How to Turn Goals Into Reality + If Your Behavior Is Dictated By Something That Is Unpredictable Your Results Will Be Unreliable. + “My dad used to make me lift avocados until my legs hurt.” + 4 Clay Clark Client Success Stories

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 2)
Our next task, next task. We want to get something for mom in the next one minute that she’s gonna love that’s organic and gluten-free. What is something mom likes that’s organic and gluten-free? What is it? What about that Justin’s candy bar? It’s like the peanut butter cups? Okay you have one minute. You and Scarlett, you and Bean have one minute. See if you guys can get minute no you’re eating your time you’re eating up your time

(Speaker 33)
Dad where’s the avocados? I’ll have them. Okay I need to start over the time because um…

(Speaker 2)
oh that’s what you call it you faking an injury? No literally! Nobody told me anything. You got it. You’re holding it. Yeah Bean I’m holding it. Alright now we’re starting over. Okay, what do you say, Bean? The time starts now. One minute to get Mom something awesome.

(Speaker 12)
One minute.

(Speaker 11)
Oh, can they do it?

(Speaker 12)
Nope, you gotta hold it. Use your power. Thank you so much. You’re an angel. Hey, just use a little power, bro. You gotta grow some muscles there.

(Speaker 2)
Hey, if you’re gonna play hockey, you gotta have some muscles.

(Speaker 32)
Okay?

(Speaker 11)
Right?

(Speaker 2)
You ever worry about that? You ever worry about not having enough muscles for the game?

(Speaker 11)
Huh?

(Speaker 12)
If you just lift some more avocados, you won’t have that problem.

(Speaker 2)
My dad used to have me just lift avocados until my legs hurt.

(Speaker 11)
I want to do your arm shirt. What. I want to do your arm shirt.

(Speaker 31)
What? I want to do your arm shirt.

(Speaker 30)
No, I lift avocados until my legs hurt.

(Speaker 12)
It was a weird exercise. It was a weird exercise.

(Speaker 2)
One of the most important things that you will ever do or not do in your life is to value and seek wise counsel. To be coached hard means you have to be willing

(Speaker 29)
to be uncomfortable.

(Speaker 8)
Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multimillion dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use. Because they believe in you and they have

(Speaker 8)
a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zunich.

(Speaker 2)
Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. I break down the books, the seeds bring in some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s the C and Z up on your radio. And now, three, two, one, here we go.

(Speaker 10)
We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here.

(Speaker 10)
We started from the bottom, now we’re here.

(Speaker 1)
You will not rise above the level of your discipline. You can have the best ideas, the strongest ambition, the clearest goals. But if you can’t lead yourself consistently, you will fall short every single time. Discipline is the foundation of everything that lasts.

(Speaker 1)
It’s not glamorous, it’s not loud, but it’s what separates the people who talk about potential from the ones who actually deliver on it. Most people underestimate the role discipline plays in building a meaningful life. They treat it like a side tool instead of a central pillar. They think they need motivation when what they really need is structure.

(Speaker 1)
They think they need to feel inspired when what they actually need is structure. They think they need to feel inspired when what they actually need is to stop negotiating with their own excuses. Discipline is the bridge between intention and execution. It’s the trait that shows up long after the mood has left. It’s what drives consistency.

(Speaker 1)
It’s what builds character. It’s what creates trust with yourself. Because when you become someone who does what they say, your self-respect grows, your confidence grows, your influence grows. This isn’t about punishment. Discipline is not about being rigid or robotic. It’s about being clear. It’s about being aligned. It’s about

(Speaker 1)
building habits that support who you’re becoming, not who you’ve been. Discipline isn’t about making life harder. It’s about removing chaos, about reducing unnecessary decisions, about building rhythm so you can create momentum. The truth is most people don’t lack potential. They lack follow-through. They’re good at starting, bad at finishing, good at getting inspired, bad at staying locked in. Not because they don’t care, but because they’ve never trained their discipline.

(Speaker 1)
They’ve never structured their life to support it. They’ve never trained their discipline. They’ve never structured their life to support it. They’ve never replaced their patterns. You can’t expect to reach your goals with the same behavior that’s kept you stuck. You can’t expect to break through while still defaulting to the same behavior that’s kept you stuck. You can’t expect to break through while still defaulting to the same habits that sabotage your momentum.

(Speaker 1)
Change requires more than effort. It requires discipline daily, quietly, repeatedly. Discipline is the skill that unlocks every other one. It makes learning easier because you stay consistent. It makes progress faster because you reduce friction. It makes performance sustainable because you’re not relying on how you feel. You’re moving from what you’ve decided.

(Speaker 1)
The challenge is discipline rarely feels good in the moment. It often feels inconvenient, boring, repetitive. But over time, it delivers something motivation never can, real lasting results. And the more you train it, the more normal it becomes. Until one day, the things that used to require effort become part of your identity.

(Speaker 1)
There are seven core techniques that sharpen this trait. Not fluff, not theory, proven ways to build real discipline that holds under pressure. That doesn’t collapse under distraction. That becomes a system you can trust, not a feeling you have to chase. These techniques are not for people who want it easy. They’re for people who are ready to stop starting over.

(Speaker 1)
Who are tired of hoping and ready to lead. Who are done making promises they don’t keep. This isn’t about turning into someone else. It’s about becoming who you said you were. It’s about removing the gaps between your intention and your behavior. It’s about replacing emotional decisions with aligned ones. It’s about building a life where

(Speaker 1)
discipline doesn’t feel like effort. It feels like integrity. The first technique to enhance your self-discipline is to eliminate negotiation. That internal debate, the voice that asks if you really have to do it today, the reasoning that tells you it’s okay to push something until tomorrow, the logic that justifies easing up just this once, has to be silenced. Because the moment you begin to negotiate with discipline, you lose to your feelings.

(Speaker 1)
And feelings are unreliable. You cannot win long-term if every action requires a conversation. If every decision depends on how you feel in the moment, then the moment controls you. Not your plan. Not your vision. Your mood. And moods lie. They shift.

(Speaker 1)
They change based on sleep, stress, weather, other people’s words, your own doubt. If your behavior is dictated by something that unpredictable, then your results will be just as unstable. Discipline begins when negotiation ends. When there’s no question, no debate, no maybe. It’s scheduled, so it’s done. It’s part of the process, so it’s non-negotiable.

(Speaker 1)
You stop needing to feel inspired and start committing to the standard. You don’t ask whether or not you’re going to show up. You just show up. The key here is pre-decision. Most people try to make decisions in the moment. but by the time the moment arrives, you’re tired, you’re distracted, you’re emotional, you’re not clear.

(Speaker 1)
And when you’re not clear, you negotiate. That’s why your standards need to be set in advance. Your rules, your routines, your commitments. They’re already decided. And when they’re decided, your mind doesn’t have to waste energy figuring it out all over again.

(Speaker 1)
You do it because it’s who you are now. Not because it’s easy, not because you feel like it, but because it’s the rule the system the identity That’s how real discipline is built through alignment not adrenaline through principle not preference

(Speaker 1)
Through non-negotiable habits that become part of your operating system

(Speaker 28)
Link buildings a thief and you know that It’s robbed you of your time. You

(Speaker 1)
want to post amazing content and make sure you’re… The best athletes in the world don’t train when they feel like it. They train because that’s what the schedule demands. The best leaders don’t make decisions based on whether they feel powerful. They follow their process. The best creators don’t rely on motivation. They rely on motivation. They rely on their system.

(Speaker 1)
And that’s what separates them. Not talent. Not excitement. Structure. Discipline. Repetition.

(Speaker 1)
So how do you eliminate negotiation? You build routines. You anchor behaviors to time, to triggers, to identity. You don’t just say you’re going to be more disciplined.

(Speaker 1)
You decide exactly what that looks like. What time, what day, what action. You make it specific. And once it’s on the calendar, it’s as good as done. You don’t leave open space for maybe. You remove the word later from your vocabulary.

(Speaker 1)
You get honest about what’s actually essential. You cut the options that waste your time. You simplify and you remove friction from starting. Because the easier it is to begin, the less room there is to talk yourself out of it.

(Speaker 11)
Every time you override the negotiation, your identity shifts.

(Speaker 3)
Hello, hello, hello, Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Radio Show. It’s an exciting time. Also, I think a treacherous time, a spooky time also. But it’s always, you know, danger is a good time. Today my guest is Clay Clark, and I went out with Tom Wheelwright to visit Clay with Eric Trump also.

(Speaker 3)
And the reason I’m gonna talk to Clay this morning is a very important subject called study. And the reason I say that is things are changing so fast and many people are completely missing the show you know things are changing at rapid rapid rapid speed technology is changing as I went to Tulsa well again with Tom Wheelwright and Eric Eric Trump and I think I was so impressed about Clay is this word called study.

(Speaker 3)
I don’t know, you guys must be in your water or something, Clay, but boy, I was so, so impressed how big you guys are, but what really impressed me was you have this huge congregation, they’re all about guys your age, they’re on fire, and you start your classes at five in the morning.

(Speaker 3)
Now let me talk to you about study here. We show our books here, this is how I study. You know this is the creature from Jack O’Lantern, it’s on the Fed, and Clay’s doing the same thing, we study. So I go out to Clay’s place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s built this huge compound out there

(Speaker 3)
and you guys start at five o’clock in the morning. That’s not by Zoom. They drive there. They show up five o’clock, bright-haired, bushy-tailed and all this, and they’re on fire. Your group is on fire.

(Speaker 3)
So that’s what was, Clay, this technology, you tell your group, I was so, so impressed because like I said, study has became a bad word. I got into fights in my own company because our staff didn’t want to study anymore. And I just, I don’t know how they cannot do that.

(Speaker 3)
So Clay, anyway, welcome to the Rich Dad Radio Show. That’s what I want wanna talk to you about, is how do you do it? Five o’clock in the morning, you have hundreds of people showing up in your huge, huge, huge auditorium on your property to study.

(Speaker 3)
Anyway, welcome to the show, Clay, and what turns you on so much? That’s what I wanna know.

(Speaker 2)
Give us a little little about your background. Well, I’ll say this. First off, it’s a beyond an honor to be on your show. And I’ve been buying gold specifically since 2005 when it was $450 an ounce because of you. And now the price of gold is over 3,400. Who knows what it’s going to be when the show comes out. So again, I mean, I can’t thank you enough for helping me increase my net worth by sevenfold, eightfold. Second thing is your books have made such an impact

(Speaker 2)
on my life, and for anybody who doesn’t have your books, I recommend that you read these books. What happens is it’s not about knowledge, it’s about the application of knowledge. So Napoleon Hill, the bestselling author of the book called Think and Grow Rich,

(Speaker 2)
he said that action is the real measure of intelligence. And so when I read your books, I was also reading Napoleon Hill. That’s why my son’s name is Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark. I named my son after Napoleon Hill. And I’m going, in this book, there’s great potential power,

(Speaker 2)
but knowledge without application is meaningless. And so I started a DJ company, which I haven’t owned in over 15 years, called DJConnection.com. And we were doing 4,000 weddings a year. 4,000 weddings a year, that’s 80 weddings every weekend,

(Speaker 2)
and people kept saying, can I pick your brain, can I pick your brain, and so this was the pitch I told people, I said, here’s the deal. You cannot pick my brain, but I will charge you some fee that you can pay on a monthly basis, and I just want a small percentage of your growth. And they go, huh? I go, just a small percentage of your growth

(Speaker 2)
because that makes it worth it, my time and your time and the whole thing. And then eventually, Robert, I got to 160 clients and I thought to myself, that’s a lot of partners, a lot of clients. I know what I’ll do, let’s just start having conferences.

(Speaker 2)
And so this is my 20th year having these conferences people come at five in the morning is because when they go to thrivetimeshow.com, they see over 2000 documented case studies of real people on video that say, hey, my name is Aaron Antus, and I’ve grown my company from 14 million to 150 million. And people go, what? And people say, hi, my name is Lindsey Blankenship,

(Speaker 2)
and I was a startup, and now it’s a multimillion dollar company called Revitalize Medical Spa. And people go, hi, I’m the founder of OxiFresh, I now have 500 locations. And people go, 500 locations? And so, Robert, I guess the answer is, I have a very low turnover program

(Speaker 2)
with 160 long-time clients, very limited availability. And it works, and people want to apply what they’re learning, and so that’s why it was such an honor to have you because you’re the master of application and you and Tom Wheelwright, you guys broke down the biggest expense that every entrepreneur faces, which is taxes.

(Speaker 2)
And you made it very practical, very tactical. And it was an honor to have you and Eric Trump there. And now that Eric Trump comes to all of our business conferences,

(Speaker 3)
I said, we’ve got to get Robert Kiyosaki in the house. So again, thank you for lowering your standards and joining me, sir. Yeah, I’m lowering my standards. I was, I just wanted to let everybody know, you have, how many acres do you have out there? You have your house, you have this, I call it an amphitheater, and that’s really an amphitheater,

(Speaker 3)
but it’s an auditorium that you built on your property. And like I said, your parking lot fills up at five o’clock in the morning. How do you, what, how come you guys are on fire in Tulsa, Oklahoma?

(Speaker 2)
Well, you know, it’s wild too, Robert, is you know, probably 95% of my clients are not from Oklahoma. So what happens is, is I tell people, look, hey, we have limited availability. We’re gonna have 300 people at this conference, and I keep the attendance small, and I say, listen, if you’re not wanting to grow your company,

(Speaker 2)
if you’re just coming because you want to get a photo with a celebrity, and you like fog machines, and you like skinny jeans and fancy clothes, and you like to just pose and get fake influencers to take fake photos with you, don’t come. But if you’re a real entrepreneur,

(Speaker 2)
and you’re not afraid of giving someone a high five at five, come to our conferences. And I think that’s been the filter process, because when you study the lives of multi-millionaires, I mean, over the years, I’ve interviewed the founder of Square, I’ve interviewed the founder of Netflix, I’ve interviewed Wolfgang Puck, guys like yourself.

(Speaker 2)
When I interview people like Eric Trump, they all wake up at 6 AM or before. You just don’t see super successful people that are waking up at noon. And so it’s sort of a filter process. And because, Robert, I’ve been doing it for 20 years,

(Speaker 2)
you’re pretty much now surrounded by only high-quality, get-er-done people that love to study and do deep work. And I say deep work, what’s deep work? You once said, I’m quoting it, if I mangle it I apologize, but there’s a quote you said professionals hire coaches Amateurs do not yeah, I wrote that down. I wrote that down. I heard you said that the first time well over 15 years ago I wrote it down and I thought to myself

(Speaker 2)
Why does Michael Jordan have a coach for fitness and Kobe Bryant as a coach? And why don’t I have a coach for accounting so I did what you recommend. I hired a coach to help me with accounting. And I thought about, I’m going, why don’t I have a coach to help me with the legal aspects of my company? And I hired a coach to help me with my accounting. And I still use the same coaches 10 plus years later. But again, there’s one thing to hear it and it flies by.

(Speaker 2)
There’s another to grab that idea and to apply it. And so how do you find the time to apply these things? I recommend that you wake up, you set your alarm at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. every single day, and you get up and you spend the first three hours of your day designing your life.

(Speaker 2)
And so I decided this idea, I thought to myself, self, I would like to have a 40 acre-ish compound slash hobby farm where my wife and I and our five kids can raise our family and where we can offer the world’s best business conference experience. And so I wrote it down, I sketched it, I drew it. I actually have a picture. This is a sketch of what I’m working on

(Speaker 2)
in my backyard right now. So I sketched this stuff out. You’ve been to my backyard. So I sketch it out. And when you came to the conference, I noticed that we are a little bit short on places for people to go So I sketched out how I want the the additions to be and next time you come back if I can trick you into coming Back, we’ll have more additions and I’m just constantly

(Speaker 2)
Sketching out my future ideal in every way possible and then every day I work towards it Well, you know Clay it was spiritual. I mean your people were on, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. They were so turned on. And like I said, in my own company, I couldn’t get them to read a book,

(Speaker 2)
and I fired them, and I did. I said, I don’t wanna hang around people who are just gonna cruise along with life because it’s not worth it to me. And so that’s why I’m gonna talk today about what you do.

(Speaker 3)
I mean, pastor, what’s his last name? Jackson Lawmeyer. Jackson. I mean, even your pastor is on fire. Why don’t you tell his story because he’s got this massive church and all this.

(Speaker 3)
You guys are on fire out there.

(Speaker 2)
Well, let me give a big shout out to Pastor Jackson Lawmeyer. This is a true story. Your good friend, Donald J. Trump, America’s 47th president selected personally Pastor Jackson Lawmire to be one of the 15 pastors who he works with.

(Speaker 2)
So you hear about President Trump’s faith council. You look in the picture, you’re gonna see a guy under the age of 40. That’s Pastor Jackson Lawmire. This is a guy, his church is Sheridan.church. And I know this is not a religious broadcast, but Pastor Jackson is a diligent man

(Speaker 2)
who really does believe he’s supposed to work as unto the Lord. And President Trump saw him, he caught President Trump’s attention. And so he is one of the pastors that President Trump has personally selected

(Speaker 2)
to lead America’s faith leaders. So when you see President Trump had an Easter meal with the pastors, Pastor Jackson’s in that photo. Now Pastor Jackson is an entrepreneur who has read all of your books and he’s diligently applied the principles that you teach.

(Speaker 2)
And he did that because he never wanted to build a church where he was dependent upon donations to be able to pursue his vocation. The word vocation means calling. Meaning he never wanted to have to get up in front of a platform and browbeat people for money

(Speaker 2)
in order for his church to be solvent. He never wanted to be one of those churches where they spend 90% of the sermon begging you for money. He wanted to be a church where he could focus on teaching the Bible and he wanted to be self-sustaining. So he, as a young man, true story,

(Speaker 2)
he has read your books, he’s applied your books. When I told him that you were gonna come to our workshop, he lit up like a Christmas tree. He lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. He was so excited. He said, Robert Kiyosaki is coming to Tulsa? And he was just so excited because you in many ways have kind of written the business Bible.

(Speaker 2)
And so he was on fire to see you. And people say, Clay, how did you meet Eric Trump, Eric Trump and I met through all this nonsense about the lockdowns and the quarantines, and I just refused to lock down, and he and I got to be good friends through that process because he discovered me, because I wouldn’t lock down and I wouldn’t back down,

(Speaker 2)
and he liked that kind of energy. And we were comparing schedules, and he says, you wake up at 4 a.m. too? And I said, yes, sir. He goes, I wake up at 4 a.m. He goes, do you work six days a week? I said, I do work six days a week. He goes, awesome. And he and I became friends and now we’ve done,

(Speaker 2)
I think, 26 events together or 25 events together. So Robert, Eric Trump is a diligent doer as well, but Pastor Jackson Lawmire,

(Speaker 3)
I’m telling boomer, and you guys are on fire. When you come back, I want you to talk about what would you say to people, how do you get that fire? You know, for me, I started to study in Vietnam and because it kept me alive. It kept my faith going.

(Speaker 3)
You know, at nights before a battle, I’d be my aircraft carrier, you know, the rocking of the ship going like this. And I just, I’m not really religious religious but I do believe there’s a God and I just sat out there and went you know dear God tomorrow morning we fly into battle we were up at four o’clock we’re launching by six so you know, about 25 planes are taking off.

(Speaker 3)
And I just wanted to fly with spirit. And that’s when I started to learn a lot about exactly what you’re saying, it’s action. You know, I have my casual board game back here. And that came after Maria Montessori, the Montessori school system and she says what the hand does the mind remembers. So when you come

(Speaker 3)
back I want you to talk about what does it take to get somebody’s fire going that they want to come back to life and learn and take part in the greatest you know we’re in a dangerous economy right now but it’s also the biggest opportunity in the world and so many people getting crushed you know homelessness is expanding and so we have a lack of spirit in our country right. So we come back on Clay

(Speaker 3)
Clark and I just want you to talk about getting that fire to learn and study and take part in life. So we’ll be right back Clay, so thank you. Welcome back, Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Radio Show. My guest today is Clay Clark and my good friend Tom Wheelwright and I traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma to visit Clay as long as my other friend Eric Trump and his father and I are good friends wrote this book together called Midas Touch and we’re talking about the word study because when I went out to Clay Clark’s place in Tulsa he has a compound out there I mean it’s huge estate and he had this huge

(Speaker 3)
huge auditorium that he’s built and he had hundreds of people there at five o’clock in the morning to study and you know it was almost a worship. I looked at it and said this is a church or what? But you guys have made learning a religion and that’s what I wanted to have you on the Rich Dad Radio Show for Clark because the people around you are impressive. I was so in awe, humbled, and honored. I mean there’s such good people but they came to you to study and Pastor Jackson and

(Speaker 3)
all you young guys out there and then then I go around, like I said, I had to let go of my company because they refused to study. I study every single day. It’s a religion to me. I don’t mean I study religious things,

(Speaker 3)
but I study every single day. I was just out in the South Pacific, you know, looking at the World War II sites, you know, like Iwo Jima and Palau and Okinawa, and the guy I met there was going about your age. And this guy studies, this whole group studies, there are multi-millionaires on that trip. So how do you get people so turned on, Clay? I mean,

(Speaker 2)
you do it in mass, in mass. Well, let’s say this real quick. I’m gonna give people a spiritual answer, not a religious one, a spiritual answer that I’ll get really specific. So what I do is that the Hebrew word work means worship. So if you look up the Hebrew word, the word work means worship and worship means work.

(Speaker 2)
I happen to identify as a Christian. If you’re watching and you don’t, that’s fine. But I believe I’m supposed to work as unto the Lord and the word work means worship. Think about it folks, in Hebrew the word work means worship and worship means work. So when I’m worshiping, if I claim to be a Christian, I’m working as unto the Lord and not as unto human masters.

(Speaker 2)
So I am over delivering because I know it will cause me to eventually be overpaid. I am filling the room with confidence because I have confided in myself, I have confided in myself during this instance that I’m doing what God wants me to do. I know that this is the day that the Lord has made, but what I do with that day is my gift to God.

(Speaker 2)
Every day that I have is a gift from God, and what I do with it is a gift to God. So that’s how I get myself fired up. Now, as far as specifics for other people, I say, listen, you’re at this conference, you’re watching the show, you’re interacting with me right now, and time is your most important asset.

(Speaker 2)
Time is your most valuable asset. I don’t care how old you are, how young you are. I tell people, look, I grew up poor. I worked at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV simultaneously en route to building my empire or whatever this compound is. But everybody out there, what you want to do is think about your life perfect in every

(Speaker 2)
respect. Where do you want to be 18 months from now? Where do you want to be 18 months from now? Everybody watching today’s show, write it down. Where do you want to be 18 months from now? And then we have to go S-M-A-R-T, smart goals. We have to set specific goals. What are our specific steps we need to take daily

(Speaker 2)
to get up that mountain? M, measurable. They have to be measurable. They can’t be woo-woo It can’t be this pseudo Esoteric vague cloud of the know have to be measurable a Actionable they have to be actionable. You have to take your big idea and turn it into action steps Realistic your goals have to be realistic are realistic and T is time-sensitive

(Speaker 2)
We’re only gonna live once life is not a dress rehearsal so when people go to thrive timeshow.com and they click on the testimonials button and they go, you know This guy’s been doing the same thing for 20 years uh He’s a little more pale in person than I thought he would be Uh, i’m surrounded by people that weren’t born yesterday that are successful But people who are young or people who are old and people start to go, you know what, Robert, if somebody can do it who’s old,

(Speaker 2)
if someone can do it who’s young, if someone can do it who grew up poor, if someone can do it who grew up wealthy, if these people all eliminated their excuses and they decided to transform from victims into victors, perhaps I can do it too.

(Speaker 2)
And I think that’s what unlocks the excitement is people go, you know what? I’m gonna go back to my hometown and I’m gonna diligently implement these systems and processes. And then because we’ve diligently documented these success stories for 20 years, you start to go and a lot of our long-time listeners

(Speaker 2)
will go on the site and they’ll say, Clay, you interviewed a mother of seven named Lindsay Blankenship. Her husband was working 80 hours a week. She’s a mother of seven and her and her husband started a company pre-COVID and now it’s a massive medical spa.

(Speaker 2)
Well, I don’t have any excuses. They go to belovedcheesecakes.com. They see Jennifer, a recently divorced single mom who started a cheesecake factory and now it’s a nationwide success story. People start to say, you know what?

(Speaker 2)
I think I can do it because I’m gonna eliminate my own excuses. So Robert, long answer, but hopefully that was specific for you, sir.

(Speaker 3)
No, I love it because Clay, what the reason I want you on my show, it’s not just the mind, you know, we have a body, mind, spirit, and we have emotions. And emotions, you know, when they talk about EQ or IQ, intelligence, but emotional intelligence, And emotions, when they talk about EQ or IQ,

(Speaker 3)
intelligence, but emotional intelligence. And you touch the spirit, Clark. Clay, you touch their spirits and their fire goes on them. And that’s what I want to know, how you do it. And how do people can, I suggest anybody listening to this, if you live near the Tulsa or anywhere in Kansas, go visit what you’re doing.

(Speaker 3)
Because to see your compound, I mean, your home is a mansion, and you open it up to everybody, and you feed everybody. I’m going, my God, your spirit is so on fire. That’s what I think is missing in life today, is that spirit.

(Speaker 3)
You know, I mean, you’re on fire, and you’ve passed it on to your, let’s hate to say it, your congregation, but your followers out there, five o’clock in the morning, they’re turned on and ready to study and learn

(Speaker 2)
and get back to work, you know? Well, you know, Robert, one thing that I do, and this is a visualization exercise, and again, I’m not getting religious, I’m telling you what I do. My father, may he rest in peace, he died of Lou Gehrig’s disease

(Speaker 2)
approximately five years ago, and I had to watch my father suffocate en route to death. It was the worst. Just, I won’t choke there watching today’s show, it’s heavy, it’s heavy. And so when I grew up poor, a lot of your listeners grew up poor,

(Speaker 2)
and what happens is my dad’s delivering pizzas and he was working, my dad specifically, my father, may he rest in peace, was delivering pizzas for Domino’s and working the night shift at a gas station chain called Quick Trip. trip. So my middle school years were spent with my father working two jobs to put food on our table, but he had a college degree, aka he had gone through the Marxist indoctrination camp

(Speaker 2)
known as college. And so my father was really, really doing his best to provide for us. And I appreciate him doing that. And I wouldn’t criticize anything about my father. He did such a great job trying to provide for us. But I recognized at the age of 15, I’m going, you know what, I am not gonna live that way. And so I started a company out of my parents’ basement called DJConnection.com and I decided I am going to have success.

(Speaker 2)
And so I reached out to millionaires and people that I kind of knew through church and friendships and people that, parents of my friends, and I said, what book would you recommend that I read. I’m a 15 year old asking this question. True story. And I kept being told you got to read Rich Dad Poor Dad and you got to read Think and Grow Rich. Napoleon Hill. Now, Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, I read that. Rich Dad Poor Dad, I read that. But then it was up to me, am I going to apply it? And as I began diligently applying these

(Speaker 2)
systems and processes, and people kept asking me to help them grow their companies, I’ve decided mentally, every time I talk to a potential client, I visualize and I picture my father, and I think, what would I tell my father, who at that, my father at the age of 37 was delivering pizzas and working at QuickTrips. Every potential client who goes to Thrivetimeshow.com

(Speaker 2)
and they schedule a free consultation with me, it might sound weird, it might sound woo-woo, but in my mind I picture my father as the person on the other end of the phone, and I think to myself, if I was talking to my father, or someone like my father who’s trying to raise kids, and he’s working two jobs despite the degree,

(Speaker 2)
what does he need to hear? Maybe not what does he want to hear, but what does he want to hear, but what does he need to hear. And my goal is to kick that person into another gear when we get off that phone call. And so that’s what I do, and I think people say, man, Clay, you’re filled with enthusiasm

(Speaker 2)
or you have that spirit. The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek word, theos means God, so enthusiasm means God within. So I believe that I am filled with the Holy Spirit or a spirit of I wanna help somebody become successful. And a mentor of mine back in the day,

(Speaker 2)
he told me this, a true story, a big mentor, a multimillionaire, I said, sir, what is your philosophy towards coaching? He said, Clay, the word charisma used to be spelled with a K. And I said, come again? He said, the Greek word for charisma, K-A-R-I-S-M-A. It means to lift up, to coach up, to mentor up,

(Speaker 2)
that’s what charisma means. He said, however, today’s version of charisma is now spelled with a C-H, C-H-A-R-I-S-M-A, and now it means a highly motivated individual yelling at you, talking down to you, making you feel inadequate, unable,

(Speaker 2)
and so you get coached down or talked down to. He said, your job is to leave people feeling whole and not to leave people feeling full of holes. And I said, what did you just say? He said, your job is to make people feel whole and not to leave feeling full of holes.

(Speaker 2)
And so I would just say, everybody watching today’s show, if anybody does come to our conferences, Robert, probably 95% of our attendees are not from Oklahoma. And I’ve always let people name their price and people say, you let people name their price.

(Speaker 3)
I go, yeah. So I was telling people, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. I’ve got nothing to upsell you. But when people see that you’re actually trying to give them a hand up, not a handout, people respond and people gain that enthusiasm and I believe that courage and enthusiasm is contagious Robert. Well I tell you what Clay can you tell people

(Speaker 3)
how they get in touch with I what you just said is important I think it’s important people come and spend you know time to look at your work what you have done I mean you’re not just, and to come and associate with your, I use the word congregation, but your followers, because they’re on fire. People need the fire.

(Speaker 3)
So how do people get in touch with Clay Clark and what would they have to do to come and visit you and get a sense of what you’re doing and carry that out into the world?

(Speaker 2)
Well, first off, Eric Trump asked me the first time I did this, he goes, are you actually giving out your cell phone number? This is my cell phone number and anybody out there with a sound mind who is a sincere person, you can text me to request tickets to our events. That’s 918-851-0102.

(Speaker 2)
This is the same cell phone number my wife texts me on, the same one Eric Trump texts me on. That’s my son. That’s my cell phone number nine one eight eight five one zero one zero two or you can go to thrive time Show.com thrive time show.com and you might say why would you give out yourself a number? I do it because I get to meet some of the most fantastic people ever One of the world’s best-selling authors text me the other day and I said is this you and he goes is it you? We had an NBA player who’s currently playing in the playoffs Text me the other day and goes dude. I love your podcast. Is this you so it’s a great way for me to connect

(Speaker 2)
It sort of breaks the industrial complex and it freaks people out But that’s my cell phone number nine one eight eight five one zero one zero two Or you can go to thrive timeshow.com thrive timeshow.com and if you want to listen to my podcast, I recommend you go to Spotify and do a search for the Thrive Time Show on Spotify. That’s the Thrive Time Show on Spotify.

(Speaker 3)
THRIVE, time show. Thrive, not Thrive Time. So, you know, because what you have is the fire. And you’ve packaged it, you deliver it, and you turn your people on. Like I said, you know, the hardest times of my life

(Speaker 3)
was just sitting on that aircraft carrier going, you know, the fear is intense, flying into combat. And how do you overcome that fear, the paralysis, the sadness about it? We did a job that nobody really wanted to do. We got spit on when we came home, hit with eggs,

(Speaker 3)
and called baby killers. But that actually built strength.

(Speaker 2)
Well, sir, one thing I wanted to share with you, and again, with the limited time we have here, and I mean this sincerely, I am in awe of, I am inspired by the men and women who’ve served our country. I get to focus on problems like,

(Speaker 2)
how do I teach my kids how to become successful? Or how can I teach entrepreneurs? But none of that matters if you don’t have freedom. And so on behalf of me and all the entrepreneurs out there that have frankly been living in this great country because of the sacrifices of you

(Speaker 2)
and anybody watching today’s show who’s ever served in the military, I just wanna say thank you so much for repeatedly putting your life in harm’s way and for doing a job that nobody else wanted to do. And then I want to issue an apology to you on behalf of anybody that spit on you or said negative things about you in ignorance because you really did stand up and fight for our

(Speaker 2)
country. And it’s just an honor to know you, to call you friend, and thank you for the service. You and anybody else watching today’s show who’s ever served in our military. Thank you so much, sir.

(Speaker 3)
Well, you know, thank you, Clark, really, Clay. I mean, my good friend’s name is Clark, so I call you Clark. Anyway, Clay, so thank you very much. And it’s thrivetimeshow.com. I want you on my program to let people know that you’re for real out there. And take the time to go visit your work.

(Speaker 3)
Worship and work, but when you see your house and the people, and five o’clock in the morning, it’s just, it’s inspiring, inspirato. So congratulations, Clay, you’re doing a fantastic job. Tell your people out there, I was so impressed with them because of their fire, their spirit,

(Speaker 3)
they’re wanting to learn and to go and serve the world out there. So congratulations, Clay, for your great work out there.

(Speaker 2)
Thank you, brother. And again, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you. It was the highlight of my life having you come to Tulsa.

(Speaker 3)
Thank you, sir. Well, thank you. I’ll be back, man. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So we come back with our final words from the Rich Dad Show. And I want to again, thank Clay Clark.

(Speaker 3)
It’s thrivetimeshow.com. Please, if you have the time, go visit him in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s worth the trip. Thank you, Clay. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show and thank you for all you do.

(Speaker 3)
I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects. You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations.

(Speaker 2)
Sean, guess what’s happening on June 5th and 6th right here in Tulsa, Russia. We are probably going to have an amazing business conference here at Tulsa Russelum. Yes, we are joined by Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow is going to be joining us right here at the Thrive Time Show World Headquarters June 5th and 6th. He’s a very successful football player, obviously a Heisman Award winner, but he’s also a very successful entrepreneur. Now, when you work with real clients, Sean, real clients you really work with to help them grow their companies, do you ever hear a business owner tell you that they didn’t have time to get something done? Every day.

(Speaker 1)
How often is not having enough time a problem for business owners? All the time.

(Speaker 2)
It’s almost, it’s like maybe 90% of the issues as people are trying to grow their company. Well, Tim Tebow is going to come join us here at the in-person Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop and he’s going to teach us time management and his approach to personal self-discipline and getting things done. Also at the workshop, I’ll put up on the website so people can see it here, also at the two-day interactive workshop Sean we are going to

(Speaker 2)
be, oh there it is, we’re going to be teaching accounting, systems creation, marketing, human resources, how to hire, inspire, train and retain great people, accounting, social media advertising, search engine optimization. Sean, what’s the area where most clients ask you for help the most? Is it generating leads? Is it hiring people?

(Speaker 2)
What’s the biggest issue that most business owners have by default before they come to one of our workshops? Well, I think it’s management because time is the most valuable resource for these business owners and being able to manage their time is the first thing. Once they get that under control, then generally the numbers, you know, being able to track their business and be able to make the best decisions based on numbers rather than emotions

(Speaker 2)
is a big area. And we teach all of this stuff at the business conference, particularly you, Clay, you love to hammer on time management.

(Speaker 9)
It’s my favorite part of the conference.

(Speaker 2)
Now I’m gonna pull this up real quick here cause we’re gonna go through, if you’re not excited, I wanna get you excited about what we’re gonna cover at the workshop here. Okay.

(Speaker 2)
The two day interactive workshop. This is my 20th year hosting workshops. So I’m telling you folks, we’re in rare form here. So one is the idea of establishing your revenue goals. I think most entrepreneurs don’t know their revenue goals. Would you agree, or am I off my rocker? No, that’s totally a very important point

(Speaker 2)
we do with every one of our new clients that come on board, is we have to establish the revenue goals. And generally speaking, we have a vague idea, but not an exact idea that can be engineered down into like the daily goals for sales.

(Speaker 9)
And so that’s a really big one.

(Speaker 2)
Now next is the break even numbers. What kind of sales do you have to do to even break even? Yeah. Third is how many hours per week do you want to work? You know, what is your ideal schedule as an entrepreneur? Box number four, how do you stand out

(Speaker 2)
in the clutter of commerce? What makes your company unique from all the different businesses? In a world of brown cows, herds of brown cows, proverbial brown cows, the analogy of brown cows, how can you be the purple cow that stands out?

(Speaker 2)
How can you be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil? Box number five, branding. How do you improve the perception that people have of you, your business, your brand? Box number six, marketing, your three-legged marketing stool. What is a turnkey way for you and your company to generate leads so you can succeed? Because if you don’t have any leads, your business will bleed. If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell. You’ve got to generate leads. Sean, how often do business owners by default tell you they have a hard time generating leads? It’s almost all of the time. It’s really a huge struggle. And many times they may be creating

(Speaker 2)
leads, but just through word of mouth. So they get to a point where we’ve implemented systems, and then they need to create more leads, but they’ve never had to do it. So there’s a lot of different scenarios where business owners are like, how do you create leads? Something we hammer on at the conference a lot. Box number seven. Box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Again, box number seven, create a sales conversion system.

(Speaker 2)
Sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, pre-written emails, lead trackers, all of the sales tools, the sales print pieces, the one sheets, the big screens that you see inside the business. Whether you’re a doctor, you’re a dentist, you’re a lawyer, you gotta have sales systems in place.

(Speaker 2)
We help you with that. Box number eight, what does it cost you to get another customer? Step number eight, what does it cost you to actually acquire a customer? Step number nine, it’s hard to build organization if you’re not organized.

(Speaker 2)
We’re going to teach you how to create repeatable systems, processes, file organization. Box number 10, we’re going to teach you how to manage people, real people on the planet Earth. This just in, we’re going to teach you how to manage real people on the planet Earth.

(Speaker 2)
Box number 11, how to create a sustainable schedule that works for you and your family. Step number 12, how to create human resources systems for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining great people. Box number 13, accounting. This just in, we have to cover accounting. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep.

(Speaker 2)
We’re going to cover all the accounting things you need to know. And step 14, finally, what is the point of even achieving success? We’re going to go over that. What is the point of even achieving success? How to design a life that you’re excited about. How to design a life where you carve out enough time for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, your fun,

(Speaker 2)
and where you’re gonna spend your focused time. We’re gonna go through that, all this and more. Now the workshop, Sean, it’s June 5th and 6th. It’s a two-day interactive workshop. And tickets, we always do it. It’s $250 or whatever price that someone can afford. Sean, why do we let people name their price? Why do we have scholarship tickets available

(Speaker 1)
if somebody can’t afford the $250 general admission ticket?

(Speaker 9)
Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it. You could be at a startup phase, or you could be way along in your business. But we want to make it accessible for everybody. I think it actually goes back, too, to a story of your dad. And it goes all the way back to how you’ve always done this as a business coach, trying

(Speaker 9)
to make sure that your average people out there have access to the things that work.

(Speaker 2)
Now 7 AM to 5, Sean, why do we go from 7 to 5 both days? I mean, it’s 10 hours a day, 20 hours of training over two days. Why do we do 10 hours a day, Sean, of back-to-back workshops. We do a 30-minute teaching session. We do a 15-minute question and answer session.

(Speaker 2)
And then we take a break. 30 minutes of teaching, 15 minutes of question and answer. Then we take a break. Why do we do that format, Sean? That format is so that we can keep people engaged and not just sitting there listening,

(Speaker 2)
but also getting involved. We really encourage people to ask questions and that’s really where the juiciness of the conference comes out is you can put your personal situation and your questions on the board and Clay will tee off and give you direct advice. Even without being in our coaching program, you can get direct coaching from Clay. It’s really a very engaging format.

(Speaker 9)
I enjoyed a lot.

(Speaker 2)
Sean, final 60 seconds, pop quiz here. What date is the conference? June 5th and 6th, 2025. This year. Question number two, who’s our keynote speaker coming to the conference there, Sean? Tim Tebow is our keynote speaker. Sean, question number three, how much does it cost to come to our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma? I think it’s, did you say it’s $250 or whatever

(Speaker 2)
you can afford? That’s right, $250 or whatever you can afford. Sean, how do you spell Eric Trump backwards? P-M-U-R-T-C-I-R-E.

(Speaker 9)
Ooh, that took a long time.

(Speaker 2)
I’ll have to listen to this signature. All right, again, that’s Sean Lohman. I’m Clay Clark, inviting you to come join us at the in-person Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop June 5th and 6th, right here in Tulsa, Russia, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Shawn, I really am excited to have this event. I’m excited to see you at the event June 5th and 6th,

(Speaker 2)
right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

(Speaker 22)
Tim Tebow, baby.

(Speaker 2)
It’s Tebow time in Tulsa, Russia. You could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here.

(Speaker 27)
Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay?

(Speaker 11)
Clay is the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens.

(Speaker 26)
I saw his compound.

(Speaker 22)
He’s like the greatest guy.

(Speaker 7)
I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right?

(Speaker 4)
His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is, is, is marketing.

(Speaker 2)
What kind of growth have you had since you and I’ve been working together over these past few years? Uh, 3.45 million. I got those stats before I got on here. So you’ve grown by 3.45 million.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah. 3 million, 450,000.

(Speaker 2)
Would that be like if you took the combined revenue and maybe doubled it? Or have we gone up by a half?

(Speaker 5)
Almost three, not quite.

(Speaker 2)
Could you talk about just maybe the impact it’s made on you, knowing that, OK, I’m going to pay this guy this amount of money. I’m not going to get a random fee or a random charge, or he’s not gonna, you know, go oops, we had two calls. So it’s more or Wow, we didn’t meet this week. So it’s less. Can you talk about just knowing in your mind that you got the graphic design, the photo, the video, the web,

(Speaker 2)
the search ads, all of that is a monthly thing.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, I have not too long ago, I looked at what the average percentage of sales was spent on marketing and I’m like half of the bottom number is what spent on marketing. Obviously, my marketing is working because we’re tracking it, right, and the sales growth. As far as the SEO, I’ve messed up and didn’t send money to the hosting service and crashed my website.

(Speaker 5)
Clay had it back up in a half a day. It’s really great to have somebody call just fixes it I can I can do what I do you do what you do. So it’s very powerful to me to have somebody that no matter what’s going on, no matter what crashes, you can take care of it. And I’m very convinced that it’s a great bargain. I don’t

(Speaker 5)
know how you do what you do as cheap as you do, but it actually is super economical for me. Man, if you want change, you need to change, right? And if you knew what you needed to know to change it, you would already change it. So it might be good to get some knowledge. I always say this,

(Speaker 5)
you’re stuck at your level of knowledge right now. So if you don’t increase that, you can’t go anywhere. And especially in the area of business, most startups are technicians, right? A lot of technicians are kind of arrogant and don’t think they need any help

(Speaker 5)
and never even read a book on business. That was me. And then wonder why you’re having trouble writing one, right? So it is a huge win to actually start learning about business and I read books now and I value knowledge, but it was a journey that really opened,

(Speaker 5)
took the lid off of me, or I’d be in crisis right now at 65 and having to twist wrenches still and be in that mode I was in when I came to you. So I would encourage everybody, even for your health, your marriage, fix it.

(Speaker 5)
You need to fix it.

(Speaker 2)
Folks, on today’s show, I’m gonna tell you about a success story. I’m telling you a success story of a real diligent doer. Now, he could be a male model. You might say, come on, this guy’s not real. He’s an actor, he’s a paid model.

(Speaker 2)
His website is RC Auto Specialists. RC Auto Specialists, that’s his company number one. Company number two is the garage, BA.com. This is a automotive repair business and over here the Ford business is a diesel repair specialty shop and again he could be a male model, he could be an actor, he could be a rapper, he could be an AI generated example of perfection, but he’s Roy Cogshall, he’s in the flesh. Roy, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m happy. Thanks for having me on, Clay. Well, I wanted to have you

(Speaker 2)
on the show because I have a client that I’m working with right now. Great guy. And this is not a passive aggressive testimonial, but he’s in the automotive space. And he’s start off with the success and then we’ll get into how we’ve done it together. What kind of growth have you had since you and I’ve been working together over these past few years? 3.45 million I got those stats before I got on here. So you’ve grown by 3.45 million?

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, 3 million 450,000.

(Speaker 2)
Would that be like if you took the combined revenue, maybe doubled it? Have we ever we’ve gone up by?

(Speaker 11)
About almost three three not quite

(Speaker 21)
Got it. So almost almost three times

(Speaker 5)
Yes 275% at least now

(Speaker 2)
um What happens with a lot of people in this I’m gonna send this show right away to this particular guy is Times we have a bakery a dentistry a law firm a product and I a lot of times we have a bakery, a dentistry, a law firm, a product, and a lot of my clients will say, you know, it’s different in my industry because I’m sure you see the same thing in your business. People bring in a car and they say,

(Speaker 2)
look, I don’t need a diagnostic. I think what it is is this. Look, I don’t need you to look at my car. I think it’s this. Could you maybe just talk about when you and I first met? What were you thinking? Or what was kind of going through your mind as you were being introduced by to me by some of your friends?

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, you know, I was in a crisis situation on my second business, I was minus 250,000. Now my first business went pretty good. But I was a mechanic trying to run a business. I wasn’t a businessman. And that second one taught me a pretty good lesson. So a good friend of mine, Aaron Antus, recommended you. And so that’s why I reached out to you.

(Speaker 2)
And when I first started working, I always tell people, they say, how do I grow a company? And I’m gonna pull out my sheet, or at least how I look at it. I’m gonna to go to rumble.com. I’m going to pull up our recent business videos so people can see this. And for anybody out there, you want to follow along,

(Speaker 2)
go to any of my business shows. I always put the proven plan in those notes. Let me pull this up real quick. And I’m scrolling down. And here we go. So people say, what’s the most important step

(Speaker 2)
I need to take to grow my business? The first step is you have to know your revenue goals. Roy, every time someone comes in to service their vehicle, you’re the kindest guy I know, and I know that you do this. If nothing else, you like under charge for stuff. And if you’re not intentional and you don’t know your revenue goals,

(Speaker 2)
what’s gonna happen by default for a guy like you, who frankly would give the shirt off your back to people,

(Speaker 3)
and you do that, what would happen if you’re, I guess what was happening by default? Yeah, we were just going under, you know, and I was, like I said, I didn’t have the knowledge to pull it out because I was a mechanic trying to run a business and this one was gonna require a businessman. So my journey with you was learning metrics,

(Speaker 3)
learning all 14 of those steps were foreign to me. I just thought, hey, I can do this. And like I said, the first one just kind of went by itself. The second one was the one that forced me to change.

(Speaker 5)
So that is how my journey began with Mr. Clark here.

(Speaker 2)
Now, second step is, you know, you have to know your break-even numbers. And break-even is just, you know, how much business do we have to do just to break even? And maybe for the listeners out there that don’t have a context of what you do, could you maybe share about the kinds of services

(Speaker 2)
that you provide at your automotive businesses, just so listeners can get an idea of the kinds of solutions you provide before we get into the break even numbers?

(Speaker 5)
Sure, my big store, the Ford Specialty Store, we go from anything from all changes to putting engines in diesel trucks. And so it’s a turnkey all the way across the board. Anything get done at the dealer, you can get done at that shop. Garage is a little different model. Let’s say the neighborhood garage around the corner. We’ve done a few engines that’s not really our mainstream

(Speaker 5)
would would be air conditioners, electrical alternators, things like that. Alignments, suspension issues, general auto repair.

(Speaker 2)
It doesn’t matter whether someone’s a doctor, a dentist, or a lawyer, we have to know our break even points. And the break even point is, you know, how much revenue do you have to do just to break even? Could you talk about how you frame that in your mind now that you do know your break even point now that you know, you know, how many days a month you have to, you know, how many

(Speaker 2)
customers you have to see a month just to break even? How does that impact how you run your business?

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re behind, you’re under until you hit that number. And so there’s some urgency to get to that number. And I’ve found that with my employees, if they don’t have a target either, then they don’t really strive to hit it. And so I’ve my I’ve structured my pay plans to where we’re all on commission. And so we all are going the same

(Speaker 5)
direction for the same reason. And it works good for us. But they most definitely know where that break even point is when we start making money. At this point, my break even point is right at 48,000 gross profit per week, shops combined.

(Speaker 2)
And you know that, I love how you mentioned the merit-based pay. Everybody on your team is getting paid based off what they produce, not based on how many hours per week that they occupy space and breathe air.

(Speaker 2)
Moving on to step three, you have to figure out how many hours per week you’re gonna work. Now, this is one thing that’s been interesting about you and the different clients I work with, is I have some clients that I work with that are 25 years old, and I say,

(Speaker 2)
how many hours a week do you want to work? And they go, Ooh, we 30 hours a week. And you go, really? Then there’s a guy like you who you you’ve been working, you know, six days, seven days a week for years. And you’re a, you’re a Bible believer. You always take your family to church, but you have, I mean, you would do whatever it took and you have done whatever it takes to be successful. And so you’ve, you did that, but you knew in your mind that you had a vision, that you wanted to

(Speaker 2)
get to a place where you could take your wonderful wife on dates and spend time with the grandkids and do that. And so you were willing to put in the work, but you also had boundaries on how many hours per week you’re willing to work and what days you wanted to be free to travel. Could you talk about the balance of that? Because I do see a lot of young whippersnappers being unwilling to put in any work at all to grow the company. Then I also see a grizzled entrepreneurs

(Speaker 2)
willing to work seven days a week. Family, don’t even worry about the family. We’re just gonna work seven days a week. I wanna get your thoughts on how you balance that.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, I believe there’s seasons of life. Starting a business, you’re all in, there’s kind of a, I would call an adrenaline rush for at least the first two or three years where I’m working literally 7080 hours, and not really even thinking about it, it’s just what we have to get done here. And after you get some success, I’ve throttled that back some I’ve got a

(Speaker 5)
couple young 35 year olds that are doing the heavy lifting. And I’m actually running it like a business. Thank you, Mr. Clark. And I was a mechanic attempting to do it. And I was in what I call micromanager hell. I didn’t have systems processes. So I was a fireman and there was always more fires than I could put out. So hence the 70 or 80 hours, not real efficient. So now I can, I can take off a week or two and not even get a phone call. But that was after many years of

(Speaker 2)
grinding and getting to that point. So powerful. I want everybody to take notes. What you’re hearing folks is a is a real entrepreneur, a real grandpa, a real committed husband, a real committed dad, who’s just giving you real information here. Okay, there’s no BS here, folks. Now, step number four, you gotta figure out

(Speaker 2)
your unique value proposition. We have to figure out your unique value proposition. And there’s a lot of automotive repair shops competing for business out there, a lot of diesel repair shops competing for the marketplace. And you and I sat down, and I think that was the first area

(Speaker 2)
where maybe you and I had some mental friction because I was obsessed. I said, Roy, you and I, every single week, we got to get video reviews. We got to get images on that website. We got to write search engine content that no one’s going to read.

(Speaker 2)
And we got to get more Google reviews. And then we got to run the same ads every week. We don’t have to change them every week, but keep those ads. So V-I-S-M-D, for people taking notes, it’s video reviews, images, search engine content, more Google reviews, and then run those ads, never turn them off. And I think that was the first time where

(Speaker 2)
you were kind of going, I don’t know if you know what you’re talking about. Could you talk about that a little bit?

(Speaker 5)
Well, first of all, several of those I thought to myself, well, Clay doesn’t understand my business and that’s not going to work. But I actually did it because I was going to prove you wrong. And I’m glad I didn’t open my mouth because I actually proved you right. And in my mind, I finally said, look, obviously, I don’t know how to do it. I’m sinking this ship at minus 250,000.

(Speaker 5)
So I’m going to go ahead and listen to my business coach and do it even if I don’t think it’s going to go ahead and listen to my business coach and do it, even if I don’t think it’s going to work. And lo and behold, it did work. So really, if you’re reaching out for help, maybe you ought to listen to the person that’s trying to help you is kind of my takeaway from that.

(Speaker 5)
And even though I thought it wouldn’t work, I obviously did not know. And that’s why I needed help.

(Speaker 2)
Now, the thing about marketing and ads, most marketing companies, I’m sure you’ve never experienced this, but I have, they want to come up with a new ad of the week, a new logo, a new ad, a new theme, a new vision, a new brand. Hey, wow, Mr. Client, look, it’s the spring. We should do new ads, new vision, new promo. And they do that to stay busy because they want to show, which would be analogous to me, if I ran an automotive

(Speaker 2)
repair shop, this is where the analogy would go. That would be like me saying, Roy, I just fixed your truck, but guess what? I just broke it again. I’ll be back in there fixing it. I mean, it’s just, it’s creating problems and really what needs to be done is just diligently executing those systems.

(Speaker 2)
Could you talk about maybe the mind freedom or the time freedom that’s created for you now that you’re following the same system and we’re just doing it as opposed to coming up with a new idea every week?

(Speaker 5)
Sure. The franchise system, somebody actually developed a business strong strengths processes, and then they hand you this model and you just keep doing the same thing every week. Everybody knows what to do.

(Speaker 5)
It’s really hard for us entrepreneurs to do that because we had to start out micromanaging, but transferring out of that is key to having freedom and for the money to scale up. I’ve found that people my age, when they start, they had a big giant capacity.

(Speaker 5)
Well, that capacity shrinks up as you age out. And if you don’t do something about it and install systems and processes, your business is going to shrink with your capacity because you become a giant funnel. And so those processes what we do weekly, monthly, day in, day out, we’re getting reviews, we’re constantly getting reviews. Those reviews drive customers 24 seven.

(Speaker 5)
And they’re my most important thing. And the website on the videos gets me on the front page, obviously. And so we keep doing what it takes to stay on the front page. I’ve tried all kinds of fancy marketing

(Speaker 5)
and I’ve wasted a ton of money and I couldn’t measure

(Speaker 3)
one customer that came in because

(Speaker 2)
that’s so powerful for somebody out there. Now Roy, one thing is when you go into the garage, I’m going to put up on the screen here. When we go to the garage automotive repair shop and the RC auto specialists, you and your family, you guys have really taken a pride and ownership into running it in a way where it creates a nice atmosphere.

(Speaker 2)
It’s a good place to do business. When you go there, you don’t feel like you’re going to a prison. A lot of auto repair shops have a prison theme going on. You’ve worked really hard to create a nice atmosphere. And when you and I first started working together,

(Speaker 2)
we went in there, we kind of overhauled that lobby, we did some nice changes to the website, we updated the website so the website looked as good as the location. We did a lot of that, but now we’re not in there, you know, repainting the whole thing every two days. We’re not coming up with a new theme every hour.

(Speaker 2)
I see these automotive repair people I work with, wonderful people who feel the need to every week come up with a new theme, repaint the whole thing. They’re constantly putting up different, you know, they’re doing different mailers. They’re doing billboards. They’re doing the billboards. They got the new there’s local magazines. They’re just a lot of work and they’re not getting the results. Can you talk about just tracking the numbers and

(Speaker 3)
why that has helped you just track in the numbers? Yeah, you measure what’s important to you. And the term metrics, I didn’t know what that meant before I started started working with you. But they’re the key performance indicators that I likened to gauges on a car or a scan tool, like I’m trying to fix a car and I don’t have any metrics, any facts, it’s going to be real hard. I may stumble across it if I threw enough parts at it, but it’s a whole lot more effective if I can look at some data that the metrics we track every week are the data that’s the measuring system. So

(Speaker 3)
I know if my marketing is working or not, because I can

(Speaker 5)
track it in dollars every week. Super important.

(Speaker 2)
So we’re moving on here, folks. Again, if you’re if you’re taking notes at home step number one is establish your revenue goal. Step number two know your break-even point. Step number three define how many hours per week you’re willing to work. Step number four we have to define our unique value proposition and what we focused on just to be clear with the garage and the diesel repair business was you were already doing a great job repairing cars but we

(Speaker 2)
had to get documented evidence that that was true because everybody’s competing for that dollar, so we had to gather objective video reviews, a lot of them. By the way, hundreds of them, and not just 200 or 300, but 500 of them per company, per location.

(Speaker 13)
It’s pretty powerful.

(Speaker 2)
Next is we had to establish a three-legged marketing stool. We had to think about who are the ideal and likely buyers, and what’s the most sustainable way for Roy as the business owner to reach them. Some of my clients love hopping on podcasts, and they like to be, one of my clients does RV, they sell RVs, and he loves being on commercials,

(Speaker 2)
and he loves being the face of the business, and he wants to do all that. Other business owners don’t wanna do that, so what we did is we created a three-legged marketing stool that allowed Roy to implement it without needing to be on camera all day or without needing to post on social media every two minutes.

(Speaker 2)
Roy, can you talk about that for a second? Cause there’s so many marketing strategies that could work but many of them require the owner to live on social media. Could you talk about why you and I together have not gone with the, hey, let’s make Roy the viral TikTok king

(Speaker 2)
in order to grow.

(Speaker 5)
Well, I’m happy. I’m thankful about that. It’s really not my personality, but yeah, just doing a company that knows what works, i.e. Clay Clark’s company. I don’t know how many, you work at 600 companies.

(Speaker 5)
You’ve been doing it for what?

(Speaker 2)
How many years? 15 years? 20 years. 20 years.

(Speaker 5)
So after a while, maybe just maybe, you know what you’re doing, I think. So with the marketing, I call it the low hanging fruit marketing, the stuff that actually works, best value. I can go on radio, but my ROI goes down significantly.

(Speaker 5)
So what we’re doing right now, we track those numbers. And it’s it’s amazing how many new customers come in

(Speaker 3)
per week based on the same marketing we do. Week after

(Speaker 25)
week after week after week.

(Speaker 2)
And Roy, you know, I remember this like it was yesterday, and I’ll let you share as much of it as you want. But every client we ever work with, why I always say I tell that business owner, I said, we need to install call recording. Oh man. I had a fantastic conversation with the dentist this morning and I say fantastic, it did not go well.

(Speaker 2)
And I was on the phone with Mr. Dentist, I said, Mr. Dentist, I know you’re paying me to help you, I really wanna help you. And he says, I just have pushback on the call recording. I said, why? if I if I play the calls it’s gonna create an awkward culture and we found out that his daughter is the one answering the phones hmm and so we just I said can we just go in just listen to a couple and they were rough I mean you

(Speaker 2)
know and it was like didn’t want to know so I said we have anybody you’re not doing you said well one more that we had a lady we know from church we play the calls and they were actually not in any way, shape or form following the script. And she was trying to convince the patients that she, that the dental practice was super busy

(Speaker 2)
and that they’d shut down for the day and that people should just call back. Wow. She’s around three o’clock every day. She’s going, yeah, we’re all booked out, but the doctor, he’s all gone. But if you could just call back on Monday. And so she was trying to make the business. Conform to her schedule, which involved leaving early.

(Speaker 2)
Aaron, this who you referenced earlier, who referred me to you, Aaron found that people on the phone were using his phone line to poach customers. So he had people on his phone saying, thank you for calling Shaw Homes. How can I help you? And they would answer the phone, these salespeople, and they would refer the deals over to other home builders that were willing to pay more of a commission.

(Speaker 2)
I mean, did you, when you started putting call recording in place, did you discover anything exciting?

(Speaker 5)
Wow. I was at a loss of why the garage was struggling so bad and why customers didn’t come back. And I listened to three phone calls and went down and fired the manager on the spot. It couldn’t have been any worse if he was I don’t know that he wasn’t on purpose trying to take my business it was so bad. And then

(Speaker 5)
I realized he’s representing me I mean just a sketchy human bad. So it was a key to turning that thing around because I remember you said, there’s a couple of rats in there. I go, no, no, these are good people. And I mean, you better check

(Speaker 5)
because yeah, these were not good people at all. So I almost, I don’t know, a couple of people stayed but I had to turn over the whole staff and that’s when things started getting better.

(Speaker 3)
But I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t hear.

(Speaker 2)
Now, again, Roy’s implemented the scripts. We talk about installing sales systems. I’m talking about scripts, folks. I’m talking about pre-written emails. I’m talking about recorded calls. We have a whole system for this, and Roy has implemented that.

(Speaker 2)
Step number eight, you got to track how much does it cost you to gain a new customer? Every week, Roy and I, we track those numbers, we look at them, we go, okay, we spent this much on advertising. Just to be clear, this is remarkable, I want people to know this. We’re down right now to spending about $150 a week on ads, which is incredible for a location where … I mean, there are people that reach out to me, and right now I’m thinking about this automotive guy that I’m going to send this to. He’s spending right now over $2,000 a week on ads.

(Speaker 2)
And you’re now down to $150 a week on ads or less. Could you talk about just the idea that tracking every single week? I mean, because we’ve been doing it for years now. How many years have we been doing this? I mean, because we’ve been doing it for years now.

(Speaker 2)
I think 2016, I believe. Yeah. So we’re like, you know, we’re like years into it. And we’re tracking and you can see that number of that you’re that you were spending on ads is going down down. Yeah. Can you talk about that a little bit?

(Speaker 5)
I did the same thing. You know, you get a couple slow days and somebody tells you they could just overwhelm you with customers. It always takes a little more, a little more, a little more. But if you’re not measuring, you don’t know where they’re coming from. You don’t know if you’re bringing in one. I’ll never forget this young man just got out of college and he had a marketing degree. And he’s all excited about how he’s going to just, man, explode my business. And so I think it was ClickFunnels or something.

(Speaker 5)
And the young man really believed it. I mean, he was passionate and he believed what they told him. So I said, well, how much do we gotta spend to know if it even works? And he gave me a number.

(Speaker 23)
Well, I doubled it.

(Speaker 5)
I said, well, let’s double that number and let’s do it for a month and see if I can. And we ask where people come from because we vet our customers at the counter. And so and I said, Let’s give it a month. So he he did all this stuff. And not one customer said, that’s what they heard about after a month of doubling what he said it would take to make it work. But he believed he was sincere, he was

(Speaker 5)
just sincerely wrong. So again, working with somebody that actually knows what works is pretty important.

(Speaker 2)
Now, step number nine, I want to brag on Roy for a second, folks, for anybody watching this. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. One thing Roy does really well is he’s organized. And it’s hard to build an organization unless you’re organized.

(Speaker 2)
And I would say the clients I work with are not organized. And so when you go to the garage or RC Auto Specialist, everything has a place. Everything’s organized. You can leave knowing that your vehicle is going to be repaired with quality and a focus on quality

(Speaker 2)
taking care of your vehicle. That’s something Roy’s always done. But if you’re watching today’s show, I won’t mention the name of the company, but there was a bakery I’d worked with for a while and I’m not kidding, she would, every meeting she would take a call, Clay I gotta take the call. What’s going on?

(Speaker 2)
Sorry, I got, someone’s calling me. And I’d say what happened? She goes, oh they ran out of eggs. I’m like, okay, okay, next week. Clay gotta take the call real quick, sorry. They ran out of flour.

(Speaker 2)
Gotta take the call. They ran out of material shows? Oh every day It’s like every couple hours. It’s just a zoo. So again, if you’re out there today, you got to be organized I’ll help you with that. We didn’t have to help Roy with that, but we do have we most of our clients We do have to help on that next is managing step number 10, I would argue that managing people is the hardest thing for compassionate people to do, holding people accountable to a standard of excellence.

(Speaker 2)
And Roy, you’ve done a great job of really assembling an all-star team piece by piece, almost like the NFL draft. Every year, if you have a team that’s a loser, you got to go get a good guy, another good player, maybe do a trade, maybe do a different. And you’ve built a wonderful team now. Could you talk about maybe the pain

(Speaker 2)
of recognizing that someone’s not a good fit and yet needing to, you want to be compassionate, but you also know that if you don’t fire a bad employee, the customer will fire you. Could you talk about that? Cause you’ve done, you’ve really built a great team now.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, we have the best humans we’ve ever had, but that was on purpose. And so one thing I’ve learned is to hire slowly, fire quickly. If you know you’ve made a mistake, it really affects the whole team, the whole atmosphere of the shop, one bad guy. I don’t care how much work he’s putting out. It is not worth it. Believe there’s a proverb says, get rid of the mocker and all strife will cease.

(Speaker 5)
And I mean, the whole atmosphere of the shop changes So now I’ve left it up to my employees I say if I hire somebody I stick them in here and and they don’t fit our culture You just let me know so to them last of the week. It’s not worth it. I won’t do it And and like I said, we do well, but I’ve got good humans, no drama, everybody shows up to work, they’re family guys, but it was on purpose.

(Speaker 3)
I’m telling you, I’ve been through a few.

(Speaker 2)
Now, next question I have here for you, next question I have here for you is, or next step, step number 11. You’ve got to create a repetitive schedule. You and your wife are really involved in missions and outreach, and I’ll just kind of keep it vague there,

(Speaker 2)
but you guys are passionate about weekly going out and sowing seeds and investing time in ministry. And that’s a big part of your schedule. Could you talk about the importance of you and your wife having a schedule that you two agree on? Because you guys have that. And a lot of clients I see, it’s the husband and wife

(Speaker 2)
have a very different view of how the schedule should be. And rather than just agreeing to disagree or setting a schedule that works, there’s a constant fight. Could you talk about just the importance of you and your wife having a schedule you both agree on?

(Speaker 5)
Wow. Yeah, how can two walk together unless they be agreed? She’s right underneath the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as far as any success I’ve had, and not blown it up three or four times. So I’m very thankful for her.

(Speaker 5)
So she’s a high priority for me. And so we have come to an agreement about how much we’re gonna work and where we’re gonna be and we have determined to be together. There was a season there that we couldn’t, but we changed that pretty quick, it wasn’t healthy.

(Speaker 5)
And then I look back behind me and see how many people have been together. We’ve been at 37 years now. And I mean, it is a huge win over any of these businesses. But it ties to those businesses. I could not have done what I’ve done without her. Back behind the scenes, you know, she’s my strength. So we we agree on everything. If we

(Speaker 5)
don’t, I’m going to park it till we do because that’s that important to me. I don’t know if that answered your question. But that’s kind of how we operate. This is big. I’m telling you, as a business consultant, you start to see people walk in a different direction. And if they’re married, that gets odd. If they’re business partners, it gets odd.

(Speaker 5)
So you’ve really set a great example for that. A final couple of steps here. Again, folks, if you’re taking notes, I put all of them in the show notes here. a little bit, but it’s hard to manage people if you don’t have good people. So I would just say never stop hiring. That’s one thing I obsess on. Roy, you’ve quickly adopted that.

(Speaker 5)
Most business owners will fight me on the idea.

(Speaker 2)
They’ll say, why should I always be hiring if I already have good people?

(Speaker 24)
Right.

(Speaker 2)
What do you say to somebody who says, why should I always be hiring if I already have good people?

(Speaker 3)
I’ve lost three people in one week. So you better have some back on the bench ready to come in because trying to find them when you’re in crisis situation, you usually end up getting a bad hire or two just got a desperation to get a human body in there and then you have to back up and punt again. And so we we have a several deep applications people that we know and if there’s somebody really good, I’ll make them a spot.

(Speaker 3)
I will pay them. And it looks like you’re losing money. I’m not, because there will be a need.

(Speaker 5)
And when you need them, you can’t find them.

(Speaker 23)
That’s what I found.

(Speaker 2)
Now, step number 13, folks, you got to know your numbers. We talked about that earlier. But you got to know your accounting. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep. And Roy and I, we get into it. We talk about it. We look at the numbers every single week. And I’m telling you, there’s little moves you can do, just a little tweak. Once you get the business to a certain level, you can do one tweak, just one little tweak. And all so, Roy, I mean, what do you say for someone who’s afraid of, you know, doing a price increase

(Speaker 2)
despite record inflation or somebody who’s afraid to make a tweak or make a cut? What do you say about really knowing those numbers?

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, we did 6 million in sales last year and we did, let’s call it 6% better. It was different at both shops, but average 6% better to the bottom line. Well, that’s $360,000 of profit that for 6%. That’s substantial numbers. That’s life changing money that is on top of what you were doing

(Speaker 5)
before without a even bringing any any more, just being more efficient, cutting waste. You’ve had me do several things, like going through with changing credit card companies and fees and different, just going through and checking all the monthly things that are automated that you’re not even using anymore.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, and these little percentages add up at the end of the year to a big number, especially when you’re starting to,

(Speaker 3)
your sales numbers start going up significantly.

(Speaker 2)
Now, step number 14, I would ask anybody watching today’s show, what’s the purpose of having a business? I would argue that every day that we have is a gift from God and what we do with it is a gift to God. And a vehicle is simply,

(Speaker 2)
a business is simply a vehicle that allows you to give more, be more, make a bigger impact. And that’s how I look at it. And I know Roy, you’re a Christian business owner. You know, you don’t have a sign that says Christian business owner, Roy Cogshaw. But you are, and I know that the profits that you make,

(Speaker 2)
you and your wife like to sow seed into good ground and support missions. Could you talk about what’s in how you view a business? Like, what’s the purpose of a business at this point in your life? Like, what is the purpose of owning a

(Speaker 22)
business?

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, at this stage of my life, I was just trying to get some money and get out of crisis. Starting the business, but we have a nonprofit that the businesses fund. It’s closer to a foundation at this point. I always say you’ll do more for a higher cause and you’ll do for yourself. Like I, I work night and day inside jobs for my

(Speaker 5)
family. I wouldn’t work that hard just for myself. But there’s there’s a higher purpose now with I call it doing some 10,000 years from now stuff. That’s really what flips my switch now. And I’m going to a third, but I don’t need any more money, but I wanna be able to give some more money, right? So that’s gonna require a third.

(Speaker 5)
Also have some really great humans that work for me. And they make really good money. They can work five days a week and enjoy their family. That’s super important for me to have also. I actually enjoy being around these guys. So starting a third will give some room for movement,

(Speaker 5)
and everybody can move up and make more also.

(Speaker 3)
So that’s what flips my switch.

(Speaker 2)
OK, my final two questions for you. Here we go.

(Speaker 5)
OK, all right.

(Speaker 2)
When you pay me, we deliver service for you. What I know is I know that you and I have a meeting every week. And at that meeting time, the purpose of that meeting is to make sure that we identify what needs to be discussed. We identify, we discuss, and we solve. What am I saying? We identify the biggest limiting factor,

(Speaker 2)
we discuss the best way to solve it, and then we solve it. So identify, discuss, solve. IDS. We do it every week. And so the meeting doesn’t need to be two hours. It doesn’t need to be discussed, discuss it, and then solve it. For me, it’s peaceful knowing that I’m working with 160 people that I actually care about

(Speaker 2)
and knowing that they’re going to go out there and take those profits and do great things with it. Can you talk about just maybe the impact it’s made on you, knowing that, okay, I’m going to pay this guy this amount of money. I’m not going to get a random fee or a random charge, or he’s not gonna go, oops, we had two calls, so it’s more,

(Speaker 2)
or wow, we didn’t meet this week, so it’s less. Can you talk about just knowing in your mind that you got the graphic design, the photo, the video, the web, the search, the ads, all of that is a monthly thing?

(Speaker 3)
Yeah, not too long ago, I looked at what the average percentage of sales was spent on marketing and I’m like half of the bottom number is what spent on marketing. Obviously, my marketing is working because we’re tracking it, right, and the sales growth. As far as the SEO, I’ve messed up and didn’t send money to the hosting service and crashed my website. Clay had it back up and a half a day

(Speaker 3)
It’s really great to have somebody called just fixes it I can I can do what I do you do what you do So it’s very powerful to me to have somebody that no matter what’s going on No matter what crashes you can take care of it, and I’m very convinced that it’s a great bargain

(Speaker 5)
I don’t know how you do what you do as cheap as you do, but it actually is super

(Speaker 2)
Economical for me. Now, Roy, what do you say to anybody out there that’s thinking about going to thrivetimeshow.com and scheduling a free 13 point assessment? They’re thinking about coming to one of our conferences to see Tim Tebow. They’re thinking about maybe coming out to a conference

(Speaker 2)
to see an Eric Trump or thinking about scheduling a free consultation. What do you say?

(Speaker 5)
Man, if you want change, you need to change, right? And if you had if you knew what you needed to know to change it, you would already change it. So it might be good to get some knowledge. I always say this, you’re stuck at your level of knowledge right now. So if you don’t increase that you can’t you can’t go anywhere. And especially in the area of business, most startups are technicians, right? A lot of technicians are kind of arrogant, and don’t think they

(Speaker 5)
need any help never read a book on business. That was me. And wonder why you haven’t trouble writing one, right? So it is a huge win to actually start learning about business. And I read books now and I value knowledge. But it was a it was a journey that really opened took the lid off of me or I’d be in crisis right now at 65 and having to

(Speaker 5)
twist wrenches still and be in that mode I was in when I came came to you. So I would encourage everybody even for

(Speaker 3)
your health, your marriage. Fix it, you need to fix it.

(Speaker 2)
Roy, you’re the best joke giver I’ve ever seen. You have a delivery, it’s a mastery. I’m not trying to paint you into a corner. I know you have a good joke. And I’ll give yourself a moment to get ready for that joke. If you’re watching this right now

(Speaker 2)
and you don’t find this funny, there’s something wrong with you folks psychologically. Roy’s the different joke. So Joe, Roy, I’m ready. What do you call a man with a toe growing out of his knee?

(Speaker 21)
Tony.

(Speaker 20)
Yes, yes.

(Speaker 2)
Does your wife feed you these jokes? Where do you get this endless source of jokes?

(Speaker 5)
She rolls her eyes. She’s not one of my biggest fans on the jokes at all. But it does help me out much.

(Speaker 2)
Well, thank you. He’s a comedian. He’s an entrepreneur, he’s a husband, he’s a great dad, he’s a committed Christian. I encourage everybody out there, check out his websites. He’s a real guy.

(Speaker 2)
Roy, thank you for carving out time for us today. I really do appreciate you.

(Speaker 5)
All right, thanks Clay, have a great day, brother.

(Speaker 2)
Take care, bye-bye.

(Speaker 4)
All right, bye. So we ended up meeting with Clay. And he’s helped us go from right before we opened the third location now to six locations. And so we’ve more than doubled our revenue. And these are ground up build gyms. And so it’s not the barrier for entry is pretty high. It’s 20 plus staff at each location. So yeah, it’s been a lot as far as running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when and how.

(Speaker 4)
Training us on that. Clay’s helped a ton. We would not be where we’re at without him. So huge win.

(Speaker 2)
Charles, from an ROI perspective, if someone’s going to look at it and go return on investment, I pay you $1,700 a month. Will I make more money than I’m paying you? How would you maybe tackle or how would you respond to

(Speaker 4)
what kind of return on investment have you seen the $1,700 a month you’re paying? Well, for example, Clay has got, there’s no there’s no better business coach in the world that has the way he works the way his mind works. But he’s also got a team of other other business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries. So he’s worked in every industry. His staff has worked in every industry. He’s got videographers, what web

(Speaker 4)
designers, I mean, just for the fact of like, just the website alone is worth the $1,700. Just the ability to take any of their proven systems, whether that’s a marketing thing or whether that’s a staffing thing. Like one thing done in the month, it pays for itself. And then to understand this, there’s a part of where,

(Speaker 4)
you know, some maybe some week you may be like, well, you know, some maybe some week you may be like, well, you know what, I’m not getting a whole lot out of this call. But the bottom line is, it’s like when you read the Bible, there’s times you’re just reading it and then you’re like, you know what? I really, and then you read it that one time

(Speaker 4)
and it’s like, God really speaks to your heart. And the whole truth coaches, graphic designers, web developers, anybody that has that type of knowledge, you know, in your back pocket. And then in the whole thing is, is run your business with being somewhat conservative. Make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time.

(Speaker 4)
But by doing that, you have that skill set. You have that, you have those tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like it’s just like the cost of doing business like just just understand it that’s a that’s what

(Speaker 6)
I think there’s a there’s a sometimes the payment we make I feel like is peace of mind even because there have been multiple times throughout the years that we will we will either be butting heads on something we’re super confused about something, we’re fearful about something, something in the market’s changed, and it’s a quick call to clay.

(Speaker 2)
Well, Thrive Nation, it’s a very special occasion because a lot of times on the Thrive Time Show, I get to interview people that I am friendly with or have an acquaintance with, that kind of thing, and I enjoy that. But it’s really an honor whenever I get to interview

(Speaker 2)
someone who I consider to be a friend or people that I consider to be friends of our family. And it’s awesome when we can celebrate a success story because it’s a life-giving thing. And for somebody watching today’s show, if you feel you need like a checkup from the neck up,

(Speaker 2)
if you feel stuck, if you feel like you don’t have the resources to get started, but you have the resourcefulness. Maybe today’s show is the show you need to hear because this is a couple, they started this business together out of their house and they’ve now grown it into a multi-million dollar super successful company.

(Speaker 2)
And I’ve had the opportunity to work with them in a consulting or coaching capacity over these past five or six years. And I am so excited to have them on today’s show. And that being said, Amber and Charles Cola, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 2)
Amber, how are you?

(Speaker 6)
Great, thanks Clay. It’s awesome to be on here with you.

(Speaker 4)
Yes, we are excited.

(Speaker 2)
Okay, so I gotta ask this real quick because people think you’re a hologram. How long have we had the opportunity to work with you or how long have we worked with you guys together from a coaching relationship? We probably started back in 2017.

(Speaker 4)
2017.

(Speaker 6)
Yeah, we’re looking at seven, eight years.

(Speaker 19)
Yeah.

(Speaker 6)
It’s coming up.

(Speaker 4)
Coming up on eight probably. It’s a little over seven.

(Speaker 2)
And from that time, you guys have experienced tremendous personal growth and business growth. I mean, could you, Charles, maybe talk about, I’m not looking for your specific financials,, could you, Charles, maybe talk about, I’m not looking for your specific financials, but could you maybe talk about maybe the size

(Speaker 2)
you guys have grown over these past seven or eight years at colawfitness.com?

(Speaker 4)
Absolutely. We started off, we were getting ready to open our third location, and one of our accountants had said, you’ve got to meet this guy, Clay. So we ended up meeting with Clay. He’s helped us go from right before we opened

(Speaker 4)
the third location now to six locations. And so we’ve more than doubled our revenue. And these are ground up build gyms. And so it’s not, the barrier for entry is pretty high. It’s 20 plus staff at each location. So yeah, it’s been a lot as far as running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when, and how. Training us on that.

(Speaker 4)
Clay’s helped a ton. We would not be where we’re at without him, so huge win.

(Speaker 2)
Now I’m going to ask you guys this story because I want you to be able to encourage somebody. I’m not sure who’s going to watch this show, but I view every show as kind of a message in a bottle. So somebody is watching this story, I’m going to let Amber go first, because I think she’ll maybe have a less rosy view of how it was.

(Speaker 2)
But you guys started ColawFitness.com doing personal training to individual clients in your actual home. So like your living room was where the squat rack was, or the bench press was in the kitchen. Or Amber, what was that like when you

(Speaker 2)
started ColawFitness.com?

(Speaker 6)
Well, I think when you’re starting something like that, you don’t see bigger picture. You’re not thinking that far ahead. You’re just kind of thinking you have to work, you have to survive, you’ve got to make money, and you’re doing what you love.

(Speaker 6)
And so with that, it was just, it was kind of more of a survival. And also we couldn’t afford furniture to go in our formal living room or formal dining room. And so, so we were kind of stuck in a situation where Charles needed a place to train and he had a full

(Speaker 6)
clientele. And so we just were why don’t we find like a big universal piece, stick it in the living room, that because it’s just an empty room. And the dining room became more of the office. And so we bought a big universal piece and threw down some rubber flooring,

(Speaker 6)
ripped up the carpet and put some big mirrors on the wall. And we just started doing what we needed to do at the time with no, I mean, I definitely did not think it was gonna to be in my house for a couple of years for sure. But yeah, a lot of it was fear of failure. I was like,

(Speaker 4)
I want to make sure that, you know, I can provide for my family. And we were trying to just, I was every lead I had and follow up with every client I trained, want to make sure that it gave me good And yeah, next thing you know, we have about 160 clients coming in and out of the door a week. And it’s me and about four or five of the trainers training out of our living room. And so it became a revolving door of fitness. And then Amber also did some hair.

(Speaker 4)
So she had a hair salon in the back of the house. So it’s like a training studio in the front of the house and then a hair salon in the back of the house.

(Speaker 2)
So yeah, the win. Now, I want to share this story because I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this story with you, but I think our listeners need to hear this because your story is better than mine. But let me just show this to the listeners real quick here. If we go to 111th and Memorial in Tulsa, Oklahoma, my wife and I, we were 20 years old-ish.

(Speaker 2)
And I remember I was so excited to be able to build our house. I remember telling my wife, honey, we can afford to build a house. We are going to build a house, a brand new house. She was so excited. I remember we were driving down Riverside. She was like, we’re going to buy a house? I go, yeah.

(Speaker 2)
She’s like, we’re going to build a house? I’m going, yeah, because we’re a young couple. We’ve just been married a couple of years. I found a builder named Rob Brewer who did a phenomenal job. I would hire him again. And this is a true story. So I built this house from scratch. And so my neighbor comes by, Wendy, God bless her.

(Speaker 2)
I’m not going to mention her last name. Wendy comes by and she’s like, hey, what are you doing? I go, what do you mean? Because I’m having like 40 couples a week that are walking up to my front door, hanging a right at my office. And there’s, not kidding, there’s probably eight DJ vans in my backyard.

(Speaker 2)
And she’s like, what are you doing? And I’m going, well, what do you mean what I do? She’s like, this is a residential neighborhood. What are you doing? I said, well, I’m running a business. She’s like, you can’t run a business here. eight different bands back there. And then neighbors kept asking me if I was running drugs. I mean, people were concerned because the first DJ

(Speaker 2)
would come to load up gear at four in the morning and our last guy would come home at three in the morning. And it was just a wild thing. I got to ask you with the gym, Amber, how early were people coming to work out, to do squats and bench press and cardio?

(Speaker 2)
What time were they showing up? How many people were showing up?

(Speaker 6)
Oh yeah. So Charles is, he’s relentless and he’ll fill any hour he can. And so he would start as early as 5am with his first client. And uh, you know, sometimes it would last until about 10 o’clock at night. And so it was, it was, it was just a revolving door and we always blocked out the middle of the afternoon at two o’clock at night. And so it was, it was just a revolving door. And we always blocked out the middle of the afternoon at two o’clock every afternoon and him and I,

(Speaker 6)
and as we added staff, we would all work out together. So it became this big, you know, workout session together.

(Speaker 18)
It was awesome.

(Speaker 2)
And this is a real thing. Now, how, Amber, I’m not looking for anything super salacious, But I mean, did you ever have awkward situations? I mean, because you’re trying you’re sleeping there you’re living. Do you guys ever have just like, I remember with the DJ business, my wife about once a week there for a while, she

(Speaker 2)
would come downstairs and one of my DJs would get clay, where’s the bathroom? I’d say right there. And they would walk into our master bedroom and I’m like, get out of there. That’s my bedroom, you sicko. I mean, did you ever have just weird client interactions?

(Speaker 6)
Oh yeah, totally. From, you know, our kitchen became like the staff break room. And so all of a sudden I’ve got everybody’s lunches in my fridge. And I remember one day a guy had went to get the barbecue sauce out of the fridge and just drops it.

(Speaker 6)
And it just shatters all over the kitchen floor, but his client was here. So he looks at me kind of like, uh, and I was like, just go. I got like some cleaning up barbecue sauce out of the kitchen.

(Speaker 6)
One morning I had gotten out of the shower and I come out of the bathroom, which is at the top of the stairs. And I’m just making that short little jagged over to my bedroom door. And so I have my hair in a towel and a robe on and I open the door.

(Speaker 6)
And right there at the bottom of the stairs, Charles has one of the clients doing calf raises and they just good morning. And I thought, get this out of my house. So, yeah, yeah, the trainers napping on the couch between clients and our middle son was in pre-K at the time. And so he’d come home half the day

(Speaker 6)
and he’d sit on the couch. He was just so little, his feet would just stick straight off the couch. And he’d try and watch cartoons and there would be someone on like a ab mat on the floor, right in front of the TV doing crunches

(Speaker 6)
And so he’s just watching his little cartoons and someone’s doing crunches in front of him and so oh, yeah the whole family

(Speaker 2)
Was in on it. I just remember when I was building dj connection.com I would train my djs out of my house So we would practice announcements like ladies and gentlemen coming up in just a moment We’re going to introduce the bride and the groom. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the intro. And we would practice. Ladies and gentlemen, coming up next,

(Speaker 2)
we’re going to be cutting the cake. Once again, we got the bride, we got the groom, we got a knife, it should be exciting. And I’m practicing and they have a script and I’m practicing. So adult males are in my house to do 4,000 weddings a year. So I’m training 30 disc jockey every week. So Havana, my oldest, who’s now 20,

(Speaker 2)
she starts running around in the office going, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, the cutting of the cake. Because she heard it so much. She’s like, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, the Soul Train. She knew.

(Speaker 2)
Because it was like, I don’t think if you’re watching today’s show and these stories, you can’t relate to it. That’s okay, but I’m just trying to make sure we’re getting this idea. This is a real couple that I would now classify as a super success story, but they had to start somewhere. And it’s not about resourcefulness.

(Speaker 2)
It’s about, it’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness. Again, it’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness. the backyard. I turned half my backyard into a concrete slab so that we can park all the vans back here. I mean, look at all the trees I planted to block the view. So now you look at Colaw Fitness and you go, wow, this is a super successful company. Wow, I want to be the next Colaw Fitness. Wow, these guys are really doing it. I want to be a ColawFitness.com.

(Speaker 2)
I’ll get the website to pull up in just a second. And people always come to me and they say, Clay, what do I need to do? What’s the most important thing? I just had a guy today, huge ministry, huge ministry, multi-million dollar massive ministry called me and said, what’s the one thing I can do to grow my ministry? And I said, buddy, I’m gonna send you today’s show.

(Speaker 2)
There are 14 things that we need to do and a lot of details on those 14. So we’re going to go step by step on today’s show. I’ll go back and forth between Charles and Amber. And for sake of time, we’ll just go back and forth rapid fire. So here we go. And Charles, by the way, you get 60 seconds on the clock for each answer.

(Speaker 2)
So here we go. Box number one, you have to figure out your revenue goals. You just have to know your revenue goals. What are your gross revenue goals? What are your weekly revenue goals? What are your annual revenue goals? You have to know your revenue goals. Charles, why do you have

(Speaker 4)
to know your revenue goals? Yes, you have to know your revenue goals so you know if you’re going to be making money or not. And for us, we want to make sure that we’re staying bankable, that we can open more locations. Our gyms are a ministry for us. We want to make sure that we continue to expand and making sure we got at least a 20% profit margin off of all of our expenses to income over expenses. And we know how many memberships we have to sell. We know how many clients that we have to service

(Speaker 4)
to hit those goals for our set overhead costs. And yeah, so you got to know how many units of items you have to sell every week, every day. And so we track that stuff. And for us, we have a lot of recurring revenue. But the whole point is that we want

(Speaker 4)
to make sure that we have enough of the payable, viable buyers in the system to continue to grow.

(Speaker 2)
And you track this stuff. And so we’ve got wonderful members of our team. We’ve got a young member of our team named Natalie, who’s learning all of this because she’s developing into a coach and When you work with a new client a lot of times the client’s going to have a bias

(Speaker 2)
to focus on just marketing just Branding, but you have to know these numbers amber anything else You want to talk about as far as the numbers because I know your husband is passionate about fitness and you are as well But why do you have to focus on the numbers and not just marketing or not just branding or not just social media? Why do you have to focus on those numbers?

(Speaker 6)
Well, I think the numbers, it’s like the steering wheel that steers the ship. I mean, if you don’t understand the numbers, you have no idea where you’re going. And so I think that’s probably the biggest thing. Like, it just leads the whole way.

(Speaker 6)
And I think a lot of people tend to do, I’m gonna do the marketing or I just wanna perform the service. I think a lot of it because people are scared of numbers. I think they feel like numbers are overwhelming and they try to make numbers way too difficult.

(Speaker 6)
So I think that’s the biggest.

(Speaker 2)
This is such wisdom folks. I’m telling you, if you’re not familiar with Colawfitness.com, go to their website. These guys give away a Bible. Every time they sell a new membership, they set aside a portion of the funds

(Speaker 2)
to give away a Bible to first-time members at their gym. It’s an incredible, it’s a ministry, it’s a business, it checks all those boxes. Number three, define the number of hours you’re willing to work. Now, Amber, you happen to be married to a man who’s willing to work every hour of the day if need be. I will say this though, most of my clients, if I had to think about my 160 clients I work with,

(Speaker 2)
and I had to think about the average client, 90% of them are not willing to work as hard as you guys. Most of my clients are willing to work 40 hours a week or 50 hours a week. Some will work 60 hours a week. But nobody is willing to go sprint from 4 AM to 8 PM, 10 PM every day if need be. Your husband is willing to do that.

(Speaker 2)
Why is it important for you guys, Charles, to define the hours that you’re going to work, the hours that you’re not going to work, block out time for the family cruise, for the family trip. Why is that an important box there, Charles?

(Speaker 4)
That way my wife will stay married to me. Well, I’m like you, I like to just go, go, go. And then we do definitely, we take off and we go to church on Sunday. It’s important for us to hold the Sunday as a Sabbath, as a day off.

(Speaker 4)
Other than that, I like to work. You talked about vacation, to vacate or leave something. I love to work. I love to build the systems and build the documents and train staff, build the systems and so on. But we do have to make sure that once a quarter, we try to look at taking time off.

(Speaker 14)
Go ahead.

(Speaker 6)
Well, I would say the biggest thing that we always talk about in marriage, But we do have to make sure that once a quarter, we try to look at taking time off. Right. Well, I would say the biggest thing that we always talk about in marriage, family and work expectations and boundaries. Those two things have to be very clear all the time. So as long as he understands what my expectations are, and I need him to fulfill a husband role in addition to working, as long as he understands

(Speaker 6)
that these are my expectations and then these are my boundaries. And as long as we communicate

(Speaker 4)
that then we’re good. I’ll say one more thing is that for us, we’ve kind of at the spot to where, you know, we just work on the business, not in the business. So we don’t actually do the day-to-day stuff, but we work on the business systems, checklists, workflows, training, coaching people remotely because we do live in Florida. Our clubs are in the Midwest, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Kansas. And so running remotely and running all that stuff, we’ve got to kind of say, how do we want to live our lives? Like you’d say, Charles, how do you really want to live it? You got to kind of map out and clearly define that. For us, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, those days are just all in on Zoom calls,

(Speaker 4)
training, coaching, working with staff. And so those days are really, really full days. And then the rest of the time, like on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, those are all lighter days that we don’t block in a lot of meetings.

(Speaker 4)
It’s like no meetings that we plan, but I’m still working on things that I want to work on, but I’m not leveraged to having to. So I’ve kind of created my three day work week that’s like super long. And then the rest of the time, I don’t have meetings, I don’t get held hostage on a lot of stuff. And people have to kind of have a gatekeeper to get to me. But other than that,

(Speaker 4)
that’s how I’ve tried to map that out so that I can continue to mastermind and kind of grow the brand and have some

(Speaker 2)
meta perspective on how I want to continue to grow. So there’s just so much again for folks if you want to learn entrepreneurship this is this is real people and if you’re in the Florida area and you’re looking for a job if you’re in the Joplin Missouri area you’re looking for a career not just a job. Koloff Fitness is a company that’s going places. I’m not prophetic. I’m not claiming to have some view of the future. I just see patterns. And I work with clients, and I help them implement patterns that work.

(Speaker 2)
And I also know of the clients that’ll work. Nothing works unless you work, right? So nothing will work unless you work. And I look at the Kola family, and I look at the fuel that you put into the business and the diligence that you bring. And I’m telling you folks, this is a brand that’s going somewhere.

(Speaker 2)
If you’re looking for a career, check it out, Colawfitness.com. Box number four and five, these kind of fit in together. Box number four is you have to determine your unique value proposition. That’s a unique thing. But what is it that makes you unique? What is it that separates you from the competition if you’re watching today’s show. Let’s think about your website, your print piece, your auto wraps, your business cards.

(Speaker 2)
Let’s think about everything about your business. Let’s think about the sights, the sounds, the smell, the ambiance, the employees you have. What is it that makes you different from the competition? What is it that makes Chick-fil-A successful when there are many other fast food chicken restaurants?

(Speaker 2)
What is it that makes Quick Trip super successful when there are so many gross, nasty, dirty convenience stores? What is it that makes Chick-fil-A successful? What is it that makes Quick Trip successful? What is the secret sauce that allows Brad Stevens, the coach of the Boston Celtics, to bring out a winning lineup year after year?

(Speaker 2)
Brad Stevens took a dysfunctional Butler College basketball team and turned them into a top four basketball team. Think about this. He took a college called Butler the size of Earl Roberts University and took them to the Final Four multiple times. And then he takes that same recipe and goes to the NBA,

(Speaker 2)
and they win a championship, and he’s putting out a winner year after year. What is the secret sauce that allowed Phil Jackson to win year after year? Michael Jordan couldn’t win a championship without Phil Jackson. He played a lot of seasons without Phil Jackson.

(Speaker 2)
He only won his championships with Phil. Kobe Bryant never won a championship without Phil Jackson. By the way, Kobe Bryant played a lot of seasons without Phil Jackson. What is that magic formula? The big part of it is you have to understand

(Speaker 2)
your unique value proposition. So Amber, what is it that makes Colaw Fitness unique versus other,

(Speaker 6)
you know, fitness companies? Oh, I, for us, it’s culture, hands down. It’s culture all day long. And we worked really hard at our first location to set the culture and make it what we wanted it to be. We wanted a fitness center that everybody could come be a part of. And I mean, not everybody, not everybody likes it, but it’s definitely our culture. And that was something we knew we had to be able to duplicate

(Speaker 6)
when opening other locations. And so that is probably the number one piece that we train, develop, encourage, that we’re the biggest part of the company that we are still a part of is the culture part.

(Speaker 4)
Yep, and that’s the big part. I’m gonna just kind of jump out a little bit more. We’re unapologetic in our Christian component to that. Think if Planet Fitness is the McDonald’s of gyms, Cola Fitness is the Chick-fil-A. What I mean by that is we are a strong Christian culture. We hire and we look for people that

(Speaker 4)
match that. They don’t have to be a Christian, but they do have to align with those values. All of Christianity summed up in one word is the word agape. That’s an unconditional love. We want to make sure that we actually hire people that are into customer service, that likes people. Who’d have thought customer service would find people that actually like to serve people. And so we really vet that pretty heavily on the front side on the onboarding with our, you know, like our Christian culture. We play a video, we talk about who we are, we talk about the Christian values, devotion to God, discipline in living, denial of self, dream great dreams for God’s glory, determination to stay the course. So the Christian side of it is kind of strong.

(Speaker 4)
So either people lean in or lean and lean back. And so when we do group interviews, this is where you’ve taught us a lot of great systems. You see people lean in and see people lean back. So when everybody’s on the boat rowing in the same direction and they really match that value set,

(Speaker 4)
the culture is just better. And when you hire people that actually like people, like hire people that like people, they want to acknowledge your presence, close the gap, give them a fist bump, a high five, make somebody feel like the highlight of the day when they walk through that door.

(Speaker 4)
So we train people on those systems. So we took the culture that we did when we first opened the club and we defined it into actual ways that we can role play and script it with our staff so that you have not a purple hair McDonald’s perpetually distracted,

(Speaker 4)
crandmark tattoo person. You have a person opposed to like a McDonald’s, somebody that runs up to your car like a Chick-fil-a that’s you got their polo on and says my pleasure. So that’s where we have to be very, very, very specific on how we do culture differently than the competition who’s just, you know, scaling out like crazy. But people like the greatest currency in life is how you make somebody else feel and want to make other people feel like the highlight of the day and hire people that are sincere. They’re just genuine that truly like people.

(Speaker 2)
If you do that, well, you have to lock the doors to keep people out. I’m telling you folks, this is so important. I talked to a guy the other day who applied to work for your business, true story. And he’s kind of a gremlin. I know him because he didn’t get hired by a friend of mine. And so a friend of mine’s like, hey, I didn’t hire this guy.

(Speaker 2)
He’s kind of a gremlin. I said, what do you mean gremlin? and kind of a negative guy, Debbie Downer. And he’s got a big background in fitness, though. And he’s into fitness, and he played sports at a high level, and he’d love to come work for you, Clay. And I go, OK. And he’s like, yeah, I guess he applied

(Speaker 2)
for the Colaw guys a couple years ago, didn’t get the job. And I’m going, interesting. And I knew that you, and I met the guy. I understand why you didn’t hire him, and I didn’t hire him either. And I’m just telling you, you have certain standards. And if people aren’t up to those standards, they can come back and reapply later after they turn that frown upside down.

(Speaker 2)
But you have a certain standard there. Now, box number six, the three-legged marketing stool. Kola Fitness, with every business we work with, every business that you a moment, Charles and Amber, to reflect on this. And maybe this is true for you, maybe not. But a lot of my clients that come into my life, I think about Stacey Purcell, a long-time client, great lady.

(Speaker 2)
I think about Shaw Homes, shawhomes.com. We helped Shaw Homes grow from $14 million a year to $150 million a year of sales. I think about Oxifresh, O-X-I-Fresh.com. We’ve helped them grow now to 500 plus locations. And every single time I sit down with a business owner,

(Speaker 2)
they have not a three-legged marketing stool. No, no, no. They have a variety of things that might work. And through tracking, we start to figure out what doesn’t work. And so with Stacey Purcell with her wonderful business, we found out that LinkedIn didn’t work 100% of the time, thus saving her $8,000 a month by turning it off.

(Speaker 2)
I just had a client this week, true story, we found he was spending $4,000 a week on YouTube ads, Instagram ads, and TikTok ads. Got a lot of clicks, got a lot of views, no leads. Another client, I’m using a stream of consciousness, another client of mine, they were doing mailers,

(Speaker 2)
getting zero response. Another client of mine was doing billboards to the tune of $6,000 a month between all their locations. And as you look at the different businesses and you track, you can really, really become much more profitable by nailing down a three-legged marketing stool.

(Speaker 2)
Could you talk about that, Amber? Maybe the impact it’s had or hasn’t had, tracking the results, getting rid of what doesn’t work and focusing on what does work.

(Speaker 6)
Yeah, well, I would say none of that is my part of the business and I’m so thankful. I hate marketing, but I would, what I would say to that is that has everything to do with like we were talking about your numbers and the tracking.

(Speaker 6)
So you’re talking about tracking these things. That’s my side, the financial side. And I want to know that when the money’s going out that that return is coming back, right? And so I do that side of it with, we talk about a marketing budget and watching that

(Speaker 6)
and holding true to that and watching those numbers and watching the revenue that comes back from that marketing. And so you may be able to talk more on the marketing that’s your…

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, we’ve tracked where they come from sometimes you do get clicks or you do have like sometimes Facebook shows you you make it but it’s really not getting people to walk through the door and convert people into members and convert people into higher ticket items and so you really want to make sure that what you’re spending money on is actually quantifying out into dollars and so clay’s really been good with us to track that we’ve done that

(Speaker 4)
for years and so we can really can really see in our industry, we market in a five-mile radius, really heavy. That’s our ideal and likely buyers within that five-mile radius or a 12-minute drive time. We target those, we see what marketing works best,

(Speaker 4)
and a lot of times it’s the same proven stuff that Clay teaches with a lot of his clients is really seeing to making sure that you’re dominating on certain platforms and I can go into that. But the whole point is Clay has done it in every industry and when we follow the system, track it correctly, we can monetize our marketing dollars a whole lot better. And so there’s ways you want to get in front of your ideal and likely buyer. We make sure we got the right product offering in front of the right ideal likely buyer.

(Speaker 4)
And the things that Clay has been doing with his clients over the last seven years with us, it doesn’t change much. There’s a few little things that adjust, but it’s a proven system and that’s what works. And we’ve just, we’ve done that. We’ve gone from three locations to six

(Speaker 4)
and we’ve more than doubled our revenue.

(Speaker 1)
So it’s been a huge win.

(Speaker 6)
Well, I think sometimes people wanna market want to market in a certain way because that’s the cool thing to do. Like I want to be on TikTok. If TikTok doesn’t pay me, if TikTok is not, it’s not paying my bills, I could care less. I mean, I can watch TikTok on my off time, but I’m not going to put my marketing dollars into it just because that’s what everybody else is doing. And, um, I think another part of that is everybody has marketing advice for you. Everybody, everybody thinks that’s a marketing guru, you know, because they see ads.

(Speaker 6)
And I don’t think that’s true either.

(Speaker 2)
Now, I’m going to ask you this, Charles, and I’m not ready for your answer yet. I got to mentally prepare myself for this, but you do not have the ability to not be honest here. Okay, so a guy called me here today and I thought, man, I’m gonna send this to him right away, okay? Guy reaches out to me, he’s in the construction space, okay? And he goes, what would it, this happens every day, by the way,

(Speaker 2)
but he says, what would a relationship look like if I hired you guys as my coach? If I hired you, Clay, and your team, what does that look like? And I said, well, we charge you $1,700 a month. So it’s less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. That’s what it is.

(Speaker 2)
We have a weekly meeting. And we follow a proven system. And anyway, and I said, there’s accountability. There’s kind of three parts to it. One is we have a team that helps you get your photography, your video, your web, your search engine done for you, all those things. The second is we provide coaching down a proven path.

(Speaker 2)
And then the third is we have workshops every couple of months so you can kind of get a tune up. And I said, you know, I said, Mr. Client, Mr. Potential Client, who I’ve known forever, I said, Clay Stairs describes me, the ass man. And I said, yeah, Clay Stairs, longtime client of mine. He’s been a client of mine for like 15 years. He literally tells people that I’m his ass man.

(Speaker 2)
And they go, what? He goes, Clay has helped me grow my company, claystairs.com. He’s helped me get into political office. But he kind of is like an irritant who follows up on the same things every week until they get done. So I want to ask you, Charles, how would you describe what the coaching relationship looks

(Speaker 2)
like for somebody out there that’s saying, what is it like to work with specifically me and my team?

(Speaker 4)
Well, to shoot you straight, I mean, Clay’s highest desire isn’t always your comfort in that coaching. His highest desire is your continued development, that you do hit your goals for financial. And a good coach, think of a good coach. A good coach tells you what you need to hear

(Speaker 4)
because he doesn’t just care about the comfort in the room or the comfort of the conversation. He cares about your character development, your personal development to becoming the better leader. And if you want to run a great company, you have to be a great leader.

(Speaker 4)
You have to be the avatar. You have to be the great person. push that in me. And for me, I thought I’ve always needed that. And I just like, okay, Charles, stay humble, stay coachable. And that’s the biggest thing is most business owners, they don’t have the ability to stay keep a humble, coachable heart and be willing to grow when you work with somebody that has a proven system. They’ve worked in every industry. They’ve got a team of videographers, graphic designers, web developers, people that will help you build the back end of your business correctly. The proven systems of continuous hiring of staff team like group hiring that you always have staff ready to go. Somebody in the bullpen,

(Speaker 4)
so I’ll take it. You always have continuous training staff. You’ve never held hostages because there’s somebody that doesn’t know a skill set. You can always replace somebody because if you don’t create a system, you’re going to be a limited resource. And Clay creates the systems, helps you with document creation, file organization, and make sure you’ve got that stuff, so you have a proven template. It’s really more like a franchisable prototype

(Speaker 4)
that you can handle the lowest skill set. Great people are great, but Clay has been really good at shooting me straight. If you have a humble, coachable heart, you’re willing to grow and you take two or three action items every week. 50 weeks, 52 weeks in a year, you’ve got a bunch of systems, you got a way better website, you got checklist workflows, you got staff following systems,

(Speaker 4)
you got backup for each position. Because if you don’t have people in the bullpen, you’re going to be held hostage. And so you want to make sure that you got the right systems, checklist and personnel ready to go. And to run six different businesses

(Speaker 4)
in four different states, from Florida in the Midwest, we’re gonna live there. We have to have good systems, checklists, workflows, and so on, and making sure people are holding to that. Clay’s been really great for helping set up the system. So yeah, but it’s, to be honest, it’s not always, the conversations are definitely sometimes challenging, but understanding that both parties, me as the client,

(Speaker 4)
him as the coach, is really help trying to have the highest desire to make you grow as into a better person and to help your company grow and be better. And for me, that’s a good coach. And that’s why I like working with Thrive and Clay.

(Speaker 17)
So yeah.

(Speaker 2)
Amber, I wanted to tap into your wisdom on this. You know, there was a statement that was made years ago by Robert Kiyosaki. And it really resonated with me. I heard this about 20 years ago, Amateurs don’t have a coach. Professionals do have a coach. And at the time, I thought, you know what? From a legal perspective, I probably

(Speaker 2)
need a coach or mentor to help me. So I hired wintersking.com. And I’ve used that company for, what, 10 plus years. And it’s really helped me. I thought to myself, from an accounting perspective, I need probably to have a coach.

(Speaker 2)
So I hired CCK. And so in the areas where I want to improve, I really do firmly believe in having a coach. When I wanted to become a better speaker, I hired Carlton Pearson. And I worked with Carlton for as long as he would work with me. Because at the time, he was the top televangelist in America. And he was a phenomenal verbal communicator.

(Speaker 2)
But it wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t coachable and if he wasn’t willing to coach. And you guys have done such a great job over these years implementing. And I just see the future is so bright here. So when we look at your website now, could you talk about just that weekly meeting

(Speaker 2)
and making those little iterations and every week making it a little better? Because I think some people want to get rich quick. They want to become successful in 10 minutes. They want to ready, set, let’s go. But you guys, every week we go to colawfitness.com,

(Speaker 2)
every week we enhance the website, every week we enhance the scripts, every week we enhance the value proposition, every week we’re doing little tweaks that are improving the brand. Could you talk about this,

(Speaker 2)
that mindset of that weekly improvement?

(Speaker 1)
Yeah, absolutely.

(Speaker 4)
Well, your numbers, you have to have good feedback tools, some key performance KPIs or key performance things you look at for sales over cancellations and how much dollars you’re spending on marketing. When we track that on a regular basis, we can see that we’re doing well or not doing well. We make pivots.

(Speaker 4)
We get coaching feedback from you on best practices. And one thing is, is that you’ve not just worked in our industry, but lots of industries and having a team of people, a team of coaches that say, Hey, this is what’s working. This isn’t what’s working. It’s super valuable. And so, um, like I, I, I, I, I mean, I’ve got an MBA in, in school, but I’m telling you like it’s you’re only as good as your team and Clay brings a whole team to your team. And anyways, we have a weekly meeting. Our weekly meeting we look at like

(Speaker 4)
what are the key things that impact us. It’s going to be signups, signups over cancels, what are those signups, which one’s upgraded to higher tier options, whether that’s membership, higher tier membership options, or whether that’s tearing up into higher services like fitness coaching, like one-on-one coaching or fitness training, or nutrition coaching, or group training. But getting people into those things and understanding the scripts,

(Speaker 4)
how to role-play that over and over again, making sure your staff understands how to communicate effectively with the customer, role-play, role-play, until that socially awkward young person can totally get get it and they understand how to do it until the cognitive, the critical thinking face has gone away. They know how to do it.

(Speaker 4)
Now you’ve got staff that knows how to communicate well, how to show the product offering benefits over cost, and then show them that, hey, if you don’t do it, this is what won’t happen. And you want to show them that you’re going to really change their lives and save their life and years to life quality to your years by changing new habits. And when people see that value, you’ve got the right staff articulating that you close a lot of deals, you upgrade things

(Speaker 6)
and you change a lot of lives. Well, I, one thing Clay, I think with the coaching is it’s been beneficial. It’s kind of like you’re our blind side or blind spot coach. coach. This is what we’ve created. There’s a lot of emotions attached to it. It’s what we love. It’s what feeds our family. And so we can become very emotionally charged.

(Speaker 6)
And I think you’re super helpful to kind of bring us back in and go, hey, like, so you kind of keep us focused, separating the emotions from it. And I’ve heard a lot of people say to you, or in conversations we’ll have, and they’ll say, yeah, but you don’t understand landscaping. It’s not about understanding landscaping. We don’t talk fitness every week when we meet.

(Speaker 6)
But it’s about business, and it’s about where we’re going,

(Speaker 16)
and you really help keep us on track. There’s that accountability and it’s about where we’re going

(Speaker 6)
and you really help keep us on track. There’s that accountability like you talked about.

(Speaker 2)
You guys are set up.

(Speaker 4)
Your set of eyes is super valuable.

(Speaker 2)
I’ll just say this, I mean, colawfitness.com. If you’re looking for a career folks, I’m telling you to check out colawfitness.com. Now, point number seven, sales conversion. We have to have scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, lead trackers. What?

(Speaker 2)
We need to have sales scripts, recorded calls, all the visuals in the store. We call that internal marketing. There’s external marketing, marketing to your ideal and likely buyers, but internal marketing, letting your current gym members know that you offer personal training or group fitness. Box number eight, you have to have a sustainable customer acquisition cost. What? You have to know what does it cost you to land a new customer.

(Speaker 2)
Box number nine, you’ve got to create repeatable systems. When you clean the bathrooms, every day. When you clean the showers, every day. When you clean the locker rooms, every day. When you clean the equipment, every day. When you clean all these things, multiple times a day.

(Speaker 2)
When you change the light bulbs, every day. When you have to hire people, every day. You have to build repeatable systems or your head will explode. You got to have checklists and processes. Box number 11, you have to manage people. Manage people. What? This just in, we have to manage people. We got to hire people, manage people. How do you hire, inspire, train, retain? We have to do it. Box number 11, you have to build a of org chart? Who’s in charge? Who isn’t? How do you deal with somebody that doesn’t want to follow the systems? Because this just in, a customer will fire you if you won’t fire your bad employees. In box number 12, you got to have a high standard with the A

(Speaker 2)
players, the B players. You got to coach up the B players to become A players. You got to coach those A players to become future leaders. You got to coach the C players out into another job or to the local bus station. You got to get them out of your life or they will ruin your business. And then box number 13, you got to make sure you’re making money. It’s not about how much money you make. It’s about how much money you keep. Box number 14, you have to sit down every day and say, what does God want me to do, if every day is a gift, what does God want me to do? If every day is a gift from God, what does God want me to do with my faith, my family,

(Speaker 2)
my finances, my fitness, my friendship, my fun, my focused time? What does God want me to do with this day? That’s all these things we have to think about there. And I’m telling you folks, everything we’re talking about on today’s show, it wouldn’t not obsessed with wowing the customers. Charles Kola and Amber Kola are obsessed with helping you take your fitness to the next level. If you’re out there today and you are in Joplin, Missouri,

(Speaker 2)
you’re in Texas, you are in all the different markets they’re in, go to KolaFitness.com. You can see the markets they’re in. I’m telling you, these guys are obsessed with wow your customers. Everything we talked about doesn’t matter

(Speaker 2)
if you don’t wow your customers. Can you talk about why at the core, even though we’re going over all this business stuff, all these details, at the end of the day, you guys at Colaw Fitness have to wow the customers. Why is that so important, Amber?

(Speaker 6)
Well, I think for us it’s important because we love people and everybody needs a belonging and worth and they need to feel important and they need to feel cared for. And like, that’s our passion. We just love loving on people. That’s what made Charles such a phenomenal trainer

(Speaker 6)
when that was the initial start of the whole company. It was just his desire to help people and his love for them. And that was the same reason, you know, a million years ago that I did hair. So I think for us, that’s just what we’re passionate about. We’re passionate about people feeling like they are loved

(Speaker 6)
and they have value. And if we can pass that on through all of our front desk staff And if we can pass that on through all of our front desk staff, if we can open more locations and bring in that many more people in these communities to feel loved, and also spread the gospel at the same time,

(Speaker 6)
let them know God loves you. And so that’s really what drives our passion in the coaching and development, even of our staff.

(Speaker 2)
And Charles Cole, I got two final questions for you. And your wife can one up you. So here we go, two final questions.

(Speaker 16)
Yes, sir.

(Speaker 15)
Yes, sir.

(Speaker 2)
There’s somebody out there right now, they’re thinking about coming to one of our in-person workshops. They know Tim Tebow is going to be there. They know Eric Trump will be there, but maybe if they haven’t been to a workshop in the past, how would you describe the in-person, two-day interactive workshops? How would you describe them, sir?

(Speaker 4)
It’s just raw and real. I mean, if you really want to try to get, if you really, really, really want to build a company, not just get like, if you go to school and get a business degree, they would say Clay’s program is business without the BS. There’s no bull crap. He tells you the proven system, real proven systems that have grown and scaled hundreds,

(Speaker 4)
if not thousands of companies, add millions. Like we are millions of dollars more in revenue because of these systems that we’ve implemented. And we’ve been able to scale and not have to actually work in the business. We work on the business, just the business system. So we can live in

(Speaker 4)
Florida. We’re definitely engaged with our staff that runs these locations and they’re great lieutenants, but we have the systems, we have the checklist, we’ve got the workflows, and we have the systems that we can hold people to. We’ve retained the right talent. We’ve got really people in the bullpen for every position. So they were held hostage to happen to do that. But all that to say, it’s going, it’s funny. He’s very, very, I mean, Clay’s pretty much like a comedian. It’s hilarious to listen to. If you’re willing to be coachable, if you’re willing to have a humble and coachable heart that’s willing to grow, he’ll show you proven processes. There’s going to be a pathway that you can be successful. And if you’re a diligent doer and you just do one or two

(Speaker 4)
action items every week with your coach, the whole thing is just being more of a marathoner than a sprinter when you’re working with a coach. Just do your two or three action items and that two or three, if you times that by 52 weeks, that’s 150 next day. you got a way better website, you got a way better lead funnel, you got way better staff hired, you’ve got systems, checklists, workflows, all document created into mind-free templates, sales flows, training and development of staff,

(Speaker 4)
all that, so you got people in the bullpen for each position, and you’re no longer being held hostage as an owner, and you’ve got a proven system.

(Speaker 6)
So that’s Clay and his team. I’ll one up you. I will one up him this one time. Like there’s truly nothing more exciting than to come to the conference. And we’ve been to almost every conference you’ve had for the last seven to eight years. And it is completely refreshing.

(Speaker 6)
I always get something new out of it. It’s very practical. You’re not sitting in this huge ballroom with want, want, want speakers that you feel like are trying to sell you something and you’re trying to stay awake.

(Speaker 6)
And that’s not the case at all. It’s kind of a circus with a whole lot of, there’s a whole lot to take home. Even if you go to the conference and you decide, hey, this is not for me right now, or coaching is not for me, hands down, you will leave with practical business application items.

(Speaker 2)
Now final question I have for you guys, just like Colaw Fitness, I mean, you put your name right there on the brand, Kola Fitness. You can’t really go to thrivetimeshow.com without seeing my cranium. And so I take a lot of pride in what I do and wowing our customers. But for somebody out there, in particular, this guy today who’s in the construction space,

(Speaker 2)
who’s like, hey, what would coaching look like for me or is coaching for me? He’s reaching out. Charles, what do you say, what kind of impact has the coaching that we’ve had with you guys over these past seven or eight years made on the impact or the success, or what kind of impact has the coaching made on colawfitness.com?

(Speaker 4)
Well, I would say first off, personally, I’ve developed a great friendship with some really great people. And I thought that’s been huge for me, that’s personally. And to know people that are in the same type of pressure that you have is running a company, running a business, to have people that are intelligent

(Speaker 4)
and they care as a friend, that is huge. That’s the number one personally. And then professionally, to have a whole bullpen of a whole data set of lots of different industries, best practices, whether that’s, generally it’s either a sales issue,

(Speaker 4)
like you don’t have enough sales, or then it’s a staffing issue, you don’t have the right staff, whether it’s a scaling it, how do I build this into a franchisable prototype? It’s all stuff that they’ve done

(Speaker 4)
over and over and over again. To where you have a that gives you peace because it is something they’ve done before, that’s it’s priceless. So yeah. Yeah. Oh, I would say that you were talking about,

(Speaker 6)
it hasn’t just affected us in our business, but it has affected us in our personal life too, because all of these things that you learn can be rolled over into your personal life. So that’s been huge. And like Charles was talking about, the connections that we’ve made with other business owners. You know, Clay, you said at the very first conference

(Speaker 6)
we went to, your net worth is your net worth. Amen! I mean, that is hands down. If you’re hanging out with the old friends that have unsuccessful businesses and you’re hanging out with the old friends that have unsuccessful businesses, and you’re hanging out with the old people who are complaining about having to work an eight-hour day,

(Speaker 6)
you know, if you’re spending your time with them and, you know, it’s just going to break the bank to go to Chili’s for dinner, that you’re going to stay there. You’re going to stay in that influence of people. And every conference, we meet new people, And we’ve got some of the most awesome friends that own businesses across the country, from the cheesecake store to a pizza shop, to dog training, to, I mean, we’ve got some of our friends

(Speaker 6)
that live in cities that we have gyms and they’re members at our clubs. And it’s just, it’s so powerful. It gives us a whole community to bounce ideas off of and get encouragement from.

(Speaker 2)
Charles, from an ROI perspective, if someone’s gonna look at it and go return on investment, I pay you 1,700 a month, will I make more money than I’m paying you? How would you maybe tackle, or how would you respond to,

(Speaker 4)
what kind of return on investment? Have you seen for the $1,700 a month you’re paying? Well, for example, Clay has got, there’s no, there’s no better business coach in the world that has the way he works, the way his mind works. But he’s also got a team of other other business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries. So he’s worked in every industry. His staff has worked in every industry, he’s got videographers, web designers. I mean, just for the fact of like, just the website alone is worth the $1,700. Just the ability to take any of their proven systems, whether that’s a marketing thing, or whether that’s a staffing thing. Like one thing done in the month, it pays for itself.

(Speaker 4)
And then to understand this, there’s a part of where, you know, some maybe some week you may be like, well, you know what, I’m not getting a whole lot out of this call. But the bottom line is, it’s like when you read the Bible, there’s times you’re just reading it and then you’re like,

(Speaker 4)
you know what, I really, and then you read it that one time and it’s like, God’s no way that you can get that kind of value for $1,700 to have a whole team of coaches, graphic designers, web developers, anybody that has that type of knowledge, you know, in your back pocket. And then in the whole thing is,

(Speaker 4)
is run your business with being somewhat conservative. Make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time. But by doing that, you have that skill set. You have those tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like the cost of doing business. Just understand it.

(Speaker 6)
That’s what you want to do. I think there’s a sometimes the payment we make, I feel like is peace of mind even. Because there have been multiple times throughout the years that we will, we will either be butting heads on something. We’re super confused about something. We’re fearful about something, something in the markets changed and it’s a quick call to Clay.

(Speaker 6)
And so that quick call to Clay and he’s outside the situation and he has other data points. I mean, we’ve had times that Clay’s you’ve got a quick response and you can tell us and direct us real quickly. And we’re, we’re right off the phone and there’s other times you’ll go. I’ll call you right back. And, and Clay will jump in and he’ll call his other contacts and get back with us.

(Speaker 6)
Sometimes it, it takes longer, but there are times when you feel that way, when you’re like, is this worth it? You know, I don’t feel like we’re doing much right now or we’re not growing. Inevitably, something like that will come up. And like, that’s our peace of mind. Like he’s, you’re like a crucial team player. You know,

(Speaker 2)
well, you know, I it’s an honor to serve you guys. And everybody’s watching right now. I encourage you, if you’re looking for a career. Now, if you’re looking for a job, don’t fill out the form. But if you’re looking for a career, go to colawfitness.com. Because if you live in, what, Joplin, Missouri, Charles, Dallas, Texas, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Amber.

(Speaker 2)
We live in Topeka, Kansas. Arlington if you’re out there to go to Kola fitness comm if you’re looking for a career and not just a job Thank you to for carving time with your busy schedule. Yeah, and I’m so glad to have you here today Take your guys

(Speaker 8)
Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show But this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use?

(Speaker 8)
Because they believe in you. And they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body. Dr. Robert Zunder. Two men. Eight kids, co-created by two different women.

(Speaker 3)
Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses.

(Speaker 10)
We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here.

(Speaker 2)
We started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hooks. I break down the books. The seeds bring in some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s the C and Z up on your radio. And now, three, two, one, here we go.

(Speaker 10)
We started from the bottom, now we here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we here. We started from the bottom, now we here. We started from the bottom, now we here.

(Speaker 2)
We started from the bottom, Thrive Nation. It’s a very special occasion because on today’s show, we’re joined by a real Thriver. He could be, you might say, this guy looks like a hologram. He looks like an idealized hologram. This guy could be a male model, but no,

(Speaker 2)
he is an actual entrepreneur, a real client, a wonderful man. We’ve had the opportunity to meet in person on during multiple in-person workshops. He comes from the great state of Iowa. Josiah Ragsdale, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

(Speaker 7)
I’m doing great.

(Speaker 2)
So I gotta ask you, how did you originally come in contact with us there, sir?

(Speaker 7)
Actually through Spotify.

(Speaker 14)
Yep.

(Speaker 2)
Through Spotify, okay. Do you remember what you were doing on Spotify? Were you looking for business shows or was it recommended? Or how did you find the Thrive Time Show?

(Speaker 7)
I think I was looking for business shows because I was, at the time I was actually in school to build like custom cars. And then I was working on a dragster. And so like I was looking for some more, you know, I didn’t like,

(Speaker 7)
I’ve never liked listening to music. So I was looking for either an audio book or a podcast or something and ran across your guys’ business show because I always figured I’d open up a custom car shop. So that’s kind of how I found you.

(Speaker 2)
Now, for anybody out there that wants to verify that you are a real person, the website is autoliftserv.com. Autolift and serve, S-E-R-V.com. Josiah, could you share with everybody out there who wants to verify you’re a real person, what’s your first and last name and what’s the name of your company?

(Speaker 7)
Yeah, it’s Josiah Ragsdale. And then the name of the company is Automotive Lift Services.

(Speaker 2)
And what kind of services or solutions do you guys provide there? I think a lot of people are curious about that. What kind of services do you provide at autoliftserve.com?

(Speaker 7)
Sure, sure. So kind of our main niche is obviously fixing lifts. Because we generally will prioritize speed of repair. So we offer like 48 hour repair times guaranteed. But otherwise, as far as the rest of the equipment in the shop, if it’s in a shop, like in the mechanic side, whether it be exhaust ventilation equipment or air

(Speaker 7)
compressor equipment, we service it and sell it as well.

(Speaker 1)
But lifts are our main bread and butter.

(Speaker 2)
Now, what I wanted to do on today’s show is really brag on you and kind of go through some of the wins that we’ve been able to work on together. Because I think sometimes when people think about a business coach or a business consultant, they may think about a motivational guy.

(Speaker 2)
They may think about some sort of motivational feelings focused, almost like business therapist. But that’s not what we do at all. We focus on implementing a linear path to help real business owners grow their real companies. So we’re going to go through all 14 steps today.

(Speaker 2)
So step number one, revenue goals. I’m not asking you to share on today’s show what your yearly revenue goals are. But why is it important for you as a coaching client and a business owner? Why was it important for you to figure out how much money you needed to do per week in sales to, to, you

(Speaker 2)
know, hit your goals and what your yearly goals actually were?

(Speaker 7)
Yeah, so I mean, without knowing our yearly goal, there’s no way to break down into what you need to hit per week. Because that’s a really important thing that we start with every single Monday morning, just between my service manager here and myself is figuring out, okay, this is how much cash

(Speaker 7)
we need to break even for this week, and this is how much cash we need to break even or should need to break even next week, and then this is what we need to make a profit. And here’s our goal for profit. So I mean, it’s, I don’t know how you would stay in business without knowing it.

(Speaker 2)
So. Okay, so let’s drill into that for a second. Are you coming to our workshop coming up here in March? Are you coming to that?

(Speaker 7)
I will not be, unfortunately. Nope, we’ve got a two month old baby, so he’s not moving yet.

(Speaker 2)
Okay, well, let me pull this up real quick so people can see that you’ve been to a workshop, though.

(Speaker 1)
So you’ve been to a workshop.

(Speaker 14)
Oh, yeah.

(Speaker 2)
And I’m just going to throw out some ideas for anybody out there watching. We have Eric Trump. That’s President Trump’s son will be there. Robert Kiyosaki, bestselling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Eric Trump obviously runs the Trump organization. thousands of employees. We have Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. We have Tom Wheelwright, one of the most respected wealth

(Speaker 2)
consultants on the planet. And people say to me, Clay, man, that’s got to be hard putting together an event like that. And I say, well, we could define hard, but I’ll just tell you this. It’s about $175,000 for me to put on that event.

(Speaker 2)
And someone says, huh? Huh? Real numbers that you put out up front. You say, what does that go to? Well, you got the president’s son here, so you need security. You need great security. We need all the police and all the law enforcement to keep him safe. You’ve got audio and visual people that work all weekend, and they set up for the event. We’ve got food. Anytime you try to feed a small army of people, which will be 400 people. Think about it. Even if the average person, if we only invested in $20 over two days to feed them, that would

(Speaker 2)
quickly add up. But it’s not $20. So you’re talking about $50 of food per person. You’ve got the security. Then you’ve got the flights, the hotel, the accommodations for the various speakers. I can go on and on boring people with details. But you end up spending quickly about $150,000 to put on the event. And so because we only sell 400 tickets, you kind of do the math and you go, OK, that’s

(Speaker 2)
what you need to do to break even. And I think everybody out there needs to have clarity on that. You mentioned it. I want to go back to this workflow for a second. The break even point, box number two. Most people do not know how many customers they need to break even. Why is it absolutely essential for you and for any business owner, especially

(Speaker 2)
at autoliftserve.com, why is it important for you to know how much you have to sell

(Speaker 1)
to break even? Yeah, I mean, if you don’t break even, you’re going bankrupt. So that’s

(Speaker 7)
about as important as it gets, you know? I mean, I don’t know how else to break that down.

(Speaker 2)
Well, I think a lot of business owners, though, don’t ever think about these things at all. I mean, I don’t know how else to break that down. Well, I think a lot of business owners, though, don’t ever think about these things at all. I mean, I would say 99% of the wonderful doctors and dentists and lawyers and clients and automotive repair shops I’ve worked with, I mean, of all the clients in our portfolio, I would say 99% of them

(Speaker 2)
don’t know their break-even point before they start coaching. And I think that’s so important for everybody out there to really dial into that idea. Now, the third step, we’ve got the third step, is you’ve got to know how many hours per week you’re willing to work. Now, you have a baby on the way.

(Speaker 2)
Is this baby number one or baby number 407? How many kids do you have?

(Speaker 7)
This baby is baby number one.

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, and so I remember I first met you. You were girlfriend free. I think you came to the conference with a friend. And I think one of the work vans stopped working and you guys helped us fix the van or got it working. So a lot has changed in your life. Why is it important that you and your wife,

(Speaker 2)
you and your partner that you guys have, that you’re on the same page with defining your schedule?

(Speaker 7)
Oh, definitely. That’s huge. Cause I mean, if like we want to be happily married and have a good home for, you know, our future kids and whatnot, because we want to have more kids too. But I mean, if I was just like always working,

(Speaker 7)
she would not, we probably wouldn’t be married for very long. So like my curfew moved up from like 6.30 PM and being able to start as early as I wanted to like now I quit at 5 And then I don’t get to work all day and all night on Saturdays anymore So my Saturday start earlier and we’ve kind of changed when his bedtime is to kind of make it match, too

(Speaker 4)
But uh, yeah, I mean that’s that’s really important. So real stuff. This is divorced., you lose 50% of what you built. So deal. All right, now, pops number four,

(Speaker 2)
defining your unique value proposition. What is it that makes your company unique? So that’s one thing we do with every client. We help you achieve that. Let’s talk about autoliftserve.com. What do you guys do differently, autoliftserve.com,

(Speaker 2)
from your competition? What do you do to make you unique in the world of business?

(Speaker 7)
Yeah, so we guarantee that we’ll fix a lift within 48 hours or it’s free. Like we’ll try and get people over to our maintenance plan right away. That’s kind of our biggest thing because most people you go to,

(Speaker 7)
you’re gonna go ahead and you’re gonna call them. They’re gonna come out, diagnose it, bill you for that. And then they’re going to order parts. You’re going to go through. It’s like a 30 to 60 day lead time on a lot of repairs. And what we do is we’ll go ahead of that, and we’ll go, OK, hey, for, let’s say, $100 a month, whatever, we’ll cover your lift.

(Speaker 7)
And then if anything breaks, we’ll

(Speaker 2)
come out and have it fixed within 48 hours that well. So again, you’ve thought through this, and you have a coach that works with you every week. Let’s talk about this here. Moving on to box number five, branding. That’s the website, photography, video, logo, print pieces, video testimonials. How has improving your branding impacted your ability

(Speaker 2)
to go out there and sell in a competitive marketplace?

(Speaker 7)
Oh, yeah, that’s impacted a whole lot. I mean, like, even when I was first showing up, like we were, like, right after starting up with you guys, like the difference between me going in and Dream 100 marketing beforehand and after it was huge, because, like, before I’d go in, they’d be like, okay, this is just some guy off the street, clearly. But afterwards I went in, we got into the Gavis group here in Iowa and I was talking to one of them there

(Speaker 7)
and they thought we were part of a franchise. They were like, oh wow, are you a franchisee for this company or whatever? And I was like, that was the point that made me think, oh wow, our brand names really jumped quite a lot and that’s helped a lot

(Speaker 7)
because now they weren’t as worried about, oh do you know specifically how you’re gonna fix this or what you’re doing, now it’s more so like, okay, this is a legit company. We’re not worried about it, just book them.

(Speaker 2)
I’m telling you folks, people do judge a book by the cover. People do judge you based upon your branding. It’s so important you nail it down. Box number six, the three-legged marketing stool. There’s gotta be a way that every business owner out there that you can stably, consistently, methodically

(Speaker 2)
market to your ideal and likely buyers. There’s got to be a sustainable, proven way for you to market to your ideal and likely buyers. Can you talk about the impact that it’s had having someone like Andrew, one of our coaches, working with you to make sure that you’re diligently

(Speaker 2)
implementing a three-legged marketing stool?

(Speaker 7)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, just having some accountability because one of ours is Dream 100 Marketing. So that’s pretty big where we like physically show up and keep dropping off donuts until they cry, die or buy. But so that one’s big.

(Speaker 7)
That’s more so just the accountability of making sure we’re doing it. And then obviously like getting top of Google is our other main one And then we’re kind of we run a lot of retargeting ads stuff like that. We’re cranking that up So like those are two boxes that I really know nothing about and so Andrew kind of takes the whole Takes everything from there like we have lucky orange on the website him and I go through it on our coach calls every every week

(Speaker 7)
And we kind of scroll through and see if there’s stuff that could be have people hanging up on or getting caught on and whatnot. But that’s pretty much I mean, he’s pretty much taking on all that like we write some content to you guys write a ton of content. But yeah, that’s, that’s a huge I would have no idea what to do with that. Without you guys.

(Speaker 2)
If you didn’t have a team helping you get to the top of the Google search results? A, could you do it? And then B, what kind of impact has it made on your business? being top in the Google search results?

(Speaker 7)
Sure, sure. Yeah, could I do it? I probably could it’d be it’d be horrible, though. It’d take me way longer, like way longer and cost a lot more money because I would have screwed it up. Right like many times. And the impact is huge because obviously people find us on Google. We’ve got like several of our largest customers have came

(Speaker 7)
from a simple Google search. And they’re like people that we’ve been trying to dream 100 market to before that for years. And they basically didn’t know who we are other than one of these days, you know, somebody is just Googling at their company and finds us and they book us in that. That’s so much easier to

(Speaker 7)
when they find us on Google, and they call us to book it like it’s it’s light years easier, because now it’s like they’re looking for us. It’s not we’re cold calling them and trying to get them to buy something. So it’s more so like order taking at that point instead of having to sell. So I mean, it’s a huge

(Speaker 2)
impact. Now, next area here, and again, this is all people always say to me. They always say, Josiah, people will say to me, they’ll say, Clay, what is the most important thing I need to do to grow my company? And I would respond rhetorically, not in a difficult way.

(Speaker 2)
I’m just saying, what’s the most important ingredient that makes cookies? Is it butter? Is it chocolate chips? They say, what? I said, well, what’s the most important part of the house? I mean, is it the framing? Is it the tile? Is it the countertops?

(Speaker 2)
Could you skip the footings? Could you skip the rebar? Could you skip the framing? Could you skip the shingles? It’s all of those things working together. I think a lot of people really don’t think

(Speaker 2)
about business that way because of our educational system presented there. So box number 7, you’ve got to create a sales conversion system. It’s a sales conversion system. You have to have a system that we’re talking about scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, pre-written emails, lead trackers, tracking the results. How has tracking the results and having a turnkey system

(Speaker 2)
in place impacted your business?

(Speaker 7)
Yeah, tracking results is absolutely huge. The lead tracker is probably that’s probably the biggest, most game changing thing we’ve done is with you guys is because now we’ve got like one spot, all of our notes are in and it’s nice and simple went through with Andrew. So it’s just like, if that if it’s a white box, that just means we need to keep

(Speaker 7)
calling them booked. If it’s green, they’re booked. If it’s red, it’s, you know, they said no, but that’s simplified everything. I mean, that’s definitely the biggest one. The script, that’s kind of always a work in progress. We go through that with Andrew relatively consistently too, because there’s a lot of different steps

(Speaker 7)
and a lot of different questions that customers have depending on what they’re calling on. But it’s huge without what we have now. And I would say our stuff right now is nowhere close to being done. Like it still needs a lot more revisions, but without having it right now,

(Speaker 7)
like we definitely would have sold the wrong equipment into many, many shops. And that would have been a big problem.

(Speaker 2)
Now we move on here to the next box here, folks go 90 miles an hour. This is how you do it. Box number eight, you have to determine your sustainable customer acquisition costs. What does it cost you to get a new customer? You have to know, what does it cost to obtain a new customer? Do you have a tracking sheet?

(Speaker 2)
Do you know how much you’re spending on advertisement? You have to know that. Box number nine, you’ve got to create repeatable systems, processes, and file organization. Now, this is not a fitness advice to anybody out there, but I’m going to give you an example. One of my clients is unbelievably fit. I mean, this guy is looking incredible. And he made the comment to me years ago.

(Speaker 2)
I said, you look great. And he said, thank you. I pay for it. And I remember he said that like he’d been thinking about it. And I said, man, you look great. And he goes, thank you, I pay for it.

(Speaker 2)
And I was thinking, so he was ready for that response. And so I said, can I ask what that means? He’s like, oh, I pay for a trainer seven days a week. So seven days a week, I have a trainer, somebody who’s a coach who pushes me and I said, you look great. You’ve had a trainer, this is a guy that’s mid 40s. I’m like, so you have a trainer, seven days a week?

(Speaker 2)
He said, yeah. I said, can I ask why? And I kinda knew why, but it helps to hear it from somebody else. And he said, cause if I don’t, I’m gonna go to the gym, I’m gonna have the workout pants And if I do, I’m not gonna push myself. And so I have a trainer that pushes me for 40 minutes a day

(Speaker 2)
and who pushes me and I said, what do you pay per session? True story. He said, $100 a session. I said, so you’re spending per week, 700 a week. He said, yeah, that’s why I look like I do.

(Speaker 2)
I mean, that’s systems are dialed in. They go, yeah, I pay for it. I have a lawyer. I see people that are phenomenal in the game of investing. And they go, yeah, I pay for it. I have a financial strategist. I think everybody in any area of our lives

(Speaker 2)
where we want to get better, we need to have a coach of some kind. that’s done for you, having somebody like Andrew that actually gives a crap about your business, that actually is 100% focused on how he meets you every week, knowing it’s a flat rate, but also knowing that you have somebody that each week is going to follow up with you and make sure that all these systems are being implemented. Can you talk about the impact of that?

(Speaker 7)
Yeah, it’s huge. I’d say the biggest impact is probably every week kind of pulling me out of Turtle View and back up into kind of looking further out. So like I’d commonly so like for a long time, especially in the beginning, I was still doing a lot of technician work, not so much anymore, but it’s doing a lot of technician work. So it’s like every Wednesday was like, our call. That’s like what got me back up to the point of thinking about okay, you know, I’m actually building a company, you know

(Speaker 7)
Eventually, we’re gonna have somebody somebody in this role. I’m not gonna have to do this forever. You know that kind of deal But it’s big I’d say a lot of it’s just like, you know Of course the accountability and getting numbers in your tracking sheet and stuff I guess you know where you are if you’re gaining or not But I’d say the bigger thing is like helping you get out of your own head and kind of see, at least for me, helping me get out of my own head and see that,

(Speaker 7)
oh, okay, I’m not trapped, you know, and here’s the next step I can do to get us a little bit further down the road. And he really kind of pulls that out. Cause a lot of times I can kind of pull that out just through us talking. And then it’s like a lot more clear on how to keep growing.

(Speaker 2)
I find it very interesting that all of the people I’ve met in my life who are very successful, they all have a coach, an advisor, or somebody that pushes them. You know, the guy that I meet that has like the jacked up haircut is normally

(Speaker 2)
the guy that cuts his own hair. The guy that I meet that has a really, really nice car typically did not hand make the car. They typically reached out to someone who has proven to be an expert in car making, and they bought the car from the Ferrari dealership, from the Lamborghini dealership.

(Speaker 2)
The guy that has the great haircut typically has a professional they’re hiring. In business out there, if you feel stuck, you’ve got to implement all these systems. Box number 10 and 11, box number 10, you’ve got to learn how to manage people. That’s not something that’s normal, managing people. Do the people on your team know what their jobs are,

(Speaker 2)
and are they being held accountable for doing those jobs? Do the people on your team know what they’re supposed to be

(Speaker 1)
doing and are they doing those things? Could you talk about the impact of having a coach, how much of that’s made on your ability to manage people?

(Speaker 7)
Yeah, that’s another area that’s really helpful, because I had no management experience prior to this. Yeah, I don’t connect with a lot of people very well either. So I don’t, yeah, it was like basically every single week, I just have a problem. We go over with Andrew.

(Speaker 7)
I’m like some kind of crazy thing that I didn’t think people did, which is probably the most common thing. And it’s like, why is this like, like, this is the job, this is all you gotta do. Like, what’s the problem here?

(Speaker 7)
But Andrew’s very helpful in us, helping us figure out, you know, how to manage people. I’d say a big part of helping me manage was helping me get the group interview going, enrolling properly, because that has probably been the biggest influence on helping me manage people better, is maybe kind of moving some people out sooner

(Speaker 7)
and or moving some job shadows in, which kind of speeds people up then a little bit too. Yeah, but like none of that, I wouldn’t have figured out any of that without him.

(Speaker 2)
Now we move on here to the final couple of steps here is you have to create a repetitive weekly schedule. You have to schedule a time every week for the group interview, like we talked about, or your daily huddles. And that’s something we work with,

(Speaker 2)
teaching our clients how to time block and build a schedule that works for them. Box number 12, teaching you how to hire and recruit great people. How do you hire, inspire, train, retain great people? Box number 13, step number 13, you got to create an accounting system so you’re actually aware of your money. Where’s it going? But all of this, the whole point of doing all this, box 14, is so that you can achieve success in the area of your faith, your family, your friendship, your fitness, your finances, your fun, your focus. And so I encourage everybody out there, make a list today. What are your goals for your faith, your family, your friendship, fitness, your finances, your fun, your focus?

(Speaker 2)
What are your goals for faith, family, friendship, fitness, finances, fun, focus? What are your goals? And then the business exists just to help you achieve those goals. And so my final two questions I have for you,

(Speaker 2)
the listeners out there know that we’ve helped you with accounting and branding and online ads and search engine optimization. But my final two questions for you would be this. If you could explain to somebody in 60 seconds or less-ish, what kind of an impact has weekly business coaching

(Speaker 2)
made on you and your business?

(Speaker 7)
Yeah. It’s made a huge impact. I mean, like I said, I don’t think we would be anywhere close to where we are right now if you’ve been still in business without it. It’s like you guys have really helped just continue us,

(Speaker 7)
continue growing, because like without you guys, we wouldn’t have our website cranking. We wouldn’t have a bunch of leads. We wouldn’t have, I’d probably be stuck in my own head and I’d probably still be stuck as a self-employed technician and not have really figured out how to get out of that phase.

(Speaker 7)
I really think I’d be stuck there for many years without a weekly call.

(Speaker 2)
Final question. There’s somebody out there that is a big statistic guy. They want to see stats. I’m not asking you for your private numbers. But as far as a percentage, how much have you grown since we met you? Are you up like 2%, 7%, 10%? What kind of a percentage?

(Speaker 2)
How would you quantify that?

(Speaker 7)
Yeah, when we met, we were probably at, I don’t know exactly what the percentage, but you could probably figure it out. When we met and first started with you guys, we probably had done like maybe $60,000 in a year. And we probably now do more like $2 million to $2.5 million

(Speaker 14)
in a year.

(Speaker 2)
So you would say from, let’s just do some math here. So if I take $2 million and I divide that by $60,000, we could say you’re up 33 times? Yep. I mean, that’s an accurate number. You guys have grown 33 times.

(Speaker 2)
That’s powerful. So I encourage everybody, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. I have two calls to action for everybody out there today. First off, I want everyone to go to autoliftserve.com. And even if you don’t know why, share this link on your socials, because what it does

(Speaker 2)
is it helps my wonderful client Josiah. It helps Josiah to rank higher in the search engine results. So if you just share a link to autoliftserve.com, it does help him rank higher on the search results. Second thing, if you want to come to one of our in-person workshops, you just go to thrivetimeshow.com. The tickets are always $250 or whatever price

(Speaker 2)
you can afford, so we’ve made it affordable for everybody. That’s thrivetimeshow.com. They’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. How would you describe the workshops? You’ve been to the workshops, you’ve done the 13 point assessment. How would you describe the free 13 point assessment and the workshops?

(Speaker 7)
Oh, the workshops are a blast. It’s like you’re in a room with a ton of other people who wanna do the kind of the same thing. It’s probably the most, I don’t know, it’s just excellent. Like you just gotta go. Like you go in, the whole thing is very different.

(Speaker 7)
Like I’ve never seen anything like it. You get to see a bunch of people who, like I said, are kind of in the same boat as you and meet them. And they’re not normally just people who are kind of like, ah, you know, I’m just trying to sell insurance to this small group that you’re somehow a part of in your town. But no, this is like, these are like people who are like, really growing their companies. Like I can think of like

(Speaker 7)
Ryan Wells, for instance, grows like crazy, like he’s a ton of fun to talk to when we go down there.

(Speaker 2)
And I always get new ideas from it, too. So I’m like, wow, we’re really dropping the ball in this Awesome. Well, congratulations on baby number one. Thank you for carving out time for us. I encourage everyone, one more time, folks, if you haven’t checked out that website, it does help our wonderful client, Josiah Ragsdale, to rank higher if you visit that website. So you might say, how do I do it?

(Speaker 2)
All you got to do is just go on over there to AutoLift. Let me pull it up again here. autoliftserv.com, auto-L-I-F-T, serv, S-E-R-V. If you go there, what it does is it helps our client rank higher in the search results if you share today’s link, if you share a link to his website.

(Speaker 2)
So make sure you do that, folks. Again, Josiah, thank you so much for your time, sir. And we’ll talk to you soon.

(Speaker 13)
Thanks.

(Speaker 3)
Bye-bye. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects. You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you. People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations.

 

Transcribed with Cockatoo