two, you’ve got to figure out your break-even goals. Step three, sit down for an hour of power. Sit down with your spouse. Make sure that you guys are on the same page of your hours you’re willing to work. Step four, unique value proposition. Figure out what it is that makes you unique. And we have an in-depth guide that you can download for free at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire if you get stuck. Next box. You got to improve your branding, your website, your one sheet, in your case model home presentations, business cards, social media branding, everything that a customer sees needs to be first class. And I was talking to a guy named Ronnie Morales today. And it’s Morales brothers. I think you met him at a conference. He told me this and I’m not slamming Ronnie. Ronnie, if you’re listening, I’m not slamming you, this is the real thing. Ronnie said he’d listened to our show for seven consecutive years before ever reaching out. And now he’s reached out and he’s up 57% in about eight months. That’s awesome. And we’re gonna put his story on part two of today’s show because he’s in Texas and he’s seven years behind you. Yeah. But he’s doing a great job. What do you think that thing is where people have bad branding and we’re not aware of it? Someone hasn’t brought it to our attention? What causes bad branding? You know, the number one thing I hear business owners say is, well, you know, I don’t really need good branding because I sell everything by word of mouth. Oh yeah, baby. I’ve got such an incredible reputation. You do. Everybody just comes to me by word of mouth. And then it’s like, okay, yeah, but how much business did you do last year? Well, not very much. And, you know, I’m really unprofitable, but I’ve got great reputation out there and I get a lot of word of mouth. So when people switch over to starting to improve branding, I know you helped us a lot with that in just creating a lot better looking website, creating a, you know, we’ve got an office environment now that is when people walk into our model home, they are blown away. We truly wow our customers when they come to our model homes. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience in the state of Oklahoma. And the process of that, you know, just going through branding it so that it looks really top-notch and, you know, that includes everything from, you know, marketing to all of your senses and everything else. So it just really brought us to another level. And when the customer comes in and experiences us after having walked through other builders’ homes, they usually come in and go, you guys are just on a whole other level. It’s sights, sounds, smells, experiences, everything that your customer sees, they’re grading you on. And you might not know that they are even judging you because they’re not filling out the form. And I have a funny story to share with you that’s kind of sad. I was working with a fitness guy years ago, and I’m not gonna tell you what studies he’s in or what study he folks, I know you wanna know, but I’m not gonna tell you. And he filled out the form because his wife wanted him to schedule a 13 point assessment. He did not want to. He tells me, Clay, honestly, I’m just doing the call because my wife wants me on the phone. I got to, I don’t really don’t get leads from social media. I don’t get leads from marketing. I get all my leads word of mouth, like you were saying. And I said, well, let me just do this. Let’s just this first month working together. Let me get all the passwords for your Facebook, your Google, your YouTube. And I’m just, as the first month, we just with every single client, we optimize your YouTube, your Facebook, your Instagram, your Twitter, all that. We log on, this is a fitness guy. He was spending like 400 bucks a week, every week on ads. And he hadn’t known, he wasn’t aware that every time a lead came in, it got stuck in Facebook and went to an email address that he wasn’t checking. So think about this. That’s not good. And it’s like 15 to 20 leads a week for years this guy had. That’s not good. And he didn’t even, so I’m going, you’re spending, you know, 20 grand a year on ads that you’re not getting anything from. And are you aware that the phone number on your site rings to a phone that’s no longer real a real phone? And I’m serious, this was real. And then he had before and after photos where somebody had had the idea of let’s get before and after photos. You know, where you interview someone before they start working out. Yeah. But then they never completed the thought. You know what I’m saying? I do. Where it’s like they interview him about getting in shape. But then they never actually like aired the part where they’re in shape? Oh no. So it’s just sort of like an interview with people that are not in shape, and I’m like, and again, he’s a busy guy, busy entrepreneur, that kind of stuff is very common. It’s kind of laughable if it’s not your company. But okay, next box. You gotta determine your customer acquisition costs. How much does it cost you to get a customer? So Aaron, you guys run ads on Google, on Facebook, on retargeting ads, you have massive signage, there’s a lot of stuff you do. Why is it important to know how much it costs you at the end of the day to get an actual new buyer of a shawl? Well because if you want more of those, you know what it costs to go generate more of those. And it’s a cost where it’s like, okay, well, I’m down in sales this month or this quarter or whatever, and I need four more sales to make it a good quarter here before the end of the quarter. And it’s like, I know I can go put money into that and it’s gonna cost me X number of dollars per customer to get there. And so then it’s just a matter of, do I wanna spend that money to get to that point? So, for us, it’s a pretty high number cause it’s a big ticket item, but for some people it might be very small to get that each customer. But for us, you know, it’s, you gotta know what the number is because ultimately that goes into the price of your product and whatever you sell, you know, we’re doing homes. That is one of our line item costs in our homes. That’s a cost. Yeah. Now, if you go to any of the businesses that I’m involved in, you go to eitrlounge.com forward slash staff. I put in the password here. Once I put in the password, I have all of the documents needed to run the company. And they’re all saved. So the checklist for the manager, the opening checklist for the assistant manager, the bathroom cleaning checklist, everything needed to grow the company is all in one place. And therefore, the business, everybody who works there knows where to go to find those documents. This is the kind of stuff that fires me up and it makes other people crazy. So with the conferences we do, if we ever do a conference that’s out of town, I have a checklist of stuff I print out. I know it seems kind of crazy for people, but this is real. I print it out and it’s like, okay, socks. I’m gone for four days, I want to have 12 pairs of socks. Why? Because it could be hot. I don’t know. It could get wet. I don’t know. I have a list of deodorant and socks and shaving and I have a laptop and a backup laptop and I have patch cables and XLR cables and we bring three, you’ve seen all this stuff, but it’s multiple monitors, backup monitors. It’s backups for everything. When you guys build a Shaw home, you’re not moving off a guesswork. There’s blueprints, there’s plans, there’s systems, so houses don’t fall down. There’s somebody out here listening right now that doesn’t have systems in place. They don’t have checklists. They don’t have it. And so they have to think about everything all the time, because if not, they forget a step. What would you say is the importance of having taken the time to have built these systems now. It is the night and day difference between running around like your hair is on fire every day, constantly playing firefighter, or you hear people say, oh, I’m up to my armpits in alligators. It’s because you don’t have systems and processes. And every time at Shaw Homes, every time that we have a problem come up, we automatically go, okay, what step in our system did this fall apart in? And what’s broken in that step? And how can we fix it so it never happens again? So we go fix the process. You know, we address the problem for the customer, but then we go back after that and we go, how do we fix the process so we don’t repeat this problem? And the business owners that are running around with their hair on fire all the time, it’s because there’s no systems, no processes. Everything is urgent. Everything is hair on fire. Correct. And it is a chaos world that you live in. And if you’re going to build homes for a living and build a lot of them, you cannot live in that chaos world. Now this next box, I get excited about all these boxes. This is what I get excited about. This right here is what I care about. Okay. The next box is management and execution. You have people on your team and I’m just going to give some examples and I hope this benefits somebody out there listening. You have people on your team. It’s their responsibility every time that you do a new house, they go out there and they design or they get the blueprint on the website. They get the new design of the home because people want to see floor plans. So somebody’s job is to get those up there. Somebody gets photos of every house that you guys are building. Somebody gets videos of every house. Somebody puts them all up for sale, somebody answers the phone every day, somebody calls the leads every day, somebody cleans the bathroom every day, somebody builds the houses every day. Now this is what I find, and I’m sure none of our listeners can relate to this. Some of our listeners fire people and then nothing happens. So work with me on this. There’s listeners out there that I talk to every day because we do free 13-point assessments. So I talk to two or three people a day who go to ThriveTimeShow.com. They want to schedule a consultation. And the other day you heard me talking to Jordan. I said, Jordan, go ahead and keep setting those. He set an appointment with someone who’s definitely not a good fit. And you could tell he had a little question if that was okay. And I said, I would rather you set an appointment with somebody than not because I don’t know if he’s a good fit or not. But the idea though is I sit down, I was talking to a guy the other day and he was like, the reason why my team did not get Google reviews or videos reviews this week is because we fired a guy. And I go, cause I’m just asking him, where are we stuck? What’s your biggest limiting factor? I have a big process I go through in my evaluation. I said, who calls the leads? He’s like, well, normally I have a person that calls the leads, but we just fired her. And I mean this, I’m going, how long have you been in business? This guy’s been in business for over 10 years and he’s reaching out for help, good person. We’re trying to help him. I think it’s going to be a good fit. But so I said, so basically everybody follows the systems until they don’t work there anymore. And then no one does the systems. And you go back and forth vacillating from things being done to not being done. And one of my favorite things about working with you guys is that you’re honest people. What does that mean? You do your best to do what you say you’re going to do. And you hold yourself and the employees accountable. Absolutely. But what would happen if every week you if somebody wasn’t performing you remove them from the position and then the houses weren’t built for the week because something wasn’t going well or because maybe a salesperson wasn’t performing at the peak you let them go and the next thing you know what would happen if you manage your company that way? It would be a disaster. I mean I can’t not have I can’t just fire my superintendent without having somebody already ready to take over all of those responsibilities because I’ve got materials showing up at the job site today, tomorrow and the next day. I’ve got trades showing up who need some supervision, need to know what they’re supposed to be doing. If I fire that guy with no warning, somebody else has to come fill in that position. So for us, we try to never have that gap happen. And, you know, sometimes it’s like, you know that you’re going to need to fire somebody and you can see the writing on the wall. Right. But you want to get the next person up and ready to go before that happens. And you guys have a weekly meeting. So we talk a lot on this show, we’re from an employer perspective, but how frustrating would it be to be an A player employee and you’re working for a C player boss? You know, a boss that doesn’t have a staff meeting that’s not organized, that doesn’t pay people on time, that’s constantly emotional. I see that a lot. And so management is a learned skill. And thankfully, you know, when I first met with you, you’d already really mastered in my opinion, managing people. But this next box is where we I thought we needed some help was to build a system for constantly recruiting new people because certain people work for Shaw Homes for three years or four years and then they want to go move, they want to have a baby, they want to stay home, they want to get a new job. And even though you have a low turnover at Shaw, certain people get to their expiration date and it’s time for them to move on to something else. And because we didn’t have a process in place at Shaw at that time to consistently bring in a pipeline of new people, it made it difficult to do the management that was needed. Can you talk about the importance of implementing a human resources program for hiring, inspiring, training, and retaining good people? It’s huge. I mean, that was definitely an Achilles heel for us. And you helped us a lot with that. Putting in a, where every single week I’m seeing potential candidates that could come work for us, and they’re job shadowing, and seeing what it’s like to work in our company every single week. It does multiple things. It helps the people who work there to know, hey, there’s other people who desire to come work here. Here we go. And if I’m not doing my job, I might get replaced. So there’s a little bit of that. And then it’s also a thing of the people who are shadowing get to see the job being done by people who are happy doing their job. And it helps them to want to come be a part of Shaw Homes. I’ve got a very long list of people right now in every single position that would be excited to come work for us if I did all of a sudden find myself with an opening, you know, because occasionally people leave with no notice or whatever, you know, something happens, family emergency, whatever. Right. And you have that, oh, I need to replace somebody immediately, and the great thing about it is I have a whole bunch of people that I could plug into that position very quickly because every single week I am interviewing. Now the next box here is you got to do your accounting and in order to automate, in order to earn millions, you have to automate your accounting. What does that mean? You have to have a system in place for making sure you price your products and services correctly and that you pay yourself first, that you set aside a set amount of money to pay yourself and your staff. And all these things work together. And what I find is people ask me often, just not knowing, they come from a place of a good heart. They don’t know. They say to me, Clay, what is the most important step in growing Shaw Homes? I’ve heard Aaron on the show. He’s a great guy. Clay, I’ve heard PMHOKC on the show. Clay, I’ve seen OxyFresh on the show. What was the most important thing they did? And to me, that’s like asking a hiker, what was the most important step you took to get to the top of that mountain? Well, I was the one we took there an hour ago. I took a left step. No, it’s also, I was asking a baker, what’s the most important ingredient? Is it milk? Is it sugar? Is it eggs? Is it, you know, it’s like asking a farmer, what’s the most important thing, feeding the animals or watering them? What’s the key to your success? There’s just certain questions I understand people want to know, but all of this has to work together and nothing works unless you do. So I have three final questions for you. For anybody out there that’s thinking about scheduling a consultation, a free consultation with Thrivetimeshow.com and myself, obviously they’re stuck with me at the Fill Up the Form. I’m the only person that does 13-point assessments. I believe we, I’ve seen it since 2005, we help people decrease their costs, increase their time, freedom, and profits. What would you say is the benefit of scheduling that 13-point assessment? Well, actually, the 13-point assessment was very eye-opening for me. You asked me a lot of tough questions that I probably should have been asking myself and wasn’t. And so as we went through the questions, I was like, I think at every question you asked me, I was like, oh, that’s a good question. And I was like, hang on, let me think about that for a minute. So I find that it kind of helps open your eyes to, you know, hmm, these are some things that I know I have some areas of weakness. And then there were, I think, a couple of the questions where I was like, oh, I know the answer to this one. I got this one. No problem. But it helps you sort of identify. I walked away having identified areas of strength and areas of weakness, even though that really wasn’t the purpose of the phone call necessarily. It helped me to see that. And then I was like, hmm, I think I have a need in a couple of these areas and I didn’t really know what to do for my for myself I didn’t have the answers you know part three of today’s show part two we’re gonna show the Ronnie Morales story on part three we’re gonna do any a testimony with Myron and Myron just bought his first Lamborghini today and he’s super fired up and so Myron’s about six years down the path we’ve been working with you for about eight years or whereas Ronnie’s been with us for less than a year. And it’s at a certain point that we have to take action. Knowledge without application is meaningless. What would you say to somebody who’s like, you know, it’s $1,700 a month and I’m spending that much right now on random ads and that much money on random regrettable purchases at the gas station and a lot of iTunes I’m downloading. I’m spending $1,700 a month on various things. I don’t know if I can afford it because I’ve just bought another vehicle that I can’t afford, but I’m leasing it. You know, what would you say to anybody who’s kind of on that fence? I mean, I would say you need to do it. I mean, it has made a, it has been a game changer for us. I don’t know why you would sit there and think $1,700 a month is too much money to spend. Go find the money somewhere. Go empty out your sofa cushions, go sell the stuff that you have in your house that you’re not using, I mean, go get, you know, whatever you need to do to get to that place, you need to find that $1,700. And I will say this, that cost was very quickly replaced with the extra money we were making. And I’ve seen, I’ve actually seen, because I’ve been around you for a long time, I’ve seen a lot of your clients come in and right off the bat, they’re real nervous about, am I going to be able to, you know, because maybe they’re a smaller company or whatever, and they’re like, I’m wondering if I’m going to be able to handle this 1700 a month. And then I see them six months later and I’m like, how’s it going now? And they’re like, man, we’re just hitting record after record. I have referred several business owners. And they’re doing great. That are killing it. And that, you know, I’ll give one example. I won’t name the person, but I did send one of my very good friends to you who was on the verge of losing his business because he just wasn’t able, he had bought another one of the shops of what he does. He opened it and it was not profitable and it was gonna take under both of his shops and I sent him over to you. And I remember about three months later, I asked him, how’s it going? And he goes, man, we just had a record breaking month. This was amazing. And by the way, he said, first he just had another record breaking month, just so you know. Yeah, and I know right now, not only does he have way more income, but he has a lot more time freedom because he’s been working with you for many years now. And so that was, it changed his life, just like it changed my life. I would say, if you’re thinking about, you know, doing a 13 point assessment, stop thinking, dial the phone, pause this video, make the phone call, reach out to Clay, get it started right now. Now, final question I have is, I think people look at oxyfresh.com and they go in, there’s 500 locations now. Yeah. And they look at Elephant in the Room and they go, there’s five brick and mortar locations now. They look at Shaw Homes and they go, you know, these are big success stories. I don’t know that I can do it. What would you say to somebody out there that just feel like they might not have the, like all this stuff they’re going to learn is going to be over their head, too complicated. What would you say? I would say the information, the ideas are easy. It’s the application that is difficult for people. The ideas that you share, there’s nothing that’s like, oh my God, I don’t have a PhD, therefore I can’t do it. I feel like it’s all very, very simple stuff, but it is a lot of action to get traction. And you’ve got to get the action going. And I think if somebody has diligence and discipline or can learn diligence or discipline, they’re going to do extremely well. And it’s not about education, it’s about action. Now, Aaron, I’ve got one thing I want to say, and then we’ll kind of wrap up today’s show, okay, with a boom. Because boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum, and that’s what’s required to have success. You know, people watching this, they’re going, well, Aaron, he looks like a normal guy. Well, that’s true. They say, well, he sounds like a normal guy. He sounds like an all right guy. You know, that’s true. But the one thing you can’t quite picture on the show, and I want to just give that gift to you folks who are watching, is Aaron smells tremendous. It’s like a, if you had smell-o-vision, if you could just get up there and just smell that, it’s incredible. And it’s really, it’s his aroma that allows him to achieve massive success. So unless, if you’re out there and you’re going, what’s the secret sauce? It’s not a sauce, it’s more of just a smell. So I don’t know if you qualify to have the kind of success he has unless you smell like he smells it’s a really tremendous smell okay let’s do this thing with the boom here we go three two one boom well Thrive Nation we have an opportunity all the time we have JT do you know what time it is? um 410 it’s it’s Tebow time in Tulsa, Oklahoma baby Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive Business Growth Workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences in 2005 what year were you born? 1995. Dude I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old and a lot of people you know if I followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field and off the field the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now the big question is JT how does he do it? Hmm well they’re gonna have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. We’ve had the top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we’ve had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15 minute question and answer session. It’s interactive. It’s two days. It’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who’ve been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at thrivetimeshow.com. Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at thrivetimeshow.com you’re gonna see thousands of people just like you who’ve been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re gonna add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup. But I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com. Feeling it. Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the Business Conferences button, and you click on the Request Tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Jerusalem, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Jerusalem. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Jerusalem, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show in Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. Who? You. You’re going to come. Who? I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at ThriveTimeShow.com. And again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets, which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical. It’s actionable. And it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies and I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California, in the beautiful, sunny weather of LA, come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it, and it was damn exciting. 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. 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 edific chocolate Easter bunny, And they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system. When you do that research you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you’ve got to do is go to thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Keohl Society Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, 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 Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought, since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who’s my age, and I can say or cannot say. Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target and Direct TV. 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. I just want to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you thank you sir for changing my life. Not only that Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. 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. So anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not 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, King’s Point in New York, acta non verba, watch what a person does, not what they say.