Clay Clark | Entrepreneur | The 4 Step Entrepreneurial Success Cycle

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, sent here to help you learn how to start and grow a successful business. And today, as always, I always try to be joined inside the box that rocks with the godfather of Tulsa’s entrepreneurship scene. But today we have captured him. And so today we have the godfather of Tulsa entrepreneurship, Dr. Robert Zellner, is inside the box that rocks. Sir, welcome back. It’s good to be back. It’s good to be home. Here’s what we’re doing. We’re going to make each and every one of you a deal. You can’t refuse. Tell us the deal, Z. Tell us. You see, it’s lunchtime. You can go to Oklahoma Jones and get some of those burnt ends and baked beans and stuff like that. It’s like $8.48. It doesn’t feel ethical. It doesn’t feel ethical. It’s so ethical, so nice. You can look at that thing with the thing, you know. It’s so nice. It’s so nice. It’s so nice. You can look at that thing with the thing, you know. What do you want? At Oklahoma Jones. What do you want me to put in your lead pipe? And if you don’t have enough money, just swing by Regent Bank, and those boys there, they give you all the money you need. I’ll tell you what, you know, Z, over the weekend, Jason Bailey, our guest, he is the owner of DJConnection.com. Jason Bailey, how are you, sir? I’m doing incredible. You handed the baton off to this young man. He’s expanded it all over America, just making weddings awesome. We’re also joined inside the box that rocks with my incredible wife of 15 years, Mrs. Vanessa. How are you? I’m doing great. I’m looking forward to this show. Now over the weekend, Jason and I, we got together and we refined the Regent Bank theme song a little more. Oh no. That’s true. And this is audio. Now a lot of the Thrivers might go, this sounds very similar to another song. It’s all original. It’s almost like you guys have ripped it off. No, no, no, no. Jason, how many instruments can you play? Like nine or 10. What all instruments can you play? Well, not at the same time. Let’s see here. The typical ones, the drums, the bass, the guitar. But I also play the didgeridoo. Didgeridoo. I played that a few years ago. It’s a big demand for that. Yeah, it’s a big demand. What about spoons? Yeah, have you ever? Yeah, I mean, I don’t like to play them in public. Well, I mean, yeah. Can you play the guitar? Yeah. So you can play the guitar, you can play the keys, and the drums. And for those of you who aren’t familiar with audio and how you do audio recording, Jason plays all the instruments, he puts them all on his different tracks. And so we recorded this over the weekend and it really, it’s original, it’s exclusive. Here we go, yeah. It’s the Regent Bank song. Here we go. Can you sing it with us? Here we go. At Regent Bank, Regent Bank, Regent Bank. Oh yeah, one more time. Region Bank, Region Bank. Yeah, the thing is, I mean, it felt, when Jason and I did it, it felt like you were on the verge of something powerful. It was, it was like, I’d almost heard this before, but it was all original for what we did. That’s right, and we’re all about keeping it original here. Well, that’s a busy weekend, boys. That’s well done. Yeah, well done. You know what it feels like today? It feels like we just have a party in the box. We do have a party in the box. I mean, I’ve got two DJs and some eye candy in between. You guys got like a DJ eye candy thing going on here. I got two DJs and Vanessa right in between you two guys. Get to Facebook Live, and a party’s probably going to break out in here today. You know what else has been going on? It’s great this week here before we get into today’s training, today’s episode here. I have my perfect pen with me. I have a perfect pen. If you’re on Facebook Live, you can see it as the perfect pen. Nothing makes me feel better than when I have that perfect precision pen with me. The whole deal, it’s really incredible. Now today we’re talking about the four-step entrepreneurial success cycle. You see, as an entrepreneur, a lot of people out there, they want to start a successful business, but they’re not willing to push through the process. So they want to have a successful business, which by the way, takes a few years, and they want to have that overnight, which doesn’t happen. And so then they Google, Google. They go, well, how long did it take Google to be successful? Well, in 1994, they started, and in 99, they made a profit. Or you go, well, yeah, what about Uber, though? Well, what about Facebook? And you keep sliding, you’re like, oh, that’s not fun. It takes a while. And so we’ve got a guy here, Jason Bailey in the booth, who purchased DJ Connection from my wife and I. And he’s now expanded it all over the planet. And we have Dr. Zellner here, who’s expanding his businesses. And we have my incredible wife here, who’s been a part of the process of starting and growing businesses. And so it is an exciting time. We’re talking about the four steps. Step number one is you have to define. You have to define what it is that you want. Z, I’m gonna start with you. Why do you have to, as an entrepreneur, begin with the end in mind and really think about, okay, where do I want this business to be five years from now, even though you really have to make a game plan for today? Why do you have to think about the five-year plan from day one? Well, I’ll tell you what, all the plans that you write out and that you do out, I can tell you this, when I graduated from optometry school, every plan that every one of my classmates were going to do within a year they had changed. What? And you say to yourself, well, if you’re going to change it, why even make a plan? Why even get a roadmap if you know you’re not going to end up in Phoenix? Why do a roadmap to Phoenix? That’s why I never actually take a shower because it’s like the next morning. It’s like you just got to do it all over again. I never make my bed because I think I’m just going to get in at the next station. People are dumb out there taking showers every day. Except driving to Phoenix by the way. The thing about it is you go, it’s okay because we’re going to walk you through the process of once you make your definition, once you define where you’re going, you get a business plan, you say this is where I want to be. Trust me, I’m going to give you the shortcut. You’re not going to be there. What? I know. Is that mean? It’s a very negative vibe. No, because things happen. Things change. You manipulate it. You change it a little bit. You say, well, you know what? That wasn’t as good idea. New technology comes out. New rules come up for your profession. I mean, there’s all kinds of things. Are there any rules for DJs? Don’t play the song twice, I think is the only thing. Since Trump has been elected, I basically have just realized the whole thing has changed and now I just have to read, you know, executive orders every couple minutes. There’s a new thing. I mean, next thing you know, it’s, you know, it could be, I’m kind of joking about it, but seriously, different presidents will come in and change rules and all of a sudden, as an optometrist, there’s new medical rules you have to adhere to, new ways you can do things. Absolutely. Absolutely. The field’s changing. Vanessa, you talk about defining where you want to be as an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur’s family. Talk to us about that. Well, it’s so great, but it also took me back to, you know, we did this early on. It was probably from a book that you read or a mentor that you talked to. And I remember, just like Z said, it cracks me up. It changed so much. You know, the goal back in the day was, you know, revolutionary for us. We are going to have six DJ systems and that was the end all be all. And it just like you said… By March 31st of 2011. Yeah, and as we started to go along that route, it changed along the way. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. Bailey, he’s kind of like the czar of wedding DJs. So if you’re listening right now and you’re looking for a DJ for your wedding, you’ve probably already booked somebody. It’s okay to tell them you’re canceling and you’re going to use DJ Connection. Totally fine. They’re the most humble, they’re the best, he’s the owner of DJ Connection. Jason, talk to us about, in your mind, why is it so important as a business owner to define the end that you’re trying to get to? So I think there’s two reasons. Number one is I don’t think you want to build something that you hate. If you don’t have an end all game, it’s going to become this big monster that’s going to just take over. Somehow that’s true. That’s right. That’s exactly right. And so you get three or four years down the road and you’re like, what have I built? This is not what I wanted from the beginning. So if you set that goal, and then the second thing it does is that if you have employees, it gives them a vision of where the company is going so everybody can get behind you kind of in one on one page now if you’re if somebody’s listening right now Z and there and They’re going you know they’re thinking to themselves. They’re going look. I I want to take the time to Make out a schedule. I want to do that. I want to make out an ideal game plan I want to go ahead and make that marketing calendar or write down my vision for my company I wanted to be a strategic planner sure sure, but you don’t understand I get so many emails so many text messages so many Facebook updates. I’ve got a guy who’s writing some bad comments on LinkedIn right now. I can’t possibly stop because I have developed this thing called monkey brain where I just can’t stop responding to all the inputs, all the data points there. What advice would you have for the entrepreneur who feels overwhelmed and just doesn’t feel like they can ever get on top of it? Well, I tell you what, we do at our in-person workshops, we have dedicated a significant portion of the time to teaching you how to do time management That’s what’s really all about. I mean, it’s your time. It’s your day. It’s your hours Are you gonna let somebody else tell you what to do as an entrepreneur? You’re supposed to be telling yourself what to do during that time and so getting control of that putting in stops and putting in Controls on that is very important. So that’s one of the things we’re very proud to teach you. We teach you that on thrive15.com. We actually incorporated Lee Cockrell’s system into it. Who’s Lee Cockrell? Well, he just managed a little thing called Walt Disney World. What’s that? I’ve never heard of that. It’s like a big theme park. You might recognize Mickey Mouse as one of those. But he- Nope, never heard of it. 40,000 employees that he managed on a day-to-day basis. And how did he do it? Well, he did it because of time management. And so, yeah, it’s something you’ve got to get your head wrapped around. We hear it all the time from entrepreneurs, I don’t have the time. I would do that, but I don’t have time to get that done. So time management is very important. Now I want to kind of break this down, because I know a lot of people feel overwhelmed with their time. So I want to ask you, Z, and I want to ask you, Jason, and I also want to get everything done in my day. I don’t have time to be proactive about my schedule. Z, what are some things that you do on a daily basis as it relates to managing your time that you think probably, you know, most people probably don’t do that. It’s a move that you do. It’s a unique move to you. What is a move that you do that a lot of people aren’t doing? Well every morning I spend, I’m very purposeful in spending some time without my phone on, with disconnected from the world if you will and I gather my thoughts I’m mapping out my day I’m being purposeful on what I need to get done for that day I’m reviewing it and so I kind of have what I would call a it’s a kind of a quiet time for me in the morning just kind of reset everything and make sure I’m focused for the day and what I need to do for that day that’s one thing’s one of the little moves I do in the morning. Now I don’t think it’s weird at all your quiet time the first time I walked in, and I’m like, Z, and you’re going to the dance dance class. And it was weird because you were standing on your head, and I was trying to figure out, so I was trying to figure out, should I also get on my head so you could see me properly? So I stand on my head, and I’m like, Z. And then I realized that you didn’t want to be reached at that time. No, but seriously, where do you do your quiet time? Where is this? Are you in the bath? Are you in the river? Are you by a tree? Are you in a tree? Well, what I do is I drive until I find a rainbow and then I park and I just I sit there in the in the glow of the rainbow and that’s what I use. And some days it’s tougher to find a rainbow than others. You’re skittles while you’re there. Yeah well sometimes. I’m really kind of. I really think we need to talk about the best quiet time we’ve ever witnessed was when we went to go interview Johnny G. Oh my gosh Johnny G. This guy he’s the inventor of the spin class movement. And so a lot of the video guys, we’re out there in Santa Barbara, we show up at this guy’s house and he says, he doesn’t refer to it as a house, it’s his dojo. Well, and it was Dan McKenna, me and I think another video guy, and we were going to swing by and pick up Clay in a little bit. So we’re alone and we drive into what looks like this rainforest compound. And we open the car door and there’s this, kind of like the music Clay was just playing, surrounding us. This music. I’m not exaggerating. This guy bought land that was just a beat up house in Santa Barbara and he had a 20 year vision. So he planted bamboo around the perimeter for about a two mile, or about a two acre area and then inside the bamboo he plants palm trees and inside that he makes a path and he has like six or seven dojos and it plays music that’s like, and so the guys are talking and they’re like, oh man, this guy’s going to be fun to meet and fun to talk to. And then we look up. And we look up, and he’s in like a yoga position. All in white. All in white, like in these robes. Like he’s Spock. You know, where was the Star Trek where they found Spock, and Spock’s hanging out in robes and stuff on his planet? Jason, did you see this? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And the guys are like, should we engage in a conversation with him? Do we not? And say just let him be. We got back in the car. We got back in the car and we’re like, we’re imposing. He’s prepared to attack at any time. But he listens to these meta waves every morning. So when you, not kidding, on his property it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And that’s what he does every day. He spends like an hour and a half planning out his schedule. Well, that sounds, I want to go hang out with this guy. Number two, when we get back, I’m going to tell you the most important reason why you have to defy. Oh, okay. Okay. The little secret sauce. The secret sauce. All right, well I’m going to get some Oklahoma Joes and I’ll be back here in a few minutes, my friend. Thrivetimeshow.com. All right, welcome back to the Thrive Show, the Thrive Time Show. Easy for me to say, the Thrive Time Show, Business School without the BS. And yes, my name is Clay Clark. I’m on the show with you. And as always, I like to bring my friends inside the box that rocks. And so today, we have the owner of DJ Connection, Jason Bailey. We have my incredible wife of 15 years, Mrs. Vanessa Clark. And we have the man, the myth, the legend. Really there’s Yoda, but then you upgrade and there’s Broda. We have Tulsa’s Broda. It’s Dr. Robert Zellner. Sir, how are you? I’m always, you know, just kind of standing back going, what’s he going to say today? What’s he going to say this time? When we come out of a commercial break, it’s like, what’s he going to do? And since all the fines keep coming, I’ve had to really tone it down. Some of the descriptions I had early on. You appreciate that, by the way. Yeah, I know. But seriously, Thrivers, we are talking today about something I could not be more passionate about. It is the process of entrepreneurship. So many entrepreneurs think it’s going to be an event. I’m going to get this, I’m going to get that, I’m going to market it, boom, I’m rich. No, it’s always a process. And it’s like you’re beveling it. So first you build it, then you kind of bevel it, and you keep adjusting it until you build this business that’s successful. But usually an overnight success is on the other end of a five to ten year investment into something. And so it takes a while. We were talking about how you have to start by beginning with the end in mind, and specifically defining what you want your future to be like. And so, Z, you had a point on that that you wanted to get back to. Yeah, I think we talked about the reasons why, we talked about that a little bit, but the most important reason why I feel like you have to be very purposeful in your defining where you want to go, what you want to be when you grow up, your business that is. And that is for money. Money? Here’s the deal. You need to have some of your own skin in the game. You’ve got to have some of your own cash in the game. But a lot of you out there, your vision is bigger than what you just have in your bank roll. So you want to either, one, go to a bank. We would humbly suggest Regent Bank. Very business. When you want your money, you’ve got to go to Regent Bank. Regent Bank. Regent Bank. Sorry, Jason’s been teaching me. It’s an unbelievable how similar it’s… I can’t quite place… No, there’s not a song. But when he was performing and he had a ruffled shirt on, and I had these heeled, like high-heeled platform shoes. Were they purple? Yeah, they were purple, and for some reason I just was going, what is… Was it raining? Yeah, it was raining, and it was almost like there was a purple… like the way that the light was shining, it was like a purple rain and I’m going, man, this song could be the king of all songs we’ve ever written and Jason goes, no, it could be the, and then we couldn’t think of what the next part he was going to say. We just. Under a king. What’s this one? A king? Like a court jester. Above that. Not so much here, but here. Okay, so you want to go to a bank, you want to raise capital, they’re going to want to see your business plan, they’re going to want to see your definition, they’re going to want to see your defined, number one. Yeah. All right? And you say, well, I don’t know how to do that. You’re in luck. We teach you how to do that on thrive15.com. What’s that? What is it? It’s the world’s best business school without the BS. It’s called thrive15.com, and we’ve done all the hard work. We’ve done the heavy lifting for you. We’ve done the heavy lifting, and specifically this morning, we had a lady who reached out to me, and I’m going on my Facebook. She’s like, why are you on Facebook? I thought you said don’t get on Facebook. I’m reading you a testimonial. Calm down. Don’t stop sending me emails about hypocrisy. I’m getting into it. Let me pull this up. This is from a Thriver this morning. It came in eight hours ago. She says, congratulations on the Patriots’ victory over the weekend. Tom Brady has really cemented his status. And we can go on and on about the pages of Tom Brady. But she says, I also wanted to thank you for the difference that Thrive 15 has made in my career, which has experienced some significant changes since I was in Tulsa last December for a workshop. By the way, go to Thrivetimeshow.com to learn about the two-day workshops. She says, my company, not my side business, had a change in leadership and some external challenges that gave me the opportunity to step up as a leader and manager, and I would not have been able to do so without Thrive 15, especially the leadership, team building, and time management sessions. Ah, there it is. Oh, this just in from Kathy. Kathy writes this. Kathy, thank you for sharing that with us, Kathy. You know, but you may want to go to a financial institution and get the money, so they’re going to want to see your defined. You may want to go to a family member. That’s a thing. And they’re going to, you can’t just sit down and say, hey, bro, I’ve got this great idea, bro. And I’m like, I just need some money, bro. They’re going to want probably just a little bit more than that. You’re going to have to write a business plan. And at the workshop, we will get into the specifics of how you do that. And we also have downloadables for all the members of the thrive15.com community. If you’re a member, you have access to it. It is the actual pitch deck. We have over 220 downloadables available for you to help you. Very specific, very detailed, not vague. But Jason, I wanted to get your take on this, defining. Like how do you define, if I’m an entrepreneur listening and I’m going, man, my life is not going the way I wanted it to go, what advice would you have? What are you doing differently than the average person, you think? Well, I would say you have to, it’s really hard for people when they have no plan and you can see about two days out. So I would say, I’d sit down and really put some time in on trying to figure out five years out where you want to be, where you want your business to be. And maybe you don’t have a business, you would just plan, hey, this is what I want. I remember when I first started with you, you were like, you’ve got to write a five-year goal. I’m like, I will not write a five-year goal. You’re like, you’ve got to do it. I will not. And we kept on, and finally you threatened me. I don’t know if it was physically or financially, but probably both. But you’re like, you write a five-year goal, or I’m going to do all these things. Why is it that I always have to threaten people? What is that deal? I don’t know. So mean. It’s just one of your superpowers. But I remember once I wrote that five-year goal, things just kind of started happening because my mind was focused on the thing that I was driving towards. So that’s what I’d say. In the business, you want to define it so everybody’s on the same page. You’re driving towards that thing. I want to pile on with what you said, but I have a really, really just, it’s going to get negative and dark and see if you can just kind of pull us back up and just sort of keep us out of the gutter here. I’m going to do my best. Okay, so we’ll read Lee Cockerell’s notable quotables, and I’m going to break them down fast style here for you. So here we go. Lee says this. The guy used to manage Walt Disney World. He says, one of the main reasons people don’t improve is that they are not honest with themselves. That might not be fun, but maybe you just realize, hey, listen, I am not doing what I want to do with my life. And so you just sort of put that off, and then eventually you go, crap, I’m 45. So it’s really important that you are honest with yourself. Right, Zim? Is that too mean? No, no, you have to be because the elephant in the room is everybody else knows. Yeah. So, am I being mean? They all know, you know, it’s time for you to know. Well, I think that comes back to where you just said you need to be open to re-evaluating your plan. Yes, this is the plan you started off with, but like we realized along the road, wow, this really isn’t going to get us where we thought we wanted to go. We still want to go to this destination, but we need to make a few maneuvers to get there. Now here’s the next part. It gets more intense. Here we go. Lee says this, with self-discipline, almost anything can be achieved in every aspect of life. Somebody is listening right now and you’re just like, I’m not a morning person. I don’t do well with writing. I don’t like to sit down and think. I don’t do well with sales. I don’t do well with management. I just don’t do well with whatever that story is and I’m telling you what as long as you’re loyal to that dysfunctional story You’re just gonna stay where you’re at right Z. Am I missing something here? No, you’re absolutely correct I mean people just it’s almost that becomes a prophetic word in the sense that they just they speak that over themselves I mean one thing about writing down your define for five years. It allows you to let the people close to you Maybe a mentor or someone that you trust safe people to hold you accountable to say well What do you what are you doing that for because? That’s not going to get you to where you need to go and that’s one thing people don’t want to do they want to you Know it’s not a commitment You can change things But what it does is it allows you to kind when you just like Jason said when you write it down There’s just something about that now the next notable quotable from Lee is surround yourself with great people now That’s the thing where it sounds super mean, but I’m just telling you this I don’t like being around most people because they have these turtle problems. When we get back, I’m going to talk about this turtle problem thing. But there are giraffe problems and turtle problems. And TD Jakes discusses this. But basically— You don’t like turtles? No, you just want to make sure you’re not spending your day dealing with dumb things over and over and over that are usually a result of surrounding yourself with people who are choosing to be dumb all the time. Stay tuned, Thrive Time Show. Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. Inside the box that rocks today, we have a guy on the show today, and Jason Bailey, the owner of DJ Connection, who actually owns something that many, many of you have wanted to own since the 80s. Oh yes, he has… A DeLorean. That’s true. I do. So cool. And we’re talking about how you have to make your big goals, if you want to turn them into reality, specifically you have to sit down, step number one of the entrepreneurship cycle is you have to define what you want. Jason, when did you put it on paper that you will own that DeLorean? So we talked earlier about all the threatening things that happened to me. Write down your five-year goals. There are many. That’s right. So one of my five-year goals when I was 25, I was like, all right, you know what? Screw you, Clay. I’m going to write down some crazy stuff. So I wrote down, I’m going to own a DeLorean by the time I’m 30, and I want to be a millionaire by the time I’m 30. Those are the two big ones. I was like, yeah, right, let’s see if these happen. Well, when I was 29, I bought a DeLorean. Oh, yeah. There it is. Now, here’s the deal, Thrivers. Here’s the deal. Here’s the situation. We talked about it before the break. You have to define what you want your life to be like. And then Lee Conqueroll is saying, this is a guy who managed Walt Disney World, he says you have to surround yourself with great people. And I just said something that I know irritates probably 95% of you. I said I don’t like being around most people, which sounds like, do you not like any humans? I’m in love with you, but work with me. TD Jakes explains this story. He says, as a giraffe, you see things from a certain perspective. You see the sky, you see the trees. That’s your reality because that’s where you are at in life at that point. He says, but a turtle also sees the same reality. They see their reality, but they’re on the ground. They see bugs, insects, giraffe poop. And so back in the day with the DJ business, when Jace and I were working together over there, this is how a typical Monday morning would be until I decided to fire the idiots. This is how it would go. I’m going back in time. Here we go. Jason will role play. Okay. Yeah. It sounds great. I’m changing the names so that we protect the identity. Okay. Yeah. The meeting starts at eight o’clock on Monday. Right. So it’s like, well, it’s eight, eight, oh three. Jason, do you know where it’s me and you? Where’s the other 12 people? Do you know where Bobby is? I don’t know where Bobby text in last night. Why don’t we wait till like 812 okay yeah now say 12 Jason you know where the guys are one of them is downstairs bro I was so dude bro sorry bro man the traffic was bad bro and I’m what’s up guys don’t you just live a half a mile away it’s fine it’s fine did you sleep in that shirt bro bro I did it was epic epic waiting last night man. I’ll tell you what great stories. I’ll tell you bro. I’ll say 30 Jason Hey, it’s a Bobby’s here. You’re here. I’m here right can you pick up the phone and text a Guy his name is rhymes with never nervous. Can you text that guy’s the or he yeah? I’ll text him and see what’s going on. He’s not responding back. You got a text from him. Okay, okay? Okay, it looks like he’s he just woke up and it looks like you just go ahead and go on without him he said he’ll be and he just get the cliffs you just need me to go drive to watch the same house and go wake him up. Yeah Vanessa can you go pick that person up at his house? I usually do. We’re not really getting started yet. I’m gonna go back downstairs bro. He’s setting the dream. 905. So Jason you want to get that meeting started? Well everybody just left her quick trip so I guess we can wait. This is what would happen every Monday. And so here’s the deal, I’m not exaggerating, my wife would come back and she would go, the guy who does our sales, I walked in and there’s a half clothed Asian girl there and I’m not really sure what that was. Because I’ve been sent to his house to go pick him up and wake him up because typically you need to meet him physically. We had to knock on the door, wake him up. And then we had another guy who would constantly talk about how he got in a fight, he had like a black eye or some kind of wound, some sort of injury. We had people who were like, bro, my car got impounded. Could you help me get out? This is how we would start every Monday because I did not ever want to put my quality of life first. On the infamous December eve of whatever year it was, 2006 I think it was. It was scary. It was a scary day. I basically fired everybody all at one time. I called my wife. I’m like, I don’t know what’s happening, but I think I’m going to get fired. I’m not for sure. So this is what Lee Cockrell says. He says, the quality of your life is directly impacted by who you choose to spend your time with. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to the Thrive Time Show. And so all I’m saying is I’m not judging the human race and saying, oh, you don’t qualify to hang out with me. You probably wouldn’t even like me. But the thing is, is that I was at a point in my life when I worked, you know, my first job, my very, very first job I had at the Norseman, I was a moron. I was choosing to be an idiot. And I guarantee if I came to work for Dr. Z and he put up with me, you would absolutely hate it. But now I’ve changed as a person over time. But if somebody hadn’t fired me and made me self-aware of like, bro, you can’t be perpetually late, I would still do that. So I want to ask you, if somebody is listening right now and they’re listening and they’re going, oh no, I have idiots in my office, what advice would you have for these people? Before I give the advice, though, I would like to point out that almost on every occasion when Clay talks about the idiot positions that he did back in the day, he tries to make it right. Now, I’ve got a question for you. When you were at Target and you pounded all those soft pretzels. Have you ever gone back in and said, calculate how much you owe them for back pretzel tax and make that right? Well, let me explain to you the horrible justification that was going on in my mind at that time. My boss, he basically, we’d always have meetings that were supposed to start at 9-ish. And he would not get going until like 9.30. Now, Vanessa worked there at the time. It was during the seasonal thing. And so Vanessa’s doing her job right. She’s over there in the Tupperware area. I’m over at Electronics. The meetings will start at 9. 940 he just gets there and he always has vague orders for the day. Guys, let’s make sure we treat our guests like they’re special or something. And there would be three of us in the department. There’s three people. And one of them is definitely always late and never does their job. And he would go, guys, somebody here is not pulling their weight. I’m tired of it! I’m tired of it! And there’s only three of us! It’s so beautiful. We know who it is. You’re eating a pretzel. So eventually I realized there’s no consequences no matter what we do here. So I figured I’m going to eat as much of the food as possible to see what he’ll do. Because I realized… and the other move I did is back in the day on the phones, there’s a phone where you could pick it up and go, attention customers, we have someone who’s lost their wallet. That was a move. But if you hit it a certain way, they couldn’t tell where it broadcasts from. It wasn’t star 67, but something kind of like that for the intercom. And I somehow found that out, so my move was I would get on there and go, attention on target customers. We’ve got a man. We’ve got a man. There’s a man right over there, right there. Yep, right there. There. Yep. Okay. Oh, no, just right over there. Oh, there he is. And then I would do that kind of thing, just, there he is. Oh, there, there. Don’t move, sir. Don’t, sir. And then I would hang up, and they wouldn’t know who said it. Clay, did you do that? I’m like, really, that’s kind of funny, but I have no part of the… That was funny, but I have no part. So I kept just announcing things like, folks, if you have a vehicle, it’s a four-door vehicle, it’s out front, we have a concern. And just that stuff. And it was just like, I thought it was hilarious, and I knew he wouldn’t fire me. So over time, he’d be like, guys, we have somebody who’s eating the pretzels, who is making announcements, and who is… It could be the same guy, we’re not sure. Yeah, and I’m like, this guy’s the weakest manager in the world. There’s like the substitute teacher move. You just run over those people. Zero power. So anyway, I am sorry, Greg, that I did that. But I gotta say, it was very funny, and we’ll share that memory forever. Is this the official public apology? This is the official public apology. Is any fiscal reimbursement going to happen now? Yeah, it’s probably about $18,000 of pretzels that’s owed to the guy. I mean, I was pounding them pretty heavily at that time. Wow, plus interest. Yeah, I mean, back in the day, they were like four for a dollar. Now they’re like, you know, four dollars a piece. I mean, it’s just, it’s end times if you try to pay that guy back. Before we get on the pretzel talk with Target, you had asked me a profound question and that is when you find yourself with a bunch of these idiots working for you or at least some idiots working for you, or at least one that’s an idiot working for you, what do you do about it? And when we come back from the break, I’m going to break it down like fractions and you’re going to know, you’re going to know beyond a shadow of a doubt what to do. Bro, I’m going to get out that linoleum, that boom box, I’m going to just throw that down. Come on now. I’m getting ready to break it down here. I got the old Converse shoes on, splash painted denim jacket. Party time in the box. Unbelievable. Stay tuned. Thrive Time Show. Break it down. All right. Tulsa, T-Town, Green Country are the good people out there in Tennessee. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show. On your radio, we are talking today about how to make your wallet grow, how to build a successful business, and specifically, we’re talking about the four-step entrepreneurial success cycle. And step number one is you have to define what you want your life and your business to look like. And unfortunately, if you don’t do that and you find yourself having drifted to a place where you now are surrounded by people who work with you, teammates who are not performing and who drive you crazy or who aren’t the right fit, Z, what do you do? How do you do it? Well, sometimes you’re tempted to just wake up one day like you did on Christmas Eve and fire everybody. And then all of a sudden you realize, wait a second, I gotta go DJ 32 weddings this weekend. I did it real quick. I did it on New Year’s Eve after their shows. That’s right. They came back in. So I had a plan. I’m still confused because somehow we did get rid of them because I ended up having to DJ two shows. That was early on. That was early on in my DJ grasshopper career. For those two shows out there, you’re welcome. That’s right. You’re welcome. It was awesome. Best shows ever. So what you do is in your mind, you fire them, and then you hire somebody, and then on your schedule, on your pace, at your convenience, you then let them know that they are no longer needed there. And there is a magic phrase I use that saves hours of aggravation and hours of debate. But I want to talk to everybody who’s going to be fired about how they feel about how I feel and how they feel and whether we did it right and whether they did it wrong and what they feel about that. And how bad all the other employees are and why are they getting to do what they do and they’ve got to be let go now. I want to have all those conversations. Oh yeah, that drama, trauma conversation. Yeah, I want all those. Well then you will not follow this advice I’m getting ready to give. That’s good, I’ll just tune out for a minute. He’s got Oklahoma Joe’s baked beans here. Maybe you can find a soft pretzel over there at the bar. They’re all out. They’re somewhat hateable. You get out of the intercom system and make some random announcements. Over there, folks, we have a beautiful man on the microphone over there, the far left. Back to you. OK, so what you say is this when you’re ready and the time is right, because I promise you this, they will quit you and leave you when the time is right for them. So you do it when the time is right for you. You’re the business owner. Remember, you come first. That’s a whole other show. We’ll get into that another day. I’m ready. Just give it to me. I’m ready. You look at them and you say, things just aren’t working out. You’re fired. Leave. But I don’t want to have, I think I can change. Things just aren’t working out. I got the whole Michael Jackson to see, you know, I can make the change. You know, I got the whole man in the mirror, you know. Oh, you use Michael Jackson. Now I got to take the bait. Don’t take the bait because you’re going to want to know why. And then all of a sudden you’re telling them why, and now you’re debating it, and it wasn’t that bad, and they didn’t do that. And what are you talking about? And somehow they weasel into another chance then. Oh, yeah. And pretty soon you’ve got all the people you fired who are still working there. And you’re like, what did I do? What’s going on? And if you don’t do Dr. Z’s move, we have audio of what’s going to happen to your life if you don’t buy these people’s yeah this is exactly this is live audio verified from an office in Tulsa where people weren’t fired yourselves hey I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna get the world by the tail and wrap it around and pull it down and put it in my pocket well I’m here to tell you that you’re probably gonna find out as you go out there that you’re not going to amount to jack spots! That was pretty intense audio there. That was pretty intense audio, yeah. I guess I should do the move. Okay, now the next move, the next step is you have to act. So once you’ve defined what you want your life to be, you’ve got to get to a point where you actually act. And I think that part is tough for people because you don’t know what I’m about to tell you. So I’m going to give this notable quotable to you. This is from Eric Reese. He is the founder of, he actually wrote this book called The Lean Startup. He used to be an advisor for Kleiner Perkins. Who’s Kleiner Perkins? They funded Square, Uber, Google, and this is his notable quotable. He says this, we do everything wrong. He’s referring to startup businesses. We do everything wrong. Instead of spending years perfecting our technology, we build a minimum viable product. An early product that is terrible, full of bugs and crash your computer. Yes, really stability problems. Then we ship it to customers way before it’s ready and we charge money for it. After securing initial customers, we change the product constantly, but much too fast by traditional standards. Shipping new versions of our products dozens of times every single day. Eric Reese. So he’s like, this is basically the behind the scenes of what happened with Uber. They were, they were, Oh yeah. Uber, just so we’re clear, he cold-called taxi drivers and said, Hey, would you be willing to use this system to stay booked all the time? And they go, he called 10 people and a couple of them were like, yeah, I’d be interested. So then he made something that didn’t work, but he found out they would actually use it, they would try to, and he kept doing this and making it better and better and better. And this is the part that it’s like frustrating because you know you have to go through this. And so Jason, I want to ask you this, because what states is DJ Connection now in? What states and what cities are you now in? Yeah, we’re in Tulsa, and that was the easy one. Dallas was the hardest, probably the second hardest one. We crashed and burned there a lot, but we’re doing great now. We’re in Kansas City, we’re in Denver, we’re in Indianapolis, we’re in Houston, we’re getting ready to open St. Louis and Nashville this year. Are you in Chicago? That’s next year, 2018. Holy cow! Well, apparently Harry Carey’s very excited about your arrival. He is really excited, yes. So when you’ve been building the systems and going into the different markets, what have been the challenges that you could not have predicted, kind of proactively you found out as a result of doing something that you now had to make some changes? Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. Okay, so some of the things we did, when we moved to Dallas, okay, so we tried to hire someone in Dallas to run that office. And what we found was they had no idea how to run a DJ company because we were just hiring them randomly. So multiple, multiple screw-ups on that. We finally realized that we have to move someone from our core office, Tulsa, who has the culture and they believe in the company. We had to move them down there. When did that idea happen to you? When did that solution occur to you? Oh, after we had screwed up like five times in a row and I was about to pull my hair out. But it was two or three years after trying to start going on in Dallas. We have audio of you during the times where you were trying to get other people trained. I hope you don’t feel like I’ve invaded your privacy. I know you record me at all times, so it’s fine. I was working. I was part of the pro-Putin Trump campaign. So what I did is I’ve come up with this bugging device that has allowed me to bug you throughout this space and time That’s fine. This is audio of you when you were trying to hire somebody That was that was the audio there and I’ve got audio of when you finally had the idea to hire somebody from Tulsa and take them other places This is amazing! I should buy a boat! So when did that happen? When did it finally… Was it like a moment? Do you remember? It was like a moment. It was like… It almost was like a deal where one of the guys finally told us… Listen man, I’ll just go down there. I’ll move down there and just do it. And I was like… Like a light bulb over my head. I was like, why haven’t we been doing this the whole time? This guy is trustworthy. I trust him in the Tulsa office. I’ve trusted him a lot of things. He can move down there. All of those problems go away if somebody from Tulsa, who we’ve trained and spent years of training on, they move down there. It’s done. It’s a done deal. There’s something kind of bromantic about what you just said. You tried to look at that guy and said, dude, you, that idea you had right there, what do you think about you and me talking about that idea? And he’s like, why are you looking at me that way? And you’re just going, there’s something romantic about that. That’s right. That’s exactly how it went down. And then he moved to Dallas to get away from me. So that was part of it. You were a little creepy. I think I’m gonna move. Why do you keep inviting me to this biker bar? Do you guys remember, what was that movie? Police Academy? Was it the Blue Oyster or something? Is that the name of the place? If you’re listening right now, I want to ask you, what is something where you defined what it should look like. And then you started acting, maybe at the optometry clinic, and you realized, man, I’ve got to change this now. I thought it would work out this way, but now I’ve got to make that change. Well, I actually had a better example, and that was when I was wanting to get back into the auto auction business. I’d sold my original auto auction, and then I waited out my no compete, and I wanted to get back into it. And so I got a plan, I got it all situated, and then I had to find a place. I had to find land. Apparently, you just can’t walk onto someone’s property and say, leave your property, it’s mine now. I don’t understand what that’s all about. That just seems so un-American. You can’t just walk up to a piece of land and declare it your own. You can’t just put a stake on it and say, this is now mine. I guess back in the Oklahoma land rush, they kind of did that thing, but I think that’s over. You’re a little behind the times on that. I think it is, yeah. I have audio of you during that time as well. I was wondering. They’ll take our land, but they’ll never take our freedom! Yeah, you just went in there and took that land. You took your freedom and they’re like, why are you wearing a kilt? What happened was I found the perfect piece of property and I started negotiating with the gentleman and we couldn’t, we came to an impasse. I couldn’t, I said to myself, bubbles, it’s too much, I’m not going to pay that much for that property, he wants too much for it. So I left it and literally one year later, one year later, I was looking, I couldn’t find, I was looking, I couldn’t find, I was looking, I couldn’t find. One year I said to myself, what am I doing? I would have been a year into this thing already and the premium extra that I would have to pay for that property, I would have already made it back with the year of having the business already open. So I sucked up my pride and I went up and I said, I’m not going to let bubbles get in my way. So I made the deal and I bought the property and you know what? And then I was a year late on my plan. But you know what? Now four years later, up and running in Florida, Oklahoma. Thrivers, if you want to learn about the upcoming Thrive Time conference, go to thrivetimeshow.com. Stay tuned. All right, Tulsa, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show. Oklahoma, welcome back. People from Tennessee, welcome back. People from Missouri, people from Arkansas, people from America, people from non-America, people from other continents, people from, Z, people from other planets, we welcome you to the center of the universe, broadcasting from the magical microphones inside the box that rocks. Zee, what message do you have for the other planets that are tuning in the other planetary systems to learn about how to build a business dynasty? Because business is big on other planets. It absolutely is, and I would like to just extend a warm, earthly welcome, because we would like to invite you also to our in-person workshops, which happen in this magical, wonderful place we call Thrive Headquarters. Write this down, circle your calendar, February 24th and 25th. Wait a minute, I was getting some Oklahoma Joe’s baked beans here. I just spilled it all over the place. Let me ask, can you repeat it again? Sorry. February 24th and 25th. You can get on a little website called, all together now, thrivetimeshow.com. It has all the information on there, all your questions are answered. Z, do I have to be on the internet in order to access this website? Is that something I need to be on? Yes, the thing, thank you Al Gore for the internet. Yes, you have to be on the internet. Oh. And you access that site and it answers all your questions. You may say to yourself, listen, times are tough right now. Had some medical bills, had some unexpected things come up, my engine blew in my car, the DJ that I had at my kid’s wedding, sold a bunch of money from me. I don’t know what happened. I mean, something could have happened and you say, I can’t afford it. Guess what? I don’t know. I’m not joking. Oswald, Oswald, I’ll tell you. Don’t guess, I’ll tell you. Okay. I’ll tell you, Mr. Oswald. And that is, we have local, we’ve partnered with local business people and they have offered up scholarship money because they know the importance of mentoring they know the importance of education They know the importance of you out there going from a watcher panora to an entrepreneur And so I’ll tell you what you can afford it you can afford it So get you if you’re on another planet come to planet Earth come to the United States of America I’m glad you clarified that I was gonna invite my other friends come over planets Well, you said a message for the other planet the planetary systems. Yes, that’s what I would say to them. I would say, you’re welcome. Welcome, welcome. I have three questions for you, Dr. Zellner, about this Thrivetime Show Workshop. Okay. Question number one. All right. Are you going to be selling all those cassette tapes in the back? No, there’s no upselling. There’s no little scam occurry going on. There’s no get you in and switch and bait, bait and switch, whatever you want to call it. There’s none of that going on. Okay. Now, the second question I have, I don’t remember, but the third one, it escapes me as well. Well, those are very good. I know what they were, because I’m a mind reader. One, I can’t guarantee there will be water in the Arkansas River on that day. I can’t guarantee that. Nice. But if it’s not, if the water’s not in the river, then we have beachfront property. And Jason, I keep trying to hit you. That’s all right. I will wear, we’ve got an extra, normally this is a fly zone. I will wear my hot pants and march to Bixby. And number three, I know your third question is you do have to wear pants to attend the conference. Can they be hot pants? They can be cool, they can be hot, they can be lukewarm, whatever kind of pants you want to wear. All right, all right, all right. Sorry, Survivors. Oswald interrupted the show there for a minute there. But anyway, okay, so we’re talking about you have to act. Step number one as an entrepreneur, you have to define what you want your life to look like, what your business to look like. Step two, you’ve got to act. You have to act. So when you, you know, now you’ve acted. Now, Vanessa, we’ve been acting together. We’ve been married now for 15 years. You’ve been stuck with me for a long time here since we met at Oral Roberts University there. And then that year of passion where I wooed you. No, but seriously, Seriously, what kind of encouraged the Thrivers? What are some mistakes we made or some things you’ve learned along the way about acting? Well, I think we’ve had all different sort of businesses and plans. One, specifically, we were starting a photo business and had a partnership going. We quickly became frustrated when maybe the partner didn’t show up to meetings or keep commitments. We were strongly, heavily relying on this person because we, you and I both didn’t know anything about photos. But you know what, we didn’t just throw in the towel and say, well I guess this isn’t gonna work out. I remember you, I mean it was a very stressful time, you said, I am gonna have to learn photos. I’m gonna have to learn how to take like amazing wedding photos because this person is not going to be reliable to show up and train all these people. Did that with drones recently too. Yeah. And actually, then, so you also learned, but then I think this is just so wise. As you guys look there, and when your plans at times fail, don’t give up, but reevaluate how you can make, you know, be successful in that. You reached out to a successful photographer down in Dallas and had them also help in the whole training process. And so we made it through. But we were constantly thinking we were going to have a plan moving one way and then getting, you know, 50%, 25% into it and think oh great this isn’t gonna work this is craziness okay how else can we make this work how else can we get there what’s the next step now Reid Hoffman has some advice for anybody out there listening who can relate to that story and says man I maybe I’m kind of not where I wanted to be right now kind of made a mistake with that one oh this is another little quote from Reid Hoffman he says if you aren’t embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too late. I do agree with that, but there’s some wisdom that Dr. Z’s taught me over the years that I really appreciate, and I wish I would have known that earlier, but you’ve taught me, like when you go into a business with somebody, you want to go ahead and agree right away, who’s the chief, and how are we going to blow this up if we have to? Because eventually, somebody has to be able to make that call, and Z, why is it so important for anybody right now who’s listening, who’s maybe thinking about going into partnership with their brother or their sister, their dad, their cousin to define who’s clearly in charge. Why is it so important? Because you’ll come to a fork in the road and you’ll need to decide which direction to go. And if you’re thinking of becoming 50-50, partnering with somebody, what you need to do is you need to come down here to the headquarters, right here on the left coast of the Arkansas River. And walk up to me and say, I am going to start a business with my uncle and we’re going to be 50-50 partners. And then what I will do, I will reach up my hand and go, Yes. And then I’ll just like spiritually slap you. And then when you get up, you’ll look in the eye. Yeah, then I’d say, Clay, we got another one coming. I would say to you, no, no, no, no, no. At minimum, be 51-49. Why? Because someone’s going to have to make a hard decision. You’re going to have a hard decision coming up. And I promise you this, if you’re 50-50 with someone, there’s going to come a time when you’re coming up fork in the road, one’s going to want to go left, and one’s going to go right, and you’re going to be in an impasse. Next thing you know, it might even lead to tearing down the business that you’re building up. Can I give you an example about this. For Elephant in the Room, Jason knows because he was there when we first started that business. It was started in the first floor of the building that DJ Connection is in. My brother-in-law, it’s his vision, and I handle all the systems. I kind of more or less look at what he’s doing, sift through the passion and the vision and make the repeatable system. That’s my job. And so I do the marketing and that kind of thing. vision for barn wood. It’s like Edison bulbs and it’s like a rustic decor and this whole thing. Vanessa, do you remember when he borrowed the Suburban to drive to Hebner? Yes. To a torn down barn. Hebner with a V. To get this barn wood. I don’t even know how far away that was. Our Suburban. It was like a 150 year old barn wood. He had to have it. He comes back and he has to sand it and he’s doing all this stuff. And I’m just being real. This is what I’m thinking. What is going on? Couldn’t we just go to Lowe’s? Can we not go to Lowe’s? They sell wood at Lowe’s. And I was thinking other things like maybe we could go to Home Depot. So I’m throwing out other suggestions like Lowe’s, Home Depot. Is Southern Woods still around? Yeah, I think so. I didn’t know a whole lot of lumber places. I’m like, couldn’t we just Google lumber? He’s like, no, it has to be historic barn wood, and we’ve got to build the shelves out of this pipe. And I’m like, can’t we just buy the shelves? Why do we have to build it out of pipe? He’s like, no, and I want to hand pour the concrete. So I don’t know if you remember this, Jason. He’s been down there loving on the construction project for months. We were all concerned for him. We’re in there, and we’re going down there. But the thing is, it turned out to be magical. And he knew what he wanted, and that was part of our agreement, is I handle all the marketing all of the branding But he gets to do whatever he wants in there as long as it produces a certain level of profit I can’t tell you how many times us having agreed going into it how we would make decisions has helped because I do not Have not and will not ever understand what he’s thinking most of the time when it comes to the experience But it always ends up being better than I could have thought as it relates to that. And it could have really blown things up if you forbid him to go there and get the barnwood when he was passionate about getting it. So you just were like, okay, I don’t understand this, but go do your thing. And that’s how it works. Now Jason, I want to ask you this. As you’ve built the DJ Connection and you’ve now tried to take it all over the planet, you’re growing state by state. Have you ever had to lay down the gauntlet and go, okay, this is where we’re going. And other people are like, I don’t want to go this way, Jason. That’s it. I mean, have you ever had to use the executive order? I’ve used the words, that’s it, many times. And then I yell something after that. But usually, yeah, there’s been some times where, you know, a lot of people, they haven’t been with you since the beginning. They don’t know all the things that you’ve gone through. They don’t know all the things that you did horribly wrong. So when someone, when a group of people are like, we should try to do this, let’s hire someone in Dallas. And then I just have to be like, no, that’s it. I’m going to pull the executive order here. We’re not doing that. And that has to happen sometimes because at the end of the day, it’s your baby that you guys are growing and they get to go home with a paycheck either way. And I will tell you this, Thrivers, this is so, so, so important to learn organizational leadership and how to manage effectively. And that’s what we teach at our two-day workshops. If you go to Thrivetimeshow.com you can get the information. We only have 40 tickets left for this next one. Only 40. We don’t have 4,000. We don’t have 407. I just look at that every day. We have 40 tickets left. If you want to learn more about it, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. We have a scholarship available. It’s super affordable for anybody. One thing I wanted to add that was so important that I think, I don’t know if it was you or Aziz said, that when you have these partnerships, you also need to think ahead. See we didn’t do this at first but we learned so much. What is your exit strategy? So if the whole thing blows up or just when you get what is going to end like Clay said that to talk about the organizational leadership before everything is formed. Who’s in charge? Who’s going to make the final call? And then okay if we decide that you know we just want to go separate ways for whatever reason what is going to be the agreement of how we do that? It’s so much easier to talk about it and get it in writing now, so you can look at that and refer to that, than when you’re in the heat of the moment. Now Zee, once you’ve acted, once you’ve been taking action, okay, now you’re going to have to, we talked about measure the results and then refine. So why is it so important that, I mean, when you started doing radio commercials, you know, when you, cause I mean, how much, I guess I can ask you the number, but when you started running commercials, was it a big part of your revenue? I mean, when you had like zero customers and you’re trying to, I’m not sure what percentage of zero dollars it would be if you’re spending money on advertisement and you have no customers coming in yet. But talk to me, how did you measure the results of your early marketing campaigns there? Well, I measured it because I asked everybody how they heard about us and I was committed to taking, when I first started off, 10% of my gross sales and put it in toward advertising. And then as that budget grew, I added different things. And once I felt like I’d gotten saturation, in other words, as many eyeballs and ears listening to my message, then I started scaling that back from 10%. How can I do so much? Because I lived underneath my means. It’s called delaying your gratification. It’s one of the things you’ve got to do. But I have a word for you on this measuring part for the Harvard Business Review. And the word is money ball. Does that mean anything to you? Money ball. Ask Oakland A’s, the Oakland A’s baseball team. Best seller by Michael Lewis. It’s been out for a while. And what Moneyball was all about was using the right statistics to build a winning team on the cheap. And I think what happens is, according to the Harvard Business Review, you can Google this and read about it, it’s a brilliant study in how people measure the wrong things. How people overthink or they think that the way they’re measuring is wrong. I mean, obviously, sales growth is important. Obviously, looking at your P&L is important. Obviously, looking at your earnings per share is important. But there’s three areas that a lot of entrepreneurs get it wrong. A lot of business people get it wrong. Three? There’s three areas. Could it be said if I was speaking in Spanish, there would be trace reasons? Wow. Three? What about, what would you pick Latin? I speak, I speak a language and a half, a language and a third really. A language and a third, yeah. Yes, it would be trace. When we get back, when we get back from the break, I’m going to break down these three areas where business managers, business owners get it wrong in the measuring of their business because you’re going to define, you’ve got to act, and then you’ve got to measure the right stuff. Now Thrivers, I’ve been taking a tally, I’ve been measuring how many times I go to Oklahoma Joe’s, and I’ve been measuring how many times I go to the USA, and I’ve been measuring how many times I go to the United States, and I’ve been measuring how many times I go to the United States. And I’ve been measuring how many times I go to the United States, and I’ve been measuring how many times I go to the United States. And I’ve been measuring how many times I go to the United States, and I’ve been measuring how many times I go to the United States. And I’ve been measuring how many times I go to the United States. And I’ve been measuring how many times I go to the United States. And I’ve been measuring how many times I go to the United States. And I’ve been taking a tally. I’ve been measuring how many times I go to Oklahoma Joe’s. And I’ve been going there right now about twice a week. And I’m just noticing that’s a trend. About twice a week I’m going there. Stay tuned in Thrive Time Show. We’re going to teach you how to measure your business. All right, Tulsa, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show, brought to you by our good friends at EW Scripps from Cincinnati. You know these guys, the EW Scripps family, they own HGTV. If you’re on Facebook Live, you can see it. They own the Food Network. They own Stitcher. They own 1170. Zeke, do they not also own 106.9? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s a thing. So they own all the different… I’m telling you, a great, great group of people. Awesome people here. If you’ve not met the folks of the Scripps family, they’re awesome people. Shelby, Travis, the executive producer, they’re just neat people. Steve Hunter, good guy. It could be said that they are great Americans. Wonderful Americans. General Manager Dave, a great guy. And what we were talking about before the break was I had thrown out an example of Moneyball, and that is how a team figured out that the right statistics that the other teams weren’t using, they captured upon. I think that’s what Bill Belichick does a lot, too. I know I didn’t want to bring up a patriot thing, but I got to show you a little love. I have a little outtake for you. In his most recent book, Belichick Brady. By the way, if you want to just manage a team, regardless of if it’s business or sports, it’s an unbelievable read. But one of the things he does is he grades players on a scale of one to ten on these different core areas. One is how likely would you be to let them watch your kids? Two is how athletic are they? Three is how willing they are to be coachable the other one was and they have all these different things so they’re they’re drafting guys that are not athletic but who don’t drop a pass and are people that are coachable and people need one around your kids over a guy who’s got the fastest 40 time because you realize in the NFL every time you win a Super Bowl and they’re always near the top your schedule gets harder the next year and you lose draft picks because everyone has the same salary cap. So imagine if you were a successful business and then next year, so you grow your optometry to be huge. This happens a lot in business. You grow it to be huge and then the next year, all of a sudden right next to you is your competition and they have hired all your best players. So this is what happens in football. So they would hire away his best players. So you realize, I have to build a system that’s not dependent upon any player. In fact, I want it to be dependent upon people that no one else wants. And so he has a lot of the same metrics that the Oakland A’s used in the book Moneyball. You can hear about it. And I’m telling you what, it’s fascinating when you can build a team that’s system dependent and not dependent upon people. You may say, well, this isn’t a sports talk show. It’s not. But the same concepts Tom Brady, Tom Brady, I’m building that that competitive team is also the same concept you can use to building your business. So the three areas that business managers, business owners get it wrong when they’re measuring, that’s what we’re talking about, is measuring key statistics in your business. The first one is overconfidence. Got it. In other words, they say to themselves, well, this is what really matters. Like for example, a famous example of an executive at a fast food chain said, you know what, what really matters is retention of our employees, no turnover. Because without the turnover employees, our customers will be more satisfied. And they just go down with that ship. To pile on that, because we’ve had some emails saying that you guys don’t talk about the Patriots enough on the air. And I’m like, okay, who am I to deny the Tulsans who love the Patriots, who are for some reason know there’s a lot of them right here in Tulsa that just love the Patriots. One of the things that Bill Belichick does is he says whenever there’s gossip on the team, his way he fixes the culture is he just makes them run. Yeah, just run. That’s his whole move. There’s a movie called Dear Job that talks about this. It’s really funny, but these guys are arguing and he’s like, okay, because people want to talk about it. Hey, this guy said this, this guy said this, this is what happened. He goes, okay, well why don’t you guys all run? And they all have to run until they all throw up. That would be kind of fun to see around the office. We could do that. Just go run. That’s his whole deal. He doesn’t worry about how everyone feels necessarily before the game. He worries about are they getting their job done. And again, if he was worried about the opinion of the team and how everyone felt all the time, he would never win games. Because you just got to ultimately get it done. Boom, boom, you got to get it done. And we all have a little bit of overconfidence. I mean, a study came out that showed that most people would say that they’re above average driver. Now, Clay, I know you’re probably the worst driver in the world. You could probably say I’m an average above average driver. I would say I’m the worst driver on the road right now. There was a time you wouldn’t admit that. You thought you were a really good driver. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. That’s the overconfidence. But now we’ve mentored you. We’ve brought him down to reality. I’m fine. You guys move on. I’ll be over here. Get in a couple of mailboxes. That probably solidified the worst driver. The second mistake a lot of business managers, business owners make is availability. What that means is that the top of mind, the latest thing that happens, all of a sudden they want to change stuff. Something just happened today, and oh my gosh, this happened. They’re like, change policy, change the system, change the plan. Oh my God, that just happened. Sometimes the availability of the information or the top of mind that it just happened or that it was, oh my gosh, that happened, we can’t, we got to, all of a sudden they do a knee-jerk response over here. When in fact, maybe that’s something that’s out of the usual, it doesn’t happen that often, you didn’t really research how often it happens. It was a tragic thing that happened. I want to ask Jason this, and I want to get your take on this. I want to get everyone’s take on this, but I want to start with Jason on this because this is big. Social media, YouTube, Tulsa World, Gmail, they’ve all given people these anonymous platforms. 4797 at gmail.com writes your company’s terrible you screwed up my wedding Moron 42 at hotmail.com writes on face We have a guy we have a guy what right on Facebook if you’re listening right now, and you’re that guy I want I want you to email me. I want to I want to understand how it is possible I just want you to explain it to me. It’s like a TED talks Please explain to me your thinking the width a dollar for your first haircut. It’s a dollar. That’s the move right a dollar It’s like a prison pricing haircut, right? It’s a dollar! It’s the first deal! And then he writes on Facebook, Watch out, they’re going to try to sell you your next haircut for $35. And I’m like, I know! That’s the point! That’s the point! You try it before you go. So he writes it and he acts like it’s a scam. And then his homeless friends all comment on it too. Yeah, that’s right, man. People today, they’re always trying to upsell you. So Jason, how do you deal with the social media and people occasionally writing, you know, if you fire someone, they write bad comments on you. How have you been able to manage that psychosis? Well I think there’s two ways. One, if it really was our fault, we rush to recovery, obviously. We want to try to make that person happy. And so sometimes people don’t even tell us that there was a problem and they’ll just go right to social media So that’s that’s kind of frustrating but we usually reach out to them try to figure out what’s going on But the other side of that is some people are just I hate to say it but just Unpleasable sometimes and so if this is the customer this is what he’s saying to you You know, sir, what what’s wrong? And this is what he said, excuse me, sir. So tell me what happened You’re gonna have customers unfortunately that are unpleasable and they expect everything and it’s just not possible to please them. So if somebody posts something on Facebook, we always try to react to it, but I definitely sleep very well at night either way. So it’s something like, I mean, if you worried about every single person’s opinion, then you would just never sleep. You would just be crazy trying to respond. You couldn’t be vicious on it, could you? No, you couldn’t. Because it’s too much. So at some point you have to just, okay, I’m going to let that go. I’m going to do my best to try to do everything I can to make everybody happy. But at some point there is a line. It’s like, all right, you know what? Z, I think that’s a part right there. You can’t pass go for many entrepreneurs. I see this every day with people we meet at workshops, who their business gets to a certain point and they can’t grow it. They take it personally, I think, right? They do, and they want to get approval from everybody. Z, what mentorship, what advice would you have for someone who is listening who goes, it’s hard for me to move forward because I want everyone to be on the same page and always get along. I just want to do like a vote. Well it’s not a vote. Here’s the problem. You’ve got to put yourself first. And anything that you do that doesn’t put yourself first, that’s not right. And what I mean by that is letting those people pull you down, rob your joy, take your fun out of it, make you doubt what you’re doing, make you upset. Hey, you’re the one that’s in charge of your brain and what you’re thinking about. So whenever someone posts a bad review for whatever their motivation was, what you need to do is like, like Taylor Swift says in her song, in her little song that she sings. Shake it off. Just shake it off. Just shake the dust off your shoes. Look in the rear view mirror and say, hasta la vista, baby. It’s unethical to play two songs at the same time, but I want to sing Shake It Off right now to the Rocky fame. Well, come back to the thing. I’ll just sneak it in. Shake it off. Oh, oh. All right. Also, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. This is the show that makes your wallet grow. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the host of The Most, and I’ve been sent here on a diplomatic mission to teach you how to start and grow a successful business. But the problem is, the plans, I put the plans in the droid. I try to find my droid. And then I’m looking around for years to find the droid with the plans to the Death Star. And then I found the guy who had the droids, Dr. Zellner. Dr. Zellner, he owns the droids and have the plans that can build the Death Star. He’s sort of a big deal. Sir, how are you? Doot, doot, doot, doot. Wow. How do they do that? Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. R2D2. Jason does a really good R2D2. Beep-bop-boop-boop. Oh wow. Nice. Now if you were just a midget, you could have been in the movie. Real quick, Jason also does great impersonations of other people. No, I don’t. Jason, Jason, do a voice of any woman. Oh, okay, sounds great. We’re going to just, sorry, when I tell stories, it’s just every other person has that voice. Do a voice of any man. Oh, he was like, oh my gosh, how do you? You know, every single time. We used to be in our meetings and he would go, now this weekend I was over at this wedding and the groom walks up to me and he’s like, hey guys, can I come in and say? And then the bride walks up and is like, hey guys, and everyone always says hey guys. Hey guys, and then whatever was said during that. Okay, alright, so Z, back to you. You have the plans. Okay, so what we’re saying is that business people out there measuring or they’re not doing the right things in their measurement of their business. Because we talked about the four loop about being an entrepreneur is define, act, number on measure. And the third one is probably the one that I struggle with the most personally, and that is the status quo move. In other words, you don’t take that chance because you’re like, well, if things are going, you know, things are going to behave, it ain’t broke. Don’t fix it. Don’t even attempt. Don’t even look at it. Don’t even look. Don’t even look at it. Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. And so what happens is, for example, say you’re a company that you’re a subscription model, you’re a phone company and you get people on subscriptions to use your phones. And after a while, you’ve built up your base. And instead of switching maybe now to where you’re trying to sell those people more upsells or you’re trying to vertically integrate more things into the big mass of people you have now and you’re playing, you just continue trying to add people on and you kind of forget about trying to sell them. So what happens is with the status quo, that usually means you’re doing good. You’re doing good. You’re making money. Things are going well. Things are going well. But you don’t want to step out of that comfort zone as an executive or the owner or the boss. And so those are probably the three areas. Now, also Harvard came out with a little figure. Clay, I’d like for you to break down. What they said was the most important number that you should measure in your business? This right here is called the Net Promoter Score. Break it down. The Net Promoter Score, basically you’re asking your customers on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely are they to refer you to a friend. And the companies that are growing are the ones that have the highest number of people, the highest percentage of people who say, I would definitely refer you to a friend. So I’ll give an example. These are two recent examples that are just fresh in my brain here. Elephant in the Room. Every week we add hundreds of members, hundreds of members. So we have thousands of members in Tulsa, great people who’ve allowed us to work with them and to trust us with chopping their mops and cutting their hair, okay? But the thing is is that if you look at the pie chart of new customers, we never stop advertising, but a larger percentage every week continues to come from referrals. And we’re finding that the average member is telling almost two people. The average member on average tells two people. And so we realized by definition we’re almost growing virally because we have got it to where the members are telling their friends and we’re not asking them to. We’re not saying, hey, what six friends do you know that you could sign up for this program? We’re not doing that. Or for our consulting company, Make Your Life Epic, Vanessa knows every day I will check my voicemail and there’s like six or seven doctors or dentists or, yesterday we had a roofer calling me going, hey, could you work with me and help me grow my business? And I usually hear about it from another client who’s had such growth by using this program. But it didn’t, it wouldn’t start that way. First, when you’re making something, it’s not getting those kind of results. You’re just doing your best and you’re losing customers as fast as you’re getting them because your system isn’t that great yet. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. But once you realize your company’s not going to grow because your net promoter score is not very good, you’ve got to do whatever it takes to fix it. So I want to ask you first, Jason, I want to get your feedback on this, Vanessa. Jason, what are some things you’ve done to make DJConnection.com grow almost virally through word of mouth? I mean, you guys are growing at a great clip. Every year it becomes harder and harder to grow at a 30% growth rate when you’re bigger. Right, yeah. But what are some things, what do you do to try to get that company growing word of mouth? How have you been able to sort of buck the status quo and embrace some change to make the company grow? Well, I think you, number one, you have to have a great product, and like with Elephant in the Room, it’s a great product. It allows people to talk good. I mean, you have to talk well about the product. You can’t have a really bad product and then be like, now go tell your friends how bad it was. The first thing is you have to have a really good product and then you have to make it easy for people to tell their friends. We send out an email and we have some different things to say, hey, refer us to a friend. They get a discount here. Forward this email to a friend and have them come back to us. That way we can make it really easy for them to come back. Now, Thrivers, if you’re listening right now and you want to know more specifically about how to increase the rate of referrals for your business. Whether you’re Farmer’s Insurance, who I’ve been proud to work with for nine years, or whether you’re a local appliance store, which we’ve helped, or your Maytag University, who we’ve helped, or your O’Reilly’s Auto Parts, who we’ve worked with, or Chevron, or whatever company, we know how to do it. We have the systems, and at our two-day, in-person, Thrive Time workshops, you can learn everything you need to know to start or grow your business. And you might say, well, where can I learn more about this workshop and how much is it? That’s the question. How much is it? Where can I learn more? Right now we have 39. And what’s the deal? Here’s, okay, let me get into it. One, we have 39 tickets left. There’s 39 tickets left. Every time you hear the gong, Thrivers, that’s another ticket sale. I guess there’s 39 tickets left, but here’s the deal. The workshops, we have them set up. If you go to thrivetimeshow.com, they’re two days. They start at 7 a.m. and they go until 3 p.m. We cover sales, marketing, accounting, search engine optimization, how to make a business plan, how to raise capital, how to manage your team, all those subjects. And we have a scholarship program available for you. So anybody listening right now, I don’t care what your family’s financial situation is, you can afford to be there. There’s no upsells in the back of the room. What’s the catch? Because you’re sounding fishy. You’re saying I can use money so I can attend this thing? Well, here’s the deal. The catch is this. If you love it, we encourage you to come back and bring friends. So that’s the whole thing. That’s the catch. We say if you love it, please, when people ask you, how was the workshop, don’t say, I don’t want to talk about it. It was too awesome. Don’t keep it to yourself. It was too awesome. It was too awesome, bro. I don’t want to talk about it. And the beautiful thing, there is no catch. You can get on a Thrive 15 conference and Google the reviews and you can see all the reviews of real people that have been at the in-person workshops. You can come down here, you can meet us, you can actually, Clay will give you a high five, I’ll give you a fist bump, shake your hand, say, give me a big gun, you know, pull out my gun, shoot a little, shoot high. But what we do is, it’s, if people, and we’ve done this because you’ve asked for it, you know, we started off with thrive15.com, which is a base card Netflix of business, awesome business coaching without the BS. And then people said, Hey, we want more. And so, um, scripts came on and said, Hey, we love what you’re doing on your thrive 15. Can you guys do that as a radio show? We said, well, I guess, why not? Now thrivers, when we come back, Vanessa, my incredible wife of 15 years, she’s going to tell you about the dark side of bucking the status quo. Because when you decide to buck the status quo, what’s going to happen is your neighbors aren’t going to like it sometimes. And I have audio from our neighbors recently. Z, you ready for this audio? You seem to have a lot of audio clips. I do. I’ve miked everyone all the time. I’m before my time. People used to, there’s video cameras everywhere. I’ve been miking people for years. Hey, Griswold, where do you think you’re going to put a tree that big? Bend over and I’ll show you. So the thing is, I’m just telling you Griswold, he tries to cut down this epic Christmas tree and the neighbors don’t like it. He’s lighting up his house so much that it’s like sucking the city’s auxiliary power. It’s this unbelievable lighting display and it upsets the neighbors and understandably so. We come back, Vanessa’s going to tell you, when you’re married to a man-bear pig who does not at all relate to the concept of sticking with the status quo while living within the confines of a neighborhood, what could happen? I don’t know. It’s going to be epic. Stay tuned. Thrive Time Show on your radio. All right. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show. It’s Business School without the BS. And yes, my name is Clay Clark, SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, here with you on your radio talking about how to start and grow a successful company. Specifically, we’re talking about the four-step process of building a successful company, which is define, then you want to act, then you want to measure the results, and then you want to refine. And when we talk about measuring, one of the things when you measure is sometimes you realize, hey, listen, I’ve got to buck the status quo in order to get where I want to go. And for some of you, that might be very hard. Some of you might go, I don’t ever want to upset somebody. And so it’s hard for you. Somebody else listening, though, like myself, you might go, I’ve never followed a rule in my life. And so Vanessa has been married to me now for 15 years, and I regrettably decided to live in a neighborhood for a few years there, and there’s some, you know, when you don’t follow the status quo, some crazy things can happen. Well, I’m kind of wondering which neighborhood or which house you’re talking about. I mean, you want to hear about the problems with the neighbors, with the HOA, the problems with the city. Where do you want to go? We should go to 111th and Memorial. I’m going to take us to, what was the neighborhood? Was it Ravens? No, it was Silverwood. So this was the first neighborhood that we moved into, and I am a rule follower. I make everyone happy. What? Yeah, yeah. Everybody knows this. So, no, we were brand new, right out of college. I mean, we literally moved in there right after graduation, so we were by far the youngest people in the neighborhood. Immediately we planted like 20 trees in the backyard which wasn’t a we’re on a third of an acre so it wasn’t a huge backyard but it’s a block so no one can see what we’re doing back there. Okay. And I made my privacy fence three feet taller than all the other fences. Yes and we put a fence in the front. We had like we we poured a slab that pulled around the back of our house so we could have the drivers pull around back where people wouldn’t see and we had a swinging big huge gate that would close behind them so we could load up all the equipment. Well naturally, neighbors over time started to wonder if there’s this really young couple there. Cars are pulling in around back, painted up crazy cars at like midnight, one in the morning, two in the morning. I think they’re exchanging cash. Like what is going on? Are they drug dealers? And we usually have this kind of music playing while the guys were unloading. True. And it would be like at 2 in the morning, they’re unloading from their shows. And this is before Jason owned the business, by the way, when all the bad things were happening. That’s right. This is before pre-Jason. Yeah. So all the guys would load in their equipment. I mean, they’d return from weddings, and it’d be… And he just… the bass was… And I’m like, dude, turn the bass down. And that was like every single night. You guys are like burning parts of car seats like A little bit restrained in our property. Yeah Yeah, it wasn’t until we got to like a little bit more land and that’s when the city got the next property was where all the burning at oh, sorry, sorry so Yeah, I just went wherever we went We just weren’t a good fit because we were kind of doing our own thing And so we got a lot of complaints from the Homeowners Association. Which didn’t bother me at all. It actually fueled me and motivated me. Yeah, and in fact you just decided, well I’m just going to be in charge of the Homeowners Association. They will report to me. J.C., you do a pretty good impersonation of the Emperor. Doesn’t he say, like, let the hate flow through you? Oh yeah, let the hate flow through you. Yeah, for some reason, like, that was always a pep talk to me. You’re always that way. You love it. I’m like, oh, the more they hate me, I want to get fueled on hate. That’s why I was thinking, you’re talking about reviews. I’m like, oh, you love reading hateful reviews. Oh, pump me up. Yeah, it gets you going. I just stay away from it. So here’s the deal, Thrivers. If you’re listening right now, though, and you are somebody who bucks the status quo naturally, this is probably an easier step for you, but if not, you’ve got to encourage yourself because, Vanessa, sometimes even when we’ve followed all the rules, have we not had competitors that have attacked us? Oh, those are the ones that would hurt my soul. I started to realize that even when you try to do everything right, there’s still going to be people who say lies about you, who make things up, and that’s, I think, sometimes the most hurtful because you’re like, this isn’t even true. But you’ve got to just realize, you know what? That actually means you’re doing a really good job because you’re making some people mad. And guess what? Those are your competitors. You’re taking some of their market. I’m in the living room sharpening my sword, getting excited about fighting my competitors. And then I walk into the restroom, or walk into the bathroom there, and Vanessa’s sitting there. She’s, why would they say that? Because she cares and is trying to figure out why they would say those things. And I don’t know, Z, what advice do you have for somebody who’s listening right now who just gets a little bit upset when the competition starts attacking him? Well, do you have the song queued up to when you were going to queue up for me? No, the song… Shake it off! Oh, let me get it going! Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it. I’m in the Boxer Rocks for two DJs. That’s why he’s not a DJ anymore for me. He couldn’t make the cut. That’s right, he couldn’t make the cut. I’ll play this, I’ll play this. This is kind of the live marching band version. It’s beautiful. This gets me going. Here we go. Shake it off. Yeah. All right. Now, Thrivers, the next step is you’re going to have to refine. You have to refine. Once you begin to measure, you’ve got to refine. I have a notable quotable for you. This comes at you. This is coming in hot. See, this is coming in hot. Bring it. This is from our good friends over there who, you know, Steve Jobs. You’ve heard of Steve Jobs? No, you’ve never heard of Steve Jobs. This is a little thought here. Steve Jobs is talking about Pixar. He says Pixar started off as a company that sold special computers for doing digital animation. It took a while, and then they got into the movie making business. But think about this. Steve Jobs is just looking at it going, hey, listen, Pixar started off as a company that made these computerized animation tools. But then when George Lucas was going through a divorce and Steve got fired from Apple, a lot of people don’t know, Steve became the CEO of Pixar. And so he’s like, guys, listen, I understand we used to make these animation machines. I realize that now we’re kind of dabbling into making movies. We’re going to be out of business unless we sell things that people want. We’ve got to make something. So it was through his leadership that, I don’t know if you guys know this, but the movie Toy Story would have never been produced. It had been sitting there for years. They’d been working on it for over half a decade. Nothing’s getting done and he was like, that’s it. We have to get a movie out. And that was Steve Jobs who rammed that through. So if you’re listening right now, once you finally have measured, you’ve got to be aggressive Z about refining and maybe adjusting your business model, don’t you? Absolutely. I mean, you know, Steve Jobs, um, another, another great example, Starbucks. I mean, he started off just selling beans and coffee equipment. Yeah. No, they had no idea that they were going to sell coffee by the cup. Did you realize that Starbucks, when they started it, the founders, they started off with the vision to sell coffee grinders and beans. And Howard Schultz is like, what if we actually serve coffee? They’re like, no, we’re not going to do that. I’m going to tell you an example about Thrive, our online school. This is an interesting thing. We’ve found that Thrivers all over the world love in-person workshops. Boom. So what do we do? We said, no, that’s stupid. We’re not going to do that. For about six months, though, seriously, I remember looking at them and I said, once we get about 150 requests for this, I’ll take it seriously. But they kept asking. They’re going, hey, I watch all the videos, but I had a specific question about this. Could you answer that? And so we created the one-on-one business coaching model, which, by the way, there’s three great coaching programs in the world right now. There’s Traction by Geno Wickman, and for about $7,000 a month, and you have to sign a contract, you can have that program. The second is E-Myth by Michael Gerber, and for about $3,500 a month, and for a 12-month contract, you can have that too. Well, there you go. And you and I thought, let’s come up with a package that everybody could afford. Let’s come up with a way to make one-on-one business mentorship affordable. And so now we have the workshops, we have the one-on-one coaching, we have this show. And I’d like to point out, the difference is, I don’t think those other programs that you mentioned, they don’t include… We actually do the practical steps. I think they lead you through and teach you, right, from what I understand, but we actually include if you need to come and get a video made, we make the video. We build the website. We make the print pieces. I don’t know of any other program out there that offers that. It is, I would say, specifically out there, as I’ve looked at it, it’s seven times less money than the nearest competitor, and you grow twice as fast. And it’s just exciting to see we have a neat, neat business in Tulsa right now called SSB Kids. Yep. And we recently helped them relaunch their website, a great business, by the way. And all they needed was a couple of digital enhancements, and they’re off. They’ve already been a very successful company for a long time, but it’s like steroids teaming up with us. Or Tip Top K9, a wonderful company. They train people’s dogs. They teach people how to make your dog sit and roll over and behave. All they needed was some digital enhancements and some coaching along the way. It’s exciting to see what can happen with a little bit of mentorship, because if you don’t have mentors, you end up learning from mistakes. From mistakes, right. And the thing about it, when you talk about refining, because that’s the last step in the loop of entrepreneurship. This show is an exact representation of that. Two and a half years ago when you approached me about scaling business coaching online, I was like, that sounds pretty cool. Let’s do that, okay. Shark tank, shark tank, you do it, you won the day, okay. So then we started that and then it evolved into in-person workshops. It evolved into one-on-one business coaching. It evolved into Scripps Radio approaching us and saying, hey, you guys have got kind of a cool thing going on here, and we need some new content. You guys want to do a business show on the radio. Well, and see, isn’t exactly what you just said. We just took 515 through defining what we were doing, acting, measure, and refine, and that’s how we got to where we are today from, yes, we still offer the $19 a month online coaching, but we said, hey, let’s change our direction and people are asking for these things. We are entrepreneurs. Now, here’s the deal. Some of you say, OK, Jason Bailey, DJ Connection. What is the special, my friend? I’ve heard about DJ Connection. I’ve read the awards. I know you’re a big deal. What special do you have for me? I just got engaged. OK, so it’s what next week is with Valentine’s Day, right? Something like that. Yeah, absolutely. So guys are not very original, and so what we’re going to do, we’re going to propose on Valentine’s Day, right? Because that’s what we do. A lot of guys do that. So if you get engaged in the next week or two and you are looking for a DJ, go to DJConnection.com, fill out our quote form, use promo code Thrive15, and we’re running $500 off all of our packages for the month of February. Oh, wow. It’s kind of a big deal We say I love you DJ connection comm is where they can learn more right DJ connection calm and thrivers You know you have to hear things 27 times before you remember it so DJ connection calm DJ connection calm Did you mention knock anyway? It was seriously thrivers? We we are honored to be here with you every single day on the radio, but we would love to meet you in person We’d love to shake your hand. We’d love to help you start and grow that business and see what’s the website? They can learn more I’ve time show calm get on it right now. Read all the great stuff about February 24th and 25th, and then show up. And as always, Thrivers, three, two, one, boom! JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s TiVo time in Tulsa, Roseland, baby. Tim TiVo is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 27th and 28th. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old, but I’ve never had the two-time Heisman Award winning Tim Tebow come present. And a lot of people have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow 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. Also, this is the first Thrive Time Show event that we’ve had where we’re going to have a man who has built a hundred million dollar net worth. Wow. Who’ll be presenting. Now we’ve had a couple of presenters that have had a billion dollar net worth in some like a real estate sort of things. Yeah. But this is the first time we’ve had a guy who’s built a service business and he’s built over a $100 million net worth in the service business. It’s the yacht driving, multi-state living guru of franchising, Peter Taunton, will be in the house. This is the founder of Snap Fitness, the guy behind Nine Round Boxing. He’s going to be here in Tulsa, Russel, Oklahoma, June 27 and 28. JT, why should everybody want to hear what Peter Taunton has to say? Oh, because he’s incredible. He’s just a fountain of knowledge. He is awesome. He has inspired me listening to him talk. And not only that, he also has, he practices what he teaches. So he’s a real teacher. He’s not a fake teacher like business school teachers. So you got to come learn from him. Also let me tell you this folks, I don’t want to get this wrong because if I get it wrong, someone’s going to say, you screwed that up, buddy. So Michael Levine, this is Michael Levine. He’s going to be coming. He said, who’s Michael Levine? I don’t get this wrong. This is the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson, for Prince, for Nike, for Charlton Heston, for Nancy Kerrigan, 34 Grammy award winners, 43 New York Times bestselling authors he’s represented, including pretty much everybody you know who’s been a super celebrity. This is Michael Levine, a good friend of mine. He’s gonna come and talk to you about personal branding and the mindset needed to be super successful. The lineup will continue to grow. We have hit Christian reporting artist, Colton Dixon in the house. Now people say, Colton Dixon’s in the house? Yes, Colton Dixon’s in the house. So if you like top 40 Christian music, Colton Dixon’s gonna be in the house performing. The lineup will continue to grow 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? How do I do it? How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com let’s go there now we’re feeling the flow we’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com again you just go to Thrivetimeshow.com you click on the business conferences button and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you 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 am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton. I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, when’s it going to be? June 27 and 28. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russia, Oklahoma. It’s Tulsa, Russia. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russia, 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. So when? June 27th and 28th. Who? You. You’re going to come. I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at ThriveTimeShow.com and again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford and we do have some select VIP tickets which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things and those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re gonna 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. James, did I tell you my good friend John Lee Dumas is also joining us at the in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. That Tim Tebow and that Michael Levine will be at the… Have I told you this? You have not told me that. He’s coming all the way from Puerto Rico. This is John Lee Dumas, the host of the chart-topping EOFire.com podcast. He’s absolutely a living legend. This guy started a podcast after wrapping up his service in the United States military. And he started recording this podcast daily in his home to the point where he started interviewing big time folks like Gary Vaynerchuk, like Tony Robbins. And he just kept interviewing bigger and bigger names, putting out shows day after day. podcast and he’s traveling all the way from Puerto Rico to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend the in-person June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop. If you’re out there today folks you’ve ever wanted to grow a podcast, a broadcast, you want to get in you want to improve your marketing, if you’ve ever wanted to improve your marketing, your branding, if you’ve ever wanted to increase your sales, you want to come to the two-day interactive June 27th and 28th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop featuring Tim Tebow, Michael Levine, Jodly Dumas and countless big time super successful entrepreneurs. It’s going to be life changing. Get your tickets right now at thrive timeshow.com. James, what website is that? Thrive timeshow.com. James, one more time with more enthusiasm. Thrive timeshow.com. I’m not to be played with because it could get dangerous. See these people I ride with this moment. Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person, two-day, interactive, thrive time show business workshop? Interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money, and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you got to do is go to thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at King’s Point in New York, octa non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Keosak, The Rich Dad Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done his 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 Thorne, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. And he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books, and I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner to the investor, and I owe a lot of that to you, and I just wanted to take a moment to tell you thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump, but I just want to tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. 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, changing a life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, Kings Point in New York, acta non verba, watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa! Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey, I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business, and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school and I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us and getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. Having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool, the people are nice, it’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Once I saw what they were doing, I knew I had to get here at the conference. This is probably the best conference or seminar I’ve ever been to in over 30 years of business. You’re not bored, you’re awake, you’re alive the whole time. It’s not pushy, they don’t try to sell you a bunch of things. I was looking to learn how to just get control of my life, my schedule, and just get control of the business. Planning your time, breaking it all down, making time for the F6 in your life, and just really implementing it and sticking with the program. It’s really lively, he’s pretty friendly, helpful, and very welcoming. I attended a conference a couple months back and it was really the best business conference I’ve ever attended. At the workshop I learned a lot about time management, really prioritizing what’s the most important. Biggest takeaways are, you know, you want to take a step-by-step approach to your business. Whether it’s marketing, you know, what are those three marketing tools that you want to use, to human resources. Some of the most successful people and successful businesses in this town, their owners were here today because they wanted to know more from Clay and I found that to be kind of fascinating. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned is diligence, that businesses don’t change overnight. It takes time and effort and you got to go through the ups and downs of getting it to where you want to go. He actually gives you the road map out. I was stuck, didn’t know what to do, and he gave me the road map out step by step. He’s set up systems in the business that make my life much easier, allow me some time freedom. Here you can ask any question you want, they guarantee it’ll be answered. This conference motivates me and also gives me a lot of knowledge and tools. It’s up to you to do it. Everybody can do these things. There’s stuff that everybody knows, but if you don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for you. I can see the marketing working. It’s just an approach that makes sense. Probably the most notable thing is just the income increase that we’ve had. Everyone’s super fun, super motivating. I’ve been here before, but I’m back again because it motivated me. Your competition’s going to come eventually, or try to pick up these tactics. So you better, if you don’t, somebody else will. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9, and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey, guys. I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right. This is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing, and this is our new team. We went from four to 14, and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. So we really just wanna thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys. If you decide to not attend the ThriveCon workshop, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. The atmosphere at the office is very lively. You can feel the energy as soon as you walk through the door. And it really got me and my team very excited. If you decide not to come, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business bottom line. Love the environment. I love the way that Clay presents and teaches. It’s a way that not only allows me to comprehend what’s going on, but he explains it in a way to where it just makes sense. The SEO optimization, branding, marketing. I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have the entire four years of college. The most valuable thing that I’ve learned? Marketing is key. Marketing is everything. Making sure that you’re branded accurately and clearly. How to grow a business using Google reviews and then just how to optimize our name through our website also. Helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google. The biggest thing I needed to learn was how to build my foundation, how to systemize everything and optimize everything, build my SEO. How to become more organized, more efficient. How to make sure the business is really there to serve me, as opposed to me constantly being there for the business. New ways of advertising my business as well as recruiting new employees. Group interviews, number one. Before we felt like we were held hostage by our employees. Group interviews has completely eliminated that because you’re able to really find the people that would really be the best fit. Hands on how to hire people, how to deal with human resources, a lot about marketing and overall just how to structure the business, how it works for me and also then how that can translate into working better for my clients. The most valuable thing I’ve learned here is time management. I like the one hour of doing your business is real critical if I’m going to grow and change. Play really teaches you how to navigate through those things and not only find freedom but find your purpose in your business and find the purposes for all those other people that directly affect your business as well. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone. Everyone. Everyone needs to attend the conference because you get an opportunity to see that it’s real.