Entrepreneur | Characteristics Of The Self-Made Millionaire

Audio Transcription

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 hear what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. the the hard-line today we are talking about the team characteristics of the self-made millionaire So we were all thinking if you can do it, other people can too, right? Yeah. It’s not as hard as we’re led to believe. Now I want to make sure we’re clear on this because I think a lot of people have fallacies about this. Okay. To become a millionaire, it means if you take all your assets and you add them up together, that your total net worth would be a million dollars. A lot of people define a millionaire as being someone who makes a million dollars a year or who has a million dollars of cash. And I want to make sure everybody is clear on this. If you had a million dollars of cash today, you would now have $400,000 of cash because after taxation, you would lose it all. So I want to make sure your goal here would be to have a million dollars of net worth. That would be the goal here. And I think a lot of people are trying to get a million dollars of cash. And I’m telling you, every time you put a dollar in your bank, you have to pay taxes on that. So you really have to have two million dollars to have a million. I think it’s important that we all think about this from the very beginning. To be a millionaire, that means you have a million dollar net worth. So your assets versus your liabilities, a million dollars. Got it. And you passionately believe that anybody can do this. This isn’t something that’s crazy. It’s not unobtainable. Where does that belief come from? Well, one, I want to, again, I’m not trying to belabor nuances, but I think anybody who is diligent, who is hardworking, meaning that they apply effort consistently, anybody who has high integrity, and anybody who has a discernible skill can do it. If you have a skill, okay, and you have integrity, and you’re diligent, you can do it. And I’ve seen it happen time and time again. If you don’t have any skills, and you’re not diligent, and you don’t have integrity, you cannot ever do it. So if you’re watching this, and you’re like the get-rich-quick guy, you’re like, I just want to get rich as quick as possible, and then I’m willing to compromise my integrity, I’m willing to just, I just want to bet it all. If you’re that kind of person, you’re not gonna ever get there. If you’re watching this and you have no skills at all, you’re not gonna do it. You have to learn skills. So everyone can do it if you have those three things. I like it. Now I know there’s a book that you’ve read, The Millionaire Next Door, written by Thomas J. Stanley, PhD, and William Danko, PhD. That book really challenges the belief that most people have about what millionaires are, who are millionaires. A lot of times we think, oh, that’s just the wealthy getting wealthier. But this book really challenges that, doesn’t it? Yeah, well, The Millionaire Next Door, as we get into it today, that’s the guy who lives next door to you who’s a millionaire and you don’t even know it. The book The Millionaire Next Door talks about America’s wealth today, and they start to show that like 8 out of 10 Americans who are millionaires today earned it themselves. They didn’t like inherit it. They weren’t second-generation. They didn’t win the lottery. These are people who earned it the hard way. What was that number? A little over 80%. Well, we don’t think that way. We’re told not to think that way often. Yeah, you always say, well, that’s old money. I remember people growing up, that I was hung out with growing up, they would say, well, that’s old money. They come from money. It’s more comfortable to think that way right because if you don’t have it You know it’s they had something that you didn’t it’s a lazy thought right. It’s easy to say well I could never do that they come from money right easier easier to think that way so we’re going to dive into those points And so what we’re going to do is specifically dive into the ten characteristics like we said of the average millionaire So that you everybody around the world can learn how they themselves can become a millionaire. All around the world. So let’s start with characteristic number one here. Characteristic number one is we are married with children. Okay, so here’s a quote from that book we just mentioned, The Millionaire Next Door. It says, I am a 57 year old male, married with three children. About 70% of us millionaires earn 80% or more of our household’s income. Why is that important? What is that quote saying? What it’s saying is that right now, I mean, there’s a lot of women watching this who feel like they can’t become successful. Well, Sarah Blakely became the first, the woman who became a billionaire the fastest. Spanx. The Spanx founder, yeah. And so Oprah’s become a billionaire. I mean, there’s women shattering that belief. Yeah. But right now, the average millionaire, really in America, is a 57-year-old dude who has kids. I think it’s important that we think about that because a lot of people who are in their 30s and 40s and they say, well because I have kids I just can’t start a business like you can. I have kids so it’s harder for me to take a risk. I can’t be crazy. I’ve got to work at this job because I’ve got to provide for my kids. Well I have five kids and there’s there you you were around them last night I mean with these are great kids and there’s a lot of pressure but I will tell you again we come back to those three you have to be diligent you have to have a skill and you have to have integrity and I find that to be a parent and a good parent you have to have integrity and the kids actually drive you to work harder. Yeah. So it’s not a hindrance it’s actually something that’ll help you. So the reason this is the first characteristic is again kind of breaking down that idea that we have of or maybe excuses that we have in our heads right like you said I can’t do it I’ll get there maybe someday but I can’t right now I have kids most millionaires well I’m gonna say well I have health problems right I have kids it’s really hard for me to make money well I can tell you this my kids they keep having these like teeth that need to be pulled yeah it’s like a thousand dollars every time like just keep it in there. Kids get sick. They twist ankles. They break arms. Things happen. And a lot of people are sitting here on the sidelines of life watching the millionaires on TV saying, I can’t become successful because I have kids. And I’m telling you, you’re wrong. You can do it. You can do it regardless of whether you have kids and all the expenses that go with it. In fact, that’s going to help you because you’re going to be one of the more motivated people. I take married employees as a general rule outperform non-married because they have this sense of obligation to provide for their dependents. They can’t fail. So that’s principle number one. We’re married with children. It’s taking away all your excuses. You can do it. So now we’ve got characteristic number two. We live on the cheap. Now this is again, but we’re going to stick with that same book now, Millionaire Next Door. It says, on average, our total annual realized income is less than seven percent of our wealth. In other words, we live on less than seven percent of our wealth. That’s mind-boggling. Is that real? People do that. Well, a friend of mine, Braxton Fears, who’s one of the Thrive Venture Capital partners, and who’s a member of the Thrive team, Braxton and his wife have capped their lifestyle. The founder of Hobby Lobby, I met Mr. Green, he capped his lifestyle. Meaning that they’ve decided, this is how much money I’m going to live on every year, and then anything I make beyond that is going to go back to savings. Most Americans spend whatever they make. So I see doctors who make $100,000 a year, and they spend $100,000 a year. In fact, they don’t spend $100,000, they spend $110,000. Sorry, correction, because they borrow money. Or you’ll see someone makes $200,000. Now they’re spending $220,000 a year. And NBA players, they make $60 million, but they spend $70 million. The majority of them end up without any money. Yeah, and we can point fingers at the celebrities, but a lot of people do it in their own lives too. So people pick on Robin Williams and they say, how does somebody lose all their money when they made so much money like Robin Williams, the actor and comedian? Everybody’s doing it. So the only way to do that is to do what nobody else is doing, which is to live below your means. Right. And this is a habit. The reason we’re bringing this up is it’s a habit that these people ingrained early on when there almost often was no choice, right? I mean, I think you can attest to that. This is something you lived by when you had no choice and you live by now. Yeah. I remember when my wife and I, when we were trying to start the DJ company called DJ Connection where we were doing at the peak of it we were doing almost 4,000 weddings a year. 80 weddings a weekend and I just remember that one time I came in and I said, hun, we’re gonna have to turn off the air conditioning unit in our apartment if we’re gonna afford this new ad I want to get. And you’re living in Oklahoma. Yeah so it’s like you know like 100 degrees in the summer in July and I said I’ll use 90s and muggy. And then no heat in the winter. And I said, yeah, it’s like 30 degrees, 20 degrees, no heat in the winter. Seriously, that’s what we did. And, but it was, it was a decision we had to make because we could not afford to buy the ad and to maintain climate control in our place. Then we also had one vehicle. So we made a decision decision that one of us would walk to work in that temperature for about a year. And another one of us would have a cell phone and the other would not. And one of us would make this sacrifice, or one of us, we decided we’re not going to watch TV. For me, even to this day, I don’t know if it’s a wealth strategy or not, but I go out annually. I just did it a couple weeks ago. I just bought six new suits, and I’ll buy six suits a year, and I wear those six suits every day. And that’s all I do. And so I suppose I could buy new clothes every week, but to me it’s not a habit, and I’m not going to do it. So you’ve got to think about those destructive, wealth-eating habits that we’re doing right now. Ask yourself if you’re watching this, what weird, wealth-destroying habit am I doing? And you have to stop it. And again, I just love that these habits were ground into you when there was no choice. But now you live with heating and cooling, but that same habit is in your mind affecting everything you do, all your purchases and your savings especially. So it needs to infiltrate all areas. Next we got characteristic number three. We did not receive an inheritance. We touched on this earlier. Here we go, another quote from that book. “‘Most of us have never felt at a disadvantage “‘because we did not receive an inheritance. About 80% of us are first-generation affluent. Again, that’s from the Millionaire Next Door book. What does this mean to you, and why is this important to talk about? Well, I’ve met entrepreneurs from coast to coast who are millionaires, some of which are billionaires. And they all do things that are very different from people who live a life of poverty. An example, every one of the wealthy people I’ve met who has come from poverty has refused at one point in their life handouts. They’ve turned down, they say I’m not going to take welfare, I’ll just live on a couch with a buddy. I’m not, just out of personal pride, I’m not going to take welfare. Whenever somebody gives them money, they almost always want to pay them back. They’re like, you know, I know you gave me money to help me during this time. I appreciate that, but I want to pay you back. They have this almost mentality. It’s not that they’re not thankful. It’s that they just cannot become a dependent or become a mooch. They can’t become a moocher. They can’t be dependent. And what he’s saying here is that these people have never felt like, man, I’m disadvantaged because I wasn’t given any money. I see poor people. When people die, I’ve seen this, it makes me just sick, vomit. I see poor people who, when a family member gets sick, they literally get together and start talking about who’s going to get the inheritance. They start speculating about how much inheritance there is and who’s going to get it. You think, watching this, you might think, well, that’s not me. Well, some people, maybe not you people, but other people are doing this. They literally are getting together when somebody’s on their deathbed, instead of thinking about how can we maximize the amount of time we spend with this person. They are sitting together and strategizing who do we believe is going to get the most money and how much money do we believe this person is going to leave us. That is sick, but that is what happens. It’s not what wealthy people do. So if I want to be a wealthy person, the first characteristic, we’ve blown away any excuses. We said you’ve got to have that habit of being in control of your budget. And now we’re saying don’t worry about the inheritance. You don’t need that. You don’t want that because it creates the wrong mindset. You don’t need a government grant. You don’t need some sort of government handout. You don’t need a rich Uncle Bernie to give you money. You don’t need a big break. You don’t need a lottery. You don’t need to have luck. You’re just going to grind it out because you know that what you think about, you can bring about only if you’re diligent and hardworking enough to make it happen. I’m kind of like a honey badger. You are a honey badger. You eat snakes and larva and you get stung by bees and you take that pain. By poisonous snakes. You take the pain and you turn it into motivation. That fuels you. Yeah, for some reason I like it. Alright, now let’s go to characteristic number four. We live below our means. So for a quote here from the same book, they say, we live well below our means. We wear inexpensive suits and drive American-made cars. Only a minority of us drive a current model year, you know, automobile. Only a minority ever lease our motor vehicles. What does this mean and why is this important? Well, a lot of people that I meet all the time who want to be successful entrepreneurs, I had one lady, I remember meeting with her and she was trying to grow her business and I noticed that she had a coach purse. I noticed that her office had really expensive name brand types of decor in it that weren’t necessary for the customer. It was just personal stuff. She had her own private office. I realized that financially she was in a bad spot. I wished that she was unique or that she was one of the few people out there. But it’s kind of like people that are poor who want to buy the Air Jordan or the most expensive shoes possible. Sometimes we just have to focus on what matters. And it’s hard to build much financial momentum. Warren Buffett refers to it as a snowball. But when you have a snowball, if it starts up here at the mountain, right? And let’s just say your snowball is only $5. That’s fine. Well, if you can save that $5 and then grow it into 10, and then 20, and 40, and then 80, and then 160, well, pretty soon you’re able to have a massive snowball, and the momentum that you have coming down this hill is tremendous. But a lot of us, we’re not able to save the money because we just have, for some reason, we have to spend the 10, we have to spend, so we can’t have the 40, so we can’t spend the 80, we can’t, and it makes it tough for us to get ahead, because money just allows us to buy opportunities. So we were just talking today about these RED cameras, just a minute ago, we were talking about buying these RED cameras, the ones that are really expensive and nice. Cameramen are just salivating. Yeah, well I’m just saying, like, if that’s my life goal, or that’s what we want to do We can’t buy them unless we’ve saved Team thrive we have to save if we want to buy these these tools that we need Every business owner watching this if you want to be successful you’ve got to live below your means You’ve got to live the way that no one else lives right now So you can live the way that no one else lives in the future right you’ve got to live on the cheap I don’t know all the details of this story, but we have a mentor who, I mean, became a millionaire the old-fashioned way, didn’t he? By just saving. He was a school teacher. Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing was that as a school teacher, you know, everyone’s paid a certain amount. He capped his lifestyle and just saved money back. It’s possible. You can actually do it. You don’t have to win the lottery. Yeah, well, you know, remember in high school where they tell you, they say, hopefully everyone watching has had this class, and if you didn’t, I want to make sure you have it right now. Good, please. But if you go ahead and save $2,000 a year every year for 30 years, and all you make is 10% interest on that, the compounding interest works in your favor, where you end up having millions of dollars when you’re in your 50s. So again, if you just take $2,000 a year and you save it, and you do that for 30 years, every year, you get a 10% interest, so it compounds. And over time, you have millions of dollars. So that’s it. Everyone, everybody watching this right now, you can achieve massive financial success if you’re willing to live below your means. But only if you’re willing to live below your means. It means you need to buy a nice suit, you need to look sharp, but you don’t need to spend $4,000 on it. Well, I think it was interesting for me, eye-opening, to see this first-hand when we traveled down to Orlando to meet with Lee Cockrell. He ran Disney World, managed almost 40,000 employees. He charges quite a few dollars for speaking events. Yeah, he’s got the money. But what is he driving? A minivan. He’s driving a minivan. But it was hot. He put spinners on it, didn’t he? I don’t think so. I think you’re thinking of something else. Did he put a big system in it? No, no, no. It was clean. It was a clean minivan. Wasn’t it a Ferrari branded minivan? No, this was a typical minivan. He had some Gucci shoes on though, right? No. This guy lived by this principle. Yeah. It’s real. Like people actually do this. You’re not just talking about nonsense. Frugality leads to unbelievable financial freedom. I love it. Alright, well let’s move on to characteristic number five then. We plan for saving on those rainy days. We plan to save for those rainy days. So again, here we go. A quote from this millionaire next door book. We have a go to hell fund. In other words, we have accumulated enough wealth to live without working for 10 or more years. Thus, those of us with a net worth of 1.6 million could live comfortably for more than 12 years. Actually, we could live longer than that since we save at least 15% of our earned income. So, if everything goes to hell, they’re okay. It doesn’t matter. Well, it also is, one of the things in the book he talks about is that, I’ve had this happen before. I did consulting years ago for a company and the guy I did consulting for was just a jerk. Okay. And so one day I walked into the office and this is after like the 10th time. Yeah. And I said listen you owe me X amount of commissions. It was like $30,000 at this point and every time that you pay me you don’t pay me the amount you owe me and I have to like argue with you to get the payment. I didn’t say go to hell, but I said, hey, I don’t appreciate it. He says, well, what are you going to do about it? I said, I’m quitting immediately. So I don’t care. And he’s like, well, what do you mean? I thought, you know, no, see, I have enough money saved that for, I don’t know, 10, 20 years, I don’t have to work. So I’m done immediately, peacing out. And it freaked him out, you know, and it gave me immediate freedom. And today I never have to work on projects I don’t like you know so if I’m working with a client, and they prove to be difficult. I tell them I Specifically say these words. I think you’ve even heard me say it before I say hey the amount of money that you’re paying me Is not worth the amount of joy that I’m losing by working with you and so henceforth. I am no longer working with you I say it all the time, so it’s just a deal where that money allows you to say, hey, go fly a kite to things and people that you don’t want to work with anymore. But in order to get to that point you gotta live below your means. You gotta start putting that away. Let’s get real for a second. If you’re watching this right now and you’re in an apartment, and let’s say your apartment is about $800 a month, chances are you’re getting the peak apartment that you can afford. This is something I encourage you to do. I don’t think most people will do this, but I know you will. Go to the leasing agency, go to the apartment complex and say, how much is the smallest apartment possible? And they’ll say 450, but no one does that because it’s just one bedroom and you’re like, I’ll take it. Then move all your stuff into the small apartment and stack it up tall like it’s a New York City apartment and live below your means. If you have a house, you and your husband own a house, and you barely are making ends meet, go. Put a for sale sign in front of your house. Sell that house. Find a house that is well below your means and live there comfortably. You have a new car. You can barely make the payments. Chances are you can barely make the payments. Get rid of that beast get a car. You can afford pay cash. I drove a 1984 Chevy Brown van without a door I used a table one of those six-foot tables as a door To keep the aerodynamic drag from being too significant. I did that for years because it was paid for yeah I don’t want a car payment We’ve gone through we’ve with the first characteristic. We’ve eliminated the excuses, right? Then we told you, you know, you gotta live on the cheap. On cheaps. And then we talked about how if you don’t receive inheritance, great, you’re set up to become a millionaire. Great. You’re set up. And then we said you live well below your means. Well. But then when you do that, you have to specifically set aside time and money, set aside money, so that when that rainy day comes, you’re fine. Yeah. That’s where we’re at right now. Hey, by the way, if you’re watching this, you’re like, I’ve had a health problem. I had an emergency. Somebody stole my stuff. You know when I ran the DJ company? Somebody stole all the equipment that was in my trailer. I had a trailer with DJ equipment in it. And you know what? I was 22 and I didn’t care. Because I just took cash and bought another system. And most DJ companies, I met two of them in Tulsa, I met two people in Tulsa who had DJ companies that went out of business when their equipment was stolen. Because they had to wait for 60 days for the insurance company to pay them. To pay them back. For me, I didn’t care. I just bought another one. That’s how I operate. So when things happen, I just frankly don’t… We’re all going to have obstacles and bad things that happen, but you’ve got to live on the cheap. Now, what if you’re watching this right now and you’re like, dude, I can’t even afford the smallest apartment. You have no idea two options for you one move to, Oklahoma It’s really inexpensive here right Tulsa. It’s a birthplace of tourism. You’ve said yeah Well actually Tulsa is one of the most affordable places in all of America to live because the cost of living is lower here The taxation is lower here obviously there’s nobody coming here for tourism, so it makes it less expensive to live here Well, it was rated one of the top places for entrepreneurs. Forbes actually rated it this year, 2014, as the best city for young entrepreneurs. Come on. Come on out here, guys. Now, thing number two you can do, though, is you can get a roommate. Find a roommate, move into an apartment. Or option three, this is a little bonus one. This is called the Lenny Kravitz method. You know Lenny Kravitz? He’s the guy who’s saying, are you going to go my way? You know that guy? Yeah. Awesome. Well, what Lenny did is he got this deal here. I’m just trying to draw it out here just so we can see what this is. I apologize. It looks like I’m driving a Jeep or something, some sort of military vehicle. But what he would do is he would actually just live inside the car. And this is the Lenny Kravitz method. And so what you would do is you actually go out there and you’d get a car and you’d just live inside the car and you would want to take showers, you know, or you take showers, you know, water coming out of the shower, you take showers at the gym. This is the Lenny Kravitz method. So this is something we can all do. So don’t tell me that you can’t do this. You can do this. Now, if you’re saying, I’m not willing to live in a car or to go to a small apartment or to go to a small house, then you’re not going to be successful. But if you’re willing to make those changes, you can be successful. Clay, you’re offending us a little bit here. Well, my goal is to offend myself every morning. So I’ve gone ahead and set myself some complaints about this episode. All right, well, let’s go ahead and move on here to characteristic number six. We keep it simple. So a quote here from this book, Millionaire Next Door. They say, we have more than six and one half times the level of wealth of our non-millionaire neighbors but in our neighborhood these non-millionaires outnumber us better than three to one. Could it be that they have chosen to trade wealth for acquiring high status material possessions? This quote is just saying that these people are living next door to millionaires when they probably shouldn’t be, right? Well, what it’s saying here is that most people, there’s three, these millionaires, are living next to non-millionaires. So just an example, a typical neighborhood, you got house one, house two, house three, right? Well, here is the millionaire, and these other three people, let’s say are not. These are non-millionaires. So what’s the difference? They all have the driveways, they’ve all got the, you know, the tree, they’ve all got the… what’s the difference? Well, these people here are buying materialistic stuff. They are buying as much stuff as they can possibly buy. They are filling their house with stuff. These guys just keep buying items. They cannot stop buying stuff. There’s a grill online, on sale, if there’s an infomercial, they have to buy it. If there’s a new fitness device, they have to buy it. If there’s a new TV, they have to buy it. They’ve got to add on to their house. They’ve got to add on to the house. They’ve got to add on this little shed over here where they start to put spend more money. Then they have to build this little chiminea. This little chiminea, it’s like a chimney where it smoke comes out of it and it’s backed up. This backyard grill. They have to put a pool, a pool which is a hole in the earth where you pour money into it. That’s called a pool. Is that a little bar yard there? It’s a hole in the earth. And you just keep… From their front… From their driveway. They just keep pouring. They just keep spending money. They get the pool. They get the shed. They get the TV. What’s the millionaire doing? The millionaire’s like, I’m cool. I’m happy. I’m content. Okay. That’s what he’s doing. Wow. So it’s just like you can spend money at an insane rate or you can be content with what you have and not be a super consumer. They’re just keeping it simple. Keep it simple. And they’re the ones that we naturally think have the ability and should be buying all these things. They can. They’re millionaires. There’s a place in Dallas, I don’t know if it still exists, but I think it’s called DFW Elite Motors. DFW Elite Motors. You can Google it. I think it exists still. But you can lease a Porsche for the day, or lease a Ferrari. And I know a guy who lives in Dallas, crazy rich, who just leases a Porsche. He just leases one when he wants one. And he’s like, honestly, the new car smell is cool, and I like to have it. But it’s like for a day. So every couple of months, he’ll go out and lease a Porsche, or lease a Ferrari, because he can. He thinks it’s kind of fun, but he doesn’t want to own it. I know a lot of people that are buying limos. I’ve literally met people who’ve bought limos, and you’re going, why would you buy a limo? There’s just somebody who’s kind of on that verge of wealth, and they went out and bought a limo. It makes no sense. It’s not to start a limo business. No, it didn’t make sense to buy a private jet either. A lot of NBA players are trying to buy a private plane. What are you doing? You don’t need to own it. I mean, I think Mike Tyson bought a tiger. We don’t need to buy a tiger. We need to maybe just rent a tiger or go visit a tiger. We don’t need to buy a tiger. What is their website for renting tigers? Rentingtigers.com. I don’t know. All I know is that he literally spent millions. Michael Jackson had financial peril. These are guys with hundreds of millions of dollars. They got to quit buying a Ferris wheel. You don’t need to buy a Ferris wheel for your Neverland Ranch. You don’t need it. Just go visit one. Yeah insane All right, just keep it simple How many people watching this know somebody or are or are that somebody who literally? bought a pool in your backyard And you’re not in the kind of shape where you should be in a pool or you want to be in the pool And so you’ve been in the pool maybe once a year You’re just on fire offending people left and right think about the cost of that pool. What does it cost you per time you go in the pool? What if you’re that person who has a pool that you installed for $100,000, and you fix it, and you do all the things you need to make sure it stays nice with chlorine and all that, and you go into the pool twice a year? What does that cost you? Is it like $10,000 every time you hop in the pool? Think about it. It’s just these are the kinds of things we’re not thinking about. And these are uncomfortable for us to hear, but what Clay is passionate about is explaining to people you can do it. You can do this. But you have to make some choices. Boom. It’s just choices. So if you don’t want to do it, if you want to live the way that these people are living, the other three houses, do it, but don’t be upset when you’re not a millionaire. Boom. So it’s just boiling down. It’s offensive, but it doesn’t have to be. Just make a choice. I think the truth is a general rule can be offensive. So as an example, you know, I wake up every day, I look in the mirror, right? Well, here’s the deal. I’m not in shape right now. I’m not offended by it. It’s just, it’s the truth. I’m not, because I’m not lifting weights a lot, right? So I’m making choices. I’m choosing to do certain things right now instead of lifting weights. So I’m not in shape as said before I am a shape right not if somebody pointed it out to me and said hey dude you’re not in shape can’t be offended because I don’t work out so we can’t be offended if like we’re if you know this is that it’s true the truth is what we have to and if truth is offensive I apologize not that I offended you but I apologize that what you’re doing is offending you characteristic number seven we aren’t elites so the quote here that we’re gonna look at is from the same book and It says only 17% of us millionaires or our spouses ever attended a private elementary or private high school But 55% of our children are currently attending or have attended private schools Hmm, so why is this quote important? Well, it’s because a lot of people say, well, gosh, I didn’t go to an elite private school. I meet people all the time that say, I didn’t graduate from an elite high school like you, so I couldn’t be successful. I didn’t go to an elite… In Tulsa, there’s a beautiful school called Holland Hall. It has this awesome campus. You know that movie Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams. It’s kind of how you picture Harvard or an Ivy League school being. It’s beautiful. It’s got its own lake and it has this beautiful history and a lot of people feel like, well, because I didn’t go there, I probably couldn’t be successful. But what we’re finding is only 17% of the people that actually did achieve big success or are achieving, did go to these kinds of private schools. So the other group, you know, didn’t. But what they’re saying is second generation, they do believe in education and they want to put their kids in private schools. So half of them are now coming and saying, I’d like to put my kids, I’d like to give my kids a better chance at success. But you don’t have to have that pedigree of private schoolism in order to be successful. That’s something you harp on a lot. You don’t need that formal education to be successful. It’s more, it’s more important to have the right attitude mindset and honey badger spirit Yeah, a practical education is more valuable than formal education being able to do something What can you do is much more important than what degree do you have right that makes sense all right? Well, let’s just go ahead and move on to characteristic number eight. Yeah, we believe in education This is perfect to be right on the tail end of that Yeah, so you said that you don’t have to have education to reach this level of success to become a millionaire but oftentimes these millionaires are doing whatever they need to do to put their kids in the best schools possible because they believe in education. So the quote is again from Millionaire Next Door they say, as a group we believe that education is extremely important for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren. We spend heavily for the educations of our offspring. What does this mean to you? I know that you are passionate about learning. Even if it’s not tied to money, you’re constantly absorbing. Well, what I do is like all these books here, you know, this book we’ve been talking about a little bit today, The Millionaire Next Door. This book is a phenomenal book and it teaches you a lot of things. Well, what does this cost? I mean, I bought this for 7.99 because I live in the US. If I was in Canada, I would have paid $10.99 for this thing. But anyway, I bought this book, right? I pay to go to seminars. I pay to go to workshops. I pay to have consultants teach me. I bet you if on an annual basis, I probably spend $50,000 to $60,000 a year on education. So I pay consultants, advisors, people to teach me things. So I place a huge value on education. But yet the formality of it is what I don’t care about. I don’t care if you give me a certification. Furthermore, I don’t want one. I don’t want a little diploma that says, you know how to do SEO. You know how to do search engine. Here’s a diploma. Because I don’t care. And all the clients I work with, I know it might freak you out if you’re watching this. I do search engine optimization work for mega fortune 500 companies and none of them are like, hey do you have a degree in that? No one cares. In fact the web developer that I’ve worked with for years, one of the top web developers in the country, he did not have a degree in web design. So the whole idea, but he knows how to do web design. That’s all you care about, can you do it? He pours tons of money into learning how to do web design and he goes to seminars and workshops and reads the books. So we value education, which is the ability to learn how to do something. We don’t necessarily care about the formality of the education. Yeah, I think that’s often just rooted in this. You guys are always looking to improve yourself. Always. I’ve seen that in all of the millionaires that I’ve come in contact with. They don’t have this mindset that they know it all, they’ve got it, you guys should listen to me now, they’re constantly absorbing any information. That’s why I’m starting major facial reconstruction of my face here, I’m just gonna do a major overhaul. Extensive plastic surgery, just kidding, I’m just kidding. Okay. Yeah. I’m not gonna do that. Yeah, don’t do that. No. All right, well characteristic number nine here. This characteristic is we believe in the sixth day principle. I know what you mean by this, but first let’s read the quote here. About two-thirds of us millionaires work between 45 to 55 hours per week. That’s tough to do in five days, right? Well, let’s just give a quick example here. The Pilgrims, you know, some of you guys might know, but the Nina, was it the Nina? The Pinta? Yeah. And then there was the Santa Marina? Was it Santa or Santa? Santa. Santa Marina? Santa Maria, I think it was. Santa Maria. Now if I get my history wrong and you’re watching and you’re like, it’s not the Santa Maria, it’s fine. The point is there were three boats we came over in, right? They came over on these boats, they land on Plymouth Rock, right? They got the big sailboats here. They land on Plymouth Rock. There should be a song that we’re able to remember all this by, I think. But it’s escaping my memory. They land here in Plymouth Rock, right? Boom, they hit Plymouth Rock. When they got to Plymouth Rock, these homies had to build houses. Could you imagine getting to Plymouth Rock? They’re already hungry. History shows they ran out of food. They were getting hungry. Now they have to not only move all their stuff off the boat, they have to build houses. They have to get food too. So let’s make a to-do list for the early guys that are on there. This guy, this guy, he’s got to get food, right? He’s got to get shelter, and he’s probably going to have to talk to his wife. Talk to my wife, so his wife doesn’t get mad. Because you know his wife is like, hey, I know you’re out there killing all the food and building shelter, but are you going to talk to me? I mean, so he’s got that needed. Was he working 40 hours a week? No, not if he wants to live. No, he just worked until he got done. Now, Steve Jobs, he launched Apple. Was he sitting there going, well, guys, it’s been 40 hours and due to the labor laws, I’ve decided that I’m going to now be done for the day? No. Was Steve Jobs saying, hey, when’s lunch break? When can we go on break? No. So why are you saying that? If you’re saying that, stop saying that. The point is, you work until the job is done. You work until you get the results you want. And for those of you who have the Judeo-Christian worldview, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX and PayPal, he talks about how you just have to work 60 hours or 50 hours a week if you want to be successful. So I’m just saying, if you want to become successful and you don’t want to die on Plymouth Rock or you don’t want to die while you’re starting your business, you’re going to have to work more than 40 hours a week. And you’re like, I don’t want to work 40 hours a week. I just want to work like 39 hours. I don’t care what the labor laws say. I don’t care. If you’re going to be successful, you’ve got to do what other people don’t do. And I see it all the time. People who come to me, you see them too, they come to me and they say, what do I need to do to be successful? And then you’ll tell them and they’ll say, when do we go on break? I have not, you’ve seen this, I have not taken a lunch break in 12 years, maybe 13 years. I don’t know when the last time I took a lunch break was. And I’ll tell you why I got into that. It’s because when I started my business, I couldn’t afford lunch. So I made myself a little wager that I would not eat lunch until I got a deal. And it created a habit where I no longer eat food very much. I don’t recommend you starve yourself, but the point is, the big principle is you have to work until the job is done, not until you hit the 40-hour maximum. Well, and with Elon Musk, I love the way he said that with that same quote you’re remembering. He talked about how working for Tesla is like working for special forces. It’s an honor. It’s a special thing. And so nobody is, you know, he’s like, well, we don’t hire people that want to work that minimum hours because they feel they’re a part of something big. And I know that I can articulate for the team here at Thrive, like we know we’re doing something awesome. It’s big. And that’s why we’re fine with showing up early and staying late, because that’s what we’re required to put out an awesome product. This product that we’re making for you is designed to help you take your life and take it from just surviving to thriving. And so whatever it takes, that’s what we’re going to do. Awesome. If you want to be thriving, you can’t just be hoping to work five days a week. Yeah. This doesn’t add up. Math doesn’t work. Furthermore, the idea of a 40-hour work week was developed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR. And I don’t know that it wasn’t created by the creator of the planet, or it wasn’t created by anybody else up until that time. So one person has now come up with this 40-hour work concept. And if you don’t agree with that person just move on. So let’s go here to characteristic number 10. This one is wrapping the whole thing up here what you have to do to become a millionaire. Number 10 is we get our money working for us. Millionaires have their money work for them. The quote is we are fastidious investors. On average we invest nearly 20% of our households realized income each year. Most of us invest at least 15%. 79% of us have at least one account with a brokerage company, but we make our own investment decisions. Clay, what does this mean and do you do this? Yeah, I mean, I took money, I think last year I invested $125,000, roughly. So what I did is I invested money in company A, and company A I make $2,000 a month from. Company B I invested money in, and I think I make about $2,250 a month. Well the thing is, is that before I’ve even done any work at all every month, I now make from these two investments alone $4,250 a month. Right. Just residual income from your investments. Yeah. Yeah. Now I still have to do some work a little bit I guess to manage it and stuff. But that’s what I do. Now I could have, now how much were these investments? This one was about $25,000 and this one was about $10,000 but it required me to spend about 160 hours of time. Okay. So $10,000 plus $160,000, this one was just cash. Okay. What could I have done with that money? Well, I probably could have bought a new car, you know? I love the Hummer of love, but I probably could have gone out and bought like a Mercedes. You could have put a pool in your front yard like you were drawing for those other guys. I’m really ripping pools because I know about a dozen people personally that own pools who never go in them. Right. I don’t get it. But if you go in your pool all the time, I’m excited for you and I’m pumped up for you and I want you to just get an even bigger pool with all your money. Okay, but anyway, this business here is $10,000. What could I have done with that? I know people that spend $10,000 a year on just flat screen TVs, furniture, trips, whatever. I put it into that, 160 hours a time. Well, where did that time come from? Well, I could have been sleeping in. I did almost all of the work for this business, truthfully, between 4 AM and about 8 AM. All the work I did for this company in the mornings. There’s times when people were asleep. So you can invest your time and create sweat equity or your money. So right now, if you’re watching this and you have no money, you can literally go to a business owner. This is what I would do. You say, hey, I don’t have any money. But what I’m going to do is you pay me $5 an hour, and I need to come up with, say, $5,000. I’m going to give you 1,000 hours of my time with no compensation in exchange for 1% or 1% or whatever the equity percentage is, whatever. And most people will take you up on that. So I’m just saying that’s a way to do it. If you don’t have any money, you can put in your time. Or in my case, you take a time and money combo. Why did I do that? Because I knew that if I hired a consultant to do what I could do, it probably would have cost me 60 G’s over here. 60 grand if I would have hired somebody. So instead, I did it myself. Right. That’s perfect. That’s what I was going to ask. This is teaching us how to become millionaires. So you need to be doing this before you’re a millionaire. And you can by investing your time. Were you able to do that as well, or did you do anything like that? Yeah. I literally, what I did is I went to a couple companies that I knew needed the services that I could offer. I taught myself to make on-hold music for companies, to make cheerleading mixes, you know, the cheerleading music that cheerleaders dance and do the routines to. I made the intro music for sports games, NCAA games. I found out, I basically built sound systems that I could use for public events. And I would go to companies that were I wanted to work with and would say, hey, I will do the event for free in exchange for a percentage of the revenue or a percentage of the profit or whatever. And that’s a way to do it. So you can get in the game. If all you have right now is your hands and your time, then invest your time. And that again even goes back to one of the principles we talked about earlier of starting those habits. Often I think these millionaires did that when they didn’t have money, they invested their time and now it’s just second nature. I continue to invest so that my money starts working for me. Well I don’t even think about it. I work with a client and they ask me I have one client right now that it’s a hospital and they’ve asked me to do some work with them. And I have floated the idea of, hey I just want a percentage of your gross revenue for a hospital Mm-hmm I Could make millions of dollars if that goes through no I never thought about what are you gonna pay me per hour? You know yeah, nor have I thought about putting in my own money and do it I just thought about hey I will do these services in exchange for a percentage of revenue of a hospital we can do it for anything right yeah Well, I love it. I’m well you’ve eliminated excuses for us in every area whether it’s the first point, you know, I have a bunch of kids. I don’t have time right now to start saving. You eliminated that. Most millionaires have kids, have family, and they do it. You eliminated any excuse for why you can’t be living cheap. Live cheap right now. Millionaires do that. I want to say this real quick. Walt Disney ate dog food at one point because he ran out of money and he wanted to keep the business afloat. He was willing to do whatever it takes. Richard Branson created Virgin out of his parents’ house. His first newspaper called The Student was started out of his parents’ house. We all have to make big sacrifices. All of us do. There’s no excuse. I don’t have a location. I don’t have the money. Just do it. You can do it. You can do it. If you weren’t given an inheritance, great. You’re set up just like most millionaires. You don’t need any handouts. Millionaires, we said, live way below their means way below mm-hmm And that’s a way for them to start saving for those rainy days which we talked about they keep it simple You know with Lee Cockrell’s driving the minivan maybe into it’s sweet though. Yeah, it’s very nice very nice Maybe you know and they’re not elites. You know, but they care about education. These are all the principles We we’ve talked about today. We gave you practical action steps on so now the choice is just yours Clay’s heart is to be able to share with you how he got to this place. All you have to do is make the decision and implement it. Is that it? I just want you to know if you’re watching this right now, maybe you’ve never heard this before and maybe you felt like you had to watch millionaires on TV or watch successful people and you could never do it. I promise you, you can do it. You’re a living example of it. Boom. Thank you. All right, JT, so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business? To get you to your goal, so it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination And would you need profits to get there? I mean is that when you have a business that’s successful and you’re in your mind your expert opinion Would you need profits to get your team to get you to your goals? Yeah, because if you have a 15 million dollar business, but you have 15 million dollars of expenses. It’s kind of pointless. Holy crap! Alright, so the question I would have here for you, if you could take, like, I don’t know, 10 minutes or less, and see if you could save $3,000 a year by reducing your credit card fees, would you do it? Yes, absolutely. Holy crap! Why would somebody out there who’s listening right now, who has a sane mind, why would they not go to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card to schedule a ten minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least three thousand bucks a year. Why would they not do it? Yeah, why would they not do it? Maybe because they don’t understand how you set the website. This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Griswold family Christmas. No, that’s clear okay so that that could be a that could be true so I encourage everybody to check out thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card what would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save three thousand dollars or more on credit card fees? Maybe they think it is a waste of time and then it won’t it’s not possible. There’s somebody out there that’s making more than three thousand dollars every 10 minutes and they’re like, nah, that’s not worth my time. There’s probably some someone out there, okay, who would think that well, I’ll just tell you folks, if you’re out there today, and you’re making less than $3,000 per 10 minutes, I would highly recommend that you go to thrive timeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard it because you can compare rates, you can save money, and you know, the big goal, in my opinion, of building a business is to create time freedom and financial freedom. And in order to do that, you have to maximize your profits. Holy crap! Now, one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue. Another way to do it is to decrease your expenses. It’s a profit deal. It takes the pressure off. JT, is there any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save a total of $3,000 a year on average? I am at a loss and I cannot think of any other. Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair. Conditioner is better. I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool, really. Stop looking at me swan. Well let me tell you a good story here real quick. I actually years ago compared rates with this company here integrated payment services and I scheduled a consultation I don’t know if I was skeptical I just thought whatever I’ll take 10 minutes I’ll compare rates. I can’t tell. You can tell me I’m a doctor no I mean I’m just not sure. Why can’t you take a guess? Well, not for another two hours. You can’t take a guess for another two hours? And in my case in my in my case my particular case I save over $20,000 a year. Holy crap! Wow. Which is like groceries when my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great. Okay. Oh God. Everything okay ma’am? Oh it’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items and it’s already 60 bucks. I’m so scared. Okay. I’m a trained professional ma’am. I’ve scanned a lot of groceries I need you to stay with me It’s just that my in-laws are in town and they want a charcuterie board. This isn’t gonna be easy So I need you to be brave. All right. What’s your name? Patricia? Patricia? All right. I need you to take a deep breath We’re about to do the cheese. You know, that’s the difference between eating organic and not organic So because my wife eats organic I had to take the 10 minutes needed to compare rates to save the $20,000 a year on credit card fees just for one of my companies. One question, what’s the brand name of the clock? The brand name of the clock, Rod, do we have it? The brand name of the clock, it’s an elegant, from Ridgway, it’s from Ridgway. Let’s buy the clock and sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card you schedule a free consultation request information a member of our team will call you they’ll schedule a free consultation it should take you 10 minutes or less and they’re gonna compare rates and see if they can’t save you more than $3,000 a year off of your credit card processing you were hoping what I would know you money at all you don’t owe us money because the end of the day at the end of the day the goal of the business is to create time freedom and financial freedom. And in order to do that, you need to create additional profits. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now. Okay. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both $1.3 billion companies. They both have 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts, and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, you know, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest and Lawn company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. So 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85%, and that’s largely due to, first of all, our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals and more new customers last year than we did the first five months or I’m sorry the first we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible but the reason why we have that success by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews, that way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists that when everything gets done and it gets done right, it creates accountability, we’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really, really contributed to our success, but that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives, and also, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut, and we didn’t know. Oh, sorry. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, and they taught us those systems. They taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut, and if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it, do the action, and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So we just want to give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42 percent increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockerill, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers, and they run a hundred and sixty companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running a hundred and sixty companies. So in the weekly he’s running a hundred and sixty companies. Every six to eight weeks he’s doing reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks he’s also doing business conferences where two hundred people show up and he teaches people a thirteen step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant, and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. And that’s what I like the most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time, a coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing was when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run and the guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. 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 Thrive 15. 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 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, thank you, times a thousand. 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 you’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 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 built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. If we go back eight years ago, think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to their phone. Well, okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s up and down roller coaster. And so now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100, as a percentage, what is that I I have grown I have doubled every year Since working with you, so I’ve doubled in clients have doubled in revenue Every year that’s a hundred percent growth Every year I’ve worked now, so so I’m looking we’ve been good friends seven eight years, and I’ve got doubled five times Which is just incredible I mean the first time you do it that’s one thing but when you do it repeatedly yeah I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating new some some some new things in there to really help us do it but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching but it would go up and down Clay. That’s when I came to you as I was going up and down and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. And so that’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, turns into sales. Well, I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management. He said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. So that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually, we try to get one appointment for every 100 calls. We make 200 to 300 calls a day per rep. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there is having a hard time. On that script. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between 200 and 300 calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do… If someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems, and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I think it was in the year 2010, maybe 2011, maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012, and at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. You were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met, how did we meet? What was the first interaction? Or some interaction where you and I first connected. I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But do you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well, we had that speaking thing that- Oh, there it was. So it’s Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redman. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help you know direct my life to get some mentorship, but I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant. I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. The experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life-changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe, wherever I end up, will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn. I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then, again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence and then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life. That standard of excellence that you want to implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall in the group interview talks about how the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal-oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory and we’re on our own trajectory. And the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship that as we pursue our goals and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I would say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. He’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. He’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that a motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s again unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people. In short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time, the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks, he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay, I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day, actually. I carried a notebook with me all around, and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.