“King of Sports Memorabilia” | Brandon Steiner, CollectibleXchange & Steiner Agency Founder, How He Built His $50 Million Sports Collectibles Empire & Working w/ Jeter, Rivera, Muhammad Ali. etc. + Interview With Strawberry

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 10)
Steiner Sports is a proud supporter of the Mariano Rivera Foundation, and tonight would like to present a check for $250 ,000 to the Mariano Rivera Foundation. And here to accept the check is number 42, Mariano Rivera. In addition, Steiner Sports would like to present Mariano with a custom knife set. Mariano, of course, made his career with his signature cutter fit on the mount.

(Speaker 9)
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? 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 U .

(Speaker 46)
S.

(Speaker 9)
Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist bunny, Dr. Robert Zunich.

(Speaker 8)
Two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women, 13 multi -million dollar businesses.

(Speaker 36)
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

(Speaker 3)
Today’s show we are interviewing the king of sports memorabilia. So maybe you’re somebody out there, you’re into collectible baseball cards, basketball cards, signed baseball, signed football, signed jerseys, signed trophies, World Series rings, NFL rings. This is the guy who knows what’s real, what’s not real. He knows bogus, he knows real. Authentic, if you’re looking for authentic sports memorabilia, this guy right now on today’s show, Brandon Steiner. Brandon Steiner, folks.

(Speaker 3)
This is the man. He’s the king of sports memorabilia. Brandon, welcome on The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

(Speaker 2)
Well, first, thank you. Glad to be with you today. It’s a beautiful day. And my new company, Collectible Exchange, as most people know Steiner from Steiner, which 30 years. But now Collectible Exchange has been, this is our sixth year. It’s unbelievable.

(Speaker 2)
It’s amazing.

(Speaker 3)
So can you tell us, and I’m going to be taking some notes here because I’m very curious. How did you get into this business? Walk us through your history. How did you get started?

(Speaker 2)
I mean, it’s probably not going to be the sexy story that maybe you want to hear, but, you know, I’ve marketed players and that was kind of my thing in the late 80s, 90s. And that was still not the most popular thing, by the way, you know, as it is now where celebrity marketing is so big. And I wasn’t really making that much money on it. And in 1991, I did like it. 2 ,000 appearances in a year, and I’d really barely made any money. Because most of those appearances are $2 ,000, $2 ,500.

(Speaker 2)
I remember booking Magic Johnson back then. It was $5 ,000 to book Magic Johnson for an appearance, just to give everybody a little context. I realized that when I did these appearances that people really wanted to get some stuff autographed and I would bring some things for the players to sign. They love that stuff as much as they love the player being there. So I started a little collectible business because there’s a lot of fake stuff out there and people weren’t sure. And people knew that I had a great relationship with hundreds of players.

(Speaker 2)
I was known for that. I was known to have these Rolodexes. That’s the thing with the business cards. I had these huge Rolodexes. I had hundreds of players. Well, it was back then if you had their phone number, That meant you had their home number, and those were not easy to get.

(Speaker 2)
Now everybody’s got Instagram, sell, text, everything. But back then, if you didn’t have the person’s home phone number, you couldn’t get all that celebrity. So that’s how I started. I took $10 ,000 out of the bank, and I would get a bunch of raw product and buy a bunch of stuff, because I was always a collector. And then when I did these appearances, I would bring collectibles with me that the client would be able to get and purchase on top of the appearance. And that’s what really kicked off Steiner.

(Speaker 3)
What year did you get started in the sports memorabilia business, roughly?

(Speaker 2)
It was really in the 94, 93, 94. My first player really was Phil Rizzuto, who I represented at the time. We got into the Hall of Fame, and then Mark Messier won the Stanley Cup. Those are like two cornerstones that I had. I really got going on hockey collectibles because no one was doing that, and I thought there was a very loyal group of people that loved their players and I think they would love to get a stick or a puck signed by their favorite player. It sounds very easy now, but back then people were like, who’s going to buy that?

(Speaker 2)
It wasn’t like a no -brainer. It’s amazing how I sit here and we could talk about collectibles and people know what I’m talking about. But if we roll back and did this interview back in 92, 93, nobody really understood. It was a very small little niche hobby that I was really, I get a lot of credit for making that hobby and turning it into a business. And there’s a whole bunch of different things along the way that have happened, those aha moments, which I never saw coming. So I think most people, You maybe had a strategy or a plan about how this is gonna blow up.

(Speaker 2)
I have no plan, no strategy. I really was really a player marketer, knew I was a good promoter, and I know people liked this kind of stuff. I had an early indication that people liked getting an autographed ball, or if they met a player, they would get something signed. I knew that would be a big thing. I didn’t realize it was gonna end up being this big.

(Speaker 3)
Now, you had unique partnerships and have unique partnerships, but you teamed up with guys like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, the great Muhammad Ali. Can you walk us through about how you started those partnerships or what those kind of looked like?

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, it’s the same way I start every relationship, which is, you know, I’m trying to figure out what I can give, what I could do for those talent, what can I do for those players. You know, back in the day, LT was his restaurant, and I helped him with his restaurant marketing and promoting and exchange. He would, you know, get into the collectible thing with me and sign autographs, do appearances. With Jeter, it was his foundation. It was a big issue to him, and helping him with that enabled me to have a relationship with him and a partnership with him. You know, the Yankees, that was probably one of my bigger partners.

(Speaker 2)
partnerships was about putting together something that would keep the fans safe. You know, they thought that a lot of things were leaving the clubhouse and a lot of fake stuff out there. And they want to make sure that all these great players that were suiting up in pinstripes, people weren’t going to get fakes. And so we put an authentication program around and that ended up being a big authentication for Major League Baseball as well, where they have independent authenticators at every game to make sure that everything you get at a baseball game, from the clubhouse, the game, these balls, the bases, were all real. So authentication is a very big issue.

(Speaker 2)
One of the reasons why my name still withstands the test of time is because, you know, the You know, I put a really serious authentication program into play. The Steiner seal meant it was real. Now it’s Collectible Exchange. We have a very serious authentication program, and we make sure that everything that gets put up on our site has that authentication. The difference with Collectible Exchange now is that people bring me their stuff. So I have more stuff than I’ve ever had on any website.

(Speaker 2)
Because the amount of stuff out there is incredible. And people are bringing me hundreds and hundreds of their items because they don’t really know how to sell it or what they’re worth. And I’m able to help them do that.

(Speaker 3)
I’m going to pull up the website here real quick.

(Speaker 17)
It’s crazy.

(Speaker 3)
I mean, your website. Let me pull this up real quick here. So this is collectibleexchange . com, collectibleexchange . com. So walk us through, how does collectible exchange work?

(Speaker 3)
And how is it different from maybe other people in the space?

(Speaker 2)
Well, you still see some of the partnerships like Michigan Live Golf, XFL, Savannah Bananas. I’m still doing partnerships with leagues and teams. I’m very proud of that. It’s a concept that I started back in 2004. But on the exchange, when you start clicking on looking at the items, those are all. on consignment.

(Speaker 2)
The difference is with me versus like an eBay is all the items are brought to our office for us to verify, make sure the authentication is right, and make sure we can verify everything that is what it is so you don’t have to worry. So we have an open marketplace, but you have to send your stuff into us in order for us to look at it first. So when you look at our site, there’s not a lot of dopey, stupid stuff on there. We don’t allow that. And again, if you want the stuff up on our site, it’s got to be sent to us for us to view.

(Speaker 2)
That’s a big benefit.

(Speaker 3)
Now, you actually purchased the old Yankee Stadium back in the day. In 2008, you purchased the old Yankee Stadium. Why did you purchase the old Yankee Stadium? What did you do with it? Walk us through that whole situation.

(Speaker 2)
Well, first, I just want to say that in the notes, we got to put this for the viewers if they want a free copy of my book I’ve written for. And my You Gotta Have Balls book explains the whole Yankee Stadium thing because it is such an unusual treasure that I broke apart. But I also want to mention it was probably one of the stupidest things I did, too, by the way. I mean, I give myself a lot of credit, but I’m not afraid. You know, that was that was a very overwhelming project because it was such an important stadium, one of the most famous stadiums maybe of our time. And a lot of greatness occurred in that stadium.

(Speaker 2)
So there’s a lot of parts of it that most people wouldn’t realize was extremely valuable. But it was very daunting because the city We owned it at that time, so we had to buy the stadium from the city, and then we had to kind of take it apart, and there’s unions and there’s people, and it’s not easy to pull stuff out of a stadium that’s right near the train tracks on the L. So it was a very daunting project. I’ve done six other stadiums along with the Yankees, but the Yankees is the most famous one that I’ve taken apart from the seats, the foul pole, the grass. I’ve sown more grass than anybody can imagine legally. We’ve lifted the grass up from the last game of the field and freeze -dried it. which is amazing.

(Speaker 2)
Bricks, the black, when Reggie Jackson hit the home runs. We took the whole clubhouse apart, the lockers, the carpet. We made doormats out of it and car mats out of it. I mean, it was really a fascinating project. I’m so proud of it because I know how important it was to people. And I made sure that we gave that stadium all the respect.

(Speaker 2)
And the Yankee fans, there’s nothing like them. So I wanted to make sure that everyone, from a dollar to $100 ,000, you’re able to get a piece of something from that stadium that a lot of Yankee fans put their heart and soul into over the years.

(Speaker 3)
I’m going to pull this up real quick. The book you’re referencing, I believe, is You Gotta Have Balls. That’s the Brandon Steiner book, how a kid from Brooklyn started from scratch, bought Yankee Stadium, and created a sports empire. Can you share with us, I mean, over the years, what are the athletes that you’ve had the opportunity to work with? For people that are not familiar with your story, just who are some of the athletes? I know in the background, even in the background of this video right now, you’ve got framed pictures on the walls everywhere.

(Speaker 3)
Who are some of the athletes you’ve had the pleasure of working with directly over the years?

(Speaker 2)
Well, I’ve secured over 40 million autographs. I mean, just to give you an idea, you mentioned Muhammad Ali, Walter Payton was one of my most famous opportunities, rest his soul. Mickey Mantle, Derek Chute, you mentioned Mariana Vera, Eli Manning, Bubba Smith was another really great one, Mark Messier. There’s not many athletes that you can name that I haven’t worked with, but I had At one point, well over 100 athletes on the contract and doing all kinds of crazy stuff from Mark McGuire, Keith Hernandez. I mean, it can go on and on, Dallas Strawberry. And then, you know, some really big names too, you know, from the 80 Olympic team, the hockey team.

(Speaker 2)
I was really known for putting teams together. So if you won a championship or you were part of a 10 ,000 -yard rusher or MVPs, I put all these themes together, which are not easy to do. But as a collector, it’s very It’s very hard to go get 20 or 25 members of a 3 ,000 -hit club or a 500 -room run club and that kind of thing. But getting guys like A -Rod or Muhammad, Muhammad was probably one of my most favorite relationships. It was just amazing to work with somebody like him. I think with the athletes is having the ability to put together a collection around their whole career, not just at the moment what they’re doing, but going back to many of them in college, high school,

(Speaker 2)
growing up, little league, and really getting yourself really around all their accomplishments, all the moments of time that equals, you know, what their career was. And I had a good vision about how I saw that. You know, I didn’t just see the athletes for their one accomplishment, whether they just won a championship or not, but usually a big, part of putting a big collection together around a lot of players I just named usually did circle around and winning a championship or doing something really above and beyond, which comes, you know, you know, I think memorabilia is remembering the moments and that those are important to people. Like when you think about the birth of your child, getting married, those are big moments, but usually most people have a sporting event where you know where you were and you know, whether it was your first game with your dad or whether it was your, We had the shot her around the world or, you know, even even even these games recently with Toronto and Los Angeles were amazing. And those are games will be for the record books to always be remembered. One of the Great World Series.

(Speaker 2)
So I think those why not relive those memories? And one of the things that I was that I still do and I’m really more known for is the replication of what was going on in those moments, starting with a photo. But if Wayne Gretzky’s first goal ever You know, why not replicate the Hespodar hockey stick that he used? You know what I mean? Why not use the Louisville hockey stick that Mark scored his 500th goal with? So if you couldn’t afford the real goal, the stick, at least you were able to get a stick that replicated, looked exactly like it, that Mark would sign and write an inscription on it.

(Speaker 3)
Who, as far as the guys you’ve worked with over the years, when you think about maybe working at a signing event with Muhammad Ali or Magic Johnson or some of these great names, who are some of the most fun or gregarious guys to do a signing with? Looking back over your historic career, do you have a handful of guys where you go, OK, that guy. he could light up a room?

(Speaker 2)
Oh, so many, I mean, so many great stories. You know, Ozzie Smith was amazing. Love working with him. Bubba Smith, by the way, was a lot of fun. Lou Holtz was, you had to take out, you made me laugh when you said, I’m going to take out a pencil and paper and write down some notes. Because like, Lou Holtz, when you sat with Lou, Coach was, you had to start writing every, I mean, I, what was coming out of his mouth was everything was, Gold.

(Speaker 2)
I mean, highly, highly motivational. Rudy, I think of Rudy and Lou Holtz, the Notre Dame guys. A lot of fun with Lawrence Taylor. You never know which way it was going to go with Lawrence and what kind of mood he was in and some of the some of the insanity that went with him. David Cohn was a lot of fun back in the 90s. You know, he would like to sign late at night.

(Speaker 2)
A lot of crazy things would happen when he would come in. Like everybody is different when they want to sign and the way they sign. You know, Jeter was extremely Bye. You know, he wanted to know exactly what he was signing, how long it was going to be signing for. And I think what you see is what you get. It was extremely professional and organized about what we went about with him.

(Speaker 2)
So, you know, fun was probably not the word I would use. Muhammad was, my earlier days with Muhammad, you were able to sit down and he’d be able to story tell and be able to kind of talk about things that happened in certain fights or right around that. And it just, you couldn’t get enough of it. For me, that was fun, you know, but, You know, Pedro Martinez, I remember when he came in after he won the first World Series with the Red Sox, you know, we had to have an open buffet there for 24 hours, and he was coming throughout the night to sign. We had 6 ,000 items from the sign after the Red Sox won the World Series, beating the Yankees in 2004. That nightmare for Yankee fans, I’m sorry to bring it up, but it’s true.

(Speaker 2)
But that was a lot of fun. The Red Sox guys were a lot of fun. Kevin Millar was a hoot. great storyteller. And he was great. Nick Swisher, great signer, a lot of fun.

(Speaker 2)
I mean, just so many great stories, so many great moments. I always love when I got to do signs with Jim Brown, by the way. And it was never fun, but it was serious. It was always something, not sports -related, that we had to dig into and get into. It was amazing.

(Speaker 3)
What’s been the biggest challenge throughout your career as technology has changed? You’ve been one of the leaders in authenticating signed items. What’s been the biggest challenge that you’ve been facing with your career, your industry over the past, let’s say, five or 10 years?

(Speaker 2)
Well, that’s a good question, and thanks for asking it, because I think leadership is the number one challenge we have in our industry. It’s an easy entry point. I love that because I see so many young kids getting into the business, collecting cards and collectibles, and it’s truly a blessing to be able to expand the business, expand the industry. But the leadership is unregulated, and a lot of people take advantage and are doing things because the market is really up. I see card companies manipulating kids that don’t know better and think they’re getting something really, really cool, but it’s not. It’s never going to be.

(Speaker 2)
I don’t like that. I never really pushed the collectibles and thinking that you’re going to hit a million dollar item by buying this collectible. I always thought that the collectibles I created and sold were going to maintain value because they were real and they were cool. But don’t bet on sending your kid to college on it. But now there seems to be a lot of this overhype. And it’s very challenging as you see people getting in and out of the business.

(Speaker 2)
They have no real commitment to the business and the industry and making sure it gets better and grows properly. It’s a money grab. And it’s always nerve -wracking for me because there’s no regulation. It’s not like a committee or a group or a federation that goes into it. us. And to have the FBI have to come in and Governing some of us, we’ve caught some people as of recently doing some fake autographs and stuff and duplicating things.

(Speaker 2)
It’s really sad that we have that kind of problem because trust is such a big part of the business. As a matter of fact, it’s everything that makes sure that this stuff is real, it’s authentic, and it is what we say it is. So I think that’s the biggest challenge. I mean, and you know, these players are not getting any smaller. These names are getting bigger. They’re getting paid more and more, more and more.

(Speaker 2)
Social media is blowing up sports bigger than it’s ever been. in and getting these players to commit to doing stuff. because I know that’s what the fans want. My ultimate goal is getting the fans closer to these players, closer to the game. That’s what I live for, the joy of seeing a kid and his dad, you know, enjoying their first game and then getting to meet their idol after a game or that kind of thing. We’re getting something autographed and special.

(Speaker 2)
But it’s getting harder and harder. You know, these players are making a lot more money than they ever have ever imagined. And getting them to commit to doing these deals is getting tricky.

(Speaker 3)
In terms of where you see your career going or what you’re doing with your business now, tell us about the next couple of years. What do you have planned with your organization?

(Speaker 2)
I have no idea. People ask me that question often, and I know that I’m going to figure it out, but I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t know. I really stay close to what people need and what they want. It’s been my key to success, is listening and figuring out what people want. and then trying to figure out how to deliver it in the best way that I can.

(Speaker 2)
And because I really have my head on a pivot, a swivel there, I’m not afraid to pivot. Sometimes it does get in the way of these three to five year plans. I’m getting a little older. I still love the business. I’m still enjoying the business. I’m enjoying what we’re able to do and create.

(Speaker 2)
There’s a lot of people that are struggling out there that have big collections, and they don’t know what to do with them. And the fact that I’m able to help these people sort out their collections, The fact that I’m able to give these people some direction so they don’t get ripped off, I have a lot of joy and I’m seeing so many cool things from all over the country now. I mean, the amount of collectability that’s gone on in this country is incredible, because especially Bay Boomers, always. are always saving everything. So there’s a big transfer of wealth about to happen over the next five years. Some people say it’s as much as $4 or $5 trillion of wealth from older people going to get transferred down.

(Speaker 2)
You know, 70 % of the wealth in this country is with people 60 years old and older. And we’re not getting any younger, so we have to do something with this money. And same thing with the collectibles. You have to do something with it. I just was at a collection this afternoon. The guy had well over 3 ,000 items in his house.

(Speaker 2)
And he was almost 70 years old. Like, what are you going to do with this stuff if your kids don’t want it? And I’m sure I’m going to help him liquidate that collection. So it’s been fun. I mean, my career, you know, I just did a fourth book, The Ride Alongs, which is a lot of fun. I mean, I spent a year with the NYPD going on ride alongs, over 15 of them, took a gang down.

(Speaker 2)
I mean, I just had, I’m just trying to do different things and having more fun. I think the college situation is incredibly crazy. So I’ve been digging into that. I mean, if you really want to know about your safety, whether you live in a big city or a small city, you definitely want to pick up this book. I mean, it’s riveting what’s going on in some of these cities around the country, and we have an issue, and we should all be concerned about how safe we are. But, you know, I’ve been having fun.

(Speaker 2)
I’m helping with a lot of colleges, figuring out how they become professional, so they’re all struggling. to get the money. All these kids want to get paid in college, so I’ve been helping a lot of the schools now. I just signed St. John’s, Syracuse, Michigan. I have a bunch of colleges that I now work for, and I’ve been doing a really good job for them. What’s nice is everything’s on the table now.

(Speaker 2)
There’s no hiding or side deals. The kids are getting paid. They want a lot of money. give them a lot of money. And I’m easily able to help them make money so they can give the kids the money.

(Speaker 3)
So right now, I mean, you’re involved in college like in a way you couldn’t be before. Can you give us an example? Maybe you want to name names, maybe you don’t. But can you give us an example about how a college athlete could be paid now for sports memorabilia where they couldn’t be, let’s say, 10 years ago, 20 years ago?

(Speaker 2)
Oh, I mean, if you if you got caught selling a jersey, you’d be you’d get thrown out of school. And now now, you know, kids signing autographs, you know, at the corner store. I mean, they’re you know, your average quarterback in NCAA for top One of the top 50 schools in the NCAA Division I, a quarterback is making anywhere from $2 or $3 million to $10 million. I mean, that’s insane. I mean, real, real money. If you’re a starting player for a Power Five school, You’re making at least $500 ,000 to a million dollars minimum, and many of those guys are making a lot more.

(Speaker 2)
And now it’s starting to spread where the schools have $20 million to spend. This just recently happened. So you see some of the money transferring over past football and basketball. Your football and basketball are getting most of the money, but now we’re seeing the women’s sports The women are getting money, and we’re seeing some of the other schools, other sports schools getting money, like lacrosse, fencing, all kinds of stuff. So the kids now, the first question I ask when they’re getting recruited is, how much money can you pay me? And it’s real, and there’s all kinds of very competitive environment to steal these kids away from schools.

(Speaker 2)
But it’s right now the way the rules are, the kids can leave anytime they want. There’s no red shirting where you have to sit out a year when you decide to leave school.

(Speaker 3)
Final question I have here for you. And again, for anybody out there that wants to check out that website, it’s collectibleexchange .

(Speaker 38)
com.

(Speaker 3)
He’s the king of sports memorabilia, folks, the king of sports memorabilia, collectibleexchange . com. That’s the website, collectibleexchange . com. And for anybody who wants to check out your book here, this is the new book, The Ride Alongs, What I Learned About Policing Crime in the New York City Justice System. Brandon, I’m going to give you the final word.

(Speaker 3)
A lot of times you hop on great shows. Maybe a great host asks you a great question. host like me forgets to ask you a great question, or maybe I don’t have the mental capacity to ask you a great question.

(Speaker 2)
So I’m going to let you ask yourself the final question, or what’s the question you want to be asked, sir? What’s the message that you want to convey to all of our listeners out there that are taking notes? Well, two things. One, if you, if you email me, if you put my email in the show notes, Brandon Steiner, 1981, pick out one of the four books I’ve written. I’m happy to send it to you for free. Number one for watching the show.

(Speaker 2)
So please feel free to pick up one of those books if you want and email me and you’ll put the email in the show notes. The question I’d love you to ask is like, what’s the key.

(Speaker 3)
What’s that email address.

(Speaker 40)
I want to make sure I screw this up.

(Speaker 3)
BrandonSteiner1981 at gmail . com.

(Speaker 45)
Oh, wow.

(Speaker 2)
I’m putting that on the show notes right now, folks. BrandonSteiner1981 at gmail . com. Sorry to interrupt you, sir. Back to you. No, that’s OK. I think the one question is, I think one of the key things to having success and lead you to extraordinary is, A, you need to stay curious.

(Speaker 2)
No matter how good you think you are, check your level and your volume on your curiosity, and then check your volume on your empathy. Because empathy… What I really mean to say is if you can increase your common sense, because empathy is putting yourself in a common person’s shoes and someone else’s shoes. If you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes, increase your common sense of curiosity, then you’re on your way to being a lot more of a happier person as far as business is concerned. And most importantly, you’re on your way to finding your way to the corner office in your company.

(Speaker 2)
Curiosity and empathy.

(Speaker 3)
is always the two strongest characteristics you can have. And I feel like those are my best two traits. I’m a curious cat, and I like to put myself in other people’s shoes, especially my lead line always is, how can I help you? Not what can I get, but what can I give? Brandon, thank you so much for your time. I really do appreciate you so much.

(Speaker 3)
You are the king of sports memorabilia. I’m going to send this show to my good friend Andrew Sorcini, who’s obsessed with sports memorabilia. So I’m sending this show right now. Andrew is one of the leaders in the precious metals space, but he started out in the sports memorabilia world.

(Speaker 29)
He loves sports memorabilia.

(Speaker 2)
So I’m sending this show to Andrew Sorcini as soon as we hop off. Thank you so much. I really do appreciate you. Thank you.

(Speaker 44)
Keep in touch.

(Speaker 20)
There’s over several hundred thousand items on collectibles change won’t be lost.

(Speaker 3)
Have a great day. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye. Strawberry with home run for 38 and that is an all -time Mets record. yes, yes, and yes.

(Speaker 3)
Thrive Nation on today’s show, I am so excited, so fired up to interview a man that I cheered for as a kid, a man that many of you know about, a man that my father loved the swing of this guest. My dad was a big baseball fan. He was a Little League World Series kind of phenom at the age of 12.

(Speaker 1)
My father played in the Little League World Series in 1965.

(Speaker 3)
And he loved, he loved himself some Daryl Strawberry. With that being said, Daryl Strawberry, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 1)
How are you, sir? Clay, thanks for reaching out and having me on the Prime Time Show. So brother, I got to ask you, first question I’ve got here for you is, how good of a basketball player were you in high school? People know you as the baseball guy, but how good of a basketball player were you in high school? I could have went either way. I mean, I think most people don’t even realize that.

(Speaker 1)
I was just getting going in high school playing basketball and a lot of colleges come to see other players play and it’s not a cringe or high and they were always asking the coach about me and the coach Willie West was my high school coach and he just told him don’t don’t waste any time. He’s going probably in the first round of baseball.

(Speaker 3)
So he’s not going to probably play any more basketball after high school. So I was I was pretty good.

(Speaker 1)
I got I got and it got better and better, and you just get better. I could have went to college and probably, you know, developed more and became at the next level.

(Speaker 22)
So, you…

(Speaker 3)
What position did you play in high school basketball?

(Speaker 1)
I played a forward.

(Speaker 3)
I was 6 ‘5″, and I played a forward. Okay.

(Speaker 1)
Did you have some pretty nasty… I was shooting forward. Did you have some pretty nasty dunks? Did you ever pull off some pretty nasty in -game dunks? I did. I pulled off some great dunks.

(Speaker 3)
I dunked onto quite a few people, and I think a lot of people were shocked, you know, to see the kind of skills I had, and I was, you know, a versatile player. I could shoot, and I could defend, and I can get up. I had some hops. But I don’t have any hops left in me now. OK.

(Speaker 1)
Now, I’ve got to ask you, were you a two -hand dunk kind of guy? Or were you like an old school Larry Johnson, Hornets kind of dunk guy, the two -hand guy? Or were you the one -hand guy? What was your preferred method? I was more of a one -handed guy that wanted to just throw down with my left hand. And whoever it was.

(Speaker 3)
You know, trying to defend it, stop it.

(Speaker 1)
I wanted to make sure I got the dunk right on there. That’s the kind of, that’s the kind of player I was in high school. And it was really fun to see me jump from that level in my senior year and become just this awesome player, you know, for our city championship team. Now, you went on to obviously focus on baseball, but how good of a baseball player were you in high school? Baseball came very easy to me, not just only in high school. I mean, at the beginning of Little League and you know, at the age of, I think I started late.

(Speaker 1)
I didn’t get on the field until about 15, 16 years old. And I started to really blossom in that in such a different way. And a lot of coaches saw me and they were thinking, man, this guy is great. You know, I was a left -hand pitcher and throwing curveballs. And they was like, don’t throw curveballs. You’re going to hurt your arm.

(Speaker 1)
And I got off the mound. I didn’t really want to stay on the mound. And I played in high school. I played right field and I pitched a little bit. I had some really good fun high school baseball in Southern California at Crenshaw. We played against Pacific Palisades, Jay Schrader.

(Speaker 1)
He was a quarterback for the Rescues and the Raiders. And we played against him in high school and we played against Elway in 79, John Elway. We lost to them in the city championship in baseball in my junior year in high school. And most of the scouts didn’t realize I was a junior. And they asked the coach, hey, who’s the linky, left -hander you got?

(Speaker 3)
He goes, he’s a junior. They go, he’s a junior? And he’s got another year. And then I came back my senior year, and then it was like 50 scouts out there my first game to see me play in my senior year of baseball. And how would you describe your baseball batting stance?

(Speaker 1)
How would you describe your approach to you get behind the plate? Everyone’s kind of got their own. For anybody out there who hasn’t played baseball before, as a baseball player, a lot of times players will develop their own routine, their own kind of mindset. What was your approach when you would step up to the plate? I’m the man. Be as confident as you can you say in yourself, you know, some people say it’s cockiness.

(Speaker 3)
No, it’s not it’s confidence It’s believing in yourself those that make it and want to become great at what they do They’re very very comfortable in their own skin, you know, and that was me. I was very comfortable in my own skin I was able to master myself as a hitter and have the confidence and that nobody was going to beat me no matter what even if you beat me the first time, you’re not going to beat me the whole game. Yeah, and then if I go take a 0 for 4 and I face you again next time, you’re not going to beat me. So, that’s the kind of approach I had as a player coming through, you know, little league and high school and getting myself into the minor leagues. And once I got to the major leagues, it was over because I developed the ability to understand the game, you know, from the on -deck circle and realizing watching the game and watching the situations, because I always watch situations And that’s why I was a guy that hit a lot of home runs and drove in runs, because I knew that I was going to be capable of getting the pitch that I could drive out of the ballpark. So baseball was your thing. You’re doing well from the outside.

(Speaker 3)
People look at you, they look at the veneer or the epidermis or the surface level. I mean, you’re a star athlete. You got the world.

(Speaker 1)
What’s going on at home at this point? I mean, can you describe your family situation? growing up where your mom and dad both, you know, home by five o ‘clock, where your mom and dad there for dinner every night? What was the home situation like behind the scenes? Well, basically, I was raised by my wonderful mother, Ruby Jewel Strawberry. She raised five of us by herself.

(Speaker 1)
My dad was a raging alcoholic. He came home for the last time when I was about 14, pulled out a shotgun, drunk. He didn’t say he was going to kill the whole family. Me and my brothers went into action. We darn near killed him. Had it not been for my mother getting us out of the house, we would have killed him that night.

(Speaker 1)
I always tell people it could have been a tragedy in my life before I ever put the uniform on. So I was already broken before I ever put the uniform on. And what people need to realize that brokenness is real and it runs in families. And a lot of times people just cover it up and nobody gets well. And for a long time, that was the same story for me, you know, being broken. and covering it up like I got it all together, but I really didn’t have it all together.

(Speaker 1)
I went to the major leagues and played the highest level, but I was still broken because I never got healed. Healing has to take place in a person’s life for them to experience a real life, and I didn’t experience that throughout my career. So I look good from the outside, but my whole inside is broken. of who I was was burning up and yearning for, you know, who am I trying to identify myself? That’s why we, like a lot of us, we cover up our life about who we are and we pretend like we had this white picket fence we live behind. And that’s not true.

(Speaker 1)
That’s not a real reality. Everybody’s got something. You got to go through something. We don’t know why, but you have to figure that out. It is part of Everybody’s journey and those that figure it out will get on the other side, but those that don’t figure it out They’ll still be searching trying to search for more and that’s why you see so many in In the famous life, you know, they always searching for more people say well what’s wrong with them?

(Speaker 3)
They have everything having everything does not make you well It just make you have a bunch of stuff and you you got to pay more attention and then you buy more stuff, and trying to fill that empty void on the inside. And so many of us will go in this life as a celebrity, and we will experience that, and some will come out, and many won’t come out. They’ll still be stuck in the same place with the wrong identity. So you’re, I mean, just to be super clear, I mean, you’re, if we can all visualize this, I mean, you’re in high school, you are the best athlete or the most known athlete or one of the most prolific athletes for sure in your community, perhaps in the United States. I mean, you’re in your, all that’s going great there on the, on the outside, but on the inside, uh, your home life is, is terrible.

(Speaker 3)
What would you do when you’d come home at that point?

(Speaker 1)
Were you experimenting with. alcohol or any drugs during high school? Or were you drug -free at that point? Or just kind of walk us through what that was like at home. No, I was, you know, I came from the broken situation. And I always say, lawlessness brings about brokenness.

(Speaker 1)
And keep bringing a broken generation to somebody. I really get healed. And I wasn’t healed at all. I mean, I was already smoking marijuana when I was 14 years old. And I was drinking alcohol because I was disturbed inside. I got kicked out of, I think, four junior high schools.

(Speaker 1)
And they just moved me on into high school after my junior high school. They just said, we can’t take it anymore, you know, his behavior and doing all kinds of crazy things. And, you know, smoking weed every day to go to walk to school. So after that process was over, then I went to high school and I was still, you know, still busy with the drinking and smoking throughout the whole time in high school. Not every day because I was playing sports and I would channel my energy into sports. I played basketball, baseball, so I had to be disciplined.

(Speaker 1)
My basketball coaches brought a lot of discipline in me. A man by the name of Joe Weakley and a man by the name of Willie West. They brought a lot of discipline in me. And then my baseball coaches brought a lot of discipline in me. coach brought a lot of discipline, too. It was all black school.

(Speaker 1)
He was a white coach. And he was the only white coach that I ever had, you know, coming up like that. And he brought a lot of discipline. His name was Brooks Hirsch, you know. So, I found myself coming to learn things through these coaches. And I think a lot of athletes have done that before.

(Speaker 3)
Coaches become your father figures. You know, a guy by the name of Mr. Mosley, Earl Brown, all these guys I played with in the summer became father figures to me to help me navigate my way through of this life of playing sports and trying to help me to become a man. I struggled with that for many years because my father used to beat the living crap out of me and said I would never, never, ever amount to anything. And I believed it until I actually put the uniform on. Then I believed that I was great at what I wanted to do as far as playing for Crenshaw High, basketball and baseball, and then going on from there, being drafted and getting settled into the professional sports. Now, baseball, it’s a unique journey, baseball, different from other sports in that, for some reason, in baseball, if you’re a very good baseball player, a lot of baseball players get drafted right out of high school.

(Speaker 1)
Now, the NBA, that’s become more common. But for baseball, I mean, that’s kind of the way it’s been for a long time. So what was that path like from high school into eventually playing in the major leagues? What was that timeline like? Well, that was a great in -between, Clay. you know, leaving high school at the age of 18 and being drafted number one, signing with the Mets.

(Speaker 1)
On my way to rookie ball, my first stop would be coming from South Central LA to Kingsport, Tennessee. Now you can imagine that’s the culture shock right there. You’re coming from where I came from. It’s in the middle of nowhere to Kingsport, Tennessee. But it was a great experience for me and I had a great manager in my rookie year, Chuck Hiller, who helped me get through that situation of being away from home and learning what baseball was going to really be all about at this point in time.

(Speaker 1)
But I went from The next year in 1981, I went to Lynchburg, Virginia. Oh my God, that was a really culture shock right there because I had to deal with some really, really nasty fans, you know, calling me boys and this and the N -word and saying that you’re not that good, you know. And my manager was Gene Dusan. He just kept, he kept me calm as ever not to look up there. He just said, do not ever look up there. He says they’re ignorant.

(Speaker 1)
And because he knew if I looked up there, I probably would have ran up there with my Louisville slugger and probably started eliminating people. And he didn’t want that to happen. So I had those coaches lined up in place for me during that time to get to where I needed to get. Then in 1982, I went to Jackson, Mississippi, and I played with Gene Ducey, and he was my manager again. And I became a baseball player that year. I hit 34 home runs and stole 45 bases.

(Speaker 1)
And I think the Mets organization was just thrilled. They said, you know, we got the right guy. He is our guy. He’s going to be the elite player to come to the major leagues one day after they saw that 82 season 83. I started off in triple -a called Tidewater stayed there a month and then I was called up to the big leagues. Now, hear me out.

(Speaker 1)
I get to the big leagues at the age of 21 and I’m playing and I’m struggling and I supposed to be at the ballpark early. My hitting coach is Jim Fry. I supposed to be at the ballpark at one o ‘clock. I show up at three o ‘clock. Jim Fry is a small guy, and I’m 6 ‘5″. And when I got to the ballpark at 3 o ‘clock, he got in my face and said, kid, I am never going to wait for you again.

(Speaker 1)
If you ever want to be a great Major League Baseball player, you will be at this ballpark early every day. He challenged me in a way that I just realized, man, I don’t care how talented I am. I need to be here early. I need to be working. And I did from now on, that point on, throughout the rest of my career. And I was going to have a great career, rookie of the year, you know, four times World Series champs.

(Speaker 1)
All -stars, I do all that. Jim Frye is passing away and somebody said, ran into me and said, Jim Frye was your hitting coach and he loves you. And he know you love him. And I said, yeah. I said, do you have a number? He’s sick.

(Speaker 1)
He said, yeah, he’s close to dying. I said, do you have his number so I can reach him? He gave me his number. I called him and I said, Jim, Darryl Strawberry. I said, he’s like, what’s up, kid? I was like, I just need to tell you thank you.

(Speaker 1)
Thank you for not giving up on me. Thank you for helping me. Thank you for encouraging me. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for teaching me how to be a major league baseball player. I said my career went on to be successful because of you.

(Speaker 1)
It’s not just because of me having talent. Yeah, I had to do it, but it was because of what you gave me. You gave me some valuable principles about how this works. See, that’s what’s important and what a lot of people don’t understand. Other people. You don’t just make it yourself, it’s the people around you.

(Speaker 3)
My number is retired and hanging up at Citi Field. Nobody will ever wear number 18 again. And that’s because of all these coaches that I’ve just talked about with you, and Davey Johnson, and Bud Harrelson, and Bobby Valentine, Bill Robinson. All these guys had a great impact on me and led me to be the kind of player that I turned out to be. You know, I’d love to interview you for eight consecutive hours, because there’s so much to unpack, but I want to respect your time. So I have two follow -up questions on this here.

(Speaker 3)
I have found in my life, in the world of business specifically, that amateurs do not have coaches. professionals do have coaches. So when you look at a guy like Kobe Bryant, who played at the top levels of the NBA, or you look at Michael Jordan, these guys both had a strength coach.

(Speaker 1)
And a lot of people don’t know that. Tim Grover was the strength coach for both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. People look at your career, and they see the success, but they don’t see the coach that you had. Could you maybe speak into someone’s life out there who’s maybe struggling in an area, whether it’s accounting, or sobriety, or fitness, or whatever area of their life where they need a coach, but they’re resistant to being coached? Yes, I think that’s because of lack of confidence. Most people, and most people believe that they have to do it all on their own, and nobody does it on their own.

(Speaker 1)
Great athletes don’t do it on their own. We have coaches to help us, and that’s the behind -the -scenes. People just look at us, run out there, and they look at our performance and everything. Yeah, we’re great at that, but you know what? Somebody’s been behind the scenes pushing me to get to there, and that’s what people need to do. learn about their own self and business or whatever it may be you’re trying to achieve.

(Speaker 1)
You can’t achieve the next level just by yourself. You need somebody to guide you and help you navigate yourself through the challenges because the storms of life is going to come. And when you get in the middle of the storm, if you don’t have nobody there, you’re going to drown. And I think that’s why people don’t achieve success most likely like most likely like Most of us as great athletes is because we have that behind and we know that’s our motivation right there behind us. And I think if people can relate to that and allow someone to be into your life, someone that’s not going to sugarcoat it, someone that’s not going to tell you, you’re great all the time. Someone’s going to tell you, you need to get off your butt and you need to hustle.

(Speaker 1)
You need to work hard.

(Speaker 3)
And if you do, you will be able to achieve. That’s what most people don’t have. And I think that’s the challenge of most people. If they challenge themselves to allow somebody else to be a voice inside of them, then they can become all that they want to be. Now, a follow -up question I have here for you about baseball for a second. I want to get into this.

(Speaker 3)
You stole 45 bases. You mentioned you hit 35 home runs, stole 45 bases. We had Will Clark on the show, the famous San Francisco giant Will Clark.

(Speaker 1)
We had him on the show. And he was known for being an aggressive slider. He would slide into second base in a way that nobody was able to turn a quick double play on him without having to leap over Very aggressive slide. Did you have an aggressive approach to sliding into second? Oh, yeah. I’m going to tear you up.

(Speaker 1)
I’m going to kill you. Even at the plate, if you’re catching, you’re blocking, I’m going to run you over. That’s the nature of baseball. They have changed it. It’s more of a different type of game. We don’t want to get people hurt.

(Speaker 1)
It’s part of what it is growing up and playing and knowing how hard you have to play to beat the other team. Because one thing I can say about me is when I see the other team, I do not like them. You know, it’s nothing personal, but I do not like them. My goal is to beat them. And now if I got to go in and break up a double play, and I did that many times, I tried to get out of the Smith. I couldn’t get him on a double play.

(Speaker 1)
He saw me coming in hard and he hopped over me and I turned around and look back at him and he just threw his finger up and waved it at me. He said, next time I’m gonna make you get down. I’m thought, Underneath and make you get down because he knew I was coming hard That’s part of baseball and guys back in our time of playing in the 80s with will will the thrill he’s right about that I’m going in hard, you know up this double play, or I’m going in hard coming around third, and that catcher, I see him straddle over that play. I am going to try to kill him, just like Pete Rose ran a guy over, but it was an all -star game. But that’s the nature of what baseball is truly all about.

(Speaker 1)
Have they gotten away from that? Yes. A couple of guys got hurt with guys going in, breaking their legs, and they changed their the ruling on that. You can’t run over the catcher.

(Speaker 40)
What do you mean I can’t run over him?

(Speaker 3)
He’s got all that gear on. He’s trying to block me. I need to run him over. So that was just part of the time when we played in the 80s and it was fun to be able to do that. Amen to that. Now, Darrell, switching gears again here.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, you ended up having a massive success, and you ended up doing drugs, and there’s all sorts of stories about the women and the drugs. And could you kind of walk us through how crazy was your life at the bottom? I mean, statistically, maybe at the top, but when you’re doing copious amounts of drugs and all the women. And how crazy was your life there as you were pursuing happiness outside of a relationship with Christ? Yeah, well, you’re trying to pursue happiness in the natural and in your flesh. Your flesh is stupid, and it’s going to do whatever it tells you to do.

(Speaker 1)
I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you’re rich, famous, and privileged, and living. You have a tendency of doing whatever you want to do. And I always tell people, you can pick your sins, but you cannot pick your consequences. The consequences of life is real. And the life was crazy, the life was fun.

(Speaker 1)
And people say, well, why was that so different? It was because I was a sinner, just like everybody else. What do sinners do? They sin, they get lost. You know, you’re lost in everything that’s out there, worldly things, women, drugs, money, fast life. And it’s not until you come to a

(Speaker 1)
a place of being changed and transformed. And I wasn’t transformed when I played baseball. I was just a baseball player. I had a, I had a uniform on, but that didn’t make me a man because I didn’t realize what a man’s supposed to be like. Cause they tell you what you rich and you famous, or you have everything. You could do whatever you want.

(Speaker 1)
That’s, that’s. That’s not a real reality. I think that’s it. They filter you through all that and make you believe all that. And when you do, you see it and you get there. And you’ve been to the top of the mountain like I was.

(Speaker 1)
I was at the top of the mountain, but nobody was home because everybody is so -called friends only when you’re at the top of the mountain. So that’s when you realize nobody’s home, because when you come off of that top of the mountain and you’re no longer there, Everybody’s gone. Everybody’s scattered. So I learned the lesson. I got a chance to see that clear. I didn’t learn it by myself.

(Speaker 1)
I learned it through people My mother praying for me. She’s uh, she’s the joy of my life and and my wife Tracy who was pulling me out of dope houses when I was shooting dope and smoking crack in South Florida and she was banging on doors and pulling me out of places saying God’s got a plan for you That says why don’t you that God just leave me here and just let me die. She says you just not that lucky and she God used her to snatch me out. I was three million dollars in debt, didn’t have a driver’s license, and I was insane. And God used her to lead me back to the cross, back into church, and I would get rescued and redeemed and restored. So it doesn’t matter what you do.

(Speaker 1)
It’s a point of knowing who you are in that particular time of your life. Most people will never identify who they are, what’s wrong with me. What’s wrong with me is I’m broken and I need a savior. I’m not the savior.

(Speaker 3)
My money cannot save me. My house cannot save me. I need something greater than that to save my life. And I would have been come to that because of my wife leading me back into the church house. Now, Darrell, I want to not want to celebrate this, but I just want to give it context because there’s somebody out there listening to today’s show that is an automotive repair guy. There’s a there’s a plumber listening right now.

(Speaker 1)
There’s a dentist. There’s a doctor. There’s somebody out there who has an occupation, but they are an active drug user. You know, they’re kind of like a closet drug user there’s someone who does drugs when no one else is around right they’re kind of hiding it and they’re dealing with it and they’re kind of trying to how were you doing drugs like before games in games after games how prominent at the bottom were you in terms of drug use i mean how how crazy of a lifestyle were you living because you were on a team with i mean doc gooden kevin mitchell so many great players you’re in new york the big apple the world’s watching you’re some of the best players in america uh were you guys doing drugs pregame, during the game, after the game, how crazy was it? No. One thing most people don’t understand, you know, people talk about people using drugs, you become addicted to it and you become an addict.

(Speaker 1)
And it’s not the last thing in the world just because you’re an addict. You know, so many people suffer from it. It’s an addiction. No, I would never do drugs when it was a game. When I was performing, I was performing. I was natural.

(Speaker 1)
You know, I didn’t have to use drugs. I had to use drugs once I got off the field. You know, when I went out to to the nightlife and drinking and drugs and women, all that becomes a part of it. The average person will be like, Sam, you’re a loser because you did drugs. No, I’m not. You know how many people have died from doing drugs?

(Speaker 1)
They didn’t win the battle. I’m still here. So I won the battle. And it wasn’t about me using drugs to perform. Yeah, did I take amphetamines when I played? Yes, but I did not use drugs.

(Speaker 1)
or any of those other drugs when I was playing baseball. It was just, it was never a need for that. You know, what would I need that for when I’m on the field? When I’m on the field, when I was performing, I was in paradise. I was, I was in heaven. And when I was off the field, I was empty.

(Speaker 1)
I was lost. I was broken.

(Speaker 3)
I was trying to fill the empty void with all these other things, you know, drugs, women, cars, Money in your pocket jury, whatever whatever players are a doctor or a plumber or somebody thinks you hide You send you’re hiding. You’re not hiding. You’re hiding from yourself. You know, if you’re using that’s just the way it is I mean, I was no different than anybody else that’s thinking I’m hiding and I’m nobody knows it, you know And and and you know, it’s a problem and and it’s not until you decide to fix the problem and get the proper help that you need, which is there, which is available, and it’s through other people, and it’s not through you having the knowledge to fix yourself, because you cannot, because you constantly continue to go back and still use drugs and drink alcohol when you know it is deadly for you. Now, Daryl, your friend and mine, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, he speaks so highly of you. And I know he always has told me that you were a great guy, like you were just a great guy, and he really wanted to see you do well.

(Speaker 3)
And there’s been a handful of people that I’ve met over the years that claim to have known you and known you well. And everybody said that Daryl was a good guy. At his core, Daryl was a kind person. You saw the way he interacted with fans and teammates and media. He was a kind person. But then he was fighting this battle.

(Speaker 1)
And so for somebody out there that’s maybe feeling like they can’t overcome that battle, can you walk us through what was your transformation like in terms of finding Christ? And maybe you could tell us more about that. how your wife led you to Christ because I want to really fill somebody’s Mind here with with hope that that no matter how bad it is. They can actually overcome these things. Yeah, I mean I’m very thankful for all the people that you run across and said that you know, because I was kind I was I I’m just a broken kid. I came from a good place.

(Speaker 1)
My mother was a wonderful woman. She raised me right. I’m the one that made the decision to live a heathen lifestyle. And you pay a price for living a heathen lifestyle, no matter who you are. But being able to get over it and become the person that I am today, it has to do with my wife leading me back to church and having me sit in church for seven years and go through discipleship. A lot of people don’t believe that God can change you.

(Speaker 1)
Well, God is always in the business of changing folks. He’s done it so many times. He was doing it back then when he turned Saul into the apostle Paul. So he got a hold of me and through that period of seven years of discipleship, and he changed my heart and he changed my direction. He changed the course of my life that I would work for him and I would not work for man. I got the greatest job working for him because The thing about when you fully come full circle and you commit yourself to Christ, and make yourself all the way in, and you don’t straddle the fence. You don’t be wishy -washy.

(Speaker 1)
I was wishy -washy like everybody else. Like a lot of athletes, you get on TV and say, I want to thank God, but then after the game’s over, you’re somewhere in a club drinking and doing an electric slide. That’s not following God. You know, following God is a commitment of coming from out of the worldly things, and that’s what happened to me with my wife and when I got in church. And I sat those seven years, and I had to learn who God is. You know, and I think most people don’t want to… learn who God is.

(Speaker 1)
They want to know who they are. But if you learn who he is, then you’ll learn who you are. The message to somebody out there, you have to learn who he is so he can show you who you are. He cannot show you who you are if you’re not in a relationship with him. It wasn’t until I got in a relationship with God, then God revealed to me who I was and the purpose of my life. The purpose of my life was not baseball.

(Speaker 1)
That was just a platform. The purpose of my life is what you’re seeing today. Daryl Strawberry, the evangelist, traveling the nation, preaching the gospel, winning souls. There’s a great purpose for all of us that he created us to to do his will. A lot of times, people entertain their own will and their own selfish ideas of saying, look at me. It does not last.

(Speaker 1)
I don’t care if you have everything. Eventually, you’re going to end up feeling that loneliness and despair and that brokenness on the inside, and you’re going to try anything to try to fix that, and you can’t. I tried everything, and it wasn’t until I came to the symbol of the cross.

(Speaker 3)
You’ve got to understand the symbol of the cross. The symbol of the cross Jesus hung on that cross what folks don’t understand that Jesus is a holy man. There’s nothing lacking in him There’s nothing short of him. And when he hung on that cross, then he shed that blood for us He said it is so that we would be able to experience this life of his blood that he would pour into us that would purify Us and liberate us and bring us to a great purpose of living and fulfilling the promises over our life We all have that promise over our life, it’s just a matter of entering into it. You know, one of the things, and again, I want to respect your time, but I’m infinitely interested in you sharing your testimony here. One of the things that let me know that you were the real deal is you came to Pastor Jackson Lallmeyer’s church, and he is a man who is obsessed with leading people to Christ.

(Speaker 3)
And you are a man obsessed with leading people to Christ. And I watched when you finished your speech, when no one was looking, no one was around, you finished a show. testimony, you finished sharing the gospel with people, you finished evangelizing, no one’s around, no one’s watching, the cameras are off, and you are shaking the hands of everybody. You’re shaking their hands. But before that, you asked anybody if they needed prayer, if they wanted to come up and you would pray specifically and directly with them. And this flies in the face of conventional wisdom so much.

(Speaker 3)
I’m not attacking celebrity pastors, but there’s a lot of celebrity pastors that kind of hide behind the velvet rope. And as soon as they finish speaking, they get up and leave. And maybe there’s a place to do that or a reason for that. But you sat there and you said, if anybody wants prayer, I want to pray for you right now. And I watched poor people, rich people, lost people, alcoholics, drug addicts. I watched people that are going through something, and they saw, here, Darryl Strawberry, rookie of the year, Major League Baseball great, household name, a guy who could pick up the phone today and call Will Clark, and he would answer.

(Speaker 3)
You could pick up the phone and call Mayor Rudy Giuliani, he would answer. A guy who has access to the best is saying, come here and I want to pray for you. And you weren’t hitting people up for money.

(Speaker 1)
It was just so awesome to see. Can I ask you, what are you thinking in that moment when you’re asking everybody to come up and pray? What are you thinking at that moment? Because to me, it was very moving. Well, the first thing is I work for the Lord. And the gospel is free.

(Speaker 1)
The gospel is not about getting paid. The gospel is not about entertaining people. The gospel is there to set people free. I know that. I’m an evangelist. That’s what I’ve been called.

(Speaker 1)
My spirit and anointing that’s inside of me is there to lead the people and lead them back to God so they can repent to God and ask God to help them so he can restore them. You’re not going to get restored by being a brand. I’m not a celebrity pastor. I’m not a celebrity preacher. I’m Daryl Strawberry. I’m born again.

(Speaker 1)
I’ve been redeemed. So God has used my platform to go catch the loss, go catch the hurting, bring them back home to him, because all I got to do is bring them back home to him. It’s not me that’s doing it. What people don’t understand, they’re looking at me and the natural, but it’s not me that is doing it. It’s the supernatural underneath that, which is God himself. And that’s what he does.

(Speaker 1)
He brings people back home so they will not be lost and spend eternal, Life in hell. He does not want he does not want one to spend eternal there, but god knows himself But that is eternal if you do not come to him and it’s very simple I listen clay. I tell people all the time. The bible is a simple book for complicated people Okay, the book is very simple once you surrender to god, but we’re complicated people So we want to change what’s in it and we want to add to it and you cannot change and you cannot add to it. And that’s why you have to read it for yourself and understand how simple it is. Yes, it’s complicated at the beginning.

(Speaker 1)
You don’t know it. Yes, because you haven’t gotten the revelation of who Jesus is. It’s not until you get that revelation and that I have had that revelation a long time ago. I’ve been converted a long time ago. My eyes are clear. It’s not about me. I’m not a brand.

(Speaker 1)
I’m about the souls that are out there. Souls are being lost. Souls are, because they’re not being taught the right way. They’re not being taught how to come to Jesus and not just come to him, but going through a follow -up and getting disciples so you can experience Jesus for yourself. So, so many people get lost.

(Speaker 3)
My goal is that none get lost. Lord, please use me mightily for your kingdom to win as many as I can before I get out of here. I don’t care about anything else.

(Speaker 1)
I care about winning souls. Sir, two final questions for you. My question here, first one, is for anybody watching this show or listening to this show or consuming this content and however they find it, what do you say to somebody who’s out there pursuing happiness outside of pursuing holiness first? Somebody who’s seeking the happiness that the world offers, the superficial happiness, the things, the cars, the money, the fame, outside of a relationship with Jesus Christ? Happiness is not a stuff. Happiness is in holiness.

(Speaker 1)
Holiness, once you arrive to that place and you find holiness in your life, you will be happy for the rest of your life. You know why? Because I know where I’m going once I die. And I almost left here last year with a massive heart attack. So God could, if I pass away, I was on my way home. Eternal life.

(Speaker 1)
People don’t realize that this is not eternal life here. These things are not important. Too many people are trying to embed themselves with a car. Cars, it’s a car. You’re going to look at it and buy a new one. Yeah, it’s a brand name.

(Speaker 1)
Guess what? It’s going to drive you just like another car to where you want to get. Oh, because you look good, but see, you’re trying to fix yourself looking good. with scenes instead of him. If you fix yourself with holiness and righteousness, you will find true happiness. I am happy.

(Speaker 1)
Do I have tough days sometimes? Yes, just like everybody else. But my joy is in the Lord. My joy is not in all these other things that people make out to be here. If it was so great, then why are there so many celebrities in Hollywood getting married and can’t stay together? their happiness was great and then it happened every time.

(Speaker 1)
Explain that to me because they don’t have the joy and the holiness of the Lord to keep them together. So they break up and they go somewhere else to search for somebody else.

(Speaker 24)
I did it before too.

(Speaker 3)
I know what it’s like. I know it’s true, but I am so happy in my life. My contentment with my wife is because I walk in holiness with God over my feelings. Wow. Okay. Final question I have here for you.

(Speaker 3)
And I’ve got a guy in the studio here, Steve, you’re on, are you on like five?

(Speaker 23)
Mike 5.

(Speaker 43)
Okay, let me turn on Mike 5 here.

(Speaker 3)
I think, Steve, can you hear me now? Can you hear me now, Steve? Are you there? I can. Check 1. Maybe hop on Z’s mic there, Steve.

(Speaker 3)
Let’s have you hop on Z’s mic. Let’s get you on Z’s. Steve, try that one.

(Speaker 42)
Try that there.

(Speaker 3)
So, are you on there?

(Speaker 38)
Okay, you’re there?

(Speaker 27)
No?

(Speaker 28)
Okay, let’s try it.

(Speaker 32)
We’re going to get it.

(Speaker 13)
Okay, Z. No, nothing there.

(Speaker 3)
Try this one. Steve, you good?

(Speaker 42)
Try it one more time.

(Speaker 3)
Check, check.

(Speaker 29)
There we go.

(Speaker 3)
Okay, so here we go. So Steve is in the studio, and Darrell, I did not plan this, but Steve Currington, he’s a mortgage lender, and he has been sober for how many days, Steve? Oh, days. It’s in years now. How many years? So it’ll be, it’s eight years this year.

(Speaker 3)
Eight years. 2016 and I’ve known I’ve known Steve and of Steve for two decades. I’m sorry nine years this year nine crazy Yeah, and I’ve known Steve and of Steve and see people know you as the super successful guy But you got sober nine years ago And you’ve been a very you become like a very very different person and a dear friend of mine And you just happen to be in the studio in the office walking by and I’m like, oh, come on. Yeah, it’s incredible So like Darryl strawberries on here. So what question do you have as a guy who’s recently?

(Speaker 42)
You know, in the last decade, I mean, you’ve just turned away from alcohol and drugs.

(Speaker 1)
What question would you have for Daryl? Well, I don’t know a lot of your faith history, but what I would want to ask is, like, how have you leaned on your faith to connect and support other players in the game during the highs and lows of their career? And have you been able to do that? Because I don’t know if that was during your baseball career or if you found God later. But since then, how have you been able to to lean on your faith to support those other players and maybe make a real difference in somebody’s life that you played the game with?

(Speaker 1)
That’s a good question, Steve, because I’ve just actually been living my life ever since I retired. And it’s been over some 27 years living a different way. being in action, not just really talking about it. I mean, they follow me. And when I first started in this journey with God and getting on, they were like, yeah, let’s see how this long this is going to last. And it’s been over 20 years and it’s still waiting for me to come back.

(Speaker 41)
A lot of them, because what happens with athletes, athletes never change.

(Speaker 1)
They still stay stuck in the same place. They still stuck it with the uniform on and Talking about what it used to be like and talking about, you know, what it’s like today for the players today I’m not stuck in that place anymore. I’m in ministry. I never I live a new life I’m on the road all the time So I’m always focused on helping those that God sent me to and those that I played ball with they see me at reunions And they see me that I don’t go down to the bars when I come to the reunions. I don’t I don’t be in the chitchats about, you know, all the stuff we used to do. That’s over.

(Speaker 1)
You got to get past all that. And I think a lot of times guys can’t get past it. I’ve seen so many athletes and their career after playing is actually not been able to move forward. They’re not going anywhere. They’re pretty much stuck in the same mentality. I’m not that person, you know, they put people tell a realized that when you come to Christ, you have a complete overhaul transformation.

(Speaker 1)
of your mindset. It’s totally different. You live a different way, you act a different way, and you talk a different way. People don’t understand how can you do that? Well, I’ve been transformed, you know, and I can, a lot of times you can’t explain it.

(Speaker 3)
guys that you play with because they don’t have the belief system like you. And that’s what I run across. You know, they most of them think was fake. He’ll be back, you know, and back to what and it’s still waiting for me to come back. So I’m actually I’m actually proud of the fact that I am a man of God and that I’ve been Rescued and been able to get on the other side of life and being able to help so many other people Experience what I experienced but most of the times most our police don’t want this, you know Because you know why it takes work to do this and it takes change and it takes it takes a commitment To do it, but it also takes a man to step up and say, you know what?

(Speaker 1)
I had some failures and I needed you need to be well and I need a savior in my life brought on Awesome. Daryl, I cannot tell you how much we appreciate every second you’ve invested in our audience today.

(Speaker 3)
Thank you for all you do. Is there a website that people can go to learn more about your ministry? There’s somebody listening to today’s show that would like to hire you to come speak to their church or come speak to their group, or they’d like to bring you in or maybe connect with your ministry. What’s the best way for people to find the ministry work that you’re doing there, sir? The best way is to find FindingYourWay . com is our ministry, and you can go to DarrylStrawberry18 on Instagram, because I post a lot of things that I do, and it’s most of it is my faith with God and walking with God to encourage people and help people grow.

(Speaker 1)
FindingYourWay . com, that’s the website.

(Speaker 10)
FindingYourWay .

(Speaker 16)
com, that’s Darryl Strawberry.

(Speaker 5)
Sir, I appreciate you so much. Have a blessed and great rest of your day, sir. All right. You guys too, Clay. Thanks. Take care.

(Speaker 5)
Bye -bye. One of our accountants had said, you’ve got to meet this guy, Clay.

(Speaker 3)
So we ended up meeting with Clay, and he’s helped us go from Right before we open the third location now to six locations and so we’ve more than doubled our revenue. And these are ground up build gyms, and so it’s not the barrier for entry is pretty high. It’s 20 plus staff at each location.

(Speaker 4)
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. So huge win. 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?

(Speaker 4)
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? 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. His staff has worked in every industry. He’s got videographers, web designers.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, just for the fact of like, just the website alone is worth the $1 ,700.

(Speaker 6)
Just the ability to take any of their proven systems, whether that’s a marketing thing, or whether that’s a staffing thing, like one thing done in the month, it pays for itself. And then to understand this, there’s a part of where, you know, some maybe some week, you may be like, well, you know what, I’m not getting a whole lot out of this call. But the bottom line is, it’s like when you read the Bible, there’s times you’re just reading it, and then you’re like, You know what I really and then you read it that one time and it’s like God really speaks to your heart and the whole truth is it’s like there’s no way that you can get that kind of value for $1 ,700 to have a whole team of coaches.

(Speaker 3)
graphic designers, web developers, anybody that has that type of knowledge, you know, in your back pocket. And then in the whole thing is, is run your business with being somewhat conservative, make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time. But by doing that, you have that that skill set, you have that you have those tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like, it’s just like the cost of doing business, like just just it. That’s a, that’s what I think there’s a, there’s a, sometimes the payment we make, I feel like is peace of mind, even because there have been multiple times throughout the years that we will, we will either be butting heads on something.

(Speaker 3)
Um, we’re super confused about something. We’re fearful about something, something in the markets changed and it’s a quick call to clay. 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 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.

(Speaker 6)
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 You have the resourcefulness. Maybe today’s show is the show you need to hear, because this is a couple. They started this business together out of their house.

(Speaker 5)
And they’ve now grown it into a multimillion -dollar, super successful company.

(Speaker 3)
And I’ve had the opportunity to work with them in a consulting or coaching capacity over these past five or six years. And I am so excited to have them on today’s show. With that being said, Amber and Charles Cola, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 5)
Amber, how are you?

(Speaker 6)
Great.

(Speaker 5)
Thanks, Clay.

(Speaker 3)
It’s awesome to be on here with you. Yes, we are excited. Okay, so I got to ask this real quick, because people think you’re a hologram.

(Speaker 4)
How long have we had the opportunity to work with you?

(Speaker 5)
Or how long have we worked with you guys together from a kind of a coaching relationship? We probably started back in 2017. So yeah, we’re looking at seven, eight years. Yeah, coming up on eight probably, a little over seven. And from that time, I mean, you guys have experienced tremendous personal growth and business growth. I mean,

(Speaker 5)
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? com? Absolutely. 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.

(Speaker 3)
So we ended up meeting with Clay, and he’s helped us go from, Right before we opened the third location now to six locations. And so we’ve more than doubled our revenue. And these are ground up build gyms. And so it’s not the barrier for entry is pretty high. It’s 20 plus staff at each location. So yeah, it’s been a lot as far as running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when and how, training us on that.

(Speaker 3)
Clay’s helped a ton. We would not be where we’re at without him.

(Speaker 39)
So huge win.

(Speaker 6)
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’s 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 doing personal training to individual clients in your actual home.

(Speaker 6)
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 colawfitness . com? Well, I think when you’re starting something like that, you don’t see bigger picture. You’re not thinking that far ahead.

(Speaker 5)
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 as a of a survival. And also, we couldn’t afford furniture to go in our formal living room, a formal dining room. And so so we were kind of stuck in a situation where Charles needed a place to train and he had a full clientele and. we just were, why don’t we find like a big universal piece, stick it in the living room that cause it’s just an empty room. And, um, the dining room became more of the office.

(Speaker 5)
And so we bought a big universal piece and threw down some rubber flooring, ripped up the carpet and put some big mirrors on the wall. And, um, 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 23)
But yeah, a lot of it was fear of failure.

(Speaker 3)
I was like, I want to make sure that, you know, I can provide for my family. And we were trying to just, I was every lead I had and follow up with every client I trained, want to make sure that it gave me good 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 there, out of our living room. And so it became a revolving door of fitness. And then Amber also did some hair.

(Speaker 3)
So she had a hair salon in the back of the house. So it’s like a training studio in the front of the house and then a hair salon in the back of the house. So yeah, the win. Now, I want to share this story because I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this story with you, but I think our listeners need to hear this because your story is better than mine. But let me just show this to the listeners real quick here. If we go to 111th and Memorial in Tulsa, Oklahoma, my wife and I, we were 20 years old -ish, and I remember I was so excited to be able to build our house.

(Speaker 3)
I remember telling my wife, honey, we can afford to build a house. We are going to build a house, a brand new house. She was so excited. I remember we were driving down Riverside. She was like, we’re going to buy a house? I go, yeah.

(Speaker 3)
She’s like, we’re going to build a house? I’m going, yeah, because we’re a young couple.

(Speaker 29)
We’ve just been married a couple of years.

(Speaker 3)
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. So I built this house from scratch. And so my neighbor comes by, Wendy.

(Speaker 40)
God bless her.

(Speaker 3)
I’m not gonna mention her last name. Wendy comes by and she’s like, hey, what are you doing? I go, what do you mean? Because I’m having like 40 couples a week that are walking up to my front door, hanging a right at my office. And there’s, not kidding, there’s probably eight DJ vans in my backyard. And she’s like, what are you doing?

(Speaker 3)
And I’m going, well, what do you mean what I do? She’s like, this is a residential neighborhood. What are you doing? I said, well, I’m running a business. She said, you can’t run a business here.

(Speaker 2)
So I had back here in the backyard.

(Speaker 6)
No kidding. I had eight different vans 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 4 in the morning. And our last guy would come home at 3 in the morning. And it was just a wild thing.

(Speaker 6)
I got to ask you, with the gym, Amber, how early were people coming to, workout to do squats and bench press and cardio. What time were they showing up? How many people were showing up?

(Speaker 27)
Oh, yeah.

(Speaker 3)
So Charles is he’s relentless and he’ll fill any hour he can. And so he would start as early as 5 a . m. with his first client. And, 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.

(Speaker 3)
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 out together. So it became this big, you know, workout session together. It was awesome. And this is a real thing. Now, Amber, I’m not looking for anything super salacious.

(Speaker 3)
But I mean, did you ever have awkward situations?

(Speaker 13)
I mean, because you’re sleeping there.

(Speaker 6)
You’re living there. Do you guys ever have just like, oh. 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.

(Speaker 6)
And I’m like, get out of there. That’s my bathroom, you sicko. I mean, did you ever have just weird client interactions? Oh, yeah. totally. From, you know, our kitchen became like the staff break room.

(Speaker 6)
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 that his client was here. So he, he looks at me kind of like, uh, and I was like, just, just go. I got like some cleaning up barbecue sauce out of the kitchen. Um, one morning I had gotten out of the shower and I come out of the bathroom, which is at the top of the stairs.

(Speaker 6)
I, and I’m just making that short little. jagged over to my bedroom door. And so I had my hair in a towel and a robe on and I opened the door and right there at the bottom of the stairs, Charles has one of the clients doing calf raises.

(Speaker 3)
And they just, good morning. And I thought, get this out of my house. Yeah, the trainers napping on the couch between clients and our middle son was in pre -K at the time. And so he’d come home half the day. And he’d sit on the couch. He was just so little, his feet would just stick straight off the couch.

(Speaker 3)
And he’d try and watch cartoons. And there would be someone on like a ab mat on the floor right in front of the TV doing crunches. 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 was in on it. I just remember when I was building DJConnection . com, I would train my DJs out of my house.

(Speaker 3)
So we would practice announcements, like, ladies and gentlemen, coming up in just a moment, we’re going to introduce the bride and the groom. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the intro. And we would practice, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, we’re going to be cutting the cake. Once again, we got the bride, we got the groom, we got an actor. It should be exciting. And I’m practicing, and they have a script, and I’m practicing.

(Speaker 3)
So adult males are in my house, and we’re practicing introducing. Because, you know, we grew DJ Connection to do 4 ,000 weddings a year. So I’m training 30 disc jockey. 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 the cake, because she heard it so much. She’s like, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, the Soul Train.

(Speaker 3)
She knew, because it was like, I don’t think if you’re watching today’s show and these stories, you can’t relate to it. That’s OK, but I’m just trying to make sure we’re getting this idea. This is a real couple that I would now classify as a super success story, but they had to start somewhere. And it’s not about resourcefulness. It’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness.

(Speaker 3)
Again, 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 3)
Wow, I want to be the next Koloff Fitness. Wow, these guys are really doing it. I want to be a kolofffitness . 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?

(Speaker 3)
What’s the most important thing? I just had a guy today, huge ministry, huge ministry, multimillion dollar massive ministry called me and said, what’s the one thing I can do to grow my ministry? And I said, buddy, I’m 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.

(Speaker 3)
I’ll go back and forth between Charles and Amber. And for sake of time, we’ll just go back and forth rapid fire.

(Speaker 5)
So here we go. And Charles, by the way, you get 60 seconds on the clock for each answer. So here we go. Box number one, you have to figure out your revenue goals. You just have to know your revenue goals. You have to know your revenue goals.

(Speaker 5)
What are your gross revenue goals? What are your weekly revenue goals? What are your annual revenue goals? You have to know your revenue goals.

(Speaker 4)
Charles, why do you have to know your revenue goals?

(Speaker 3)
Yes, you have to know your revenue goes 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. 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 3)
We know how many clients that we have to service to hit those goals for our set overhead costs. And yeah, so you got to know how many units of items you have to sell every week, every day. And so we track that stuff.

(Speaker 6)
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. And you track this stuff. And so we’ve got wonderful members of our team. We’ve got a young member of our team named Natalie who’s learning all of this because she’s developing into a coach. And when you work with a new client, a lot of times the client’s going to have a bias to focus on just marketing, just branding.

(Speaker 6)
But you have to know these numbers.

(Speaker 39)
Amber, anything else you want to talk about as far as the numbers?

(Speaker 3)
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? Well, I think the numbers, it’s like the steering wheel that steers the ship. I mean, if you don’t understand the numbers, you have no idea where you’re going. And so I think that’s probably the biggest thing.

(Speaker 3)
Like it just, 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 numbers. I think they feel like numbers are overwhelming and they try to make numbers way too difficult. So I think that’s the biggest thing. This is such wisdom, folks.

(Speaker 3)
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 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.

(Speaker 5)
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, and I had to think about the average client, 90 % of them are not willing to work as hard as you guys. Most of my clients are willing to work 40 hours a week or 50 hours a week. Some will work 60 hours a week.

(Speaker 5)
But nobody is willing to go sprint from 4 AM to 8 PM, 10 PM every day if need be. Your husband is willing to do that. Why is it important for you guys, Charles, to define the hours that you’re going to work?

(Speaker 6)
The hours that you’re not going to work, block out time for the family cruise, for the family trip. Why is that an important box there, Charles? 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.

(Speaker 4)
It’s important for us to hold the Sunday as a Sabbath, as a day off. Other than that, I like to work. 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 we try to look at taking time off.

(Speaker 4)
Well, I would say the biggest thing that we always talk about in marriage, family, and work, expectations and boundaries. Those two things have to be very clear all the time. So as long as he understands what my expectations are and I need him to fulfill a husband role in addition to working, as long as he understands that these are my expectations and then these are my boundaries 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.

(Speaker 4)
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 3)
And so running remotely and running all that stuff, we’ve got to kind of say, how do we want to live our lives? Like you’d say, Charles, how do you really want to live it? You got to kind of map out and clearly define that. For us, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, those days are just all in on Zoom calls, training, coaching, working with staff. And so those days are really, really full days. And then the rest of the time, like on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, those are all lighter days that we don’t block in a lot of meetings.

(Speaker 3)
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 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 to kind of grow the brand and have some meta perspective on how I want to continue to grow. So there’s just So much, again, for folks, if you want to learn entrepreneurship, this is real people.

(Speaker 3)
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, Koloff Fitness is a company that’s going places. I’m not prophetic. I’m not claiming to have some view of the future. I just see patterns. And I work with clients, and I help them implement patterns that work. And I also know of the clients that’ll work.

(Speaker 3)
Nothing works unless you work, right? So nothing will work unless you work. And I look at the co -law of family, and I look at the fuel that you put into the business and the diligence that you bring, and I’m telling you, folks, this is a brand that’s going somewhere. If you’re looking for a career, check it out, colawfitness . com.

(Speaker 3)
Box number four and five, these kind of fit in together. Box number four is you have to determine your unique value proposition. That’s a unique thing. What is it that makes you unique? What is it that separates you from the competition? If you’re watching today’s show, let’s think about your website, your print piece, your auto wraps, your business cards.

(Speaker 3)
Let’s think about everything about your business. the sights, the sounds, the smell, the ambiance, the employees you have. What is it that makes you different from the competition? What is it that makes Chick -fil -A successful when there are many other fast food chicken restaurants? 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 3)
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 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.

(Speaker 6)
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 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.

(Speaker 5)
Kobe Bryant never won a championship without Phil Jackson. By the way, Kobe Bryant played a lot of seasons without Phil Jackson. What is that magic formula? A big part of it is you have to understand your unique value proposition. So Amber, what is it that makes Koloff Fitness unique versus other fitness companies? Oh, for us, it’s culture, hands down.

(Speaker 5)
It’s culture all day long, and we worked really hard at our first location to set the culture. and make it what we wanted it to be. We wanted a fitness center that everybody could come be a part of. And I mean, not everybody, not everybody likes it, but It’s definitely our culture and that was something we knew we had to be able to duplicate when opening other locations. And so that is probably the number one piece that we we train, develop, encourage that we’re the biggest part of the company that we are still a part of is the culture part. Yep.

(Speaker 5)
And that’s the big part. I’m going to just kind of jump a little bit more unapologetic in our Christian component to that. Think of 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.

(Speaker 5)
All of Christianity summed up in one word is the word agape. That’s an unconditional love. We want to make sure that we actually hire people that are into customer service, likes people. Who’d have thought customer service, we’re going to find people that actually like to serve people. And so we really vet that pretty heavily on the front side, on the onboarding with our, you know, like our Christian culture. We play a video.

(Speaker 5)
We talk about who we are. We talk about the Christian faith. values, devotion to God, discipline in living, denial of self, dream great dreams for God’s glory, determination, status quo, of course. So the Christian side of it is kind of strong. So either people lean in or lean and lean back.

(Speaker 3)
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 it’s just better. And when you hire people to 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. 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 hair, McDonald’s, perpetually distracted, crayon mark tattoo person.

(Speaker 3)
You have a person posted 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. We want to make other people feel like the highlight of the day and hire people that are sincere. They’re just genuine that truly like people. If you do that well, you have to lock the doors to keep people out.

(Speaker 3)
I’m telling you folks, this is so important. I talked to a guy the other day who applied to work for your business, true story. And he’s kind of a gremlin. I know him because he didn’t get hired by a friend of mine. And so a friend of mine’s like, hey, I didn’t hire this guy. He’s kind of a gremlin.

(Speaker 3)
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 he’s got a big background in fitness, though. And he’s into fitness. And he played sports at a high level. And he’d love to come work for you, Clay.

(Speaker 3)
And I go, OK. And he’s like, yeah, I guess he applied for the Colaw guys a couple years ago, didn’t get the job. And I’m going, OK. Interesting. And I knew that 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.

(Speaker 3)
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 after they turn that frown upside down. But you have a certain standard there. Now, box number six, the three -legged marketing stool. At Colaf 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.

(Speaker 3)
And maybe this is true for you, maybe not. But a lot of my clients that come into my office I think about Stacey Purcell, long -time client, great lady. I think about Shaw Homes, shawhomes . com. We helped Shaw Homes grow from $14 million a year to $150 million a year.

(Speaker 3)
I think about Satellite Phones, Tina, 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, they have not a three -legged marketing stool.

(Speaker 6)
No, no, no. They have a variety of things that might work. And through tracking, we start to figure out what doesn’t work. And so with Stacey Purcell with her wonderful business, we found out that LinkedIn didn’t work 100 % of the time, thus saving her $8 ,000 a month by turning it off. 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.

(Speaker 6)
Got a lot of clicks, got a lot of views. No leads. Another client, I’m using a stream of consciousness, another client of mine, they were doing mailers, getting zero response.

(Speaker 5)
Another client of mine was doing billboards to the tune of $6 ,000 a month between all their locations. And as you look at the different businesses and you track, you can really, really become much more profitable by nailing down a three -legged marketing stool. 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? Yeah, well, I would say none of that is my part of the business.

(Speaker 5)
And I’m so thankful. I hate marketing. But I would, what I would say to that is that has everything to do with like, we were talking about your numbers and the tracking. So you’re talking about tracking these things. That’s my side, the financial side, and I want to know that when the money’s going out that that return is coming back right and so. I do that side of it with we talked 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.

(Speaker 5)
So you may be able to talk more on the marketing. That’s your. Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, we’ve tracked where they come from. Sometimes you do get clicks or you have like sometimes Facebook shows you make. It’s really not getting people to walk through the door and convert people into members and convert people into higher ticket items.

(Speaker 5)
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 4)
And so we can really kind of see in our industry, we market in a five -mile radius, really heavy.

(Speaker 6)
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 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.

(Speaker 6)
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.

(Speaker 3)
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 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 done that. We’ve gone from three locations to six and we’ve more than doubled our revenue. So it’s been a huge win.

(Speaker 3)
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 just because that’s what everybody else is doing. And I think another part of that is everybody has marketing advice for you.

(Speaker 3)
Everybody, everybody thinks that it’s a marketing guru because they see ads. And I don’t think that’s true either.

(Speaker 27)
Now, I’m going to ask you this, Charles.

(Speaker 3)
And I’m not ready for your answer yet. I’ve got to mentally prepare myself for this. But you do not have the ability to not be honest here, OK? So a guy called me here today. And I thought, man, I’m going to send this to him right away, OK? Guy reaches out to me.

(Speaker 3)
He’s in the construction space, OK? And he goes, you know what? 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? And I said, well, we charge you $1 ,700 a month.

(Speaker 3)
So it’s less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. That’s what it is.

(Speaker 38)
We have a weekly meeting.

(Speaker 3)
And we follow a proven system. And anyway, and I said, there’s accountability. So there’s kind of three parts to it.

(Speaker 5)
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. And 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.

(Speaker 5)
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? He goes, Clay has helped me grow my company, claystairs . com. He’s helped me get into political office.

(Speaker 5)
But he kind of is like an irritant who follows up on the same things every week until they get done. So I wanted 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? 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 5)
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 want to run a great company, 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.

(Speaker 5)
And for me, I thought I’ve always needed that. And I was just like, okay, Charles, stay humble, stay coachable. And that’s the biggest thing is most business owners, they don’t have the ability to stay, keep a humble, coachable heart and be willing to grow. When you work with somebody that has a proven system, they’ve worked in every industry, they’ve got a team of videographers, graphic designers, web developers, people that will help you grow. 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.

(Speaker 5)
You always have continuous training staff.

(Speaker 3)
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 going to be a limited resource. And Clay creates the systems, helps you with document creation, file organization, and make sure you’ve got that stuff. So you have a proven template. It’s really more like a franchisable prototype that you can handle the lowest skill set. that the great people are great, but Clay’s been really good at shooting me straight.

(Speaker 3)
If you have a humble, coachable heart and you’re willing to grow and you take two or three action items every week, next thing you know, 50 weeks, 52 weeks in a year, you’ve got a bunch of systems, you got a way better website, you got checklist workflows, you got staff following systems, you got backup for each position, because if you don’t have people in the bullpen, you’re going to be held hostage. And so you want to make sure that you got the right systems, checklist and personnel ready to go. And to run six different businesses 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 great for helping set up those systems. So yeah, but it’s 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 trying to have the highest desire to make you grow into a better person and to help your company grow and be better.

(Speaker 3)
And for me, that’s a good coach. And that’s why I like working with Ryan and Clay. Amber, I wanted to tap into your wisdom on this. There was a statement that was made years ago by Robert Kiyosaki. It really resonated with me. I heard this about 20 years ago. But he said, amateurs don’t have a coach.

(Speaker 3)
Professionals do have a coach. And at the time, I thought, you know what? From a legal perspective, I probably need a coach. a coach or mentor to help me. So I hired wintersking . com, and I’ve used that company for, what, 10 plus years?

(Speaker 3)
And it’s really helped me.

(Speaker 37)
And I thought to myself, from an accounting perspective, I need probably to have her a coach.

(Speaker 3)
So I hired CCK. And so in the areas where I want to improve, I really do firmly believe in having a coach. When I wanted to become a better speaker, I hired Carlton Pearson. And I worked with Carlton for as long as he would work with me, because at the time, he was the top televangelist in America. And he was a phenomenal verbal communicator.

(Speaker 5)
So but it wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t coachable. and if he wasn’t willing to coach. And you guys have done such a great job over these years implementing, and I just see the future is so bright here. So when we look at your website now, could you talk about just that weekly meeting 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.

(Speaker 5)
They want to ready, set, let’s go. But you guys, every week we go to colawfitness . com. Every week we enhance the website. Every week we enhance the scripts. week we enhance the value proposition.

(Speaker 5)
Every week we’re doing little tweaks that are improving the brand. Could you talk about that mindset of that weekly improvement? With your numbers, you have to have good feedback tools, some key performance KPIs or key performance things you look at for sales over cancellations and how much dollars you’re spending on marketing. When we track that on a regular basis, we can see that we’re doing well or not doing well. We make pivots. We get coaching feedback from you on best practices.

(Speaker 6)
And one thing 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 I got an MBA in school, but I’m telling you, real life is so much more important. And having good people that have good feelers.

(Speaker 6)
It’s like 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 what are the key things that impact us, it’s going to be signups, signups over cancels, what are those signups, which ones 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 roleplay that over and over again, making sure your staff understands how to communicate effectively with the customer, roleplay, roleplay, 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 got staff that knows how to communicate well, how to show the product offering benefits over cost, and then show them that, hey, if you don’t do it, this is what won’t happen.

(Speaker 6)
And you want to show them that you’re going to really change their lives 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 it, you close a lot of deals, you upgrade things, and you change a lot of lives.

(Speaker 3)
Well, one thing, Clay, I think with the coaching is it’s been

(Speaker 5)
beneficial.

(Speaker 13)
It’s kind of like you’re our blind side or a blind spot coach.

(Speaker 3)
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. And I think you’re super helpful to kind of bring us back in and go, hey, So, you kind of keep us focused, separating the emotions from it.

(Speaker 3)
And I’ve heard a lot of people say to you, or in conversations we’ll have, and they’ll say, yeah, but you don’t understand landscaping. It’s not about understanding landscaping. We don’t talk fitness every week when we meet. But it’s about business, and it’s about where we’re going, and you really help keep us on track. There’s that accountability like you talked about. You guys are super valuable.

(Speaker 3)
Your set of eyes is super valuable. Yeah. I’ll just say this. I mean, colawfitness . com.

(Speaker 23)
If you’re looking for a career, folks, I’m telling you, check out colawfitness .

(Speaker 3)
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. We call that internal marketing.

(Speaker 3)
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? Box number nine, you’ve got to create repeatable systems.

(Speaker 3)
When you clean the bathrooms every day, when you clean the showers every day, when you clean the locker rooms every day, when you clean the equipment every day, when you clean all these things multiple times a day, when you change the light bulbs every day, when you have to maintain the fitness equipment every day, when you have to hire people every day. You have to build repeatable systems or your head will explode. You’ve got to have checklists and processes. Box number 11, you have to manage people. Manage people? What?

(Speaker 3)
This just in, we have to manage people. We’ve got to hire people, manage people. How do you hire? inspire, train, retain? We have to do it. Box number 11, you have to build a sustainable schedule.

(Speaker 3)
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 3)
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’ve got to have a high standard with the A players, the B players. You’ve got to coach up the B players to become A players. You’ve got to coach those A players to become future leaders. You’ve got to coach the C players out into another job or to the local bus station.

(Speaker 3)
You got to get them out of your life or they will ruin your business. And then box number 13, you got to make sure you’re making money. It’s not about how much money you make. It’s about how much money you keep. Box number 14, you have to sit down every day and say, What does God want me to do?

(Speaker 6)
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, 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 level.

(Speaker 6)
If you’re out there today and you are enjoying You’re in Joplin, Missouri. You’re in Texas. You are in all the different markets they’re in. Go to colawfitness .

(Speaker 3)
com. You can see the markets they’re in. I’m telling you, these guys are obsessed with wowing customers.

(Speaker 36)
So I’ll go to you, Amber.

(Speaker 15)
Then I’ll go to you, Charles.

(Speaker 3)
Everything we talked about doesn’t work if you scam your customers. 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. 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.

(Speaker 5)
And that’s our passion. We just love loving on people. That’s what made Charles such a phenomenal trainer when that was the initial start of the whole company. It was just his desire to help people and his love for them. And that was the same reason a million years ago that I did hair. So I think for us, that’s just what we’re passionate about.

(Speaker 5)
We’re passionate about people feeling like they are loved and they have value. And if we can pass that on through all of our front desk staff, if we can open more locations and bring in that many more people in these communities to feel loved, And also spread the gospel at the same time, you know, let them know God loves you, you know, and so that that’s really what drives our passion in the coaching and development even of our staff. And Charles Cole, I got two final questions for you. And your wife can one up you. So here we go, two final questions. Yes, sir.

(Speaker 5)
Yes, sir. There’s somebody out there right now, they’re thinking about coming to one of our in -person workshops. They know Tim Tebow is going to be there. They know Eric Trump will be there. 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?

(Speaker 5)
How would you describe them, sir? 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 a, like if you go to school and get a business degree, you, you know, they would say Clay’s program is, you know, business without the BS. There’s no bull crap. He tells you the proven system, real proven systems. that have grown in scale 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 and we’ve been able to

(Speaker 5)
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.

(Speaker 6)
We’re definitely engaged with our staff that runs these locations and they’re great lieutenants, 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 weren’t held hostage. to happen to do that. But all that to say, it’s going, it’s funny.

(Speaker 6)
He’s very, very, I mean, Clay’s pretty much like a comedian. It’s hilarious to listen to. If you’re willing to be coachable, if you’re willing to have a humble and coachable heart that’s willing to grow, he’ll show you proven processes.

(Speaker 3)
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, it’s just being more of a marathoner than a sprinter when you’re working with a coach. Just do your two or three action items and that two or three If you times that by 52 weeks, that’s 150 next day. You got a way better website. You got a way better lead funnel.

(Speaker 3)
You’ve got way better staff hired. You’ve got systems, checklists, workflows, all document created into mind -free templates, sales flows, training and development of staff, 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 5)
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. It’s very practical.

(Speaker 5)
You’re not sitting in this huge like ballroom with 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 whole lot of, there’s a whole lot to take home.

(Speaker 6)
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. Now, final question I have for you guys, just like Kola Fitness, I mean, you put your name right there on the brand, Kola Fitness. You can’t really go to thrivetimeshow . com without seeing my cranium. And so I take a lot of pride in what I do and wowing our customers. But for somebody out there, in particular, this guy today who’s in the construction space, who’s like, hey, what would coaching look like for me?

(Speaker 6)
Or is coaching for me? He’s reaching out. Charles, what do you say? What kind of impact has the coaching that we’ve had with you guys over these past seven or eight years made on the impact or the success? What kind of impact has the coaching made on colawfitness .

(Speaker 3)
com? 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.

(Speaker 5)
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 a whole data set 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, whether it’s a scaling it, how do I, you know, build this into a franchisable prototype? It’s all stuff that they’ve done over and over and over again. And to where you 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, that’s, it’s priceless.

(Speaker 5)
So, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I would say that, Yeah, we’re 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. Um, so that’s been huge. And like Charles was talking about the connections that we’ve made with other business owners, you know, Clay, you said at the very first conference we went to your network is your net worth.

(Speaker 5)
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 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 going to break the bank to go to Chili’s for dinner that you’re going to stay there. You’re going to stay in that influence of people. And every conference we meet new people and we’ve got some of the most awesome friends that own businesses across the country, from the cheesecake store to a pizza shop, right, to dog training, to, um, I mean, we’ve got, we’ve got some of our friends that live in cities that we have gyms and they’re members at our clubs and, and it’s just, it’s so powerful. It gives us a whole community to bounce ideas off of and get encouragement from. 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.

(Speaker 5)
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 6)
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. His staff has worked in every industry. He’s got videographers, web designers. I mean just for the fact of life.

(Speaker 6)
just just the website alone is worth the 1700 just the, 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 in the month is it was 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 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.

(Speaker 3)
And the whole truth is, it’s 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. But by doing that, you have that that skill set. You have that you have those. It’s tools on your tool belt.

(Speaker 3)
And I just think it’s just like, it’s just like the cost of doing business. Like, just, just understand it. That’s a, that’s what I think there’s a, there’s a, sometimes the payment we make, I feel like is peace of mind, even because there have been multiple times throughout the years that we will, we will either be butting heads on something.

(Speaker 35)
Um, we’re super confused about something.

(Speaker 3)
We’re fearful about something, something in the markets changed and it’s a quick call to clay.

(Speaker 34)
And so that quick call to Clay, and he’s outside the situation, and he has other data points.

(Speaker 20)
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.

(Speaker 3)
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 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. Inevitably, something like that will come up and like, that’s our peace of mind.

(Speaker 3)
Like he’s, you’re like a crucial team player. You know, well, you know, I it’s an honor to serve you guys and everybody’s watching right now. I encourage you if you’re looking for a career. Now, if you’re looking for a job, don’t fill out the form, but if you’re looking for a career, go to colawfitness . com because if you live in what Joplin, Missouri, Charles, Dallas, Texas, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Amber, we live in Topeka, Kansas. If you’re out there, Arlington, if you’re out there, go to colawfitness .

(Speaker 3)
com if you’re looking for a career and not just a job. Thank you, too, for carving time with your busy schedule. Oh, yeah. And I’m so glad to have you here today. Thanks, Clay. Thank you, Clay.

(Speaker 3)
Awesome. OK, Aaron Antis, guess who’s joining us for the December 4th and 5th, 2025 Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop? Whoa. Ooh. Santa Claus? No, we will not be joined by Santa Claus, but we will be joined by Eric Trump, the son of the 45th and now 47th president of these United States.

(Speaker 3)
And yes, Amanda Grace will be in the place. And yes, Dr. Stella Manuel will be there, so you know it will go well. Yes, we have Mel K in the house.

(Speaker 18)
Pastor Phil and Tammy Hotsenpiller will be hosting this event at their beautiful church right there in sunny Anaheim, California.

(Speaker 1)
Yes, folks, make this a December to remember.

(Speaker 33)
Make this a December to remember and join us at the two day interactive business growth workshops.

(Speaker 29)
For over 20 years, folks, I’ve been hosting business growth workshops, where we’re going to teach you marketing, sales systems, human resources, accounting, social media, marketing, branding, sales training, search engine optimization, accounting, workflow development, financial management, all this and more.

(Speaker 32)
How do you get started?

(Speaker 26)
Go to Thrivetimeshow .

(Speaker 3)
com. Again, how do you get tickets? Go to Thrivetimeshow . com and request tickets today. I’m Ron Burgundy.

(Speaker 11)
a Promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build.

(Speaker 31)
I mean, everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages them. Billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it.

(Speaker 3)
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. 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.

(Speaker 3)
And we get to tap into that knowledge. That’s going to be amazing. Now think about this for a second. Nothing is over until we decide it is. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? German?

(Speaker 29)
Forget it.

(Speaker 3)
He’s rolling. And it ain’t over now.

(Speaker 30)
The lineup continues to grow. And this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 3)
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 There’s a lot of togetherness. in closeness, camaraderie.

(Speaker 3)
So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to ThriveTimeShow . com, go to ThriveTimeShow . com.

(Speaker 29)
When you go to ThriveTimeShow .

(Speaker 3)
com, you’ll go there, you’ll request a ticket, boom. Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now. Just text 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.

(Speaker 3)
And 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 3)
That is not actually bilingual. That’s just saying Juan for a Juan. 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?

(Speaker 3)
So Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past seven, eight years. So let’s talk about it. I’ll tee up the thing and then you tell me what you’re going to learn here, okay? Okay. You’re going to learn marketing, marketing and branding. What are we going to learn about marketing and branding?

(Speaker 3)
Oh, yeah. We’re going to 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 name. You’re gonna learn some intricacies of how you can do that.

(Speaker 3)
You’re gonna learn sales. So many people struggle to sell. First of all, people are, you either have great people or you have people who suck. And so it can be a challenge, you know, 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 really good at selecting great ones. And we have a process we teach about how to find great people.

(Speaker 3)
When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable. that they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people all pulling in the same direction. So we’re going to 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. We’re going to teach you time management.

(Speaker 3)
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 workshop.

(Speaker 3)
Now let me tell you how the format is set up here to get books. This is a two -day interactive 15 Think about this, folks. It’s two days. Each day, it starts at 7 a .

(Speaker 10)
m.

(Speaker 3)
and it goes until 5 p . m. So from 7 a . m. to 5 p . m.

(Speaker 3)
, 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 after every teaching session? I actually think it’s the best part about it.

(Speaker 28)
workshops because here’s what happens.

(Speaker 3)
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, 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.

(Speaker 27)
And what’s awesome about this is we literally answer every single question that any person asks.

(Speaker 3)
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. And then we take a 15 minute break to stretch.

(Speaker 22)
And this is also your opportunity to meet some of the great speakers like Pastor Dave Scarlett.

(Speaker 3)
You could meet Mel K. You could meet Amanda Grace. You could meet Dr. Stella Emanuel. You could just grab a coffee. You could find some alone time.

(Speaker 26)
You could get lost in the bathroom. You could try to go and get a photo with one of the speakers.

(Speaker 3)
You could try to photobomb a photo where someone else is getting a photo with the speakers. You could go attempt to find your phone, wallet, and your keys. That’s a good idea.

(Speaker 25)
That means you have less than 3 % of our population that’s even self -employed.

(Speaker 3)
So you only have 3 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, we can typically double this. No hyperbole. No exaggeration.

(Speaker 3)
I 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.

(Speaker 3)
There’s businesses we’ve grown eight X. There’s so many examples you can see at 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. add to that Eric Trump, the man that runs the Trump organization. You say, Clay, I still I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more.

(Speaker 3)
OK, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days. True story.

(Speaker 24)
We have we cater in the food.

(Speaker 3)
And because I keep it simple, I literally bring in the same food both days for lunch.

(Speaker 23)
Who’s with me?

(Speaker 22)
Let’s go.

(Speaker 3)
It was an incredible Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen. Someone says, I want more. This is not enough. Give me more. OK. I’m not going to mention their names right now because I’m working on it behind the scenes here.

(Speaker 3)
But we just continue to add.

(Speaker 21)
more and more success stories.

(Speaker 3)
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.

(Speaker 20)
Go there right now.

(Speaker 3)
Thrivetimeshow . com. Request a ticket for the two -day interactive event.

(Speaker 12)
Again, the event’s going to be on December 4th and 5th in sunny Anaheim, California. Great weather. Make this a December to remember.

(Speaker 19)
Eric Trump, the man who leads the Trump Organization.

(Speaker 18)
It’s going to be a blasty blast. There’s no upsells.

(Speaker 8)
Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible.

(Speaker 11)
And there’s somebody out there right now, you’re watching and you’re like, but I already signed up for this incredible other

(Speaker 17)
called Smoke Your Way to Thin.

(Speaker 8)
You think that’s gonna change your life? I promise you, this’ll be 10 times better than that. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. Don’t do the smoke -your -way -to -thin conference. That is.. .

(Speaker 11)
I’ve tried it. Don’t do it. Chain smoking is not a viable…

(Speaker 8)
I mean, it is life -changing. It is life -changing. If you become a chain smoker, it is life -changing. It’s not the best weight -loss program though. Right.

(Speaker 17)
Not really.

(Speaker 4)
So 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 thrivetimeshow . com. Again, that’s Aaron Antis. I’m Clay Clark. And reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two -day interactive Thrive Time Show Workshop in beautiful Anaheim, California. I’m Vince Suzuki, also from Sarasota, Florida.

(Speaker 4)
He dragged me here. Yup, was here in 2018 and it changed my business and I built another business and now I’m here to do it again with this business. Yeah, I’m a brand strategist and it’s been really easy to go to a lot of events like this and just leave really in your head like what to do next and already there’s the strategic, step -by -step, real -life implementation that we can do to our business and I’m super excited to be here and very excited that Eric Hump is here and that is going to be epic. Hi, my name is Erica and it has been amazing being here at the conference. I’m learning so much.

(Speaker 16)
Everything is perfect for me.

(Speaker 15)
Clay Clark, man, he is one character.

(Speaker 4)
That’s a good word for him, character. Yeah, that is it.

(Speaker 7)
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, she just lets him be Clay Clark. I mean, so, you know, he’s endorsed by his mother 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 at five o ‘clock in the morning.

(Speaker 7)
Oh, it’s incredible. Yeah. He’s, he’s like, he’s, he’s a machine. He’s a machine. But his, you know, I have problems with my company starting at 9 o ‘clock. He has hundreds of people showing up at 5 a .

(Speaker 7)
m.

(Speaker 8)
in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Man, he’s a leader of a leader. He’s a fantastic young man.

(Speaker 3)
No, he is. And the greatest thing that’ll come out of all of it, aside from winning the presidency of the United States, we’ll get to that in a second. Was an everlasting friendship between clay and I because I’m telling you there’s not too many people in the world that have this man’s backbone and his Tenaciousness and his perseverance and so buddy. I love you and to general Flynn. Thank you. You guys are incredible You guys are incredible warriors.

(Speaker 3)
You guys are incredible incredible warrior.

(Speaker 4)
So thank you my friend plate Clark is here somewhere Where’s my buddy clay clay is 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 4)
I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. Four thousand percent from February to February. Now I can better that. OK, Clay, I don’t think you know this.

(Speaker 4)
I don’t think you know this. I’m pinching myself. And if I cry, forgive me. In the last two and a half days, we have better. our entire month of February and the last two and a half days. So and the phone’s blowing up.

(Speaker 4)
Everything’s just blowing up. You’re right. It is like a rocket ship. So we’re pinching ourselves. Actually I learned at the Academy King’s Point in New York Octa nonverba. Watch what a person does.

(Speaker 4)
not what they say. Under siege my family’s fight to save our nation.

(Speaker 3)
So you go to Amazon right now you buy a copy of the book and you just text a screenshot of your proof of purchase to my cell phone number, 918 -851 -0102. So text my number, 918 -851 -0102. So again, step one, you go here to amazon .

(Speaker 13)
com, you buy a copy of the book Under Siege, then you just text a screenshot of your purchase, your proof of purchase.

(Speaker 3)
You text my number, 918 -851 -0102. You have a chance to win a dinner at Mar -a -Lago with Eric Trump and myself, and there’s more. Mar -a -Lago right there, just for your viewers. It’s the most exclusive private club in the world. $2 million to get into, just base membership fee. And I promise, we’re going to make your night absolutely incredible.

(Speaker 3)
Clay goes, listen, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we put it out to all the amazing Reawaken people, all the people who supported us all around the country, all around, at every one of these conferences, who adore your family. We’ve got to beat The New York Times. The New York Times is going to do everything they can. Even though we’re number one on Amazon right now, we just hit number one this morning, New York Times is going to do everything they can to keep you from being number one bestseller.

(Speaker 3)
You know that. I know that. You know the games that they’re willing to play. But play goes. Why don’t we do a couple of things?

(Speaker 14)
First of all, I love having dinner with Clay.

(Speaker 4)
He’s the greatest.

(Speaker 3)
Second of all, why don’t we bring one of the amazing people that I guarantee you I’ve been in front of at all these events.

(Speaker 4)
Why don’t we bring a couple to dinner at Mar -a -Lago?”

(Speaker 3)
And I said, absolutely, consider it done. So I said, they have to text you, Clay. They can’t text me, because we’ll be getting 1 ,000 of these. But yeah, go buy a book. Text Clay. And we’ll set up a dinner.

(Speaker 3)
I’ll make sure you guys have the absolute time of your life. I want to pull this up again one more time here, Jackson, because I think sometimes I’m a poor communicator, and I need to work on communicating more effectively. So you go to Amazon. That’s step one, OK? Yes. You buy a copy of the book, Pop Quiz.

(Speaker 3)
What book? Under Siege. You buy a copy of Under Siege, and then you screenshot a picture of that, and you text my phone number. It’s 918 -851 -0102. Folks, that is my cell phone number. So we’ll keep that private between you and me and everybody.

(Speaker 3)
And then when you text that to me, you have a chance to win a backstage pass to the actual in -person business workshop. That’s a business growth workshop, December 4th and 5th, featuring Eric Trump at Anaheim, California. and you have a chance to win dinner with Eric Trump and myself at Mar -a -Lago. Now, someone says, when does this contest end? Now, Eric, your birthday was hijacked. OK, so your birthday was hijacked.

(Speaker 3)
January 6th is this man’s birthday. He now has to switch his birthday because no one wants to talk about his birthday on January 6th anymore. So we’re going to run this promotion until November 5th. That’s my birthday. No, no. So we’re going to run it until October 14th.

(Speaker 4)
October 14th. It has to be pre -sale. This just in. It has to be between October 14th. That’s why we’re clarifying. So between now and October Now folks, let me just clarify this real quick here, so make sure I’m leaving you with some good clarity here.

(Speaker 4)
One, you buy a copy of Under Siege on Amazon. That’s the step one. Step two, you text a screenshot of that purchase to my cell phone number, 918 -851 -0102. Three, you have to do that. before October 14th. Before October 14th, this just in, it has to be before October 14th.

(Speaker 4)
And you have a chance to win a backstage pass to the upcoming business workshop. You have a chance to have dinner with Eric Trump at Mar -a -Lago. And I want to tell you some benefits of buying the book. One, I’ve read the book. It’s incredible. If you’re a father out there and you want to learn about mentoring your kids, it’s a great book.

(Speaker 4)
If you want to learn about American history, it’s a great book. If you want to make America great again, it is a great book. It’s a book you got to have. Now here is just a quick editor’s note. You do not have to buy a copy of Eric Trump’s book Under Siege to be entered into the drawing. Just text the number.

(Speaker 4)
All you have to do is just text the number 918 -851 -0102 and you will be entered into the drawing for a chance to win a copy of Eric Trump’s book Under Siege. and a once -in -a -lifetime opportunity to hang out with Eric Trump and Clay Clark at Mar -a -Lago, and win a backstage pass at the upcoming Thrivetimeshow . com two -day interactive business workshop. Again, you do not have to buy a copy of the book to be entered into the drawing, but it would be great if you’d buy a copy of the book, because that would make sense. However, that is all, and now back to the interview. Also, Eric, a final question here for you.

(Speaker 4)
You are donating a portion of the proceeds to support Charlie Kirk and his continued mission there. Could you tell us about that briefly there, and then we’ll let you get back to what you’re doing today, sir? Yeah, well, I was on with Benny Johnson. Benny Johnson was a great friend of Charlie Kirk’s, as you know.

(Speaker 14)
And you know Benny, and Benny’s a very good friend of mine.

(Speaker 4)
And Kash Patel is a very good friend of mine and was a very good friend of Charlie’s. You watch everybody that’s up on that stage every single day as they as they got to the bottom of exactly what happened and they brought justice to what happened or trying to bring justice to what happened. And it’s it’s it’s kind of unthinkable. But you know St. Jude and I talk a lot about St. Jude in this this book because it’s been you know fighting pediatric cancer has always been at the you know of my life. But Charlie truly, truly, truly was the epitome of being under siege, not only in the movement that he helped create, But obviously in how his life was savagely taken.

(Speaker 3)
My book came out three days, two and a half days before Charlie’s assassination. You better believe he would have been the final chapter of this book as just another illustration of what these people will do at any cost. to try and win, because it’s who they are. It’s the not -so -tolerant left. And we can never let our voices be extinguished, Clay. You stood on that stage, as well as anybody I’ve ever seen stand on a stage.

(Speaker 3)
You did at Reawaken events all across the country, which you funded out of your back pocket, because you believed in America.

(Speaker 4)
You believed in a greater country. And you were on that stage every single day.

(Speaker 13)
You know I was on that stage with you every single day. And I was on the Turning Point stage with Charlie all the time. on stages across the country and three campaigns. I’ve stood on thousands of them. And honestly, they don’t want us to stand on that stage. That’s why they’re sending bullets from rooftops.

They don’t want us to go out there with a bullhorn and have loud, independent thought. When they see these beautiful arenas full of kids and they’re cheering, they’re celebrating, they’re holding American flags, they don’t want that. And so they want to silence us. They want to silence our voice. That’s why they killed Charlie. That’s why they tried to kill my father.

That’s why they sent 112 subpoenas to me. That’s why they wanted me in jail and my father in jail and Don in jail. That’s why they made up the hoaxes. They wanted to see us destroyed and gone with no voice, with no money, with no company, with no political aspirations. Gone. And we can’t allow that to happen.

And so we need to make sure that turning point continues. We need to make sure incredible patriots like you continue to spread sensical speech, pro -American values, pro -religious, pro -constitutional values. And that’s why I want to donate the funds to Turning Point. I want to donate a portion of the funds to Turning Point, because we can’t allow anarchy to win, and we can’t allow voices to be deleted, and we need to keep Charlie’s legacy going. Eric Trump, thank you so much for joining us.

Pastor Jackson, thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely. Eric, have a great day. We really do appreciate you. Everybody go out there and buy that book, Undersea, just not too early to buy your Christmas gifts. And if you have a Democrat in your family, buy them a copy as well.

Eric Trump, take care. Thanks, guys. See you later.

Transcribed with Cockatoo