ColawFitness.com | How to Grow a Gym & Personal Training Business | “Clay Clark Has Helped Us Go from One Location to Six Locations…Checklists, Systems, & Workflows…There Is Not Better Business Coach In the World.”

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 2)
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 the third location now to six locations. We’ve more than doubled our revenue.

(Speaker 2)
These are ground-up build gyms. The barrier for entry is pretty high. It’s 20 plus staff at each location. Yeah, it’s been a lot for us, running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when, and how, training us on that. Clay’s helped a ton.

(Speaker 2)
We would not be where we’re at without him, so huge win.

(Speaker 1)
Charles, from an ROI perspective, 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 what kind of return on investment have you seen for the $1,700 a month you’re paying?

(Speaker 2)
Well, for example, Clay has got, 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 business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries. So he’s worked in every industry.

(Speaker 2)
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

(Speaker 2)
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, 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

(Speaker 2)
just reading it. And then you’re like, you know what I really and 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 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 that You have those tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like the cost of doing business. Just understand it. That’s what

(Speaker 3)
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 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 1)
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 someone who I consider to be a friend

(Speaker 1)
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. 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

(Speaker 1)
out of their house. And they’ve now grown it into a multimillion dollar super successful company. 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 him on today’s show.

(Speaker 1)
That being said, Amber and Charles Cola, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. Amber, how are you?

(Speaker 3)
Great, thanks Clay. It’s awesome to be on here with you.

(Speaker 2)
Yes, we are excited.

(Speaker 1)
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 kind of a coaching relationship?

(Speaker 2)
We probably started back in 2017. 2017.

(Speaker 3)
Yeah, we’re looking at seven, eight years.

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, it’s coming up on eight probably. It’s a little over seven.

(Speaker 1)
And from that time, I mean, 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, but could you maybe talk about maybe the size you guys have grown over these past seven or eight years at Colawfitness.com?

(Speaker 21)
Absolutely.

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, 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. These helped us go from right before we opened the third location now to six locations. And so we’ve more than doubled our revenue

(Speaker 2)
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. Clay’s helped a ton. We would not be where we’re at without him.

(Speaker 2)
So huge win.

(Speaker 1)
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 show, and they’re going to relate to 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. But you guys started ColawFitness.com

(Speaker 1)
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. Amber, what was that like when you started Kola Fitness.com?

(Speaker 3)
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. 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, a formal dining room.

(Speaker 3)
And so we were kind of stuck in a situation where Charles needed a place to train and he had a full clientele. And so we just were, why don’t we find like a big universal piece, stick it in the living room, cause it’s just an empty room. And the dining room became more of the office. And so we bought a big universal piece

(Speaker 3)
and threw down some rubber flooring, 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 going to be in my house for a couple of years for sure.

(Speaker 2)
But yeah, a lot of it was fear of failure. I was like, I want to make sure that 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 results. 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.

(Speaker 2)
And so it became a revolving door of fitness. And then Amber also did some hair. So she had a hair salon in the front of the house and then a hair salon in the back of the house. So yeah, the win.

(Speaker 1)
Now I wanna share this story because I don’t know if I’ve ever shared the 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,

(Speaker 1)
my wife and I, we were 20 years old-ish, 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 gonna build a house, a brand new house. She was so excited. I remember we were driving down Riverside.

(Speaker 1)
She was like, we’re gonna buy a house? I go, yeah. She’s like, we’re gonna build a house? We’d just been married a couple years. Right here at 111th and Memorial, I found a builder named Rob Brewer who did a phenomenal job. I would hire him again. And this is a true story.

(Speaker 1)
So I built this house from scratch. And so my neighbor comes by, Wendy, God bless her. I’m not gonna mention her last name. Wendy comes by and she’s like, hey, what are you doing? I go, 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,

(Speaker 1)
hanging a right at my office. And there’s, not kidding, there’s probably eight DJ vans in my backyard. 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.

(Speaker 1)
What are you doing? So I had back here in the backyard, no kidding, I had 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 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 gotta ask you with the gym, Amber, how early were people coming to work out, to do squats and bench press and cardio?

(Speaker 1)
What time were they showing up? How many people were showing up?

(Speaker 3)
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 every afternoon, and him and I and as we added staff, we would all work

(Speaker 3)
out together. So it became this big, you know, workout session together. It was awesome.

(Speaker 1)
And this is a real thing. Now how am I, I’m not looking for anything super salacious, but I mean, did you ever have awkward situations? I mean, cause you’re trying, you’re sleeping there, you’re living there. Do you guys ever have just like, I remember with the DJ business, my wife about once a week there for a while, she 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.

(Speaker 1)
That’s my bathroom, you sicko. I mean, did you ever have just weird client interactions?

(Speaker 3)
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 and it just shatters all over the kitchen floor. But his client was here so he he looks at me kind of like, and I was like, just just

(Speaker 3)
go. I got like some cleaning up barbecue sauce out of the kitchen. 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 jag over to my bedroom door. And so I had my hair in a towel and a robe on,

(Speaker 3)
and I opened the door 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, trainers napping on the couch between clients.

(Speaker 3)
And our middle son was in pre-K at the time. And so he’d come home half the day 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.

(Speaker 3)
And there would be someone on like a ab mat on the floor right in front of the TV doing crunches. 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 1)
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 gonna introduce the bride and the groom. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the intro. And we would practice, ladies and gentlemen,

(Speaker 1)
coming up next, we’re gonna be cutting the cake. Once again, we got the bride, we got the groom, we got an act that should be exciting. And I’m practicing introducing because you know we grew DJ connection to do 4,000 weddings a year So I’m training 30 disc jockey every week so Havana My oldest who’s now 20 she starts running around in the office going ladies and gentlemen coming up next the cutting of a cake Because she heard it so much

(Speaker 1)
He’s like ladies and gentlemen coming up next the soul train line He knew because it was like and 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.

(Speaker 1)
And it’s not about resourcefulness, it’s about, it’s not about resources, it’s about resourcefulness. Look at the backyard. I turned half my backyard into a concrete slab so that we could 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.

(Speaker 1)
Wow, I want to be the next Colaw Fitness. Wow, these guys are really doing it. I want to be a Colawfitness.com. 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?

(Speaker 1)
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’m going to send you today’s show. 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.

(Speaker 1)
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. So here we go. out your revenue goals. You just have to know your revenue goals. You have to know your revenue goals. What are your gross revenue goals? What are your weekly revenue goals? What

(Speaker 1)
are your annual revenue goals? You have to know your revenue goals. Charles, why do you have to know your revenue goals?

(Speaker 2)
Yes, you have to know your revenue goals. So you know, you know, we know if they’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.

(Speaker 2)
We know how many clients that we have to service to hit those goals for our set overhead costs. And yeah, 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 it’s recurring revenue. But the whole point is that we want to make sure that we have enough of the payable, viable buyers in the system to continue to grow.

(Speaker 1)
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, you know, developing into a coach. And when you work with a new client, a lot of times the client’s gonna have a bias to focus on just marketing, just branding,

(Speaker 1)
but you have to know these numbers. Amber, anything else you wanna 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 3)
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 don’t you have no idea where you’re going. And so I think that’s probably the biggest thing like that just it, it leads the whole way. And I think a lot of people tend to do I’m going to do the marketing or I just want to perform the service. I think a lot of it because people are scared of

(Speaker 3)
numbers. I think they they feel like numbers are overwhelming and they try to make numbers way too difficult. So I think that’s the biggest.

(Speaker 1)
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 1)
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. Let’s move on to box 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 1)
and I had to think about the average client, 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 a.m. to 8 p.m. 10 p.m. every day if need be. Your husband is willing to do that. Why is it important for you guys, Charles, to define the hours that you’re gonna work, the hours that you’re not gonna work, block out time for the family cruise, for the family trip. Why is that an important box there, Charles?

(Speaker 2)
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. Other than that, I like to work.

(Speaker 2)
You talked about vacation, to vacate or to 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,

(Speaker 2)
we try to look at taking time off.

(Speaker 3)
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. 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 that these are my expectations and then these are my boundaries

(Speaker 2)
and as long as we communicate 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, not in the business. So we don’t actually do the day to day stuff, but we work on the bills, 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.

(Speaker 2)
And so running remotely and running all that stuff, we’ve got to kind of say, what 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, 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. It’s like no meetings that we plan, but we are still 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

(Speaker 2)
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, 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 meta perspective on how I

(Speaker 1)
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, and you’re looking for a career, not just a job. Colaw Fitness is a company that’s going places. I’m not prophetic. I’m not claiming to have some view of the future.

(Speaker 1)
I just see patterns. And I work with clients, and I help them implement patterns that work. 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,

(Speaker 1)
and I’m telling you folks, this is a brand that’s going somewhere. If you’re looking for a career, check it out, KolaFitness.com. Box number four and five, these kind of fit in together. Box number four is you have to determine

(Speaker 1)
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. Let’s think about everything about your business.

(Speaker 1)
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 Quick Trip super successful when there are so many gross, nasty, dirty convenience stores? What is it that makes Chick-fil-A successful?

(Speaker 1)
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. Brad Stevens took a dysfunctional Butler College basketball team and turned them into a top four basketball

(Speaker 1)
team. Think about this. He took a college called Butler, the size of Oral Roberts University, and took them to the Final Four multiple times. And then he takes that same recipe and goes to the NBA, and they win a championship, and he’s putting out a winner year

(Speaker 1)
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. 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.

(Speaker 1)
What is that magic formula? A big part of it is you have to understand your unique value proposition. So Amber, what is it that makes Kola Fitness unique versus other fitness companies?

(Speaker 3)
Oh, 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 can be a part of and I mean not everybody, not everybody likes it,

(Speaker 3)
but it’s definitely our culture and that was something we knew we had to be able to duplicate 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 2)
Yep. And that’s the big part. I’m going to 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. And what I mean by that is we are a strong Christian culture. We hire and we look for people that 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

(Speaker 2)
one word is the word agape. That’s an unconditional love. We wanna 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.

(Speaker 2)
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. 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, the culture is just better.

(Speaker 2)
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 highest, like the highlight of the day when they walk through that door. 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

(Speaker 2)
hair McDonald’s perpetually distracted, Cran-mark 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

(Speaker 2)
day and hire people that are sincere. They’re just genuine that truly like people. If you do that, well, you have to lock the doors to keep people out.

(Speaker 1)
This is, 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 friendremlin. I said, what do you mean gremlin? He’s like, yeah, he’s just kind of a curmudgeon, kind of a negative guy, Debbie Downer. And, uh, you know, he’s

(Speaker 1)
got a big background in fitness though. And he’s into fitness and he played, you know, sports at a high level and he’d love to come work for you, Clay. And I go, you, and I met the guy, I’m like, this guy, I understand why you didn’t hire him and I didn’t hire him either. And I’m just telling you have certain standards. And if people aren’t up to those standards, they can come back and reapply later

(Speaker 1)
after they turn that frown upside down, but you have a certain standard there. Now, box number six, the three-legged marketing stool. Colaw Fitness, with every business we work with, every business that I work with, what we do is we develop a three-legged marketing stool. Now I’ll give 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

(Speaker 1)
client, great lady. I think about Shaw Homes,, her company Sat123, we’ve helped them grow to $100 million a year of sales. I think about Oxifresh, oxifresh.com. We’ve helped them grow now to 500 plus locations. And every single time I sit down with a business owner,

(Speaker 1)
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,

(Speaker 1)
thus saving her $8,000 a month by turning it off. 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,

(Speaker 1)
another client of mine, they were doing mailers, 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

(Speaker 1)
by nailing down a three-legged marketing stool. 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 3)
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

(Speaker 3)
and the tracking. So you’re talking about tracking these things. That’s my side, the financial side. And I wanna know that when the money’s going out that that return is coming back, right? And so I do that side of it with,

(Speaker 3)
we talk about a marketing budget and watching that and holding true to that and watching those numbers and watching, you know, the revenue that comes back from that marketing. And so you may be able to talk more on the marketing. That’s your-

(Speaker 2)
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 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 for years.

(Speaker 2)
And so we can really kind of see in our industry, we market in a five mile radius, really heavy. That’s kind of 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. And a lot of times it’s the same proven stuff

(Speaker 2)
that Clay teaches with 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, 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, there’s ways you want to get in front of your ideal likely buyer, we make sure we got the right product offering in front of the right ideal likely buyer. And the things that Clay’s been doing with his clients over the last seven

(Speaker 2)
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

(Speaker 3)
to six and we’ve more than doubled our revenue. So it’s been a huge win. Well, I think sometimes people 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 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

(Speaker 3)
just because that’s what everybody else is doing. And I think another part of that is everybody has marketing advice for you. Everybody, everybody thinks there’s a marketing guru, you know, because they see ads and I don’t think that’s true either.

(Speaker 1)
No, 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 for your answer yet. I got to mentally prepare myself for this. But you do not have the ability to not be honest here. So a guy called me here today. And I thought, man, I’m going to send this to him right away. Guy reaches out to me.

(Speaker 1)
He’s in the construction space. And he goes, what would it? This happens every day, by the way. 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?

(Speaker 1)
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. 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.

(Speaker 1)
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. And then the third is we have workshops every couple months so you can kind of get a tune up.

(Speaker 1)
And I said, you know, I said, Mr. Client, Mr. Potential Client who I’ve known forever. I said, Clay Stairs describes me as the ass man. And he’s like, 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. And they go, what?

(Speaker 1)
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 like for somebody out there that’s saying, what is it like to work with specifically me and my team?

(Speaker 2)
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.

(Speaker 2)
A good coach tells you what you need to hear 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 wanna run a great company,

(Speaker 2)
you have to be a great leader. You have to be the avatar. You have to be the great person and Clay’s really pushed that in me. And for me, like 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

(Speaker 2)
with somebody that has a proven system, they’ve worked in every 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, so I’ll take it. You always have continuous training staff. You’ve never held hostage 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 gonna be a limited resource. And Clay creates the systems, helps you with document creation, file organization,

(Speaker 2)
and make sure you’ve got that stuff so you have a proven template. It’s really more like a franchisable prototype that you can handle the lowest skillset. So great people are great, but Clay’s been really good at shooting me straight.

(Speaker 2)
If you have a year, you’ve got a bunch of systems, you got a way better website, you got checklist workflows, you got staff following systems, you got backup for each position.

(Speaker 2)
Because if you don’t have people in the bullpen, you’re gonna be held hostage. And so you wanna make sure that you got the right systems, checklist and personnel ready to go. And to run six different businesses businesses in four different states from Florida in the Midwest. We have to have good systems, checklists, workflows, and so on and making sure people are holding to that. Clay’s been really

(Speaker 2)
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, him as the coach, is really help trying to have the highest desire to make you grow as a into a better person and to help your company grow and be better. And to me, that’s a good coach. And that’s why I like working with with Thrive and Clay. So yeah,

(Speaker 1)
Amber, I want to tap into your wisdom on this, you know, there was a statement that was made years ago, but he said, 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 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 her a coach. So I hired CCK. And so in the areas where I want to improve,

(Speaker 1)
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. And so, but it wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t coachable and if he wasn’t willing to to coach and you guys have been such a great job over these years implementing and I just see the future is so bright here.

(Speaker 1)
So we look at your website now. Could you talk about just that weekly meeting 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 coloffitness.com.

(Speaker 1)
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 that mindset

(Speaker 1)
of that weekly improvement?

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, absolutely. 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,

(Speaker 2)
we can see that we’re doing well or not doing well. We make pivots. 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 like I don’t I mean, I’ve got an MBA in school,

(Speaker 2)
but I’m telling you, like it’s real life is so much more important and having good people that have good feelers. It’s like it’s you’re only as good as your team and Clay brings the whole team to your team. And anyways, we have a weekly meeting. Our weekly meeting we look at like 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, how to role play

(Speaker 2)
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, you know, young person can totally get it. And they understand how to do it until the cognitive, the critical thinking phase has gone away. They know how to do it. Now you’ve got staff that knows how to communicate well,

(Speaker 2)
how to show the product offering benefits over cost. And then show them that 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 life and save their life, add years to the 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 and you change a lot of lives.

(Speaker 3)
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 a blind spot 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 3)
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, you know, in conversations we’ll have,

(Speaker 3)
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. But it’s about, it’s about business business and it’s about where we’re going and you really help keep us on track.

(Speaker 3)
There’s that accountability like you talked about.

(Speaker 1)
You guys are set up.

(Speaker 2)
Super value, your set of eyes is super valuable.

(Speaker 25)
Yeah.

(Speaker 1)
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? We need to have sales scripts, recorded calls, all the visuals in the store.

(Speaker 1)
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 1)
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 light bulbs? Every day. When you have to maintain your fitness equipment? Every day. When you have to hire people? Every day.

(Speaker 1)
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.

(Speaker 1)
We got to hire people, manage people. How do you hire, inspire, train, retain? sustainable schedule. What is the schedule that your company will keep? What hours will you be open? What kind of shifts do you have? What kind of org chart? Who’s in charge? Who isn’t?

(Speaker 1)
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 gotta have a high standard with the A 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.

(Speaker 1)
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. 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 1)
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 matter if Kola Fitness was not obsessed with wowing the customers. Charles Kola and Amber Kola are obsessed with helping you take your fitness to the next

(Speaker 1)
level. If you’re out there today and you are in Joplin, Missouri, 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. These guys are obsessed with wowing customers. So I’ll go to you, Amber, then I’ll go to you, Charles. Everything we talked about doesn’t work if you scam your customers.

(Speaker 1)
Everything we talked about doesn’t matter 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.

(Speaker 3)
Why is that so important, Amber? 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 where that’s what made Charles such a phenomenal trainer when that was the initial start of the whole

(Speaker 3)
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 and they have value. And if we can pass that on

(Speaker 3)
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, excuse me, and also spread the gospel at the same time, you know, let them know God loves you, you know?

(Speaker 3)
And so that’s really what drives our passion in the coaching and development, even of our staff.

(Speaker 1)
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 21)
Yes sir, yes sir.

(Speaker 1)
There’s somebody out there right now, they’re thinking about coming to one of our in-person workshops. You know, they know Tim Tebow is gonna be there. They know Eric Trump will be there. They know that you might 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? You know, how would you describe them,

(Speaker 5)
sir?

(Speaker 2)
It’s just it’s 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, like, if you go to school, you get a business degree, you, you know, they would say Clay’s program is, you know, business, business without the BS, there’s no bull crap, he tells you the proven system, real proven systems that have grown and scaled hundreds, if not thousands of companies, add millions, like we are millions of dollars more in revenue, because of these systems that we’ve implemented.

(Speaker 2)
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 Florida. We’re definitely engaged with our staff that runs these locations and they’re great lieutenants,

(Speaker 2)
but we have the systems, we have the checklists, 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

(Speaker 2)
coachable, if you’re willing to have a humble and coachable heart that’s willing to grow, they’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 action items every week with your coach, the whole thing is this, it’s just being a more of a marathoner than a sprinter. When you’re working with a coach, just your do your two or three action items. And that two or three, if you times that by 52 weeks, that’s 150. Next thing 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

(Speaker 1)
templates, sales flows, training and development of staff, 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. So that’s Clay and his team.

(Speaker 3)
Well, I’ll one up you. I will one up him this one time. Like there’s 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’s it is completely refreshing. I always get something new out of it.

(Speaker 3)
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. And that’s not the case at all. It’s kind of a circus with a with a with a

(Speaker 3)
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 1)
Now, final question I have for you guys, just like Colaw Fitness, I mean, you put your name right there on the brand Colaw Fitness. You can’t really go to thrivetimeshow.com without seeing my cranium.

(Speaker 1)
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 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?

(Speaker 1)
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 2)
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 have that are intelligent, and they care. As a friend, that is huge. That’s number one, personally and then professionally, to have a whole bullpen of a whole data set

(Speaker 2)
of lots of different industries, best practices, whether that’s, you know, generally it’s either a sales issue, like you don’t have enough sales, or then it’s a staffing issue, you don’t have the right staff,

(Speaker 2)
whether it’s a scaling it, how do I build this into a franchisable prototype? It’s all stuff that they’ve done over and over and over again. have like a cognitive dissonance, like a mental disease with understanding it, they don’t. And when you have somebody that gives you peace because it is something they’ve done before,

(Speaker 3)
that’s it’s priceless. So yeah. Yeah. Oh, I would say that you were talking about 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.

(Speaker 3)
You know, Clay, you said at the very first conference we went to, your net worth is your net worth. 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 people

(Speaker 3)
who are complaining about having to work an eight hour day, you know, if you’re spending your time with them and you know, it’s just gonna break the bank to go to Chili’s for dinner, that you’re gonna stay there. You’re gonna stay in that influence of people.

(Speaker 3)
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 that live in cities

(Speaker 3)
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 1)
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, what return on investment have you seen for the $1,700 a month you’re paying?

(Speaker 2)
Well, for example, Clay has got, 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 business coaches

(Speaker 2)
that have worked in lots of different industries. 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 1700.

(Speaker 2)
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 is it pays for itself. 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

(Speaker 2)
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 and it’s like God really speaks to your heart. And the whole truth is, is like there’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 run your business with being somewhat conservative. Make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time.

(Speaker 29)
But by doing that, you have that skill set. You have those

(Speaker 2)
tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like the cost of doing business. Like just understand it. That’s what you want to do.

(Speaker 3)
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 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. 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, you’ve got a quick response, and he’s outside the situation and he has other data points.

(Speaker 3)
I mean, we’ve had times that Clay, you’ve got a quick response and you can tell us and direct us real quickly, and we’re right off the phone. And there’s other times you’ll go, I’ll call you right back. And Clay will jump in and he’ll call his other contacts

(Speaker 3)
and get back with us. Sometimes 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. Um, inevitably something like that’ll come up and like, that’s our peace of mind.

(Speaker 3)
Like he’s, you’re like, uh, a crucial team player, you know?

(Speaker 1)
Well, you know, I, 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,

(Speaker 1)
what, Joplin, Missouri, If you’re out there, Arlington, if you’re out there, go to colawfitness.com if you’re looking for a career and not just a job. Thank you too for carving out time with your busy schedule. And I’m so glad to have you here today.

(Speaker 3)
Thanks, Clay. Awesome.

(Speaker 1)
Take care, guys. Bye-bye.

(Speaker 21)
Bye.

(Speaker 28)
I’m yelling something like this is a sexy Lamborghini.

(Speaker 5)
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 5)
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 bunny, Dr. Robert Zunder. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women,

(Speaker 5)
13 multimillion dollar businesses.

(Speaker 12)
♪ 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

(Speaker 1)
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 C’s bringing 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 CNC up on your radio. And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go.

(Speaker 12)
We started from the bottom, now we here. We started from the bottom, let me show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we here. We started from the bottom, now we here.

(Speaker 1)
We started from the bottom, now we here. Yes, yes, yes, and yes, 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, he is an actual entrepreneur, a real client, a wonderful man.

(Speaker 1)
We’ve had the opportunity to meet in person 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 4)
I’m doing great.

(Speaker 1)
So I gotta ask you, how did you originally come in contact with us there, sir?

(Speaker 4)
Actually through Spotify, yeah.

(Speaker 1)
Through Spotify, okay. Do you remember what you were doing on Spotify? Were you looking for business shows or was it recommended? How did you find the Thrive Time Show?

(Speaker 4)
I think I was looking for business shows. At the time, I was actually in school to build custom cars, and then I was working on a dragster. I’m never listening to music, so I was looking for some more, I’ve never liked listening to music, so I was looking for either an audio book or a podcast or something and ran across

(Speaker 4)
your guys’ business show because I always figured I’d open up a custom car shop and then so that’s how I found you.

(Speaker 1)
Now, for everybody out there that wants to verify that you are a real person, the website is autoliftserv.com, autoliftsV.com. Josiah, could you share with everybody out there who wants to verify you’re a real person?

(Speaker 1)
What’s your first and last name, and what’s the name of your company?

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, it’s Josiah Ragsdale, and then the name of the company is Automotive Lift Services.

(Speaker 1)
What 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 27)
Sure, sure.

(Speaker 4)
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 compressor equipment,

(Speaker 4)
we service it and sell it as well.

(Speaker 2)
But lifts are our main bread and butter.

(Speaker 1)
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. They may think about some sort of motivational,

(Speaker 1)
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. So step number one, revenue goals.

(Speaker 1)
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 know, hit your goals and what your yearly goals actually were?

(Speaker 4)
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, like, that’s a really important thing that we start with every single Monday morning, just between my service manager here and myself, is like figuring out, okay, this is how much cash we need to break even for this week, and this is how much cash 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.

(Speaker 4)
So I mean, it’s, I don’t know how you would stay in business without knowing it.

(Speaker 1)
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 4)
I will not be, unfortunately. Nope, we’ve got a two-month-old baby, so he’s not moving yet.

(Speaker 1)
OK, well, let me pull this up real quick so people can see. You’ve been to a workshop, though, so you’ve been to one. 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,

(Speaker 1)
Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. We have Tom Wheelwright, one of the most respected wealth consultants on the planet. And people say to me, Clay, man, that’s gotta be hard putting together an event like that.

(Speaker 1)
And I say, well, we could define hard, but I’ll just tell you this. $175,000 for me to put on that event. And someone says, 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.

(Speaker 1)
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. If even if, even if the average person,

(Speaker 1)
if we only invested in $20 over two days to feed them, that would 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 got the flights, the hotel, the accommodations for the various speakers. And I can go on and on boring people with details. But you end up spending, quickly, about $150,000

(Speaker 1)
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 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.

(Speaker 1)
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 at autoliftserve.com why is it important for you to know how much you have to sell to break even

(Speaker 4)
yeah i i mean if you don’t break even you’re you’re going bankrupt so uh that’s about as important as it gets you know i mean i don’t know how else to break that down.

(Speaker 1)
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,

(Speaker 1)
I would say 99% of them don’t know their breakeven 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.

(Speaker 1)
Now, you have a baby on the way. Is this baby number one or baby number 407? How many kids do you have? This baby is baby number one. And so I remember I first met you. You were baby free. You might have even been girlfriend free. I think you came to the conference with a friend. And I think the work van stopped working,

(Speaker 1)
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, you and your partner, that you guys have, that you’re on the same page with defining your schedule?

(Speaker 4)
Oh, definitely, that’s huge. Because 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, she would not, we probably wouldn’t be married

(Speaker 4)
for very long. So like my curfew moved up from like 6.30 PM and being able to start as early as I wanted until like now I quit at five. And then I don’t get to work all day and all night on Saturdays anymore. So my Saturdays start earlier

(Speaker 4)
and we’ve kind of changed when his bedtime is to kind of make it match too. But yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s really important. So real stuff. This is divorce, do you lose 50% of what you build? So

(Speaker 1)
number four, defining your unique value proposition, you know, what is it that makes your company unique? So that’s one thing we do with every client, we help you achieve that. But let’s talk about autoliftserve.com. What do you guys do differently? autoliftserve.com, from your competition? What do you do to make sure you’re unique

(Speaker 1)
in the world of business?

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, so we guarantee that we’ll fix a lift within 48 hours or it’s free. 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, you’re going to go ahead

(Speaker 4)
and you’re going to call them. They’re going to come out and 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 kind of what we do is we’ll go ahead of that and we’ll go, okay, you know, Hey, for, you know, let’s say a hundred bucks a month, whatever, we’ll cover out and have it fixed within 48 hours where you don’t have to pay for it that long. So again, you’ve thought through this,

(Speaker 1)
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 1)
to go out there and sell in a competitive marketplace?

(Speaker 4)
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,

(Speaker 4)
okay, this is just some guy off the street clearly. But afterwards I went in like we got into the Davis group here in Iowa and And I was talking to one of them there and they thought we were part of like a franchise They were like, oh wow Are you franchisee for this company or whatever? I was like that was the point that made me think like oh wow

(Speaker 4)
Our brand names like really jumped quite a lot and that’s helped a lot because now they weren’t as worried about like, oh, do you know specifically how you’re going to fix this or what you’re doing? Now it’s more so like, OK, this is a legit company. We’re not worried about it.

(Speaker 21)
Just book them.

(Speaker 1)
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 got to be a way that every business owner out there that you can stably, consistently, methodically market to your ideal and likely buyers. There’s got to be a sustainable, proven way for you to market

(Speaker 1)
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 implementing a three-legged marketing stool?

(Speaker 4)
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 4)
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 run a lot of retargeting ads, stuff like that, we’re cranking that up. So like those are two boxes

(Speaker 4)
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, 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

(Speaker 4)
on all that, like we write some content to you guys write a ton

(Speaker 1)
of content. But yeah, that’s, that’d you guys. So if you didn’t have a team helping you get to the top of the Google search results, uh, a, could you do it? And then B, what kind of impact has it made on your business? Uh, being top in the Google search results.

(Speaker 4)
Sure.

(Speaker 2)
Sure.

(Speaker 4)
Yeah. Uh, could I do it? Um, I probably could. It’d be, it’d be horrible though. It did take me way longer, like way longer and cost a lot more money because I would have screwed it up royally many times. And the impact is huge because obviously people find us on Google.

(Speaker 4)
We’ve got like several of our largest customers have came 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’s just googling at their company and finds us and they book us in that. That’s so

(Speaker 4)
much easier to 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 to sell. So I mean, it’s a huge impact.

(Speaker 1)
Now, next area here, and again, this is all people always say to me. They always say, Joe Sye, 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,

(Speaker 1)
not in a difficult way. I’m just saying, well, what’s the most important ingredient that makes cookies? Is it butter? Is it eggs? Is it chocolate chips? They say, what? I say, well, what’s the most important part of the house? I mean, is it the framing? Is it the tile? Is it the countertops? 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

(Speaker 1)
working together. And I think a lot of people really don’t think about business that way because of our educational system and the biases that are presented there. So box number seven, you 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.

(Speaker 1)
How has tracking the results and having a turnkey system in place impacted your business?

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, tracking, 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. We went through with Andrew. So it’s just like, if it’s a white box, that just means we need to keep calling them. They haven’t booked, if it’s green, they’re booked. If it’s red, it’s, you know, they said no,

(Speaker 4)
but that 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. Cause there’s a lot of different steps 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.

(Speaker 4)
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, like we definitely would have sold the wrong equipment into many, many shops. And that would have been a big problem.

(Speaker 1)
Now we move on here to the next box here, folks going 90 miles an hour. This is how you do it. Box number eight. You have to determine your sustainable customer acquisition costs. You know, what does it cost you to get a new customer?

(Speaker 1)
You have to know what does it cost to obtain a new customer? Do you have a tracking sheet? Do you know how much you’re spending on advertisement? You have to know that. Number nine, you’ve got to create repeatable systems, processes, and file organization. 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.

(Speaker 1)
One of my clients is unbelievably fit. I mean, this guy is looking incredible. And he made the comment to me years ago. I said, you look great. And he said, thank you.

(Speaker 5)
I pay for it.

(Speaker 1)
And I remember he said it like he’d been thinking about it. And I said, man, you look great. And he goes, thank you, I pay for it. 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, I have a trainer, somebody who’s a coach, who pushes me, and I said, you look great.

(Speaker 1)
You’ve had a trainer? This is a guy in his mid-40s. I’m like, so you have a trainer? Seven days a week? He said, yeah. I said, can I ask why?

(Speaker 1)
And I kinda knew why, but it helps to hear it from somebody else. on, the workout shoes on, I’m gonna be there, and I’m not gonna work out. And if I do, I’m not gonna push myself. And so I have a trainer that pushes me for 40 minutes a day, and who pushes me, and I said, what do you pay per session? True story. He said, $100 a session.

(Speaker 1)
I said, so you’re spending per week, 700 a week. He said, yeah, that’s why I look like I do. I mean, that’s something I’ve invested in. Now again, I hear that all the time with people that have a great lawyer. They say, man, your legal 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,

(Speaker 1)
I have a financial strategist. I think everybody in any area of our lives some kind. Could you talk about the impact of having a coach, what 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

(Speaker 1)
and make sure that all these systems are being implemented. Can you talk about the impact of that?

(Speaker 4)
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 a 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 I was doing a lot of technician work. So it was like every Wednesday was like, our call, that’s like what got me back up to the point of thinking about, oh, okay, you know, I’m actually building a company, you know, eventually, we’re gonna have somebody, somebody in this

(Speaker 4)
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 like that. So you know where you are and 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, OK, I’m not trapped, you know, and here’s the next step I can do to get us a little bit further down Because a lot of times I’ll feel like I have no idea what to do next to keep growing the company. But in my conversation with him, a lot of times

(Speaker 4)
he 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 1)
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 the jacked up haircut is normally the guy that cuts his own hair.

(Speaker 1)
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 was proven to be an expert in the car making, and they bought the car from the Ferrari dealership, from the Lamborghini dealership.

(Speaker 1)
The guy that has the great haircut typically has a professional they’re hiring. And in business out there, if you feel stuck, you’ve got to implement all these systems. So box number 10 and 11. Box number 10, you’ve got to learn how to manage people.

(Speaker 1)
And that’s not something that’s normal, you know, in managing people. Do the people on your team know what their jobs are? 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 4)
Yeah, that’s another area that’s really helpful because, you know, 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 4)
on 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 4)
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 4)
and or moving some job shadows in, which kind of speeds people up then a little bit too.

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, but like none of that, I wouldn’t have figured out any of that without them.

(Speaker 1)
Now we move on here to the final couple steps here is you have to create a repetitive weekly schedule. You have to schedule time every week for the group interview like we talked about or your daily huddles and that’s something we work with 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?

(Speaker 1)
Box number 13, step number 13, you’ve got to create an accounting system so you’re actually aware of your money, where is 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.

(Speaker 1)
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? What are your goals for faith, family, friendship, fitness, finances, fun, focus? What are your goals?

(Speaker 1)
And then the business exists just to help you achieve those goals. And so my final two questions I would have for you, 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

(Speaker 4)
less ish, what kind of an impact has weekly business coaching made on you and your business? 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, 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. I’d probably still be stuck as a self-employed technician

(Speaker 4)
and not have really figured out how to get out of that phase. I really think I’d be stuck there for many years without a weekly call.

(Speaker 1)
Final question. There’s somebody out there that is a big statistic guy. They want them 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 1)
How would you quantify that?

(Speaker 20)
Yeah.

(Speaker 4)
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 26)
in a year.

(Speaker 1)
So you would say from what 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. That’s powerful.

(Speaker 1)
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. Even if you don’t know why, share this link on your socials, because what it does is it helps my wonderful client Josiah. It helps Josiah to rank higher in the search engine

(Speaker 1)
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.

(Speaker 1)
The tickets are always $250 or whatever price 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

(Speaker 1)
and the workshops?

(Speaker 4)
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, there’s, the whole thing is very different.

(Speaker 4)
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, to this small group that you’re somehow a part of in your town. But no, this is like,

(Speaker 4)
these are like people who are like really growing their companies. Like I can think of like Ryan Wells, for instance, grows like crazy. Like he’s a ton of fun to talk to when we go down there.

(Speaker 1)
And I always get new ideas from it too. in this area, and these guys are killing it. So it’s 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.

(Speaker 1)
So you might say, how do I do it? All you got to do is just go on over there to AutoLift. Let me pull up again here. It’s auto the domain is autoliftserv.com. 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. So make sure you do that folks. Again Josiah thank you so much for your time sir and we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks. Bye-bye. song goes out to my main man, Kevin Falcon.

(Speaker 1)
Kevin Falcon.

(Speaker 12)
Falcon, Falcon.

(Speaker 1)
And kicking grass. Landscaping. Landscaping, baby. The other day I was looking at my grass, thinking about ways to make the time pass and I thought about prank calling. Calling people I don’t know all morning.

(Speaker 1)
So I call 918-872-0338 I put that call through When the phone rang, somebody picked the phone up They said hello and then I said what up Next thing I know, I’m scheduling a professional To landscape my lawn and to mow that grow

(Speaker 1)
It was like a show, on the mow as they go Back and forth, whacking that grass like whack-a-moe It was total control, the way they roll, a kick in grass, moe blow and go. It’s like the Superbowl of the Moe Show. I was so impressed I gave a moe dough. I even offered a moe to Moe’s so, wishing and hoping I could prolong the show. But they said no, and I said whoa.

(Speaker 1)
I tried to film that thing on my video, but my phone was full, almost overload. Filled with videos from the Goddard Show. We kicking grass now We’re kicking grass now We’re kicking grass now

(Speaker 16)
It’s like that now It’s like that now

(Speaker 1)
You better go and kick the grass up off the land now You better go and kick the grass up off the land now You better go and kick the grass up off the land now You better go and kick the grass up off the land now. You better go and kick the grass up off the land now.

(Speaker 19)
You better go and kick the grass up off the land now.

(Speaker 12)
You better go and kick the grass up off the land now.

(Speaker 7)
My name is Kevin Falcon. I’m the owner, operator of Kicking Grass and Taking Names Lawn Care. Overall, I mean, I’m from when I first started to now, like over 1200%. It’s it’s the energy that it brings is the revitalization in what you’re doing. I see what works. I’ve gone through the process and it’s just a flood every

(Speaker 7)
every spring and summer. It’s great. It works. It’s so much easier. It’s like if you enjoy the pain, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you want to be successful, if you want to have that freedom, have that, I mean it happens very quickly. It’s not like it’s okay and it’s so many years we’re gonna get you

(Speaker 24)
here. It’s if when you’s, okay, and it’s so many years we’re gonna get you here.

(Speaker 7)
It’s if, when you implement your systems and your suggestions and your guidance, it happens. It goes, it takes off.

(Speaker 1)
Ladies and gentlemen on today’s show, ladies and gentlemen on today’s show, we’re joined by a man who had a job and he says, you know what, I wanna keep my job and then I want to build something for my family.

(Speaker 1)
I want to build some different income streams for my family. I think what today’s guest brings to the table is a really large slice of the American pie. Most people that I know, they have a job and they’re looking to earn a little bit more money, time freedom, financial freedom.

(Speaker 1)
And so he started a what I would call maybe a landscaping business or a lawn maintenance company. His name is Kevin Falcon. Kevin Falcon, welcome to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? I am great. How are you? Brother, I’m excited to be with you here. And I’m going to pull up your website real quick so you can verify that you are not a hologram. Could you share with us that website is kickinggrasstulsa.com, kickinggrasstulsa.com. Yes, that is my website right there. Could you verify what your first and last name is and what the name of your company is, sir?

(Speaker 7)
My name is Kevin Falcon. I’m the owner operator of Kicking Grass and Taking Names Law and Care.

(Speaker 1)
Now, okay, I’m gonna go through rapid fire, no trick questions, just rapid fire. So here we go. How long have you worked with us approximately? I think this is going to be my sixth year with you guys. And Andrew always brags on you because you’re just a low maintenance, hardworking guy.

(Speaker 1)
I want to tap into your brain and just for anybody out there who’s watching this, that maybe they have a job and they’re kind of looking to start a side gig or a side hustle or a side company. Could you tell us what were you doing Maybe they have a job and they’re kind of looking to start a side gig or a side hustle or a side company.

(Speaker 1)
Could you tell us what were you doing before you started kicking grass or maybe what were you doing while you were starting kicking grass?

(Speaker 7)
So I worked for a local convenience store in the Tulsa area, worked with them just over 20 years, actually just quote unquote retired from them. So if you will, but I’ve always kind of maintained in lawns on the side. And, uh, it’s just something that, you know, I feel good at when I, when I

(Speaker 1)
accomplish it, now, what was your goal when you started a kick and grass or where did the name, how did you come up with a name? How did you come up with, how did you design that name kicking grass?

(Speaker 7)
So you guys came up with it. There was a moment you guys had mentioned in one of the meetings or at your conference where have you ever spent eight hours working on your logo, moving it millimeter to the left, millimeter to the right, trying to perfect it.

(Speaker 7)
And in my early 20s, I was trying to do all that stuff And I’m like, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, the name doesn’t matter. The, the, the logos don’t matter. So I, you know, they asked me what I wanted and I said, whatever you got. And they came and gave me eight names and I thought kicking grass was great and I ran with it. I’m just curious because I was part of that meeting. This is what happens a lot of times, you know, when you’re in a meeting, And they came and gave me eight names. And I thought Kicking Grass was great, and I ran with it.

(Speaker 1)
I’m just curious, because I was part of that meeting. This is what happens a lot of times. You know, clients will reach out. We have 160 clients. And the coach will say, Clay, we’ve got a lawn care company that needs a name.

(Speaker 1)
We’ve got a restaurant that needs a name. And so I’m just sort of long on ideas, but I’m not emotional about which idea you approve or which idea you go with. So you could say, step one, we sat down together, we came up with a name, and then the logo and the website, so many business owners get stuck there. As part of our business coaching program, we guide you through the entire path, and

(Speaker 1)
part of that, obviously, is building a website and the print piece and the graphic design. How much has that impacted you having all of that with one flat monthly bill? Like how has that helped you from a peace of mind perspective knowing, hey, I’m going to pay these guys a flat rate of this. And not only are they going to do the coaching,

(Speaker 1)
but they’re going to provide photography, video, web, search engine, all those tools. It simplifies everything. Just like I said before, when I tried doing a lot of these things on my own, trying to remember everything as far as

(Speaker 1)
the advertisement and things like that portion of it, that’s all handled and controlled, so to speak. I just have to worry about closing the deals and getting the jobs done. Now, this next area, whenever someone thinks about growing a company,

(Speaker 1)
they always say, people will come to me all the time, and I’m sure you can imagine these situations, they’ll come to me and they’ll say, Clay, what’s the most important thing I need to do to grow a company? In fact, I was talking yesterday to a lady who’s looking to grow her dentistry practice, and she said, at the end of the day, what’s the most important thing I need to do to grow

(Speaker 1)
a successful company? And I said, it’s kind of like asking a baker, what’s the most important ingredient to make a dessert item? Or it’s like asking a landscaper, what’s the most important tool you have? Is it the screwdriver?

(Speaker 1)
Is it the lawnmower? Is it the weed eater? Is it the leaf blower? And I would argue it’s all of those things working in concert. What’s your thoughts on that? Because I get asked that question a lot.

(Speaker 1)
They say, so with business coaching, what’s the most important thing? I want to get your thoughts to that kind of question for somebody who’s on the outside right now. In particular, this lady’s a dentist, a wonderful dentist, sharp dentist.

(Speaker 1)
She has no leads, no real traction, but she’s got the degree, she’s got the overhead, and she’s got… What’s the main thing that moves the needle for your clients? I would say the experience. The experience of trying to do all that stuff yourself and realizing there’s only so many hats you can wear successfully. And knowing your strengths and your weaknesses, what to give up and who to delegate what to, just that is the most important thing,

(Speaker 1)
realizing your shortcomings and

(Speaker 7)
trying to have somebody else maximize that for you.

(Speaker 1)
We’re going to pull this up here. I wrote a book here. I’ve written 30 plus books. This particular book is called The Millionaire’s Guide. Again, folks, if you might have missed that website, it’s kickinggrasstulsa.com. That’s the website, kickinggrasstulsa.com. And by the way, if anybody shares today’s show, you’ll help Kevin boost up higher in the search engine.

(Speaker 1)
So please feel free to share that URL, kickinggrasstulsa.com, no matter where in the world you’re watching from. But if you go to thrivetimeshow.com and you go to forward slash free resources, you can follow along. for free, one of my books, The Millionaire’s Guide, How to Become Sustainably Rich. And if we turn here in that book to page five,

(Speaker 1)
we’re gonna go through this 90 miles an hour, all the steps here. So step number one, I’m not asking you to tell us your numbers, but why do you have to establish the revenue goals? Like why is that important for you as a business owner

(Speaker 1)
to know what your revenue goals are

(Speaker 7)
and what your weekly revenue goals are. Why is that important for you as a business owner? That way you can judge how well you’re doing, where you can improve at. If you don’t have a benchmark, then you don’t know whether you’re meeting your full potential as a company.

(Speaker 1)
And again, you came from a world where you worked very successfully for a long time in the convenience store industry. So you actually worked in a business where you had to know the numbers. You had to know the numbers for the store. You had to know inventory. So a lot of the things we taught are very applicable for your career as well. Box number two, you got to know your break-even numbers.

(Speaker 1)
Whether it’s the convenience store you ran or the landscaping company, you have to know how much crap do I have to sell to break even? How many customers do I need? Why is that important? Why do you think that most of our coaching clients don’t know that number before we start working with them?

(Speaker 7)
Because they’re just worried about trying to get their product out there and doing it. They don’t realize that they may have a little bit of money to start with, and that’s gonna be depleted real quick, unless they figure out, oh, if I don’t hit 10 customers a week,

(Speaker 7)
that’s my break-even, let’s say, then I won’t be able to maintain this lifestyle or this business at all.

(Speaker 1)
Now, we talk about number three, defining the number of work hours you’re willing to work. You are working full-time at a job, having a lot of success in a career, while you were also growing a landscaping company. And one thing I never want to do for my clients, is I never want my clients, I never want my clients to try to feel the need

(Speaker 1)
to work the schedule I work, nor do I ever feel the need to work the schedule that my clients work. So clients always ask me, Clay, what hours do you keep? And I say, well, I really like enjoy the idea of going from five to six,

(Speaker 1)
pretty much six days a week. I get up around three. That’s what I like. Some of my clients work literally two hours a day. One of my clients I just talked to today, he’s doing great. And he works less than four hours a day.

(Speaker 1)
And he’s a multi, multi-millionaire. Why was it important for you to figure out your schedule, your boundaries and hours that you were willing to work in the hours that you weren’t willing to work.

(Speaker 7)
Because for me is about the family. We’ve got 6 kids. I you know in a blink of an eye they they’re they’re moving out to go to college things like that. We’re down to our last 2 so I really want to make sure I had the time to spend with them and and then it’s it’s those little moments to be there for those kids so with the time I put in with my previous job and and the experience I now have

(Speaker 7)
while doing my my new my new career so to speak I’m able to have that fluctuation in that time and that availability for all my kids wherever

(Speaker 1)
they are in their life. It’s powerful. It’s powerful, folks. I think somebody out there, if you’re watching today’s show, that’s a little gut check for somebody out there. The whole purpose of a business is to create time and financial freedom so that we can pursue the goals that we

(Speaker 1)
believe God’s given us. And a lot of that has to do with family. We talk at the Thrive Time Show workshops about sitting down and very intentionally making a list of your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship and your fun. And all of us struggle in different areas.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, some people are incredible family people, maybe they struggle in finances. Some people are great at fitness, maybe they struggle in business or whatever. But I encourage everybody out there to take the time to do that.

(Speaker 1)
Box number four, we gotta figure out how to make your company stand out in the clutter of commerce. How do we define your unique value proposition? How do we do it? Who are your top three competitors? How do we compete versus that?

(Speaker 1)
And we try to help our clients do that through marketing and branding. I want to kind of move on to box number five, which is branding. We want to make sure your branding is incredible. I ask everybody out there watching today’s show, rate your website and your print pieces on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest.

(Speaker 1)
Rate your marketing on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. And ask yourself, how highly would you rank your own website versus your competition? And that’s the kind of stuff will help you bridge that gap and make your website, your photography, your video great. Box number six, you have to have a three-legged marketing stool. And Kevin, as you know, there’s endless people reaching out

(Speaker 1)
to you trying to convince you that this is the best way to market. You should try this ClickFunnel. Do this magazine ad. Do this mailer. Do this thing.

(Speaker 1)
Join this chamber. Go to this networking thing. Do this trade out sort of, where you do bartering and trading. There’s a trade association. And if you’re not careful, I mean, you get pulled in multiple directions.

(Speaker 1)
How has it, from a peace of mind perspective, how has it impacted you knowing that generating leads is not a problem for you now?

(Speaker 7)
It’s good. It’s wonderful. I’m very skeptical now of everything else. Like you were mentioning the mailers, the magazine joiners, and all that stuff. I see what works. I’ve gone through the process.

(Speaker 7)
And it’s just a flood. Every spring and summer, it’s great.

(Speaker 1)
So you would say, you now know it’s wonderful. You’ve gone through the process. You now know what works and what doesn’t work. Is that accurate? Yes. Okay, I think it’s big, because I think somebody out there doesn’t know the process.

(Speaker 1)
They haven’t gone through this process. They’re running around looking for leads, scavenging for leads, and you set a flood. You just have a flood that comes in every spring. You just know it’s going to happen now.

(Speaker 25)
Yeah.

(Speaker 1)
Okay. Box number seven, having a sales conversion process. And some people adhere to this very fastidiously, some not as much. But you have to have sales scripts, recorded calls, print pieces that make sense. And at the end of the day, you have to track your results. Can you talk about the impact that tracking

(Speaker 1)
every week with a business coach has had on your life and business, where you weekly look at your numbers

(Speaker 7)
and you actually track those numbers every week? It’s mind-blowing to many how many leads we get. We’ve even started tracking like how many how much acreage we’ve we’ve we’ve mowed. I think we’re somewhere just shy of just under 1200 acres we mow for the season, things like that. It’s astonishing to see when you go back over these numbers just to see how much you’ve actually accomplished, because when you’re in the moment, and

(Speaker 7)
you’re, you know, performing the task or the or the service that you have, you don’t really notice all those details until you can step back and look back at what you’ve done and

(Speaker 24)
accomplished.

(Speaker 1)
And one of the things that’s so great about working with you is you know, I know you’re going to come in on Friday. There’s homework you have. There’s homework we have. And it’s really fun to help somebody, because money is just a magnifier. And so if you’re out there today, and I’m telling you, if you’re struggling to get leads, you too can do it.

(Speaker 1)
Hey, by the way, do you know who Lou Fregno is? He’s the guy who played. He was the Incredible Hulk back in the day. Remember the Incredible Hulk? Was that a big thing in your life? This isn’t a trick question. I’m just curious. Were you a big?

(Speaker 7)
I liked the Hulk a lot, yeah.

(Speaker 1)
I’m giving you an invitation right now. Check your calendar. Seriously. The Incredible Hulk just reached out. He’s going to be on my show on Friday at 1 PM. He’s going to be in the studio. So if you want to be in the studio to interview the Incredible Hulk, I just found out he’s coming to Tulsa.

(Speaker 1)
He’s going to be in our studio. I just found this out. So if you want to be there, open invitation to your friend. I know Friday’s the day you normally meet with Andrew. Because most of our clients are not in Tulsa. So if you want to take advantage of that, you, me,

(Speaker 1)
Incredible Hulk, Friday, it’s Friday at 1 o’clock. Friday at 1 o’clock. OK. Now next is box number eight. You have to know, you have to determine your sustainable customer acquisition costs. This might blow someone’s mind. This might blow someone’s mind. I’m going to give people some facts here.

(Speaker 1)
Folks, did you know from our upcoming business workshop that it’s going to cost me over $170,000 of cash

(Speaker 20)
to put that thing on?

(Speaker 1)
I don’t think people recognize that. So when you talk about, let me just walk people through this. You got Eric Trump, this is President Trump’s son. You know, this is the guy who runs the Trump Organization. You’ve got Robert Kiyosaki,

(Speaker 1)
the best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the top entrepreneurial author of all time. You have myself, and I work very cheap. You have Tom Wheelwright, the financial planner for Robert Kiyosaki. I just got off the phone with the law enforcement community. I mean, we’ve got security.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, we’ve got a secret service detail. We’ve got lunch. We’ve got the dinner. I mean, you get this because you ran a very successful convenience store. You know how costs can pile up. I’m not at all shocked that this just in, folks.

(Speaker 1)
If I’m spending over $150,000 to put this on, and there’s only 300 people here, how much am I spending per person on putting this together? Someone might say, you’re spending $500. Yeah. So, I’m just being real. The costs can creep up.

(Speaker 1)
And you say, man, why does it cost that much? Kevin, you’ve been to our workshops. We offer a workbook. We serve lunch both days. We bring in first class talent and speakers. Could you explain the impact of attending the workshops

(Speaker 1)
and what that’s made on your life and or business?

(Speaker 7)
It’s the energy that it brings. It’s the revitalization in what you’re doing. You know, they talk about a lot of times in lawn care, how sometimes, you know, a lot of us are solo operators. And you get alone, and you’re out there, and you’re by yourself, it’s always good to get back refreshed, see everyone else in whatever element that

(Speaker 7)
they’re in. They’re excited, they’re pumped, they’re, they’re hammering down the fundamentals of business with you, and just making you reevaluate, a self-reevaluation of what you’re doing and how you’re doing.

(Speaker 1)
I just incurred. Did you ever laugh at the conferences? Do you laugh at all or not?

(Speaker 21)
Yes.

(Speaker 1)
Okay. Because it’s just so raw. I absolutely love it. Okay. So next area here, box number nine. You got to create repeatable systems, and I won’t ask for the name of the convenience store you worked with, but I can say you were very successful in that field. And so that business is all about repeatable checklists

(Speaker 1)
and processes. And my dad had an opportunity to work for the same great organization that you did. So may my dad rest in peace. But he worked there as well. And you talk about checklists.

(Speaker 1)
You talk about daily to-do lists. You talk about no bathroom goes uncleaned. You talk about greeting customers with a smile. You talk about an expectation of excellence. You talk about no uncovered shifts. You talk about high and tight uniforms. You talk about mystery shoppers.

(Speaker 1)
You talk about merit-based pay. You talk about, I mean, there’s so much we could talk about from that business that’s applicable to this one. But could you talk about, I mean, there’s so much we could talk about from that business that’s applicable to this one, but could you talk about what it’s like to build these systems and to have our team help you build these systems for your own business?

(Speaker 7)
It’s a lot of trial and error, but it’s also, as the saying goes, it’s better to be a pirate than a pioneer. So having said that, I was able to mirror a lot of what I was already doing and just copying over and just kind of changing words here and there for my business. That way it could apply to what I do. And just like I said, just taking those great ideas. I see that it already works and applying it for me.

(Speaker 1)
Love it so much. And again, folks, for anybody who’s scoring at home, if you’re scoring at home, that’s sort of an odd thing that you’d be scoring right now at home. But if you are scoring at home, that’s kickinggrasstulsa.com. We’ll continue here, final four minutes together here. Box number 10, management systems. I mean, once you start generating leads,

(Speaker 1)
you’ve got to manage a team of people. You have to manage a team of people, and we talk about that. Once you’re managing a team of people, you have to hire people. Box number 12, you gotta learn how to hire people. How do you find people? How do you recruit people? Box number 11, you gotta have a repeatable, a repetitive weekly schedule.

(Speaker 1)
A schedule that’s sustainable for your family. You mentioned you have six kids. I’ve got five kids. You had me beat. You win. There’s a competition. I just lost, you just won, you’ve got six kids, I’ve got five. What I’m saying is, all of this is what makes a successful company.

(Speaker 1)
It’s not just branding, it’s not just marketing, it’s not just videography, it’s all of it. So if you had to describe to somebody the growth you’ve seen maybe as a percentage over the past six years, are you up 1%? Are you up 10%? Have you grown by one lawn, two lawn you up 1% are you up 10% have you grown by one lawn to lawns 1% is there some way to quantify the

(Speaker 1)
growth you’ve had over these years.

(Speaker 23)
So

(Speaker 7)
from from last year, I’m up by around 7% from last year. Overall I mean I’m from when I first started to now, I’m like over 1200% just within the first couple of years of when I was doing it to where you guys have gotten me. I mean, I was less, I mean, like I said, we started following how much acreage we mow. So when I first did this, the acreage was barely nothing.

(Speaker 7)
I’m up to almost 1200 acres a year now that we’re doing. So there are some measurable points that we have.

(Speaker 1)
So just to be clear, and I want to make sure I’m hearing this correct, you’re saying since working with us, that you’re up over 1,200 percent in that time?

(Speaker 7)
For my first year, yeah.

(Speaker 1)
That’s an incredible thing. I think somebody out there, because I know when I was starting my first company, djconnection.com, full disclosure, I haven’t owned it in years, but this is what would happen to me.

(Speaker 1)
You know, Kevin, I would go to a conference and they would say, you know, you got to build a world-class website. And I would think to myself, I’m going to have to hire a guy. I called my web guy. I’m not complaining. I’m just being real. I called the web guy. And the web guy’s like, well, it’s going to be.

(Speaker 1)
This is the web guy now, first class website guy. He had built the website for Garth Brooks and other leading people. He had said, well, it’s going to’s largest DJ company. I don’t know it yet. We’re doing like two weddings a weekend and this guy’s telling me $6,000 a month and he says, however, for your website, Clay, you’re going to need a video for the website.

(Speaker 1)
I’m going, yeah. So for clients like Colawfitness.com, we build their website and we make a video for them. That’s included. But this guy said, you got gotta make a video. And I said, well, how much is that? He said, I don’t make videos, but you can call my video guy. I’ll never forget, I called the video guy. 10 grand he wants for a great video. And I’m thinking, four grand a month for you, 10 grand.

(Speaker 1)
I remember I was trying to figure out public relations and how that works. And so I’d heard about call this guy Michael Levine. I’ve read his books. And I paid $25,000 for three hours of consulting. This goes on and on.

(Speaker 1)
Can you maybe articulate for anybody out there that’s on the fence who’s thinking about scheduling a free consultation with our business coaching program? I mean, obviously you’ve been a been a longtime client for a long time. Can you explain for anybody out there? They go to thrive timeshare.com and they schedule a free consultation. That part’s free. But can you kind of explain that what the monthly

(Speaker 1)
fee what you’re paying versus what you’re getting in your mind as a business owner?

(Speaker 7)
You don’t know what you’re missing until you go and see what you can get. You know what you’re going through as a business and what you’re trying to accomplish and all the things you’ve gone through. But it’s a free consultation. It’s simple, it’s easy. They’re very workable with you. They provide a very guided stepping stone. And if you’ve done any of it on your

(Speaker 24)
own, as soon as you see done any of it on your own,

(Speaker 7)
as soon as you see it laid out in front of you, you’re gonna be like, oh, this is a much easier path.

(Speaker 1)
Final question I have here for you. You’re stuck in an elevator with somebody. I know you’re a man, you didn’t say, Clay, please let me on your show. Different, you’re a guy who’s humble, you’re behind the scenes, you’re raising your six kids. I think you’d probably rather be at the dentist than being on today’s show. And I appreciate you stepping out of your comfort zone.

(Speaker 1)
So you’re stuck in an elevator with some guy. You got five minutes until the rescue comes. And he’s like, so tell me, give me like a 60 second. How has the business coaching program impacted you? And would you recommend it?

(Speaker 24)
For me, it’s experience.

(Speaker 7)
And I’ve been there and I’ve butt my head against the wall and I’ve gone through what you guys have given me and it works, it’s so much easier. It’s like, if you enjoy the pain, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you want to be successful,

(Speaker 7)
if you want to have that freedom, have that, I mean, it happens very quickly. It’s not like it’s, OK, in so many years, we’re going to get you here. It’s if when you implement your systems and your suggestions and your guidance, it happens. It goes.

(Speaker 23)
It takes off.

(Speaker 1)
You know, I’m super excited to see you Friday morning. But also, if there’s any way I could see if that Lou Fregno interview, I think that’d be awesome. I think he’d have a lot of fun with that. We can harass him. I want it to be two on one where it’s not just me versus him because he’s a big man. He’s the intimidator. He’s the Hulk. So maybe if you show up, maybe I’m less nervous. Maybe it’s a good fit. If you can’t, I get it. But open invitation this Friday. I’m’clock on Friday. So if you want to be here, you’re you’re you’re invited, my friend. Appreciate it. Thank you.

(Speaker 5)
My honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects

(Speaker 8)
from you are good ripple effects. You know, I mean, people rave about what they learn from you.

(Speaker 10)
So congratulations. My name is Kevin Thomas, the name of our company is MultiClean. We are a commercial janitorial service and we serve the entire state of Oklahoma and Kansas and soon to be Arkansas. We have probably grown probably five times. We’ve added, I think when we first started with you, we had 60 to 65 employees and

(Speaker 10)
now we have a little over 300 employees. Before we got involved with Thrive Time, we didn’t really have any systems or processes in place. I’ve probably been to, in six, seven years, I’ve probably been to 12 to 13 business conferences. And amazingly, each time I go, I learn something new and I’m so excited to bring it back and

(Speaker 10)
show the team about marketing and how to implement.

(Speaker 1)
Okay, Aaron Antis, September 25th and 26th, guess who’s coming back to Tulsa? I will give you a hint. His first name is Eric and his last name is Trump. And his father is the 47th president of these United States. Yes, Eric Trump is joining us once again here September 25th and 26th in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth

(Speaker 1)
Workshop. But Eric Trump is bringing friends. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Alina Haba will be joining Eric Trump right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Amanda Grace will be in the place. Dr. Stella Emanuel will be here in T-Town in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

(Speaker 1)
Julie Green will be on the scene. Mel K will be here to say hey. Dave Scarlett from the His Glory team will be here. It’s going to be a blasty blast right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you want to start or grow a super successful company, if you want to make your wallet great again

(Speaker 1)
or make your wallet great for the first time, if you want to learn marketing, systems, scaling, human resources, accounting, social media, branding, search engine optimization, sales training, financial management, and more, get your tickets right now at Thrivetimeshow.com. Once again, it’s Thrivetimeshow.com.

(Speaker 1)
A lot of people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. There’s not 50 employees. The Trump Organization, again, most people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. The Trump organization, again most people don’t know this, but the Trump organization has thousands of employees and while Donald J. Trump was the 45th president of these United States, he needed a competent man to run and execute his business plans. So the man that runs

(Speaker 1)
the Trump organization for Donald J. Trump as he was the 45th president of the United States and now the 47th president of the United States is Eric Trump. So Eric Trump is here to talk about time management, promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build, I mean everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages billions of dollars of real estate

(Speaker 1)
and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it. You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint. I mean, who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand? I mean, look at it.

(Speaker 1)
And this is the man behind the business for the last, pretty much since 2015. He’s been the man behind it. So you’re talking, we’re into nine going into 10 years of him running it and we get to tap into that knowledge. That’s going to be amazing. Now think about this for a second.

(Speaker 5)
But Clay Clark, man, he is one character.

(Speaker 15)
It’s a good word for him. Character. Yeah, that is it.

(Speaker 8)
Good, driven, smart. And I’ve never met a guy who was so hyper all the time. He’s doing so much good. And then I met his mother. And she just says, she just lets him be Clay Clark. I mean, so he’s endorsed by his mother

(Speaker 8)
and he’s doing magnificent work. So it was great meeting you out there and all the people that he surrounds himself with. His Clay Clark starts his days

(Speaker 5)
at five o’clock in the morning.

(Speaker 15)
Oh, it’s incredible. Yeah, he’s a machine. He’s a machine.

(Speaker 8)
But his, you know, I have problems with my company starting at nine o’clock. Yes, hundreds of people showing up at 5am in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Man, he’s a leader of a leader. He’s fantastic young man.

(Speaker 15)
No, he is.

(Speaker 1)
The lineup continues to grow and this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show. If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay.

(Speaker 1)
And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody. I grew up without money. So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That’s how I do it. And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket. Now, we only have limited seating here. The most people we’ve ever had in this building

(Speaker 1)
was for the Jim Brewer presentation. Jim Brewer came here. The legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa. And we had 419 people that were here, 419 people. And I thought to myself, there’s no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple people had VIP seats in the men’s restroom. Oh no, I’m just kidding. But I felt so I thought, you know what, we should probably add on.

(Speaker 11)
Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay?

(Speaker 4)
Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy.

(Speaker 22)
I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

(Speaker 11)
So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life.

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

(Speaker 1)
So again, if you want to text me if you want a little bit faster service you say i want you to call me right now i just texted my number it’s my cell phone number my personal cell phone number we’ll keep that private between you between you me everybody we’ll keep that private in anybody don’t share that with anybody except for everybody. That’s my private cell phone number. It’s 918-851-0102. 918-851-0102. I know we have a lot of Spanish-speaking people that attend these conferences, and so to be bilingually sensitive, my cell phone number is 918-851-0102.

(Speaker 1)
That is not actually bilingual. That’s just saying Kwan for a one. It’s not the same thing. I think you’re attacking me. Now, let’s talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show Workshop? So Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past seven, eight years.

(Speaker 1)
So let’s talk about it. I’ll tee up the thing and then you tell me what you’re gonna learn here, okay? Okay. we gonna learn about marketing and branding? Oh yeah, we’re gonna dive into, you know, so many people say, oh you know, I got to get my brand known out there, like the Trump brand, right? You want to get that brand out there. It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is? And make it a household

(Speaker 1)
name. You’re gonna learn some intricacies of how you can do that. You’re gonna learn sales. So many people struggle to sell something. This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell. So we’re going to teach you sales. We’re going to teach you search engine optimization, how to come up top in the search engine results. We’re going to teach you how to manage people.

(Speaker 1)
Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your career and thousands of contractors. And most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people? Well, because first of all, people are, you either have great people or you have people who suck.

(Speaker 1)
And so it can be a challenge. Learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re

(Speaker 1)
really good at selecting great ones, and we have a process we teach about how to find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable, they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people

(Speaker 1)
all pulling in the same direction. So we’re gonna teach you branding, marketing, sales, search engine optimization. We’re going to teach you accounting. We’re going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance.

(Speaker 1)
We’re going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time? How do you get more done during a typical day? How do you build an organization if you’re not organized? How do you do organization? How do you build an org chart, everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two-day interactive business

(Speaker 1)
workshop. Now, let me tell you how the format is set up here. And again, folks, this is a two-day interactive 15. Think about this, folks. It’s two days. Each day, it starts at 7 AM, and it goes until 5 PM.

(Speaker 1)
So from 7 AM to 5 PM, two days. It’s a two-day interactive workshop. The way we do it is we do a 30-minute teaching session, and then we break for 15 minutes for a question and answer session. So Aaron, what kind of great stuff happens during that 15-minute question and answer session

(Speaker 1)
after every teaching session? I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops, because here’s what happens. I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them. And you go in there and they talk in vague generalities and they’re constantly upselling you for something,

(Speaker 1)
trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing or this program or this membership. And you don’t, you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business or your employees or what you’re doing on your marketing. And what’s awesome about this is we literally answer

(Speaker 1)
every single question that any person asks. And it’s very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we allow you as the attendee to write your questions on the whiteboard. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard.

(Speaker 1)
And then we take a 15 minute break to stretch and to make it entertaining when you’re stretching. And this is a true story. When you get up and stretch, you’ll be greeted by mariachis. There’s going to probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, there’s just you had a crocodile one time. That was pretty interesting. You know, I should write that down. And I can do that. Sorry for that one guy that we lost. The crocodile, we duct taped its face. So that, right, we duct taped. No, it was a baby crocodile. And we duct taped.

(Speaker 1)
Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody. But it was really cool passing that thing around and petting.

(Speaker 14)
I should do that. I should.

(Speaker 1)
We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs. So there’s not a lot of people in America today. In fact, there’s less than 10 million people today, according to US Debt Clock, that identify as being self-employed. So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3% of our population

(Speaker 1)
that’s even self-employed. So you only have three out of every 100 people in America that are self-employed to begin with. And when Inc. Magazine reports that 96% of businesses fail by default, by default, you have a 1 out of 1,000 chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet, the average client that you and I work with,

(Speaker 1)
we can typically double the size. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. I have thousands of testimonials to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back it up. But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size of the company within 24 months. Yeah. Double. And you say double? Yeah. There’s businesses that we have tripled. There’s businesses we’ve grown 8x. There’s so many examples you can see at

(Speaker 1)
Thrivetimeshow.com. But again, this is the most interactive, best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet.

(Speaker 9)
I was looking to learn how to take my business, like they’ve said today, from being very successful to being systematic. I’ve got a very successful practice in three different cities. Make good money.

(Speaker 9)
Just want to take it to the next level with systems and processes to where I can drive my cars more.

(Speaker 21)
Paul Hood.

(Speaker 8)
I’ve been a CPA for 33 years.

(Speaker 1)
And what kind of growth have you and your great team had here over the past, let’s say, five, six years?

(Speaker 20)
The last five, when I say, five, six years?

(Speaker 9)
The last five, when I met you five years ago, we were doing three million. This year we’ll do 24 million.

(Speaker 1)
You say, Clay, I still, I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more. Okay, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days. True story. We cater in the food. And because I keep it simple, I literally bring in the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Esconzito’s, an incredible Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen.

(Speaker 1)
And Jill Donovan, our good friend, who is the founder of Rustic Cuff, she started that company in her home. And now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products. That’s rusticcuff.com. And someone says, I want more. This is not enough.

(Speaker 17)
Give me more.

(Speaker 1)
OK. I’m not going to mention their names right now because I’m working on it behind the scenes here. But we’ve got one guy who’s giving me a verbal to be here. And this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma.

(Speaker 1)
And nobody really knows who he is because he’s built systems that are very utilitarian, that offer a lot of value. He’s made a lot of money in the, it’s the, it’s where you rent, it’s short term, it’s where you’re renting storage spaces. He’s a storage space guy. He owns the, what do you call that?

(Speaker 1)
The rental, the-

(Speaker 19)
A storage space?

(Speaker 1)
Storage units. This guy owns storage units. He owns railroad cars. He owns a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis, but they’re not like customer-facing. Most people don’t know who owns the mini storage facility or most people don’t know who owns the warehouse that’s passively making money.

(Speaker 1)
Most people don’t know who owns the railroad cars, but this guy, he’s giving me a verbal that he will be here and we just continue to add more and more success stories. So if you’re out there today and you want to change your life, you want to give yourself an incredible gift, you want a life-changing experience, you want to learn how to start and grow a company, go to thrivetimeshow.com. Go there right now, thrivetimeshow.com.

(Speaker 1)
Request a ticket for the two-day interactive event.

(Speaker 18)
Hey, how’s it going?

(Speaker 6)
I’m Thomas Crosson, owner and founder of Full Package Media in Dallas, Texas. I’ve been a coaching client with Clay Clark since the beginning of our business. We started about a year ago, August of last year. I had no clients, no idea what we were doing, no clue really what was going on. And now we’ve grown to where we’ve got six photographers, we’ve got office space here. I have an admin sales person that works for us full time,

(Speaker 6)
developing an online system, and a lot of that growth we attribute to Clay helping us, and there’s so many things that, no, I mean, his stuff is not revolutionary, it’s not this crazy walk on hot coals and all this stuff, it’s just real, real stuff.

(Speaker 1)
It’s gonna be a blasty blast. There’s no upsells. Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible. And there’s somebody out there right now, you’re watching and you’re like,

(Speaker 1)
but I already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin. I think that’s gonna change your life. I promise you, this’ll be ten times better than that

(Speaker 17)
It’s like I picked the wrong week. We smoke don’t do the smoke your way to thin

(Speaker 1)
Conference that is I’ve tried it don’t do it. Yeah, chain smoking is not a viable I mean it is life-changing it is life-changing if you become a chain smoker it is life-changing best weight loss program No, right not really if you’re looking to have life-changing results in a way that won’t cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at thrive timeshow.com. Again, that’s Aaron Antus, I’m Clay Clark, and reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I promise you it will be a life-changing experience. We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

(Speaker 1)
What kind of growth have you had since you and I’ve been working together over these past few years?

(Speaker 13)
3.45 million. I got those stats before I got on here.

(Speaker 1)
So you’ve grown by 3.45 million. Yeah, 3 million 450,000. Would that be like if you took the combined revenue, maybe doubled it? Have like if you took the combined revenue, maybe doubled it? Have we ever we’ve gone up by? Okay, about almost three, not quite.

 

Transcribed with Cockatoo