How to Grow a Mental Successful Mental Health Practice | “It’s Been Above Expectations! Your Guidance Has Helped People Reach Out to Us Via the Website. I Couldn’t Have Done It Without You.” – ModernMentalHealth.Net

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 11)
My name is Brooke Hertzler, and the name of our company is Modern Mental Health.

(Speaker 1)
How would you describe the return on investment of having a weekly coaching meeting and access to a team to help you implement? How would you describe maybe the return on investment from your perspective?

(Speaker 10)
Yeah, it’s been amazing. I mean, above expectations. I mean, I was a chiropractor. I am a chiropractor. I did have a business coach and it compared like a long time ago compared to this. I was talking to Brooke last night about it.

(Speaker 10)
It’s like night and day. It’s pretty much a one -stop shop. You guys do so much for the fee that you charge that pretty much covers everything. And it’s stuff that Brooke and I don’t know anything about. We’re both caretakers. So we focus on that side of the business.

(Speaker 10)
And Carter helps us out with the other side of the business. So it’s we’re so blessed to have you guys, you know, through this process, because we definitely wouldn’t be able to do it without you for sure.

(Speaker 11)
Well, we provide individual counseling services. So that’s one on one therapy for adults. Right now, we’re just working with adults 18 years and up. Usually, the person would have, you know, some sort of struggle with depression, anxiety. It could be a variety of different reasons that they’re reaching out for support and help therapy.

(Speaker 10)
We met through a mutual friend, and I think I reached back out to you like a year later when Brooke and I wanted to do the mental health therapy business.

(Speaker 6)
Yeah, well, our web address is www .

(Speaker 69)
modernmentalhealth .

(Speaker 10)
org.

(Speaker 11)
dot net net. We always ge so I can say that again i it’s www dot modern menta Um, so yes, I mean, anyone who, you know, just might be in need of having additional support, individual counseling therapy to work on any kind of mental health struggle that they’re having, they could, you know, reach out to modern mental health. And we would definitely, we try to, you know, get right back to the person right away.

(Speaker 3)
We try to get them, you know, in, um, And we offer a free 15 -minute phone consultation, too, so that they can get to know us better, get to know me better, to provide the therapy services.

(Speaker 1)
No matter how great your product is, if people can’t find you, you’re just not going to succeed, no matter what kind of business you have. I wanted to ask you this, because we’ve worked with you, if my memory serves me correct, from the very beginning. I mean, so this is a thing where we worked with you and Brooke from the very beginning. Could you talk about what the experience has been like going from, hey, we have a skill, we have a product, and we don’t have any leads, maybe from then until now. Could you walk us through, Michael, what that process has been like from your perspective?

(Speaker 10)
Yeah, it’s been a great process. We’re caretakers. We don’t know anything about websites or search engine optimization. with your guidance and formulating what all goes into that, formulated a lot of people to reach out through us through the website and obvious in our in our phone number as well. It’s been a lot more through the website these days. We haven’t spent any money on marketing up to this point.

(Speaker 10)
And we get all our clients through the website that fill out the inquiry online.

(Speaker 11)
You know, I’m a caretaker, I’m a therapist, I’m, you know, the struggle to be a business owner, you know, I really needed a lot of support with that. And so, you know, Carter, I mean, has been a like helping us every step of the way. And, you know, just being able to like have someone who can set up our website. I mean, that was incredible. Help us with what, you know, we need to put behind that, you know, writing that has just been so huge.

(Speaker 11)
And then, you know, with the Google, the Google leads, and then just, you know, I think we’re coming up now on the first page or close to it, you know, when, you know, Um, like we wouldn’t have known how to do any of that without your help. So like, you know, that has been so incredible that, you know, we’re coming up. It’s, you know, therapy in Pittsburgh and we’re coming up close to the, I think first page, like when people like, um, are looking for therapy in the area, we’re coming up to the top now. And that’s pretty incredible. So like, we could not have done that without your help. So.

(Speaker 11)
Yeah, I mean, it I mean, really, time is limited, right? You know, like, my time is service. So I’m like seeing people back to back, you know, and so, like, it would have been such a challenge for me had I had to do like a lot of marketing, or even, you know, just like, the, you know, for the website or all the different ins and outs with all these different things. And so having your team like just be able to walk us through, you know, from start to finish, like how to kind of get all of this set up and then just like really not having to do that marketing like that. Google is doing a lot of that for us with your help, with what you guys know. I mean, that has been huge because we haven’t had to spend any money on marketing.

(Speaker 11)
You know, it’s all come in through your help with your leads. from your design of the website and how to walk us through all of that. And then also I mean like Carter has been super helpful too with helping us with like even how to handle insurance companies and even how to like micromanage them. So he’s given us a lot of great tools like in our meetings just to help everything you know, run much smoother, you know, because really, I have to be focused on seeing, you know, the clients and providing the service. So it’s just been so nice to have a system that just flows so easily. And then the tracking sheet and all of that too, which Michael, like that just helps us see what we’re spending.

(Speaker 3)
And that is something we probably wouldn’t have, you know, dove into without the help of, you know, Carter really pushing on that.

(Speaker 10)
And been really streamlined a was a challenge in the be getting Brooke credential company, Modern Mental He like three insurance companies, we decided to go with the two insurance companies, it was a process. And obviously, Carter helped us out with that. And everything’s great. Now, after about a year of up and running, we’re now looking to hire somebody. So now we’re, you know, we’re looking to get hire somebody and get them credentialed through modern mental health. So that’s our next step.

(Speaker 10)
And we just currently started talking about that. So we’re excited about that.

(Speaker 1)
Well, Thrive Nation, a big thing that I am obsessed with this Christmas season and every Christmas season is I want you to know that you have the mental capacity and the tenacity needed to turn your dream into reality. I know that if you have the capacity needed to hit play on this video, you can turn your dreams into reality. And so to make that more real, I try to interview actual clients that are actually having success by actually following a proven system and then actually wowing them. clients or their patients or their customers. And so on today’s show, we’re joined by Michael and Brooke. And with that being said, Brooke, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 1)
How are you, ma ‘am?

(Speaker 11)
I am doing wonderful. How are you doing, Clay?

(Speaker 1)
I am so excited to be here with you. And I want to ask you here, could you share with us your first and last name and the name of your business so people out there can look you up and verify that you’re real people?

(Speaker 11)
Yes, my name is Brooke Hertzler and the name of our company is Modern Mental Health.

(Speaker 1)
And could you share with us, what are the services that you guys provide there, Brooke, at Modern Mental Health?

(Speaker 6)
Well, we provide individual counseling services. So that’s one -on -one therapy for adults. Right now, we’re just working with adults 18 years and up.

(Speaker 11)
Usually, The person would have, you know, some sort of struggle with depression, anxiety, could be a variety of different reasons that they’re reaching out for support and help therapy.

(Speaker 1)
Now brooke who’s this guy next to you here? Can you share with us? Who’s this guy? How do you how do you know this guy?

(Speaker 3)
This is actually my husband michael Yeah, this is my husband michael and he has been alongside of me Like helping me through this whole thing just trying to get everything up and running and started and so he’s played a role too and just you know, from start to finish, like helping with, you know, initial phone calls, um, you know, working on some of the billing aspects, um, the accounting, the tracking, the accounting, the tracking, he’s like more of the, you know, my number side.

(Speaker 1)
So now Michael, could you share with everybody out there? How did you and I originally meet? Do you remember that? I think it involved wrestling of some kind.

(Speaker 70)
Yeah.

(Speaker 10)
National tournament was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I believe in 2023. And we met through a mutual friend. And I think I reached back out to you like a year later, when Brooke and I wanted to do the mental health therapy business.

(Speaker 1)
Now, you know, that’s how we What I like to do is I like to engage in what I call a shalom relationship. It’s a Hebrew word, but the idea is it’s a win -win. And something where I know that the customer, in this case working with you guys, that it benefits you, that our coaching benefits you, and that your dollars going into our business benefits us. But more importantly, I want your customers to be wowed. I never want to work with a shamachery or some client that doesn’t deliver massive value to the marketplace. And so, Brooke, for somebody out there who’s watching right now, who maybe could benefit from the services you provide.

(Speaker 1)
What’s your web address and what kind of services or maybe solutions could you provide to anybody who happens to be tuning in to today’s show?

(Speaker 3)
Yeah, well, our web address is www .

(Speaker 69)
modernmentalhealth .

(Speaker 10)
org.

(Speaker 68)
dot net.

(Speaker 3)
We always get that like stuff. So I can say that again if we need to. But it’s www dot modern mental health dot net. And so yes, I mean, anyone who, you know, just might be in need of having additional support, individual counseling therapy, to work on any kind of mental health struggle that they’re having, they could, you know, reach out to modern mental health. And we would definitely, we try to, you know, get right back to the person right away. We try to get them, you know, in for, um, and we, we offer a, uh, free 15 minute, you know, phone consultation too, so that they can get to know us better, get to know me better, um, to provide, uh, the therapy services.

(Speaker 1)
I’m going to pull up your website. real quick so people can check it out. And one of the things, Michael, that you and I had talked about when we first met and then we’ve talked about it kind of as a recurring theme is, you know, we have a business, whether it’s a chiropractic business or a mental health care business or a lawyer, doctor, dentist, home builder, without leads, your business won’t succeed. Without an inbound stream or flow of customers reaching out to you, if people can’t find you, no matter how great your product is, if people can’t find you, you’re just not going to succeed no matter what kind of business you have. I wanted to ask you this because we’ve worked with you, if my memory serves me correct, from the very beginning. I mean, so this is a thing where we worked with you and Brooke from the very beginning.

(Speaker 1)
Could you talk about what the experience has been like going from, hey, we have a skill, we have a product, and we don’t have any leads, maybe from then until now. Could you walk us through, Michael, what that process has been like from your perspective?

(Speaker 10)
Yeah, it’s been a great process. We’re caretakers. We don’t know anything about websites or search engine optimization. With your guidance, um, and formulating what all goes into that formulated a lot of people to reach out through us to the website and obvious in our, in our phone number as well. Um, it’s been a lot more through the website these days.

(Speaker 1)
We haven’t spent any money on marketing up to this point and we get all our, uh, clients through the website that fill out the inquiry online. Now, Brooke, you’re wanting to help, you know, people improve their mental health. What’s it been like for you knowing you have our team and then Michael working with our team to help you behind the scenes, you know, generate leads so you don’t have to. What’s that been like from your perspective?

(Speaker 11)
Oh, I couldn’t have done it. I mean, without Carter and you and you know, and Michael, I mean, I am, again, you know, I’m a caretaker, I’m a therapist, I am, you know, the struggle to be a business owner, you know, I really needed a lot of support with that. And so, you know, Carter, I mean, has been amazing, like helping us every step of the way. And you know just being able to like have someone who can set up our website. I mean that was incredible Help us with what you know, we need to put behind that, you know writing that Has just been so huge and then you know with the Google The Google leads and then just you know, I think we are coming up now on the first page or close to it you know when Um, like we wouldn’t have known how to do any of that without your help.

(Speaker 11)
So like, you know, that has been so incredible that, you know, we’re coming up, it’s, you know, therapy in Pittsburgh, and we’re coming up close to the, I think, first page, like, when people like, are looking for therapy in the area, we’re coming up to the top now. And that’s pretty incredible. So like, we could not have done that without your help. So yeah.

(Speaker 1)
Now, Michael, I was talking to a lady today, a wonderful lady. And I told her, you probably need to come to a conference. I said, just like when you and I first talked, it was like we were at a college sporting event. And I said, what do you do? And you said, what do I do? And it was about a year before you and I moved forward on anything.

(Speaker 1)
But I told this lady, this wonderful client, or potential client, I said, you should come to our workshop because I think you’re starting to see what we do. But I want you to come to a workshop and maybe look at some case studies and see, because she’s wanting to start something. And I was trying to explain to her from the time you start to the time that you are making money, that has to be as short of a period of time as possible. You have to be. able to generate leads. Could you talk about maybe the sense of urgency or maybe what kind of results you’ve been able to generate in these first six months or seven months as new business owners?

(Speaker 10)
Yeah, absolutely. We actually, it was probably within the six -month range, we started developing a profit with the leads that we were getting, which was nice. Brooke, in the beginning, was working still for her company, and we were doing 50 -50. Now, after a year, we’re 100 % on our own. Um, which is great. Um, and that contributed all that to the leads that came in, um, you know, through the website.

(Speaker 10)
But in the beginning it was, uh, it was, you know, it was different for us, but we, they, within six months it was great. And we were doing, you know, doing a profit now.

(Speaker 1)
And again, I’m, I’m taking notes so our listeners can follow along, but I’m going to start to get really linear and I want to get Brooke’s thoughts on this. Um, first off, when you’re growing a company. You want to do it in a way that it’s scalable. So meaning that as a teacher, there are no bad students. There are just bad teachers. So this is how I look at it.

(Speaker 1)
There’s no bad students. If you’re watching today’s show and you’re a student, there’s no bad students. There’s just a bad teacher. In this case, I would be the bad teacher if you don’t get it. And so what I try to do is make it simple, not because you’re not smart, but because I know you’re very busy focusing on your main thing. Could you talk about, Brooke, the simplicity of the system?

(Speaker 1)
Because I think a lot of potential clients think about, they say, Clay, I want to work with you guys, but I don’t want to have to learn coding. I don’t want to have to have 25 hours a week of homework. I just want a simple plan that I can do. Could you talk about the simplicity, or maybe lack thereof, of the system that we’ve taught you and your incredible husband to implement for your business?

(Speaker 11)
Yeah, I mean, it I mean, really, time is limited, right? You know, like, my time is service. So I’m like seeing people back to back, you know, and so, like, it would have been such a challenge for me had I had to do like a lot of the marketing or even, you know, just. like the web, you know, for the website, or all the different ins and outs with all these different things. And so having your team, like just be able to walk us through, you know, from start to finish, like how to kind of get all of this set up, and then just like really not having to do that marketing, like that Google is doing a lot of that for us with your help with what you guys know, I mean, that has been huge, because we haven’t had to spend any money, on marketing, you know, it’s all come in through your help with your leads from your design of the website, and then you know how to walk us through all of that.

(Speaker 11)
And then also, I mean, like Carter has been super helpful to with helping us with like, even how to handle insurance companies and even how to like micromanage them. So he’s given us a lot of great tools, like in our meetings, just to help everything. you know, run much smoother, you know, because really, I have to be focused on seeing, you know, the clients and providing the service. So it’s just been so nice to have a system that just flows so easily. And then the tracking sheet and all of that too, which Michael, like that just helps us see what we’re spending. And that is something we probably wouldn’t have, you know, dove into without the help of, you know, Carter really pushing on that.

(Speaker 3)
And It’s been really streamlined a lot for us.

(Speaker 1)
I want to bring this up because every doctor, I say every, I mean, without exception, every doctor I’ve ever worked with, they ultimately run into a problem with insurance companies. And they think to themselves, why do I have to spend my day thinking about how to get paid from an insurance company after I’ve already provided first class care? And that’s a big part of it, is managing those relationships with a journalist. and making sure you get paid. Mike, what’s been your perspective on that? I think that’s a big part of the coaching we provide for medical professionals is helping you guys actually work with and manage the relationship with these insurance companies that oftentimes owe you copious amounts of money.

(Speaker 10)
they do. It was a challen and um in the beginning g through the company moder was it, it was very, we w like three insurance companies, we decided to go with the two insurance companies, it was a process. And obviously, Carter helped us out with that. And everything’s great. Now, after about a year of up and running, we’re now looking to hire somebody. So now we’re, you know, we’re looking to get hire somebody and get them credential through modern mental health.

(Speaker 10)
So that’s our next step. And we just currently started talking about that. So we’re excited about that.

(Speaker 1)
Now the tracking thing, Brooke, you mentioned it, but I want to go back to this tracking. You always tell people, you measure what you treasure, you slack, or you don’t.

(Speaker 67)
What?

(Speaker 1)
Think about it, folks. You measure what you treasure. And you slack or you don’t track. And so that’s why when we were watching that wrestling event there, Michael and I were watching, and the people were getting pretty excited. People in the audience were getting fired up because their favorite wrestler might win. Their favorite wrestler might lose.

(Speaker 1)
Their favorite college might win. And they were keeping track. And there’s points. And there’s a system. So there was an energy out there because everybody was rooting for their team to win. And it creates a certain buzz.

(Speaker 1)
But in business, a lot of times, people don’t keep score. track and then things start to slack.

(Speaker 11)
Brooke, how much has it helped you, Brooke, to have a tracking sheet where you can see all of the pertinent relevant information all in one place? Oh, I mean, it’s just helped so much because we need to be able to see what we’re spending and what’s coming in. It allows us just to have one sheet one area where we can monitor that and we could go into that at any point. And, you know, you guys were helpful in setting up the categories. even thinking about the categories of what we need to be looking at.

(Speaker 11)
I mean, that was all so helpful that you were able to, you know, categorize it all for us too, so that we can just go back in and plug in the numbers. So that that’s been really, really helpful.

(Speaker 1)
And then also helping us to see where we’re spending and, you know, or what’s coming in and what we need to work on. So Now, Michael, I’ve got three final questions as you mentally prepare yourself for this marathon interview. So I’ve got three final questions for you, OK? So for anybody out there, and I’m not asking you to share your specific financial numbers, but for anybody out there that is looking for the return on investment, they’re saying, yeah, if I pay Clay’s coaching team for coaching, am I going to see a return on investment? And I told you this when I was sitting next to you at that event. I said, we charge less money than if you hired a minimum wage employee.

(Speaker 1)
We do charge. But our goal is to make sure that you’re making more money than you’re paying us as quickly as possible. How would you describe the return on investment of having a weekly coaching meeting and access to a team to help you implement?

(Speaker 10)
How would you describe maybe the return on investment from your perspective? Yeah, it’s been amazing. I mean, above expectations. I mean, I was a chiropractor. I am a chiropractor. I did have a business coach, and it compared, like, a long time ago compared to that compared to this.

(Speaker 10)
I was talking to Brooke last night about it. It’s like night and day. It’s pretty much a one stop shop. You guys do so much, you know, for for the fee that you charge, that pretty much covers everything. And it’s stuff that Brooke and I don’t know anything about. We’re both caretakers.

(Speaker 10)
So we focus on that side of the business. And Carter helps us out with the other side of the business. So it’s we’re so blessed to have you guys.

(Speaker 1)
through this process, because we definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it without you, for sure. Next question for you, Brooke. There’s somebody watching the show right now, and they’re going, you know what? My cousin, my neighbor, my brother, my sister, my somebody I know is in need of a mental health professional. There’s somebody out there watching this. Do you work with patients in all 50 states or do you work with people just in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains?

(Speaker 1)
Do you just work with people in Canada?

(Speaker 11)
Who all do you work with? Yeah, well, I am just licensed in the state of Pennsylvania, so really I can only you know, see individuals that are living here in the state of Pennsylvania. But I can meet with anyone throughout the state. And I am working on, I am trying to look to see into getting licensed in other states. So hopefully soon, and I just learned something new that, you know, hopefully I can get this telehealth special license pretty easily. So hopefully I’ll be able to do Florida here soon too.

(Speaker 1)
But for right now, it’s Pennsylvania. Got it. OK. And by the way, just to revisit that idea, we could talk more offline, but there’s a gentleman I work with in the marriage counseling space that found that certain states like Florida, certain states, they all have different guidelines and different things. But he was able to get himself registered to be a counseling service in certain states that were easy to register, easier to register. And he’s been able to dramatically grow his business without dramatically growing his expenses.

(Speaker 49)
And so I encourage you to continue pursuing that.

(Speaker 1)
A final question I have here. for you, Brooke. This is your business, and it’s hard to detach the success of a business from how we as an entrepreneur feel about ourselves. As an example, if you’re an entrepreneur out there and you run a hardware store that’s going into bankruptcy, it’s hard to feel good about your day if your hardware store is not doing well. If you’re a car dealership, it’s hard to detach yourself from feeling bad about yourself if your car dealership is not doing well.

(Speaker 11)
How much has it helped you knowing that all these years of education and all this work you put into learning what you learn, you’re now able to share it with the world and help your customers? How does it feel running a successful business? Yeah, I mean, it’s incredible. Like, I just feel so happy. I just every day, you know, knowing that I’m helping so many people and yeah, all the years of education and just, you know, working different so many different, you know, experiences with my work, but to be able to now have my own business, it’s just been just so incredible. And I’m so happy.

(Speaker 11)
And I’m so excited that we’re going to start hiring people. So I’ll get to, you know, hire other therapists and help guide them and teach them. And, you know, so like, that’s the next phase. And it just really makes me happy knowing that, you know, here I am, I’m doing this, and, you know, making a difference in this world. And, you know, hopefully, you know, modern mental health becomes, you know, bigger throughout, you know, Pennsylvania here, and who knows, you know, other states too. Perhaps, but no, it’s exciting.

(Speaker 1)
It’s a wonderful feeling. Thank you so much. Michael, any final words you want to share? I mean, you were sort of the connective tissue. We were stuck together at this wrestling event, by the way, had a great time sitting next to you. And it was a very unique circumstance in which we met.

(Speaker 1)
And I learned all about wrestling. I had no idea.

(Speaker 28)
I’d never been to a college wrestling event.

(Speaker 1)
Never thought I would go, by the way.

(Speaker 10)
I was just there. So could you what’s it been like to see your wonderful wife turn her dream into reality? Yeah, it’s amazing because she tried this once before and it obviously didn’t have your help, didn’t go well, and now it’s going great. So she’s super happy about that. We are super happy about that. It was great meeting you.

(Speaker 10)
your wife at the wrestling event. And then we, I’ll be honest, we really didn’t, or I didn’t want to come to Tulsa, Oklahoma for that seminar. And we were so glad that we did to see you in person, spend the weekend in Tulsa.

(Speaker 1)
Obviously that was, yeah, that was amazing. We look forward to coming back again and seeing you and your team and your family. Well, hey, thank you guys for being a great member of the Thrive Nation. I encourage everybody without reservation. If you’re looking for a mental health professional, check out ModernMentalHealth . net in Pennsylvania, soon to be in other states.

(Speaker 1)
Brooke, thank you so much for your time.

(Speaker 11)
Thank you, Michael, for fitting us in your schedule.

(Speaker 52)
I hope you guys have a great day.

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, thank you, Clay. I appreciate it. See you guys. At that time, it was one employee doing everything, me. I met Aaron Antus in 2007. The top three things that Aaron did for Shaw Homes was he brought in processes that helped us be able to repeat over and over. He brought in unique hiring skills.

(Speaker 4)
He was able to find the right people for the right seat on the bus. Aaron brought sales techniques that we weren’t familiar with up until that time. When Aaron came, we were selling about 80, 85 houses a year. And during the 16 -year period, we saw sales get up over 400. Before I met Aaron, the only sales manager we had was myself. And I was completely unable to perform that job.

(Speaker 4)
And so Aaron brought changes and great results with them. In the many years that I was building houses before Aaron, I was great at selling if somebody wanted to buy, but they had to be knocking on my door asking me to sell them a house before I could actually make that sell. I had no sales techniques and no ability to generate sales. Aaron coming in as a natural salesperson just absolutely transformed that and made the sales experience better for the company and better for our buyers. Prior to Aaron, I would work all week for the company.

(Speaker 4)
I’d sit in the model home over the weekend. And I had a salesperson or two, but I was actually out there all week and working that. Since hiring Aaron, I was able to take my weekends off, even reduce my workload during the week. I went from working 60, 70 hours a week to almost a normal workload. So I’ve been a member of the Builder 20 program in the National Association of Home Builders for 25 years, 20 years. And during that time, I’ve seen a lot of sales managers with the other companies that have been involved.

(Speaker 4)
And in my opinion, Aaron is smarter and sharper than any sales manager of any builder that’s ever been in our group. Now, some markets, they don’t have to try to sell, they just sell themselves. But with the ability to sell and to train and hire, Aaron was better than any of those sales managers that were in my program. Well, I remember when I considered hiring Aaron many years ago, the thought of spending the extra money was a little scary, but in hindsight, it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. It freed my time, increased our sales, and at the end of the day, increased our profitability beyond my wildest expectations.

(Speaker 4)
Years ago, I was concerned that if I didn’t do whatever a customer asked me to do, it might be the last thing house I sold. And so over time, we were able to move away from unlimited customization to pre -design options. The problem that we were having in those days is that the customer would tell us what they wanted, but they didn’t really know what they wanted. And we would deliver exactly what they told us to do, and they wouldn’t be happy with it. So as we became more standardized, we give lots of options, but we don’t customize.

(Speaker 1)
And in the end, that allows us to sell more homes for better margins than spending countless hours trying to customize in just every avenue of the sales process. We get weekly reports on sales, on profitability, on production, and it provides all the manageable tools that I need to review the company from a 10 ,000 -foot level. All right, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, what we’re going to focus on is how to grow a successful company. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to pull up a graphic that is the theory of how to grow a successful company. But vision without execution is hallucination. And so if you go to thrivetimeshow .

(Speaker 1)
com forward slash millionaire, you can download a book that I have written called A Millionaire’s Guide, How to Become Sustainably Rich. You can download it for free at thrivetimeshow . com forward slash millionaire, but you have to actually implement that which is in the book. And so on today’s show, we’re joined by a very successful person in the home building business, a great friend of mine, a man by the name of Aaron Antus. Aaron Antus, welcome on to The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

(Speaker 1)
I’m doing great, Clay. Thanks for having me on.

(Speaker 2)
Hey, so I got to ask you this for the people out there that want to prove you’re not a hologram. First off, what’s the website for your company so people can verify that you are in fact a real estate agent?

(Speaker 1)
You bet. It’s shahomes . com.

(Speaker 58)
S -H -A -W -H -O -M -E -S .

(Speaker 1)
com. shahomes . com. I’m pulling it up.

(Speaker 66)
shahomes .

(Speaker 1)
com. Pulling it up. That’s the website, shahomes . com. And when you and I met, before we met, you had been already very successful as a home builder. You turned your dream of being a home builder guy into reality.

(Speaker 1)
Yeah. And so how many homes had you sold, or what kind of sales had you done in your career as a home builder guy before you and I even met? Before we met? probably about 750 million in sales prior to meeting you.

(Speaker 33)
And then you did, the year we first started working together, what were the sales totals that year?

(Speaker 1)
We were at like $19 million. $19 million. And then when you ended 2022, obviously we’re in 2023, and so we’ll see how this year ends. But as far as ending 2022, how much sales did you do last year at the end of 2022? 2022, we were at like $84 million. OK, so from $19 million to?

(Speaker 1)
$84 million. $84 million. So you’re doing some things right here. And what we’re going to try to do is kind of demystify the plan here. OK, so here we go. You were establishing revenue goals.

(Speaker 1)
Yep. Um, when you and I first started working together, we started off with a 13 point assessment. We, we went over, um, your goals. I’m not going to ask you to share your goals on the air, but why is it important that you have goals? Well, I mean, goals are sort of your guide posts that, you know, you, you set something out there in front of you and you start chasing after it. and without that you’re just kind of floundering in mediocrity you don’t have any reason to get up in the morning and really get after it and so you know I think goals are you know it’s it’s you can have lots of different types of goals.

(Speaker 1)
And we’ve talked about a lot of this. We’ve talked about, you know, having financial goals and having, you know, fitness goals and having friendship goals and just all these different areas. I know you’ve got the F6, you know. So that’s kind of something that, you know, we touched on very early on. You asked me, like, is the goal, is one of your goals more income or is it more time? And so I said, well, really, at this point, it’s more income.

(Speaker 1)
And then later, it became more time. So it’s changed over the time I’ve known you since 2016. We’re going on seven years. And the income went up considerably. So now it’s turned in the last couple of years towards more time. Now, the breakeven numbers, again, I’m not asking you for the numbers on the show, but you guys have a lot of fixed costs.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, if you go to shawhomes . com, you’ve got framers, you have plumbers, you have tile people, you have so many skilled people, you have a full -time sales team. You have an admin staff. And if you don’t sell a house, you still have the service of the land. You still have all the overhead. Why is it important for every listener out there to know their break even point?

(Speaker 1)
How many deals they need per month just to break even? Well, yeah, because you’re going backwards real quick. And it doesn’t take very long if you’re at the beginning of your business. It doesn’t take very long for you to be in a place where you know, the creditors are knocking at your door and you’re, you know, you can’t pay your bills and all of a sudden you’re going to lose all your, your, for us, all of our trades, all of our suppliers are going to start backing out. So, you know, you’ve got to know what that number is that lets you tread water so that, you know, okay, this is the worst case scenario, everything above that, at least I’m into the profit zone. So, you know, you go out of business,

(Speaker 1)
pretty quick. Most businesses don’t last more than just a few months if they get below that breakeven number. Now, folks, again, these might seem like simple steps, but they’re all the linear steps you have to take to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And if you want to grow your company, this is how you do it. Box number three, though, is you have to know the hours you’re willing to work. Now, your incredible wife is here off camera for accountability.

(Speaker 1)
So at any point, she could yell, like, amen, or boo.

(Speaker 2)
But you guys are on the same page with the hours you’re willing to work.

(Speaker 65)
And you guys, as a couple, I want to brag on both of you.

(Speaker 2)
You guys both committed to sacrificing time and energy and a lot of things to get to where you’re at in life. And then as you had your children, you raised them, you decided to devote time to raising said kids. And now that your kids are older, you’re devoting time to raising these kids. So it’s not like you advocated being a parent while also growing a company. You did both well.

(Speaker 1)
I’d love to get your thoughts on sitting down with your spouse, if you’re watching this today, or your significant other, and making sure you’re on the same page about how many hours per week you’re willing to work. Well, yeah, I mean, you don’t want to grow a business to make a whole bunch of money just so you can split it in half later. Oh. Because that’s kind of what happens when you don’t work out those details ahead of time. And so my wife and I have been married 25 years.

(Speaker 64)
We’ve been together for four before that.

(Speaker 1)
And so yeah, sorry, 26. Did I just say 25? 26. I hate to do this to you. I just got in trouble. Your wife just turned 27 on Thursday, and what you said is 100 % false.

(Speaker 1)
OK, so the unique value proposition Now, let’s talk about this. Whether it’s growing a home building company, or a dog training business, or a haircut chain, or a carpet cleaning franchise, or whatever business we’re involved in helping to grow, you have to sit down as a listener out there, as a business owner, and you’ve got to figure out what makes your company unique.

(Speaker 2)
Absolutely.

(Speaker 18)
So I want to ask you, what makes Shaw Homes unique in the marketplace with other home builders?

(Speaker 1)
Yeah, we have more furniture. and decorated model homes than any other builder in the market. So, you know, a lot of times people, when they walk into a home and they’re trying to decide if they like the floor plan, the layout, whatever, they usually, most builders in our market have an empty house that they walk into. It just kind of echoes when you walk through it. There’s no furniture or anything.

(Speaker 2)
And we completely, as you can see in this little video here, we completely furnish and decorate it.

(Speaker 1)
make it beautiful. We are the most award -winning builder in the state of Oklahoma. That’s true. We’ve won like five times as many awards as any other builder in the market. So definitely that is one of our big takeaways. And I’m going to throw you under the bus real quick, and I don’t mean to do this super passively aggressively.

(Speaker 1)
It’ll just be more of a subtle passive aggressive. When I met you, you guys had all these awards, but no one knew. That’s true. It was like this weird, bizarre thing where you had all these awards. I remember talking to you and I’m like, what makes you guys different? And you’re like, you know, we do a good job and you’re going to be nice about it.

(Speaker 60)
You’re a good salesperson.

(Speaker 1)
But I said, well, I mean, tell me about the awards. And you’re like, well, we got this award, that award, this award, like 45 minutes later, it’s like that award.

(Speaker 49)
This award.

(Speaker 1)
I need to shave now. This award. That award. I need to go brush my teeth. This award. That award.

(Speaker 1)
I want to go mow the lawn now. This award.

(Speaker 63)
That award.

(Speaker 1)
I’m thinking about retiring. This award. My kids are turning 18. I can see it.

(Speaker 2)
This award. You’re just going, and this award, and that award. And so we put those on the website, and that helped. And the other thing, you guys, we needed to change was all these people were saying great things, but we didn’t have video reviews of them saying it on camera.

(Speaker 1)
Right.

(Speaker 24)
So it was like your online reputation didn’t match your real world reputation.

(Speaker 2)
It’s so much good momentum there. And so many people loved you guys.

(Speaker 1)
And now you guys have, would you say, 100 video reviews? Oh, gosh. I would say more than that. We’ve got, yeah, we have a lot. Everyone can get them. You can just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.

(Speaker 1)
I was scrolling. And this is actually all that’s on this video. If you go to our YouTube channel, we have way more than this. So again, and this is all the stuff. You’re going to grow a successful company, folks. Step one, you got to figure out your revenue goals.

(Speaker 1)
Step two, you got to figure out your breakeven goals. Step three, sit down for an hour of power. Sit down with your spouse. Make sure that you guys are on the same page of your hours you’re willing to work. Step four, unique value proposition. Figure out what it is that makes you unique.

(Speaker 1)
And we have an in -depth guide that you can download for free at thrivetimeshow . com. Next box. You got to improve your branding, your website, your one sheet, in your case, model home presentations, business cards, social media branding.

(Speaker 30)
Everything that a customer sees needs to be first class.

(Speaker 1)
And I was talking to a guy named Ronnie Morales today, and it’s Morales Brothers. I think you met him at a conference. He told me this, and I’m not slamming Ronnie. Ronnie, if you’re listening, I’m not slamming you. This is the real thing. Ronnie said he’d listened to our show for seven consecutive years.

(Speaker 13)
before ever reaching out.

(Speaker 1)
And now he’s reached out, and he’s up 57 % in about eight months. That’s awesome. And we’re going to put his story on part two of today’s show, because he’s in Texas, and he’s seven years behind you. Yeah. But he’s doing a great job. What do you think that thing is where people have bad branding, and we’re not aware of it?

(Speaker 1)
Someone hasn’t brought it to our attention? What causes bad branding? You know, the number one thing I hear business owners say is, well, you know, I don’t really need good branding because I sell everything by word of mouth. Oh, yeah, baby. I’ve got such an incredible reputation that everybody just comes to me by word of mouth. And then it’s like, okay, yeah, but how much business did you do last year?

(Speaker 1)
Well, not very much. And, you know, I’m, I’m really unprofitable, but, but I, I’ve got great, you know, reputation out there and I get a lot of word of mouth. So when people switch over to starting to improve branding, I know you helped us a lot with that in just creating a lot better looking website, creating a, you know, we’ve got an office environment now that is when people walk into our model home, they are blown away. We truly wow our customers when they come to our model homes. It’s a one -of -a -kind experience in the state of Oklahoma.

(Speaker 1)
And the process of that, you know, just going through branding it so that it looks really top -notch. And, you know, that includes everything from, you know, marketing to all of your senses and everything else. So it just really brought us to another level. And when the customer comes in and experiences us after having walked through other builders homes, they usually come in and go, you guys are just on a whole nother level. It’s sights, sounds, smells, experiences, everything that your customer sees, they’re grading you on. And you might not know that they are even judging you because they’re not filling out the form.

(Speaker 1)
And I have a funny story to share with you that’s kind of sad. I was working with a fitness guy years ago, and I’m not going to tell you what studies he’s in or what study folks. I know you want to know, but I’m not going to tell you. And he filled out the form because his wife wanted him to schedule a 13 -point assessment. He did not want to. And he tells me, Clay, honestly, I’m just doing the call because my wife wants me on the phone.

(Speaker 1)
I don’t really don’t get leads from social media. I don’t get leads from marketing. I get all my leads word of mouth, like you were saying.

(Speaker 2)
And I said, well, let me just do this.

(Speaker 1)
Let’s just, this first month working together, let me get all the passwords for you. Facebook, your Google, your YouTube, and I’m just, as the first month, we do this with every single client. We optimize your YouTube, your Facebook, your Instagram, your Twitter, all that. We log on. This is a fitness guy. He was spending like 400 bucks a week, every week on ads.

(Speaker 1)
And he hadn’t known, he wasn’t aware that every time a lead came in, it got stuck in Facebook and went to an email address that he wasn’t checking.

(Speaker 62)
So think about this.

(Speaker 1)
And it’s like 15 to 20 leads a week for years, this guy had.

(Speaker 61)
That’s not good.

(Speaker 1)
And he didn’t even, so I’m going, okay. spending $20 ,000 a year on ads that you’re not getting anything from. And are you aware that the phone number on your site rings to a phone that’s no longer a real phone? And I’m serious, this was real. And then he had before and after photos where somebody had had the idea of, let’s get before and after photos, where you interview someone before they start working out. But then they never completed the thought.

(Speaker 1)
You know what I’m saying? I do. Where it’s like they interview them about getting in shape, but then they never actually like air the part where they’re in shape. Oh, no. So it’s just sort of like an interview with people that are not in shape. And again, he’s a busy guy, busy entrepreneur.

(Speaker 1)
That kind of stuff is very common. It’s kind of laughable if it’s not your company. But OK, next box. You’ve got to determine your customer acquisition costs. How much does it cost you to get a customer? So Aaron, you guys run ads on Google, on Facebook, on retargeting ads.

(Speaker 2)
You have massive signage.

(Speaker 1)
There’s a lot of stuff you do. Why is it important to know how much it costs you, at the end of the day, to get an actual new buyer of a shawl? Well, because if you want more of those, you know what it costs to go generate more of those. And it’s… You know, it’s a cost where it’s like, okay, well, you know, I’m down in sales this month or this quarter or whatever, and I need four more sales to make it a good quarter here before the end of the quarter. And it’s like, I know I can go put money into that and it’s going to cost me X number of dollars per customer to get there.

(Speaker 1)
And so then it’s just a matter of, do I want to spend that money to get to that point? So, you know, for us, it’s, you know, a pretty high number because it’s a lot, it’s a big ticket item, but for some people, it might be, you know, very small to get that you know, each customer. But for us, you know, it’s, you got to know what the number is, because ultimately that goes into the price of your product and whatever you sell, you know, we’re doing homes, that is one of our line item costs. in our homes. That’s a cost. Yeah.

(Speaker 1)
Now, if you go to any of the businesses that I’m involved in, you go to EITRLounge . com forward slash staff.

(Speaker 39)
I put in the password here.

(Speaker 23)
Once I put in the password, I have all of the documents needed to run the company and they’re all saved. So the checklist for the manager, the opening checklist for the assistant manager, the bathroom cleaning checklist, everything needed to grow the company’s all in one place.

(Speaker 1)
And therefore, the business, everybody who works there knows where to go to find those documents. This is the kind of stuff that fires me up and it makes other people crazy. So with the conferences we do, if we ever do a conference that’s out of town, I have a checklist of stuff I print out. I know it seems kind of crazy for people, but this is real. I print it out and it’s like, okay, socks. I’m gone for four days.

(Speaker 1)
I want to have 12 pairs of socks. Why? Because it could be hot. I don’t know. Could get wet. I don’t know.

(Speaker 1)
I have a list of deodorant and socks and shaving. And I have a laptop and a backup laptop. And I have patch cables and XLR cables. And we bring three. You’ve seen all this stuff. But it’s multiple monitors, backup monitors.

(Speaker 1)
Backups for everything.

(Speaker 60)
When you guys build a Shaw home, you’re not moving off of guesswork.

(Speaker 2)
There’s blueprints, there’s plans, there’s systems, so houses don’t fall down. There’s somebody out here listening right now that doesn’t have systems in place. They don’t have checklists. They don’t have it. And so they have to think about everything all the time, because if not, they forget a step. What would you say is the importance of having taken the time to have built these systems now?

(Speaker 2)
It is the night and day difference between running around like your hair is on fire every day, constantly playing firefighter, or you hear people say, I’m up to my armpits in alligators.

(Speaker 1)
It’s because you don’t have systems and processes. And every time at Shaw Homes, every time that we have a problem come up, we automatically go, OK, what step in our system did this fall apart in? And what’s broken in that step? And how can we fix it so it never happens again? So we go back. the process.

(Speaker 1)
We address the problem for the customer, but then we go back after that and we go, how do we fix the process so we don’t repeat this problem? And the business owners that are running around with their hair on fire all the time, it’s because there’s no systems, no processes. Everything is urgent. Everything is hair on fire. And it is a chaos world that you live in. And if you’re going to build homes for a living and build a lot of them, I cannot live in that chaos world.

(Speaker 50)
Now, this next box, I get excited about all these boxes.

(Speaker 1)
This is what I get excited about. This right here is what I care about. OK, the next box is management and execution. You have people on your team, and I’m just going to give some examples.

(Speaker 24)
And I hope this benefits somebody out there listening.

(Speaker 1)
You have people on your team. It’s their responsibility. Every time that you do a new house, they go out there and they design or they get the blueprint on the website. They get the new design of the home, because people want to see floor plans. So somebody’s job is to get those up there. Yes.

(Speaker 1)
Somebody gets photos of every house that you guys are building. Yeah. Somebody gets videos of every house. Somebody puts them all up for sale. Somebody answers the phone every day. Somebody calls the leads every day.

(Speaker 1)
Every day. Somebody cleans the bathroom every day. Somebody builds the houses every day. Now, this is what I find. And I’m sure none of our listeners can relate to this. Some of our listeners, they don’t fire people, and then nothing happens.

(Speaker 1)
So work with me on this. There’s listeners out there that I talk to every day because we do free 13 -point assessments. So I talk to two or three people a day who go to thrivetimeshow . com. They want to schedule a consultation. And the other day, you heard me talking to Jordan.

(Speaker 1)
I said, Jordan, go ahead and keep setting those. He set an appointment with someone who’s definitely not a good fit. And you could tell he had a little question if that was OK. And I said, I would rather you set an appointment with somebody than not. Because I don’t know if who’s a good fit or not, you know? Yeah.

(Speaker 1)
But the idea, though, is I sit down, I was talking to a guy the other day, and he was like, you know, the reason why my team did not get Google reviews or videos reviews this week is because we fired a guy. And I go, cause I’m just asking him, you know, where are we stuck?

(Speaker 30)
What’s your biggest limiting factor?

(Speaker 1)
I have a big process I go through my evaluation. I said, who calls the leads? He’s like, well, normally I have a person that calls the leads, but we just fired her. And I mean this, and I’m going, how long have you been in business? This guy’s been in business for over 10 years, and he’s reaching out for help. Good person.

(Speaker 1)
We’re trying to help him. I think it’s going to be a good fit.

(Speaker 2)
But so I said, so basically, everybody follows the systems until they don’t work there anymore, and then no one does the systems.

(Speaker 1)
And you go back and forth vacillating from things being done to not being done. And one of my favorite things about working with you guys is that you’re honest people. What does that mean? You do your best to do what you say you’re going to do, and you hold yourself and the employees accountable. Absolutely. But what would happen if every week you If somebody wasn’t performing, you remove them from the position, and then the houses weren’t built for the week because something wasn’t going well, or because maybe a salesperson wasn’t performing at the peak, you let them go, and the next thing you know…

(Speaker 1)
What would happen if you managed your company that way? It would be a disaster. I mean, I can’t just fire my superintendent without having somebody already ready to take over all of those responsibilities, because I’ve got materials showing up at the job site today, tomorrow, and the next day. trades showing up who need some supervision, need to know what they’re supposed to be doing. If I fire that guy with no warning, somebody else has to come fill in that position. So for us, we try to never have that gap happen.

(Speaker 2)
And sometimes it’s like you know that you’re going to need to fire somebody, and you can see the writing on the wall. But you want to get the next person up and ready to go before that happens.

(Speaker 1)
And you guys have a weekly meeting.

(Speaker 24)
So we talk a lot on this show from an employer perspective.

(Speaker 1)
But how frustrating would it be to be an A -player employee? and you’re working for a C player boss?

(Speaker 42)
You know, a boss that doesn’t have a staff meeting, that’s not organized, that doesn’t pay people on time, that’s constantly emotional.

(Speaker 1)
I see that a lot. And so management is a learned skill. And thankfully, you know, when I first met with you, you’d already really mastered, in my opinion, managing people. But this next box is where I thought we needed some help, was to build a system for constantly recruiting new people, because certain people work for Shaw Homes for three years or four years, and then they want to go move, they want to have a baby, they want to stay home, they want to get a new job. And even though you have low turnover at Shaw, certain people get to their expiration date and it’s time for them to move on to something else. And because we didn’t have a process in place at Shaw at that time to consistently bring in a pipeline of new people, it made it difficult to do the management that was needed.

(Speaker 1)
Can you talk about the importance of implementing a human resources program for hiring, inspiring, training, and retaining good people? It’s huge. I mean, that was definitely an Achilles heel for us, and you helped us a lot with that. You know, putting in a, you know, where every single week, I’m seeing, you know, potential candidates that could come work for us, and they’re job shadowing and seeing what it’s like to work in our company every single week. Yep. It does multiple things.

(Speaker 1)
It helps the people who work there to know, hey, there’s other people who desire to come work here. Here we go. And if I’m not doing my job, I might get replaced. So there’s a little bit of that. And then it’s also a thing of the people who are shadowing get to see the job being done by people who are happy doing their job. And it helps them to want to come be a part of Shaw Homes.

(Speaker 1)
I’ve got a very long list of people right now in every single position. that would be excited to come work for us if I did all of a sudden find myself with an opening, you know, because occasionally people leave with no notice or whatever, you know, something happens, family member. whatever. Right. And you have that, oh, I need to replace somebody immediately. And the great thing about it is I have a whole bunch of people that I could plug into that position very quickly because every single week I am interviewing.

(Speaker 1)
Now, the next box here is you’ve got to do your accounting. In order to earn millions, you have to automate your accounting. What does that mean? You have to have a system in place for making sure you price your products and services correctly, and that you pay yourself first, that you set aside a set amount of money to pay yourself and your staff. And all these things work together. And what I find is people ask me, often just not knowing.

(Speaker 1)
They come from a place of a good heart. They don’t know. They say to me, Clayton. What is the most important step in growing Shaw Homes? I’ve heard Aaron on the show. He’s a great guy.

(Speaker 1)
Clay, I’ve heard PMH OKC on the show. Clay, I’ve seen Oxyfresh on the show. What was the most important thing they did? And to me, that’s like asking a hiker, what was the most important step you took to get to the top of that mountain? Well, it was the one we took there an hour ago. I took a left step.

(Speaker 1)
So it’s like asking a baker, what’s the most important ingredient? Is it milk? Is it sugar? Is it eggs? It’s like asking a farmer, what’s the most important thing, feeding the animals or watering them? What’s the key to your success?

(Speaker 1)
There’s just certain questions that I understand people want to know, but all of this has to work together, and nothing works unless you do. So I have three final questions for you. For anybody out there that’s thinking about scheduling a consultation, a free consultation with Thrivetimeshow . com and myself, obviously, they’re stuck with me if they fill out the form.

(Speaker 2)
I’m the only person that does 13 -point assessments.

(Speaker 1)
I believe we, I’ve seen it since 2005, we help people decrease their costs, increase their time, freedom, and profits. What would you say is the benefit of scheduling that 13 -point assessment? Well, actually, the 13 -point assessment was very eye -opening for me. You asked me a lot of tough questions that I probably should have been asking myself. and wasn’t. And so as we went through the questions, I was like, I think at every question you asked me, I was like, Oh, that’s a good question.

(Speaker 1)
I was like, hang on, let me think about that for a minute. So I find that it kind of helps open your eyes to, you know, Hmm, these are some things that I know I have some areas of weakness. And then there were, I think, a couple of the questions where I was like, Oh, I know the answer to this one. I got this one, no problem. But it helps you sort of identify, I walked away having identified areas of strength and areas of weakness, even though that really wasn’t the purpose of the phone call, necessarily. It helped me to see that.

(Speaker 2)
And then I was like, Hmm. I think I have a need in a couple of these areas, and I didn’t really know what to do for myself. I didn’t have the answers. You know, in part three of today’s show, part two, we’re going to show the Ronnie Morales story. On part three, we’re going to do a testimony with Myron. And Myron just bought his first Lamborghini today, and he’s super fired up.

(Speaker 2)
And so Myron’s about six years down the path. We’ve been working with you for about eight years, whereas Ronnie’s been with us for less than a year. And it’s at a certain point that we have to take action. Knowledge without application is meaningless. What would you say to somebody who’s like, you know, it’s $1 ,700 a month. And, you know, I’m spending that much right now on random ads and that much money on, uh, random regrettable purchases at the gas station.

(Speaker 2)
And, you know, a lot of iTunes I’m downloading, I’m spending $1 ,700 a month on various things. And I don’t know if I can afford it because I’ve just bought another vehicle that I can’t afford, but I’m leasing it. You know, what would you say to anybody who’s kind of on that fence?

(Speaker 1)
I mean, I would say you need to do it. I mean, it has been a game changer for us. I don’t know why you would sit there and think $1 ,700 a month is too much money to spend. Go find the money somewhere. Go empty out your sofa cushions. Go sell the stuff that you have in your house that you’re not using.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, go get whatever you need to do to get to that place. You need to find that stuff. And I will say this. That cost was very quickly replaced with the extra money we were making. And I’ve seen, I’ve actually seen, because I’ve been around you for a long time, I’ve seen a lot of your clients come in, and right off the bat, they’re real nervous about, am I going to be able to, you know, because maybe they’re a smaller company or whatever. And they’re like, I’m wondering if I’m going to be able to handle this $1 ,700 a month.

(Speaker 2)
And then I see them six months later, and I’m like, how’s it going now?

(Speaker 1)
And they’re like, I don’t know.

(Speaker 2)
Man, we’re just hitting record after record. I have referred several business owners to you. And they’re doing great. That are killing it. And I’ll give one example. I won’t name the person.

(Speaker 2)
But I did send one of my very good friends to you who was on the verge of losing his business because he just wasn’t able. He had bought another one of the shops of what he does. He opened it, and it was not profitable.

(Speaker 1)
And it was going to take under both of his shops. And I sent him over to you. And I remember about three months later, I asked him, how’s it going? And he goes, man, we just had a record -breaking month. This was amazing. And by the way, he said, first, he just hit another record -breaking month, just so you know.

(Speaker 1)
Yeah. And I know right now, not only does he have way more income, but he has a lot more time freedom because he’s been working with you for many years now. And so it changed his life just like it changed my life. I would say, if you’re thinking about doing a 13 -point assessment, stop thinking. Dial the phones. Pause this video.

(Speaker 1)
Make the phone call. Reach out to Clay. Get it started right now. Now, final question I have is, I think people look at oxyfresh . com, and they go in. 500 locations now.

(Speaker 1)
And they look at Elephant in the Room and they go, there’s five brick and mortar locations now. They look at Shaw Homes and they go, you know, these are big success stories. I don’t know that I can do it. What would you say to somebody out there that just feel like they might not have the, like all this stuff they’re going to learn is going to be over their head, too complicated. What would you say? I would say the information, the ideas are easy.

(Speaker 1)
It’s the application that is difficult for people. The ideas that you share, there’s nothing that’s like, oh my God, I don’t have a PhD, therefore I can’t do it. I feel like it’s all very, very simple stuff, but it is a lot of action to get traction and you got to get the action going. And I think if somebody has diligence and discipline or can learn diligence, or discipline. They’re going to do extremely well.

(Speaker 1)
And it’s not about education.

(Speaker 2)
It’s about action.

(Speaker 1)
Now, Aaron, I got one thing I want to say, and then we’re going to wrap up today’s show with a boom. Because boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. And that’s what’s required to have success.

(Speaker 16)
People watching this, they’re going, Aaron, he looks like a normal guy. Well, that’s true.

(Speaker 1)
They say, well, he sounds like a normal guy. Sounds like an all right guy.

(Speaker 16)
That’s true. But the one thing you can’t quite picture on the show, and I want to just give that gift to you folks who are watching, is Aaron smells tremendous.

(Speaker 1)
It’s like a, it’s a, it’s like a, if you had smell -o -vision, if you could just get up there and just smell that, it’s incredible. And it’s really, it’s, it’s his aroma that allows him to achieve massive success. So unless, so if you’re out there and you’re going, what’s the secret sauce?

(Speaker 16)
It’s not a sauce, it’s more of just a smell. So, uh, I don’t know if you qualify to have the kind of success he has, unless you smell like he smells.

(Speaker 1)
It’s a really tremendous smell.

(Speaker 16)
Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the grill gun. One of the gentlemen, his name is Bob Healey, came to our conference with a quasi -functional prototype. He had terminal cancer. And Bob came to me and said, help me. Entrepreneur Clay Clark has built several multi -million dollar businesses. Now, he helps budding entrepreneurs like Bob turbocharge their ideas with a 14 -step plan.

(Speaker 1)
And grillblazer . com is now a massively successful company that’s becoming a household name in many American homes. In this episode, we dive into how to rebuild American small businesses and industrial capacity. You never want to outsource your core competency. We have to import certain technology from countries that hate us to make military weapons to defend us.

(Speaker 1)
That doesn’t even make sense.

(Speaker 16)
This is American Thought Leaders, and I’m Jan Jekielek. Clay Clark, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

(Speaker 1)
Hey, thank you for being here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So this current administration is looking to revitalize the economy, to push it to the next level. For me, always, small business has been a centerpiece of this. Some people describe it as the engine of American innovation and growth and so forth. But during the COVID years, just we’re emerging out of them as we speak, a lot of small business was frankly wiped out. And you’re the guy who’s actually helping people build those small businesses.

(Speaker 1)
So Tell me about what you do. Well, in America today, we have about approximately 330 million Americans that live here, and we have 9 .2 million Americans that identify as being self -employed. And so what happens is somebody out there, a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, a plumber, somebody says, I want to start my own business. And when they do, they don’t really know the proven processes to start and grow a company. And that’s what I do. So I basically take somebody with a dream, and I align them with my team, and we help them scale some things.

(Speaker 1)
something to humans on the planet Earth in exchange for a profit. That’s what we helped people to scale. You’ve structured your business in such a way that it’s actually, unless your client does well, it’s impossible for you to do well. I thought to myself, what a brilliant way, what an ethical way to set up a business, because you have no choice. The word shalom, which Pastor Jackson, I go to Sheridan Church, and Pastor Jackson talks about that word from time to time, shalom. But the shalom is like a win -win.

(Speaker 1)
It’s a win -win relationship, a mutually beneficial relationship. Napoleon Hill, the best -selling author, Think and Grow Rich, calls it the mutually beneficial relationship.

(Speaker 16)
And so what I do, and I coach a client or work with a client, I tell the client, hey, look, I’m gonna help you grow your business for the smallest monthly fee possible, and I just wanna get a small percentage of the growth. Because if I’m getting one percentage, percentage point of the growth. Theoretically, you’re making 100 times more than I am.

(Speaker 1)
But if I can scale multiple companies, it turns out to be a great thing for me. So I’ve been doing the same thing for 20 years. And so what I’ll do is I’ll sit down with an electrician, and the electrician will have a business that’s stuck. It’s not thriving. It’s barely surviving, and they go, I don’t know how to grow. I don’t know if it’s marketing.

(Speaker 1)
I don’t know if it’s human resources. I don’t know if it’s accounting. I don’t know if it’s pricing. I don’t know if it’s me. I don’t know if it’s the economy. How do I grow my company? And I sit down with them, and I say, look, we’re going to go through a 14 -step plan to rejuvenate, to revive, to bring life into your business.

(Speaker 1)
And I’m going to get a small percentage of the growth, and you’re going to be rich, and I’m going to be doing very well if this works. Tell me a little bit about your background. And one thing that I, you know, made me aware of you is that during these COVID years, when a lot of small businesses were basically closed and many permanently, the companies you worked with actually all stayed open. Just tell me a little bit about how that happened and a little bit about where you come from, too, because that’s connected. And I apologize for everybody watching this that I speak fast. I used to stutter as a kid, okay?

(Speaker 1)
So my synapses go really fast. So you might have to watch this in slow -mo. But I knew that the Constitution is not a suggestion, and the Constitution cannot be suspended because of a pandemic. That’s something I knew. Also, the Bible, I happen to be a Christian. Hebrews 10 .25 tells us to not forsake the gathering, even as we draw closer to the end.

(Speaker 1)
So theoretically, as we’re getting closer to the end of time, God is the alpha, the omega, the beginning and the end for all the Christians out there, we’re not supposed to stop gathering. So I knew that the pandemic couldn’t temporarily suspend the constitution. I knew that the Bible tells us to not forsake the gathering. And so to me, it was a no -brainer to stay open. Also, I have this controversial business theory I was telling you off camera a little bit, but it’s hard to be open if your business is closed.

(Speaker 1)
And so I really leaned into my clients and I said, clients, listen, doctors, dentists, pizzerias, home remodelers, look, the models that said 2 .2 million people would die from COVID, those are false. Those are made by Neil Ferguson, the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute. Whether they were wrong intentionally or accidentally, they’re wrong. The PCR test, the polymerase chain reaction tests, Those can be misused, misconstrued to inflate cases. And COVID is 100 % treatable with Budesonide, Ivermectin, and Hydroxychloroquine. And a lot of my clients were going, how do you know this?

(Speaker 1)
And I’m going, well, a third of my clients are in the medical field. So I’m working with doctors.

(Speaker 59)
Dr. Rashid Batar, may he rest in peace, client of mine.

(Speaker 1)
Dr. Zulinko, These are friends of mine, may he rest in peace. And they knew the models were false, the PCR tests are false, the treatments are real. However, the media, outside of One American News, Epoch, and a handful of media outlets, they were just telling everybody, we need a lockdown, we need to temporarily suspend the Constitution. And to me, that was analogous to laying on the train tracks to see if it was safe while the trains approaching quickly and will certainly kill us if we don’t move. It’s like a case study of if we lay on the train tracks as the train runs over us, we’ll see if that’ll help. We’ll see if locking down, shutting down, quarantining will help.

(Speaker 16)
Will that stop the spread? And I knew that it’s going to start the spread of communism is what it’s going to do because then people are going to be sitting around looking for government handouts. And so I told my clients, stay over

(Speaker 1)
be the purple cow in the field of brown cows, to quote Seth Godin, the marketing guru. Stay open.

(Speaker 16)
You’ll be the only company that’s open in your market.

(Speaker 8)
Shaw Homes is a home building company we’ve worked with for years.

(Speaker 1)
We started with them. They were at $14 million of revenue, shawhomes . com. Before they sold the company, we got them up to $150 million of revenue. Not overnight success kind of growth, but a tremendous amount of growth had to do with the fact they stayed open. Pizzerias I worked with, they stayed open.

(Speaker 1)
Again, if you’re watching today’s show and you say, what can I do with this information? The next pandemic, the next scamdemic, the next plandemic, whatever that is, it cannot temporarily suspend the Constitution. Locking down won’t stop the spread of COVID or some other virus. What it will do is it will start the spread of communism. Pastor Jackson Laumeyer, Also in Tulsa, I was speaking with him earlier, and the thing that made him realize that there’s something amiss with this closing of churches is right across the street, he had a Home Depot, if I recall correctly, a strip club, and one other kind of business that I can’t remember, but all of which were open and with tons of people going in 24 -7 in many cases.

(Speaker 16)
And he’s thinking to himself, my church is supposed to be closed here, and I’m only doing this once a week. Well, okay, within four miles or five miles of Sheridan Church, which is a Tulsa -based church, there is an adult club, as he mentioned, a strip club. There was a liquor store. These places are all – Yeah, that’s right.

(Speaker 1)
It was a liquor store, was the other show. They were all open. Dr. Deborah Brooks came out and actually said on camera that the models were false and that that number was off by 25 times. So my wife is about five foot three, you guys have met her. That would be like me telling you my wife is 125 feet tall. Thus, you need to renovate your offices because she’s going to come visit.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, the jackassery of being off by 25 feet. that should have stopped the pandemic to begin with. Then those PCR tests, Kerry Mullis, may he rest in peace, the inventor of the PCR tests, he actually on camera said multiple times, The DePauli -Maurice chain reaction test, a PCR test, should not be used to test something like COVID. He explained how his test could be misused and miscalibrated. And the Constitution is the law or it’s not. It’s not a suggestion and it cannot be temporarily suspended because of a scandemic.

(Speaker 1)
It’s interesting because you say pandemic, but really, we’re talking about the response, the way that we, as a society, dealt with the pandemic, because there was a virus, and it did go around. But how we deal with it is the whole story, actually. So let’s go back to small business. Seeing as you’re tracking the realities of small business as part of your work, how much of an impact did the whole COVID policies thing have on the small businesses, really? Well, the average small business that I work with, when people come to me and they say, could you help me grow my company? We do what was called a 14 -point analysis, okay?

(Speaker 1)
So, Jan, if I was talking to you and you were a business owner, I would go over, okay, what are your goals? What do your finances look like? What does your marketing look like? What does your branding look like? And we go through that sort of a business colonoscopy kind of thing. We discover that the average small business owner has about two and a half weeks of payroll on hand.

(Speaker 1)
or two and a half weeks of operating capital on hand, or maybe a little more than half a month of operating capital, meaning that if you’re a pizzeria, you’re a doctor, you’re a dentist, you could afford to be closed. for a week and then another week before you would start to have some serious cash flow problems. Cash to a business is like blood to a human, oxygen to a human, water to a fish. It’s essential to survive. By doing two weeks to stop the spread, what you did was you verified that every business would be dead. I’m not just saying that because it rhymes, but two weeks to stop

(Speaker 1)
the spread was like verifying that every business would be dead. And so my wife and I and a lot of my longtime clients, we had built up fortification and cashflow fortification so we could withstand lean times. But most people that I knew couldn’t. And so our podcast oftentimes will have a million listeners a month. And I was getting text messages from listeners saying, I own a business. How am I supposed to feed my family if I’m closed for two weeks?

(Speaker 1)
So right now, if you go to usdebtclock . org and you look at it, we’ve got approximately under 3 % of the American population that’s self -employed. And according to Inc.

(Speaker 16)
Magazine, by default, 96 % of businesses fail anyway. 96%, according to Inc.

(Speaker 1)
Magazine, fail within 10 years. You’ve got a one out of a 1000 shot of achieving success as a small business owner by default anyway. And you add into that lockdowns. Quarantines, curfews, think about the emotional chaos that creates in a company. A small business is like a family. So half of my staff at my hair business wanted to stay open.

(Speaker 1)
Half of them were going, let’s stay open, let’s cut hair. The other staff is saying, let’s stay closed, I want to be safe. You transition to the remodeling company I’m involved in. Half of the employees wanted to stay open. The other half is saying, well, if we can keep it open, basically not work for two weeks, I’ll call this a vacation. And so it created a division within companies too, where employees, some employees wanted to stay open, some wanted to stay closed.

(Speaker 1)
Some people were very concerned about the effectiveness of the treatments, some were not. And so it created dissension within organizations, it killed momentum, it killed rapport, it really was destructive for small business. That’s fascinating, looking at it really from the inside. Even if the businesses did survive, they had to go through this extra chaos. I have a very intimate knowledge into the workings of the business. I’m on the phone with dentists who are saying, my front desk lady will come to work, but my front desk guy won’t.

(Speaker 1)
Dentists are telling me, my anesthesiologist, let’s say, for the oral surgeons, he’ll come to work, but the actual oral surgeon won’t. So the anesthesiologist will, but the surgeon won’t. I work with doctors that do knee replacements, doctors that do cosmetic surgeries of all different kinds.

(Speaker 16)
They’re going, I can’t find a hospital that’ll let my patient have the knee surgery, but I can find surgeons to work it. So it created this supply chain problem.

(Speaker 1)
The home builders I was working with, they can find framers to frame, but they couldn’t find tile guys to do the tile. So it created all sorts of disruption within the marketplace, because not only did you have to make a decision as an owner, whether to keep your business open, but then you had to educate your employees from a position of weakness. Because these doctors, dentists, and lawyers, they don’t claim to be experts on pandemics. they claim to be experts in their given field. So it really was probably the most turbulent time to have a business, run a business, own a business. However, because I have a close -knit relationship with my clients, we were able to keep it going.

(Speaker 1)
And to quote John Lee Dumas, he has a podcast called EOFire .

(Speaker 51)
com.

(Speaker 1)
And John Lee Dumas is a friend of mine, and he says to me, you’re going to go ahead and have your business conference? during the pandemic?” And I go, oh yeah. And I’m mangling the quote, but he said something to the effect of, well, I don’t think you have a lot of competition. And so our business conference was booming. And one of our, there was a literary agent who represents some of the biggest authors in the world.

(Speaker 1)
She told me she flew to our conference and she was the only person on the plane. How do you actually figure out who you’re going to work with? Because with your particular model, it’s clear you can’t It’s not that anybody who wants to work with you can because you have to make your decisions about who you think has potential because you’re going to be on the hook for it. Well, when you got a chance to kind of shadow me a little bit off camera, I do a lot of the video editing myself. I do a lot of the web development myself. I do a lot of the accounting myself.

(Speaker 1)
So I’m very much hands on. And so I like to keep a group of around 160 clients I work with. And I do these free assessments. And the reason why I do a free 13 point assessment is I just want to see, are we going to have a shalom or a win -win relationship? Can I? And there’s three things I’m looking for.

(Speaker 1)
Do you actually solve a problem or do you provide a product or a service that the marketplace would benefit from? So if somebody’s selling something that I think is ethically a foul or against my Christian morals, I’m not going to work with them. So thing number one is, do you sell a product or service that I actually think is ethical, legal, that kind of thing?

(Speaker 59)
And you’d be surprised how many people are selling illegal things that won’t help doing it.

(Speaker 1)
So number two is, does the person actually identify with the worldviews that I have? If I’m going to sit there and debate about the Constitution or capitalism, that’s probably not the thing. So one is, do we have a product or service that we can actually help you scale? Two is, Is the person ideologically aligned with me? And then three is, you know, is it realistic? We want to be able to set these SMART goals.

(Speaker 1)
I call them SMART goals. They’re S -M -A -R -T. I’m quoting Brian Tracy, best -selling author, but a SMART goal is a specific goal. It’s a measurable goal. It’s something that’s actionable. You know, you can actually take action and do it.

(Speaker 1)
It’s realistic and it’s time -sensitive. S -M -A -R -T. Is it specific? Is it measurable? Is it actionable? Is it realistic?

(Speaker 1)
Is it time -sensitive? Because if I can help somebody grow a company and I can see a clear path to get there, it is exciting, Jan, when you know, wow, this person’s business is struggling and I can help them get there. So I think about Papa Gallo’s Pizzeria in Florida. We’ve helped this couple grow. They’ve opened three restaurants. So since I’ve started working with them, we’ve opened up restaurant two and three.

(Speaker 1)
They’ve grown their business five -fold. I think about shawhomes . com from 14 million to 150 million. I think about companies like Oxifresh, where I’ve had a role in advising them. They’re now up to 500 locations. Beverly Hills Precious Metals, here’s my precious metals dealer that I’ve worked with for years.

(Speaker 1)
And to watch him scale his company, I just, that never gets old to me.

(Speaker 8)
You know, it’s like infinitely exciting to help someone achieve their goals. So that’s really… what gets me excited and then growing up poor or without money, I’m sure there’s somebody watching this who grew up more poor, but you know, my dad was working at a gas station, working the night shift.

(Speaker 41)
My dad was delivering pizzas for Domino’s.

(Speaker 16)
May he rest in peace. In his late thirties, he’s in his late thirties, he’s delivering pizzas. He’s working at a gas station.

(Speaker 1)
He has a college degree from Oral Roberts University. That wasn’t a reverse shout out to ORU, but that’s a fact. And, but yet he didn’t know how to financially help our family thrive, but he had the work ethic. I appreciate him being willing to work those two jobs. Whenever I talk to that new potential client, I picture it like I’m talking to a 37 -year -old version of my dad. My dad’s no longer with us.

(Speaker 1)
He passed away from Lou Gehrig’s, but that’s how I look at it. I can’t communicate it with enough sincerity or passion, but every person I talk to on the phone who wants to become a client or wants to come to a conference, I pretend in my mind, maybe it’s not healthy, maybe it is, that that’s the 37 -year -old version of my father, and that’s what I look for. But someone who wants the hand out, yeah, no. I don’t want to do that, but that person needs a hand up. That’s who I try to work with. Again, I just want to come back to this.

(Speaker 1)
This is what dawned on me, that I think you built your business to have to only have the people that want the hand up, because it’s just not going to work with the other people. You’re not going to work with them. to be successful. That’s a great alignment of incentives. That’s what I’m trying to say here. Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill.

(Speaker 1)
That book changed my life, and I encourage everyone to read it. There are three big principles I got out of that. One is the idea that only engage in a mutually beneficial relationship. We should never leech on our fellow man. We should never be looking for a handout.

(Speaker 16)
We should never be looking to the government. We should try to have a win -win with the marketplace. The second is we want to over deliver.

(Speaker 1)
Can we exceed the expectations of our clients, of our buyers? Can we exceed the expectations of our customers? And then the third is you want to surround yourself with people that have a similar goal and vision for their life. And so clients of mine, when they are clients, they also get to come to a workshop every couple months. And so that’s where I get to meet people like Eric Trump. You know, Eric Trump comes to our workshops and, you know, the average mechanic, doctor, dentist, lawyer, home remodeler, plumber, they’re going, I’m in a room with 300 people and one of them is Eric Trump.

(Speaker 1)
This is incredible. Or they’ll say, wow, there’s 300 people in this room and one of them is an NBA coach. I’m in a room with 300 people and Tim Tebow is one of them. And so there’s something that happens when you’re in a small, intimate setting and you’re surrounded with 300 entrepreneurs, some of which are household names. There’s a whole different level of electricity and of learning and of interaction that happens. And that’s really the environment we try to create.

(Speaker 1)
We want to help people create their own virtual mastermind, their own community of people that have that energy. I’m not Amish, but as I study the Amish, I know they’re very intentional about their community, and I can just tell you we are very intentional about the community that we’ve built here. Tell me about your background. You did grow up in a humble situation, but you had some very interesting pivots along the way. This is what happened.

(Speaker 1)
I’m a kid that stuttered. My dad’s working two jobs, working at the gas station, quick trip, and working delivering pizzas. My mom’s doing what she can do. It occurred to me, and I don’t remember the exact moment, Jan, but I remember that kind of era of my life, thinking to myself, we’re poor. Although we don’t care about money, every decision was somehow impacted based upon money. And I thought to myself, 12 -year -old self, 13 -year -old self, I’m going to find a way to make copious amounts of money so therefore I can focus on other things.

(Speaker 1)
Because for anybody who spends any amount of time with me, there’s three things I’m always doing. I’m always writing songs. I’m always writing books. And I’m always writing business plans. So I get into that kind of stuff. But you can’t afford to write songs that very few people listen to, unless you have the time to do it.

(Speaker 1)
So I set out on this quest to create time freedom and financial freedom. So out of my parents’ basement, I started a company called DJ Connection. Back in the day, it was called C &G DJ Service. And it was called G because the youth pastor That mentored me who he was old enough to drive a car see I couldn’t drive a car And so the guy who drove me to my gigs was my youth pastor and he lost a bet and shaved a G into His very hairy chest for some reasons. I don’t understand. So it was C and G DJ service named off of that And then I basically started cold calling schools.

(Speaker 1)
I’m a 14 year old kid 15 year old kid cold calling schools saying hi I’m Who DJs your school dance? Who’s in charge of organizing the school dance? And they would say, oh, that’s the PTA, or that’s the booster club, or that’s the parent sponsors. And I say, hey, I’d love to DJ your school dance, and I’ll do it for $1. And you can just pay me after the event what you think it’s worth. Well, a lot of schools are infinitely disappointed in their disc jockeys.

(Speaker 1)
And so I started getting some gigs. I started doing two gigs a week. three gigs a month. I needed equipment. I was selling the gigs, but I didn’t have any equipment. So I found a pothead by the name of Oswald, and I rented equipment from him.

(Speaker 1)
This is a true story. And I thought to myself, I probably don’t want to be renting equipment from potheads. I probably need to have a more viable. This is my 14, 15 -year -old mind. So I got a job working poured concrete, and I got a job working at the Norseman restaurant, and I got a job working as a home health aide. So I had three jobs simultaneously.

(Speaker 1)
That was my pro tip for getting rich quick. And I took every dime I had, and I just kept buying more speakers, more sound, more lights. The speakers I bought were called JBL TR225s, and these were like $500 a piece. And I tell you this because I was making $8 an hour. So if you’re making $8 an hour, you gotta work, you know, 70 hours to buy a speaker. you know, before taxes.

(Speaker 1)
So like, you know, you got to work 80 hours per speaker. So I had three jobs. I’m working these three jobs. Eventually, I decided to go to college early because in Minnesota, if you have enough credits, you can go to college early. So I went to St. Cloud State, and I picked classes, you know, graphic design, language, accounting, things that I thought would help me on my career. And then I transferred to Oral Roberts University.

(Speaker 1)
And at that point, I changed the name from C &G DJ Service. to DJ Connection. And then over time, I started getting into weddings. And before I sold the company, we were doing 4 ,000 weddings a year, which is 80 weddings a weekend, by the way. So think about all the vans, the lights, the mic stands, the speaker stands, the lighting equipment, all the people training these people. And then I started this thing called the Tulsa Bridal Association, which was a big bridal show.

(Speaker 1)
I started one of the region’s largest wedding photography companies called epicphotos . com. What happened is the fathers of the bride would pull me aside and they would say, hey, I’m a dentist. Could you help me grow my business? Hey, I’m a doctor. Could you help me?

(Speaker 1)
Hey, I have a hardware store.

(Speaker 16)
Could you help me? And I won this thing called the SBA Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the state of Oklahoma. I also was the City of Tulsa Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the chamber when I was 20.

(Speaker 1)
And I was the state’s Entrepreneur of the Year when I was 27. And I kept winning these awards. And every time I would win awards, people would say, can I pick your brain? And then my wife, I’d give her credit. My wife says, What if you said yes instead of saying no, and you just charged them a small percentage of the growth? And I’m going, I don’t know.

(Speaker 1)
I like DJing quite a bit. So I kind of put that idea in the back burner. And then one by one, more and more people kept being more and more persistent, asking if I could help them. And I first started working with Maytag University, and I’m working with Hewlett Packard, and I’m working with some bigger companies that are bringing me in to speak. And I kept being asked and asked. And eventually, we found ourselves 160 clients.

(Speaker 1)
And that was almost 20 years ago. So I’ve been doing the same thing for 20 years. And I love it. That’s interesting. They would actually bring you in to speak, but then somehow that would turn into some kind of business relationship as well. Because you were this budding entrepreneur, they wanted you as an inspirational speaker or something?

(Speaker 1)
The way it would work is like Hewlett -Packard, as an example. There’s a lady by the name of Anitra, a great event planner, by the way. Anitra, if you’re watching, big shout out to you. Anitra calls me and says, I work with Maytag University, and they’d like a speaker to come in to teach time management and sales. And I’ve watched some of your videos online, some of your samples, and I’d love to have you come speak. Could you do it?

(Speaker 1)
And most speakers charge per hour. Jan, they charge per hour. It’s like, you know, $10 ,000 for 90 minutes. Again, Napoleon Hill, I can hear it in my head, overdeliver, overdeliver. So I would tell these event planners, for me, you get me unlimited time for two days. So not just per hour, unlimited time for two days.

(Speaker 1)
Any subject that you want me to talk about, I’ll do it. And if anybody bails out, I’ll speak. So if you have a guest speaker that cancels, I’ll fill in. Well, I’m working for Maytag University. The United States Government Accountability Office brought me in to speak. And I’m at the Anatole Hotel speaking to that group.

(Speaker 1)
And I think two of the speakers canceled. So I had three gigs, three speaking slots at the same event. And I kept being known as this is the guy who’s bringing comedy and entertainment to education, because I was a former disc jockey, which is like one level lower than a carny in terms of the entertainment hierarchy. So I was this DJ, entertainer, who’s educating. And I call it edutainment.

(Speaker 16)
And so what happened is more and more of the attendees would say, hey, I own a Maytag local store, and I love what you talked about. Could you help me grow my business? And I said, well, you just pay me $1 ,000 a month and a small percentage of your growth, and we’ll do it.

(Speaker 1)
And they go, really? And I could usually help somebody double their revenue within 12 months. And then I’m speaking to Hewlett Packard and I’m going, you know, this is corporate America. I don’t know that this is probably my best place here. But the event planner who booked me would call me and say, hey, I love what you’re doing. Could you help me grow my event planning business?

(Speaker 1)
And so it just kept happening where I was bumping into caterers, event planners, photographers, farmers insurance. I did a lot of work with their local agents. I’ve done a lot of work with state farm agents, not under the brand, but with the local agents, the local entrepreneurs. Franchises started bringing me in. UPS brought me in. Somehow I found myself being the keynote speaker for UPS Canada, and it was just a lot of fun, but I’ve got five kids, and so I figured I needed to create a scalable model where I could help people in a way that it still allowed me to be here.

(Speaker 1)
and physically present father. And so that’s why I have the model I do now. And that’s why I don’t travel to do speaking events. I typically bring the events to me. I sat in on a number of your consultations. I mean, basically, it’s business coaching what you do, right? And with actually doing some of the work as well.

(Speaker 1)
Yeah, you think about Bill Belichick. You think about Nick Saban. You think about Red Auerbach. You think about a great coach. What’s a coach doing? A coach is doing three things.

(Speaker 1)
They’re pushing someone to be their best. The second thing is a coach is giving you a plan. You know, for the NFL, they don’t say to each player, hey, why don’t you come up with your own plan?

(Speaker 16)
And then when we say hike, everyone go 11 separate directions, we’ll see what happens.

(Speaker 1)
There’s a unified play, there’s a strategy, there’s a plan. And so a coach pushes you to be your best, a coach gives you the plan. And the third thing a coach does, and this is probably an uncomfortable word for a lot of people, I know certainly it is for me, it’s accountability. And as a Christian, one of the biggest problems that I face have with myself is hypocrisy. It’s where, you know, we read the Bible, we wanna be a Christian, I call myself a Christian, the Bible says to do these things, and sometimes in my morning reflections, just this morning I was thinking, the Bible tells me I’m supposed to love my wife the way that Christ loved the church. I don’t know that I did that yesterday.

(Speaker 1)
I probably was a C -level husband yesterday. I got to at least get to a B today. And so having a coach is a great way to have kind of a mirror or that accountability, that objective feedback, that accountability to make sure that your dreams turn into actions and those actions turn into results. Because if not, you just have hope. And hope is sort of an opium that I think a lot of people in the American medical community have, where we just hope things are going to get better.

(Speaker 1)
We write songs about hoping things will get better. We watch movies about hoping. But looking for entropy or serendipity or some sort of luck for success to happen is not a valid strategy. Hope is not a valid strategy. You need somebody who can coach you down a proven plan, and that’s what I do. Tell me about the BS in business school.

(Speaker 1)
I primarily think that business school is primarily BS. I primarily find that business school involves talking about theories, thinking about concepts, theories, and things that don’t impact actually growing a company. But when you get out of business college or you start a business, you’ve got to learn the four steps to grow a company. Step one, find a problem. Step two, solve the problem. Step three, sell the solution.

(Speaker 1)
Step four, nail it and scale it. Because if you can’t sell, your business is going to go to hell and your life will not go well. And so most people have a degree from business school, but they have no knowledge of how to actually start and grow a successful company.

(Speaker 16)
I call my Thrive Time show, I call it the Thrive Time show business school without the BS, because I find that so many people, my father is one of these, where again, may he rest in peace. He went to school, he was top of his class, he graduated with great grades, but he had no concept of how to turn his goals to own a business into reality.

(Speaker 1)
One of the gentlemen, he came to our conference, he had terminal cancer. By the way, in the grace of God, he did not die. His name is Bob Healy, and all your listeners can go verify his story. It’s grillblazer . com, grillblazer . com.

(Speaker 1)
He showed up at one of my conferences with a quasi -functional prototype, meaning it’s a prototype that wasn’t polished, for a thing called the grill gun, which is like a flamethrower for grilling. And he had never sold any, he had never had a team, he never employed people, he didn’t have a website, didn’t have a logo. didn’t have a brand, didn’t have a marketing plan, but he had a prototype. And Bob came to me and said, help me. And grillblazer . com is now a massively successful company that’s becoming a household name in many American homes.

(Speaker 1)
He’s kind of like the grill master now. And that’s a guy named Bob who is battling health issues, marketing issues, branding issues, accounting issues. And Bob couldn’t find financing either. We actually helped Bob raise all the money to sell the product. This is the other thing I was going to ask you about. How do you view venture capital or people coming in from the outside to support you?

(Speaker 1)
In Bob’s case, we helped Bob do a crowdfunding campaign to help him raise money. In my case, I did the controversial strategy of working at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, all while growing DJConnection . com. Whenever you get capital, there’s three C’s that come with capital, three C’s. So whoever invests in your business, there’s three C’s that come with it. Yeah, you get the money, but three C’s come with it.

(Speaker 1)
One is counsel. The people who invest in you are going to want to steer the direction you go. It’s going to happen. Three or number two, connections. Um, when you, Take capital from, let’s say, Sequoia Capital or whatever the capital company is, the big venture capital fund. They’re going to have a certain political worldview, a way they view the world.

(Speaker 16)
I mean, Silicon Valley views the world a certain way.

(Speaker 1)
Middle America views the world a certain way. Some people are right of center. Some people are left of center. But the moment you start to take in capital into your business, you start to lose some sovereignty. So you get one, you’re going to get the council. The two, you’re going to get the connections.

(Speaker 1)
And then the third is you’re going to get the money, which seems obviously the capital. But I think a lot of times people think about capital in terms of, oh, I’ll just get the money, and then I can go along and grow my company. No, no, you get the money, but you now have the connection to people that you might or might not align with, and you now are going to get the money. counsel or their coaching, and it might not be what you want.

(Speaker 16)
So I would encourage everybody out there, if possible, try to find a way to self -fund or fund from people you know. And the best book ever written on how to raise venture capital is called Pitching Hacks. Pitching Hacks.

(Speaker 1)
It’s written by Naval Ravikant. And it is super small and super powerful pitching hacks. You can download it for free. There are PDF versions available online. And that will help you figure out how to get money in a more independent way? He teaches the specific linear process to go through to raise money.

(Speaker 1)
But I would just tell you, before you try to raise money from people you don’t know, let’s say you needed to raise $50 ,000. It’s better to go to 10 people you know and get $5 ,000 from 10 people. who could afford to lose it, than it is to bring in an outside investor who you don’t know that well, who may or may not want to dramatically change the way in which you do business. And I’ll just give you a brief example. There was a franchise I worked with years ago, and the owner of the business was very conservative. And he took in outside capital, and the outside venture capitalist wanted him to take his business in a very DEI way, the diversity, the equity, the inclusion, the very woke agenda, and He really, really had a hard time because the investor wanted to dramatically alter the course of the business.

(Speaker 1)
I’m not an advocate for the woke investor, but the woke investor is saying, hey, I gave you all this money and without me, your business wouldn’t exist, so we’re going to go this way. I had to help that business owner decouple the business from the financing, and it was a painful experience. When possible, don’t secure outside financing from people that you don’t align with or people that you’re not equally yoked with. Bringing back manufacturing is a centrally important feature of America being successful. Some of that is going to be small business. How many of your businesses are manufacturing, and how can that be done in your mind?

(Speaker 1)
I believe that my client portfolio is very indicative of the American entrepreneurial portfolio as a country. About 10%, I would say, ish of our portfolio has to do with manufacturing. So I think of one of my clients, it’s called Master Machine, mmm -usa .

(Speaker 40)
com.

(Speaker 1)
They make parts for Tesla. They make parts for the US Army. That’s a company right here in Oklahoma that does manufacturing. I think of another brand I work with, Grid Down, Chow Down. They sell mRNA -free meat. I think about, as I mentioned, the case study of Shaw Homes, the home builder we work with, or Sky House home builders.

(Speaker 16)
They’re building real things right here in America. I would tell people as a pro tip, you never want to outsource your core competency. Exporting jobs to China started under Nixon, but that’s just complete jackassery to outsource 95 % of our essential medical supplies to countries that hate us. We have these essential metals, these essential elements needed to make car batteries, to make cars. We have outsourced that to the point where the majority of the countries that hate us are the ones who are procuring these essential elements needed to make manufacturing possible. America needs to do, I know you recently interviewed Eric Trump and Eric talked about this, we’ve got to bring manufacturing back to America.

(Speaker 1)
We’ve got to do it. Anybody out there that has that dream to make jeans in America, make a tie in America, make shirts in America, make shoes in America, make clothing in America. I encourage everybody really seize this opportunity under the Trump administration and find a way to bring manufacturing back to these United States. We saw it happen a little bit under President Trump and Dr. Ben Carson. We saw an urban renewal. Dr. Carson

(Speaker 1)
was instrumental in bringing investments into urban development areas that basically the world had given up on. They brought in great restaurants and nightlife and entertainment, and they rejuvenated. They put life and investment capital into these abandoned buildings and revitalized a lot of downtowns. I know we can do the same thing with manufacturing. If you’re watching today’s show and you have the ability to reinvigorate manufacturing in America, I would encourage you to do so. I don’t speak for the Trump administration, but I know they are really wanting to team up with and support and to breathe life into entrepreneurs that want to bring manufacturing back into these United States.

(Speaker 1)
There’s this idea that a country can’t be successful without this core element of manufacturing. There’s this philosophy, right? Do you subscribe to this? The bulk of manufacturing has to be within a country for it to even be successful, ultimately. It can’t be service -oriented. It can’t be.

(Speaker 1)
I’m working with a client in Wisconsin who has a home remodeling company. He actually does beautiful home remodeling. He does great work. Well, he’s not outsourcing the manufacturing and the remodeling of a house to somebody who can do the work because he can’t. He does the work himself. Therefore, when he talks to, in this fictitious example, he talks to the Thompsons and the Thompsons say, you know what?

(Speaker 1)
I want the pool table to go here. I want the lighting to go here. I want to move this to create this ambiance. This client who I actually work with in Wisconsin, he’s able to get in there and get in the conversation with the client and rearrange the building plan to accommodate the client’s needs. He can do that. But if he was outsourcing that to a third world country or a second world country or some country not here, it would be very hard to make those real -time modifications.

(Speaker 1)
So my client, yes, he’s a home remodeler, but I would argue he’s almost a plumber. he’s almost an electrician, he’s almost a designer, he’s almost a sales guru, he’s almost a manager, he’s almost an accountant, he’s wearing a lot of hats. And this is what you call a polymath, okay?

(Speaker 44)
And a lot of the founding fathers were polymaths.

(Speaker 1)
I challenge anybody out there to look up the life of Benjamin Franklin and tell me what career he was in. Thomas Jefferson, what career? Look up George Washington, what career? What career were these people? Were they politicians? Were they military leaders?

(Speaker 1)
Were they entrepreneurs? I would say a lot of our founding fathers were all of these skill sets. And I think it’s a good idea. to be resourceful. Now what happens is when we outsource our core competency to countries that hate us, by the way, what does that even do?

(Speaker 16)
I mean, I don’t, I don’t even understand how that’s a sustainable idea to make some of the cutting edge military technology that America’s military now uses.

(Speaker 1)
We have to import certain technology from countries that hate us to make military weapons to defend us. That doesn’t even make sense. Think about that if you go, let’s go back in the time of kings and queens and castles and imagine that you are a king trying to protect your castle. and you have to get behind your castle walls and yell out on your castle megaphone, excuse me, enemy, could you please ship us spears? We are trying to protect ourselves. From you.

(Speaker 1)
From you. And then the hostile enemy says, sure, how many spears do you need? I mean, just the jackassery, the duality, the mental gymnastics I have to go through to understand how outsourcing our core components, our core resources, our core manufacturing to countries that hate us, I just can’t do it. Also, the CCP, they are not a competition. They are an enemy. The Chinese Communist Party does forced organ harvesting.

(Speaker 1)
The Chinese Communist Party has no problem with sending people to re -education camps.

(Speaker 24)
The Chinese Communist Party is not somebody that we should be working with.

(Speaker 1)
We do not want to be investing heavily into a country that is an ideological hatred towards your worldview and who has psychopathic tendencies. It’s just not a good idea.

(Speaker 16)
So you’re a big fan of repatriating the supply chains to America, basically. It’s just wisdom.

(Speaker 8)
America, we have the resources right now to desalinate Unbelievable amounts of water. If there was a water shortage, if you believe that there’s a water shortage in California, we can desalinate. Think about Israel. How does Israel maintain a self -sufficient country? It’s the size of New Jersey. It’s surrounded by countries that hate it.

(Speaker 16)
I mean, if Israel can stand up for freedom and be able to be self -sustaining, think about Israel.

(Speaker 1)
They’ve turned, what, desolate land into rich, plentiful farmland. I mean, America, we have the tools, the technology, the drive, the critical thinking. We have the population needed to become self -sufficient, and we should be. America should be a net exporter of oil. America should be a net exporter of auto oil. automobiles.

(Speaker 58)
America should be a net exporter of technology.

(Speaker 1)
We should not be importing. And this idea of becoming an importing nation that provides services primarily, what that does is that sets the foundation for becoming a slave state of a Chinese communist totalitarian regime. There’s this term that’s often used, whole of society. right? And that can mean different things. Whole of society could mean, like in Communist China, where the Communist Party, the supremacy of the party is complete, and the party dictates what happens on down, and the whole of society has to follow because that’s how it works.

(Speaker 1)
But whole of society can also mean something else. It could also mean bottom up. which means people basically working together, getting inspired to start their small business, be entrepreneurial, come up with new ideas, come up with new manufacturing concepts, theories. and actually just get down and do the hard work of raising the rising tide lifts all boats. As we finish up, let’s talk a little bit about that. Well, years ago, there was a gentleman who personifies the American dream.

(Speaker 1)
His name’s Kevin Thomas. Everyone can look him up. His company’s called MultiClean. Everyone can look him up. I think it’s multicleanok . com.

(Speaker 1)
Kevin made a profound statement. He said that if he could have just five employees, that would be success. You say, well, what does Kevin do? It’s a janitorial service. You’d say, well, what does a janitorial service do? He cleans commercial buildings.

(Speaker 1)
And Kevin made that profound statement.

(Speaker 52)
If I could just have five employees, that would be success.

(Speaker 1)
Kevin came and spoke at my last conference because we filled a conference full of success stories. I have at least 15 to 20 success stories at every client, real people. And Kevin, if you look at Kevin, He’s not the tallest guy in the room. He doesn’t come across like he’s some entrepreneurial pedigree. He doesn’t look like he’s been, you know, he doesn’t look like the Hollywood entrepreneur. He doesn’t look like he’s on some reality TV show.

(Speaker 1)
He doesn’t look like he’s a celebrity. He just looks like a very normal person, just like me, just like you. And at the last conference, somebody put their hand up and they said, well, Kevin, you’re having a lot of success. How many employees do you have now? He says, just a hair over 350. Think about that for a second.

(Speaker 1)
So this guy, Kevin Thomas, had a goal to have just five employees. He thought entrepreneurship wasn’t quite for him, that maybe he didn’t have the education, he didn’t have the marketing background, he didn’t have the accounting, he didn’t have the skills. But what he did is he went on over to Thrivetimeshow . com, that’s where I live, Thrivetimeshow . com, and he went there and said, you know what, I’m gonna fill out the form and I’m gonna schedule a call with this crazy guy and we’ll just see what happens.

(Speaker 16)
He has three employees.

(Speaker 41)
employees.

(Speaker 16)
He’s one of the most successful people in his town. And I share that story because everybody out there, you can become successful.

(Speaker 22)
And when you are, money’s a magnifier, good and bad, by the way. So money allows you to be more of who you are. So if you’re a generous person who loves to donate and celebrate and tithe to your local church or community or your outreach, you can give more.

(Speaker 15)
Money allows you to be more, to give more, to be. It allows you to just magnify who you are. And so if you’re watching this show, And you’re kind of in the mind space where my 37 -year -old father was, where he was delivering pizzas at Domino’s Pizza, which again, great company. We’re appreciative for that opportunity. He was working at Quick Trip Gas Stations, and we appreciate that opportunity too. He’s working the night shift, and I have not an ounce of resentment that my father was working the night shift during my years growing up.

(Speaker 15)
I respect him for doing it. But if you feel like, man, success has passed me by, Kevin was the guy in his early 40s who was having these thoughts, and now he’s profoundly successful. Clay Stairs, who’s now an Oklahoma state representative, he started his entrepreneurial path when he was 47 years old, and now he’s super successful.

(Speaker 1)
Bob Healy had terminal cancer and was in his early 60s, and now Grillblazer is booming. I can list off examples all day, but everybody out there, if you have the mental capacity and tenacity to listen to today’s interview, I promise you, you, you have what it takes to do it as an entrepreneur. Well, Clay Clark, it’s such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you. Thank you all for joining Clay Clark and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

(Speaker 1)
this nozzle on the top you slightly turn like almost nothing so a little bit of the gas starts coming out and then you press the trigger.

(Speaker 18)
You can either turn the nozzle on the top to have more power and this one here is a full power trigger basically madness.

(Speaker 1)
Push it down and yeah it is a lot of fun. How will I apply what I’ve learned so far into my business?

(Speaker 52)
I’m actually a client that And I learned so much from what I’m learning at this conference and from my regular weekly attendances that it’s helping me establish the business and get it off the ground.

(Speaker 1)
Everything that you see is authentically clay. It’s a great deal of fun. Everybody enjoys it. They know when you walk in they think they’re coming into a carnival and frankly they are. It’s just great fun. There’s not another conference like it.

(Speaker 1)
You just don’t go to a carnival atmosphere and learn. On today’s show we find ourselves at the intersection and entrepreneurship as we interview

(Speaker 57)
founder of the grill gun products, Mr. Bob Healy.

(Speaker 1)
This engineer of over 30 years has invented a product that combines the look of a gun and that shoots fire so that you can light your charcoal grill within just 60 seconds. But before we talk about Bob, his beautiful, glorious grill gun, let’s talk about the products that I’ve almost invented. Let’s talk about the products that you’ve almost invented. uh crying eating pooping crawling ah sure they crawl right yes so what if we converted their onesie you know they wear like one thing oh yeah onesie where it’s like the top and the bottom that’s like a baby sock what if we turned that into a mop So it could be called the baby mop.

(Speaker 31)
So your baby’s mopping the floor.

(Speaker 56)
And they just clean as it goes.

(Speaker 25)
Oh.

(Speaker 1)
Yes. That’s probably the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life. What?

(Speaker 55)
I thought deeply about that for several minutes.

(Speaker 28)
That idea was going to be my path to financial freedom and riches.

(Speaker 1)
OK, OK, fine. You want to rain on my parade? I have another idea. Here’s the, I thought about this last Tuesday. It’s incredible.

(Speaker 18)
Men like to do what?

(Speaker 49)
They get kind of older.

(Speaker 1)
They have some success.

(Speaker 27)
They’re looking to relax.

(Speaker 1)
They want to get a prostate exam.

(Speaker 29)
18 holes.

(Speaker 54)
Well, that’s out.

(Speaker 52)
They want to go golf.

(Speaker 1)
Right.

(Speaker 8)
And guys often have to go to the bathroom, right? And when guys go to the bathroom, typically they do what? When they’re going to the bathroom, they’re looking for a magazine. Right.

(Speaker 14)
They read. They read now. But what if they invested the time they normally spent reading and spent that time professionally? their putting game? Jason, it’s so easy. We could just take the floor around the toilet and turn that into a putting green.

(Speaker 1)
No one’s thought of this. Yeah, because it’s a bad idea. You could practice putting while pooping.

(Speaker 12)
That is the worst.

(Speaker 1)
It’s the poop putt. The poop putt.

(Speaker 24)
That’s it.

(Speaker 1)
The poop putt. Well, hey, you know, this idea is special because it is, in fact, the worst idea that anybody has ever had.

(Speaker 18)
What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard.

(Speaker 53)
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.

(Speaker 41)
Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.

(Speaker 33)
I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

(Speaker 1)
Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does.

(Speaker 49)
Two men.

(Speaker 52)
Eight kids co -created by two different women.

(Speaker 39)
13 multi -million dollar businesses.

(Speaker 4)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 5)
Yes and yes, Thrive Nation! Welcome back to another exciting edition of The Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast download. And Dr. Z, today’s show guest deserves some cowbell.

(Speaker 1)
Oh, and he got four yeses too. I know when you fire off a show with four yeses, You are fired up and ready to go. Now, Zee, I wanted to allow this listener to be introduced with a kind of a subtle hype intro. Yes, OK. So I brought my megaphone with me. And so we’ll go ahead and tee it up real quick.

(Speaker 1)
this ready here. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.

(Speaker 5)
All right, tribe nation. On today’s show, we have the inventor of the grill gun, Mr. Bob Healy, an engineer with over 30 years of experience. He’s the founder of this great new product. Bob, welcome on to the show. How are you? Wow.

(Speaker 5)
Oh, I’m just fine, Clay. Thank you. Thank you both, Dr. Z and Clay for having me on today. Well, tell the listeners out there who are not familiar with the grill gun. I think anybody out there, if you’ve ever wanted to be an inventor, it’s a tough road to go down.

(Speaker 12)
It’s a tough road.

(Speaker 42)
And all the listeners right now, if you will go to grillblazer .

(Speaker 12)
com, that’s grillblazer . com, you can see this product. So you can check it out while he’s talking. You can look at it and marinate on it and see it.

(Speaker 5)
Talk to us about this grill gun. And when did you first get the idea to make the grill gun? Oh, well, so the grill gun is a high powered torch. It’s, it’s designed to be able to conveniently light charcoal charcoal grill in just minutes, rather than 10s of minutes or half an hour at a time, something like that. It’s, it’s really not even a tool or a type of tool that people have been or could be familiar with, because it’s entirely new, both in its purpose and in its appearance. The, the, the What you do with the grill gun is you use it to light a charcoal grill and it’s designed to fit in your hand comfortably and use safely while you actually light the charcoal, almost instantly warm up your grill, sterilize the grates, start cooking over your charcoal and or your smoker, you know, your wood smoker, offset smokers in just minutes.

(Speaker 1)
The whole notion of lighting a charcoal grill pretty much instantly, instantly is not something that people have done. I know there are a lot of YouTube guys that are out there and people like me who sort of. we really like the idea of starting a charcoal real fast and not having, um, having to use a lighter fluid or wait around on a charcoal chimney or any of the other things that are done for it. And, um, when you light a charcoal with a 400 ,000 BTU torch, you’re basically setting that charcoal on fire and you’re cooking off all the debris that’s on the grills.

(Speaker 29)
And you’re at the same time, you’re bringing the whole grill up to temperature.

(Speaker 1)
So you’re basically, you’re doing it and just. Uh, when I go, when I go grill and I I’m cooking in two or three minutes after I start the process and it’s a year round activity. And Bob, you feel like a man. Yeah. Like a man Rambo of the grill. I mean, come on now.

(Speaker 1)
You just feel like a man. It’s a man gun.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah, that’s, that’s, um, it’s, it’s pretty amazing watching people, their reaction to it because it does, does hit that Y chromosome pretty hard. You’re out there at 25 degrees. You like to grill. You can run back in the house where it’s warm, but it doesn’t matter. You can grill year round. It doesn’t have to be an outdoor summertime activity, even though that’s how a lot of people like looking at it.

(Speaker 5)
Now, my understanding is, OK, so we have a grill gun here. This thing can help our listeners light their charcoal grill in 60 seconds. And it’s fun. It’s fun. Oh, it’s fun.

(Speaker 1)
But what does it look like, the grill gun? I’ve seen some pretty, I don’t know the technical term for it, but I’ve seen some pretty weak.

(Speaker 12)
Versions of what Bob is creating up to people who’ve tried to create a grill torch.

(Speaker 1)
Yeah, but it’s kind of like It has the class some of these products have the class and quality of like the Chinese finger locks the paper locks Oh, don’t kid yourself.

(Speaker 51)
I mean very so talk to me about this.

(Speaker 1)
What does it look like? What does it feel like? Does this feel like a man gun or does it feel like a man?

(Speaker 12)
I don’t know

(Speaker 1)
person who interviewed, or actually reviewed it said he felt like he had seen Prometheus for the first time. It just, it was so intense, the feeling of looking at a torch that looks like a pistol, like a .45 or a Glock or something like that, a semi -automatic, semi -automatic, slide -action pistol that that has a long bell on it. It’s about 22 inches long in order to get the barrel away from you so that you can use it without burning yourself. But it looks like a gun.

(Speaker 12)
It feels like a gun.

(Speaker 28)
It shoots fire.

(Speaker 19)
You hold on to it. It fits nicely in your hand.

(Speaker 1)
It’s well -balanced.

(Speaker 12)
And you use it to really just basically flood the grill with the heat that you need in order to bring it up to the temperature you want to cook in just under a minute.

(Speaker 1)
Now Z, I want to get into the business -y kind of things. This is a business show. It technically is a business show. So it’s business school without the BS.

(Speaker 28)
Come on now.

(Speaker 1)
So Bob, you made the product. Z, that’s step one. You got to have your product. That helps.

(Speaker 12)
So step one, you have the product.

(Speaker 1)
It’s a product idea, step one. Step two, nobody, Z, I’m talking about almost nobody ever goes to step two. And that is make a prototype. Oh, check.

(Speaker 5)
He’s got the prototype. You got the idea? Yep. He’s got the prototype? Yes. Step three, we got to try to sell something.

(Speaker 5)
You got to sell it, baby. Sell something. Sell something. For more than you make it. Sell something. That’s the key.

(Speaker 5)
So I want to ask you this. Talk to us about, if someone wants to buy this thing, can they buy it? What’s been your road like of seeing if someone wants to buy it? Because I know you did a demo at the Thrive Time Show conference for our attendees. Oh, yeah. And I think about one third of the people in attendance, I could be wrong, but I think about a third of the people in attendance said, I definitely want to buy one of these like right now.

(Speaker 5)
How can the listeners get a hold of this? How can they buy one? Tell us about selling something. Okay, so the process of putting this out on the market is when you’re trying to bootstrap something up from the bottom without having venture capital or something like that step in and say, here, we need this money. Let’s go for it.

(Speaker 5)
You actually have to determine whether or not people want what you have, what they’re willing to pay for what you’ve got. And then how are you going to get it made? And so I had to figure out what I could do. Um, well, first off there’s torches. You can get a torch today. If you go down to a hardware store, you can buy one.

(Speaker 5)
And, um, it’s long and it’s got a long hose and it goes to a 20 pound tank. And you can look like the dork, like I have done for the last 10 years, you know, standing back and flaming up my charcoal grill. And if you want to do that, knock yourself up, go ahead and do it. And I, like I said, I’ve been doing that for a long time and I decided to make something that really. uh did the job right and so it’s the same sort of technology and that you’re putting high intense fire on a grill but how do you make that into something that people want and how do you get it in front of them so if your listeners have gone to grillblazer . com they’re already taking a look at this they can see what it looks like they but they can’t hold it in their hand why and what they can the reason they can’t hold it in their hand is because it’s on a computer screen and they need to order one in order to get one but In order to do that, the hardest part about launching this endeavor is, where are you going to come up with the capital to make it happen?

(Speaker 5)
And I decided to go the crowdfunding route. And so what I’m asking people to do is to go to the website and entertain themselves, figure out if this is for them. And if it’s not, move along. But if it is for them, then take it on good faith that what I’m doing in crowdfunding is I’m using that tool, that whole platform. There are a couple of them out there. I’m looking right now pretty hard at Kickstarter.

(Speaker 5)
But you use that platform to allow people to come out and say, I want one, I’ll back you. And when you make them, you send them to me. And so the process is pretty straightforward.

(Speaker 1)
You basically are pre -selling them. You say, I’m going to make them. If I hit the minimum threshold that I need to have in order to be able to have the finances to make it work, then I can build them. And that’s really my business.

(Speaker 50)
I’ve done this all my life.

(Speaker 5)
I’ve made things.

(Speaker 1)
The easy part is for me, it’s my wheelhouse to create a product and figure out how to build it and how to make it a high -quality product.

(Speaker 5)
But the new part, my new venture really is being out on the sales edge and on the financing edge. How are you going to fund it? How are you going to turn it into a business that everybody wants to get behind? In order for them to get their hands on one right now, they really can’t. I’ve got a dozen of them that I’ve made that are prototypes. I’ve sent them out.

(Speaker 5)
People have used them. They kind of rotate around in a pool of grill guns that can be used for the purpose of promotion. But it’s a four to six month process to actually get them in your hands.

(Speaker 12)
And so if I were to, like for instance, today with this podcast, with your audience, if enough people actually went out there and said, I want to do this. I want one of those things. And they simply said, you know, in my little buy it, get yours now page on the on the website, if they were to say, I want to support this, I want to do this, then before Christmas, you know, even before Thanksgiving, they could be in production and in your hands.

(Speaker 1)
And that’s that’s the That’s the beauty of crowdfunding and the direction that I’m taking it here is is that I can launch it.

(Speaker 12)
I can have it in people’s hands and we can be going down the road.

(Speaker 1)
Bob for the listeners out there who maybe are pondering they’re going is this guy delusional.

(Speaker 29)
Is this guy crazy.

(Speaker 1)
You are a man with an engineering background. How many years have you been an engineer?

(Speaker 21)
Let’s see. I’m going to give away my age here, but it’s been almost 40 years.

(Speaker 12)
So how many of these people do you need out there right now to say, I want to buy one before we can get this thing in the hands of America?

(Speaker 19)
Well, the way crowdfunding works is you actually set your deadline, your minimum, that you absolutely have to have.

(Speaker 5)
And I absolutely have to have 1 ,400 people, that’s 1 -4 -0 -0, say I want to have one.

(Speaker 1)
And I’m a tenth of the way there after having just a few weeks of just doing advertisement on Google and Facebook.

(Speaker 49)
And so the whole Kickstarter community is bigger than that.

(Speaker 5)
And so it seems like a real doable number. And if people were to actually just believe that it will happen, if they like it well enough, and they say, yeah, I’ll support you, then what will happen is, is when I see that I actually have people up over that number, then I’m going to just email everybody. And so you’d want to put in your email and your text number, and then I’ll just do a broadcast. Everybody would say the Kickstarter website’s up, it’s live, go fund it. And as soon as I see that that actually is happening, it’s funded, then I can actually start the manufacturing process going. Bob, what made you come up with the grill gun?

(Speaker 5)
What were you thinking? Did you fall and hit your head? On the toilet seat. Yeah, did you have a bad accident as a kid from a burn? This ice cream, this yogurt is curdled. I feel sick.

(Speaker 5)
Oh, look what I just drew with my vomit. It’s the grill blazer. How does that happen? Do you have a dream? And this mythical grill gun came to you in the dream and said, make me, make me. What happened?

(Speaker 5)
All of the above. I was outside talking to a horse. This is what he said to do. Like I’ve been saying, I’ve been doing this for a long time and putting up with buying torches that they, you know, a weed torch, a torch that puts out that kind of heat, 400 ,000 BTU is, it’s going to burn up fairly quickly. And so I’ve gone through several of them over the last decade. And I thought, Um, you know, nobody does this and people come over and they watch me grill.

(Speaker 5)
I grill every single week and, um, or, or, um, smoke something. And so lots of friends and stuff are used to coming over and they, they hear the, the roar of the jet engine as I like to grill and start cooking things in just a minute or two.

(Speaker 12)
And they think it’s really funny and really cool, but they don’t see themselves with this giant long torch hosing down a grill. And so it was a year ago in December, December 2018, that I was out there grilling and I thought, you know, I’m either going to put up with this nonsense for the rest of my life or I’m going to do something about it. So I just said, I didn’t know what a grill gun was.

(Speaker 5)
I hadn’t ever seen one before. I thought, well, Something is better than this, and what is it going to be? And so I went to some friends and my family.

(Speaker 1)
I’ve got sons -in -law and sons that are opinionated, and I like the opinions. And so I basically started asking them questions and formed a list of what we need to have.

(Speaker 12)
And then I got busy modeling it.

(Speaker 48)
And it was about, so that was December.

(Speaker 1)
And it’s probably in February, everybody said, oh. you’re on to something here. And then by May, I had it, I mean, a year ago May, so not quite a year ago, I actually had prototypes in my hand. And I then started going down

(Speaker 5)
other channels of, okay, how do I build this? How do I get this cost effective so that I can make it and people can buy it for a reasonable price? And utmost important was the quality of it. So I’ve designed this to where I’m going to be proud to use every single grill gun that I have for years, not for once or twice or for half a season before it burns up. So it was just a process of saying, I don’t know what it is that’s going to make my life better, but I know when I see it, I’m going to like it. And so, again, if you’re on the website or your listeners have listened to and gone to the website, they know what I’m talking about here.

(Speaker 1)
It’s pretty appealing design, and it’s really durable, really well designed.

(Speaker 4)
So Bob, you’re basically a big pyro.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, that’s really what it boils down to. I mean, you’re a big pyro. Well, I’m not as much a pyro as the people that want it. I mean, I’ve heard a lot of people say this is all kinds of stories about how I’ve been a pyro my whole life and that sort of thing. And I, not me, but I can appreciate that there are people that like fire a whole lot. Now, let’s talk about this grill gun.

(Speaker 5)
Let’s get into the rough questions now, the rough ones. The tough ones. All right. Will this blow up? If I turn it on, boom. What are the chances I turn it on?

(Speaker 5)
What are the chances I incinerate myself? Well, pretty small. You’d have to be deliberate wanting to do that, because what you’re working with is protein gas. And propane gas is explosive.

(Speaker 1)
You could do things that I warn you not to do, like you could turn on the grill gun inside the house.

(Speaker 29)
and just let it run like that for a while and then say, okay, I think I’ve got enough propane in here and then light it.

(Speaker 4)
I wouldn’t advise that.

(Speaker 1)
That’s not a best practice move. That’s not a top three thing to do. No. And so the real problem in trying to design and tell something like this, where you’re handling that much heat, I’m dealing with the same sort of thing that every torch manufacturer out there has. You’ve got to build something that’s safe. And then you have to warn people about how to use it.

(Speaker 1)
Because the nuts and bolts of it is you have a propane source, a small one -pound can, or you can tie it into a 20 -pound bottle. And you’ve got to screw that onto the bottom of the grill gun. And now you’ve pressurized the grill gun. And that affords the opportunity for the gas to come out the bell.

(Speaker 31)
And so when the gas comes out the bell, you want to light it when it comes out so that you’re not just expelling propane in the air, which is explosive.

(Speaker 1)
Because if you burn it while it’s coming out the bell, you don’t have any danger. And there’s nothing about the gun itself or the design of the self where it’s going to pocket enough propane to explode on its own.

(Speaker 32)
It couldn’t do that.

(Speaker 1)
But what it could do is you could vent it into an environment where the gas is itself explosive. But this is not new. The grills gun itself is some really innovative new technology.

(Speaker 5)
But the notion of taking gas out of a gas container, poping gas out of a bottle and lighting it on fire is, you know, tried and true for decades. So I’m not doing anything there that’s in any way dangerous that would create a problem for anybody to operate on. What have been, and see I want to ask Bob, see I’m now going to ask Bob the really tough questions. Are you going deep? You’re going deep, deep. What has been, as you’re building

(Speaker 5)
the grill gun, which you can learn more about at the grillblazer .com. It’s com. It’s grillblazer . com. See, that’s grillblazer .

(Speaker 1)
com. And for all the listeners out there who are going on to the website right now, they’re looking at it.

(Speaker 4)
What’s been the toughest part of trying to take your idea that you are.

(Speaker 12)
.

(Speaker 1)
And I mean this in a nice way. You are. . passionate in a way about this product that doesn’t make sense to most people. Most people see most people like to grill. Oh yeah.

(Speaker 1)
And most people want to light the grill in 60 seconds. But most people aren’t willing to invest this kind of money and time into coming up with a coming up with a solution. Bob as you’ve been trying to provide the world’s best grilling tool possible what has been the most challenging part of doing this. Really everything except for designing it and setting up the manufacturing. I mean it’s hard to actually pin that down to one thing.

(Speaker 12)
But Getting in front of people who can help influence or charcoal influencers and getting them to pay attention and helping me promote this notion, it’s basically you can have the best tool of anything, whatever you want.

(Speaker 5)
And if nobody knows about it, you’re just sitting there holding them. I could make 5 ,000 grill guns and put them out in my garage.

(Speaker 1)
And then next year I still have 5 ,000 grill guns out.

(Speaker 47)
It, it really is trying to get an audience that, um, that wants to buy them.

(Speaker 5)
And so it wouldn’t make any sense for me to just get excited, you know, 1400 people excited to buy one and then launch my Kickstarter campaign and then crickets, you know, nobody, uh, nobody wants any. So it’s, it’s the whole aspect of, um, marketing and sales. Uh, that’s the hard part because everything else is, you know,

(Speaker 12)
straightforward. Z, you’ve told me for years I’m one of the best tools that the world has not heard of yet. I know you mean by that. I promise you, Bob, if you put 5 ,000 of those in your garage, you’re going to end up with 4 ,999, because I’m going to come over and snipe one of them. So there you have it. Z, what tough questions do you have for Bob about the process?

(Speaker 12)
Because there’s so many listeners out there who want to be an inventor. They want to launch a product.

(Speaker 1)
He’s done step one.

(Speaker 12)
He had the idea. Step two, though, he made the prototype.

(Speaker 14)
Step three, he’s got to try to sell it.

(Speaker 1)
As he’s in that pre -selling phase, and it’s a weird deal because you’ve got to sell enough to get the money needed to produce a lot.

(Speaker 12)
Z, what rude question do you have for Bob? What strong advice did you have for Bob? What do you got there? How much money do you need right now?

(Speaker 1)
I need $100 ,000.

(Speaker 5)
And if you want to write me a check, Z, I will drive you into town.

(Speaker 46)
What are you willing to give up for $100 ,000?

(Speaker 5)
I mean, like a kidney. Well, obviously, I’m willing to give up whatever it would take in the form of a loan. And I would also be willing to give up, you know, negotiate on a piece of the equity in the company for whatever the investor thinks that it’s worth. Well, there’s there’s that that’s always a negotiation. Yeah, there’s there’s, you know, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of people are going to be listening to this podcast, i .

(Speaker 1)
e. radio show. And somewhere, someone’s going to get on there and look at grillblazer . com, which I have been looking at now for the entirety of the podcast and looking at it and remembering my experience with the Grillblazer. It’s a cool product. And sitting out there thinking there’s probably somebody out there that does this.

(Speaker 5)
They’ve got their money in a savings account drawing nothing. Maybe they’ve got a few thousands in the stock market.

(Speaker 1)
And they’re willing to put $100 ,000 on 10 different businesses and hopefully one hits. And hopefully one hits.

(Speaker 4)
And they go to themselves, they go to their website and they go, hmm, okay. Hmm, how much? What do I get for $100 ,000? So how does somebody contact you? What’s the best way to contact you? Somebody’s listening out there going, you know what, I may want to, depends on the equity piece you give up, depends on a lot of things, but still that’s negotiable.

(Speaker 4)
We don’t want to go into that right now in the air. But how does somebody contact you and start that process?

(Speaker 1)
The most direct way that’ll get to me is Bob at grillblazer . com. And if you don’t know anything about the internet and you don’t have email and you do have a rotary dial phone, then you could dial 918 -960 -9690. What’s that number again? 918 -960 -9690.

(Speaker 31)
I think I might’ve said that wrong the first time.

(Speaker 1)
918 -960 -9690. Yeah, it’s on your website. Now, Bob, as we wrap up today’s show, what final question do you have for Dr. Zellner?

(Speaker 24)
Dr. Zellner, Z, you’re a guy that people shark tank you all the time.

(Speaker 20)
They’re always wanting to pick your brain for business tips. Z, is it OK if he asks you any questions?

(Speaker 45)
Absolutely.

(Speaker 43)
OK, Bob, what question do you have for Dr. Z as we wrap up today’s show? So do you, Dr. Z, have an impression, just having seen the grill gun and you’ve seen people’s reaction to it.

(Speaker 44)
Do you think that this is something that is, you know, that is a thing that is gonna go?

(Speaker 43)
Okay, first of all, I do have an impression, I do.

(Speaker 20)
I do Forrest Gump fairly well. That’s my boat, Janae.

(Speaker 5)
Janae.

(Speaker 12)
Janae. I was just running. Just running. We were like peas and carrots. So I do have, I got a couple of impressions that I do. Number one, I’m sidebar.

(Speaker 22)
You know, you probably don’t want to hear all that.

(Speaker 42)
of them today, but that was a good one though.

(Speaker 12)
Thank you Can I do this as you’re as you’re formulating your answer?

(Speaker 41)
I’m just gonna queue up a little motivational quote that you you once This is a voicemail, but I think it came from you to me Oh, yeah, this has been during that phase of our career and life where you called me happy.

(Speaker 12)
That was my nickname was happy. I’m just going to cue it.

(Speaker 27)
Okay, good.

(Speaker 1)
And I’ll cue it up as you formulate your answer.

(Speaker 12)
That way what your feedback you give Bob will not either be super euphorically awesome or soul crushing. We don’t want that Simon Cowell moment to happen without a lot of premeditative thoughts. So here we go.

(Speaker 1)
I got to rise above energy, block out the bad.

(Speaker 12)
Harness, energy, block, bag. Feel the flow, Happy. Feel it. It’s circular. It’s like a carousel. You pay the quarter, you get on the horse.

(Speaker 1)
It goes up and down and around. Circular, circle, with the music, the flow. All good things. All good things. All right. Two things, Bobby.

(Speaker 1)
To answer your serious question, that is, yes, I think it’s pretty cool. And I do think there’s a market for it. I don’t know how many times people look at me and say, there’s nothing to buy you. What do you buy the man who has everything? A grill gun. Agreed.

(Speaker 12)
Number two, I would do my best effort to approach Hasty Bake, to approach Oklahoma Joe’s, to approach some barbecue places that, you know, barbecue, i .

(Speaker 40)
e.

(Speaker 12)
is grilling by almost definition, right, anymore. I would maybe do a co -sponsorship. Maybe it’s the… But what if they steal my idea? Well, then that’s just what you have them sign an NDA before you approach them and then you talk to them about co -marketing, co -branding this. What if they say no?

(Speaker 4)
Then you go to the next one, you knock on another door.

(Speaker 1)
Who do I call?

(Speaker 39)
Ghostbusters?

(Speaker 12)
No, I’m sorry. You start off, you make a list, you make your top 100, you make a top 10, top 12, top 50, okay? People that might be interested. in co – co -managing this with you, you know? Now you’re going to have to give up some of the juice. You already said, hey, for $100 ,000, I’m going to give up some equity position anyway.

(Speaker 12)
So maybe you go to somebody who themselves are in the grilling business. How much would you be willing to give up? You see, if you were in Bob’s shoes, let’s say, and you get a deal. Hasty Bank says, yeah, we love it.

(Speaker 1)
Let’s do it. How much equity would you be prepared to give up on a product that would be stillborn, essentially, without funding?

(Speaker 5)
How much would you, Z, advise a young man to say, hey, I’m willing to give up, you should be prepared to give up up to this much of your company for that funding? Well, it depends on the amount, and it depends on what I feel like I’ve already put into it personally. I don’t know how much money you’ve put into this already, but you have put some money in. You have put some time in.

(Speaker 12)
I would be able to document that, and I’d be able to get that a reasonable amount of money. for that, okay? How much is the invention worth? Reasonable.

(Speaker 38)
How much time have you put in?

(Speaker 5)
Reasonable.

(Speaker 1)
And how much physical money have you put into it? These are all reasonable numbers that a businessman would want to see. And so then, if $100 ,000 is a third of that, then I would say they’re giving up a third of the equity.

(Speaker 12)
I mean, money is money.

(Speaker 29)
Cash talks.

(Speaker 14)
So you’re saying if Bob put in $100 ,000 of his own money, and Hasty Bakes says, hey, we’re going to put $100 ,000 in, you might be willing to give up 49 %?

(Speaker 1)
Correct. I mean, at the most, you want to negotiate.

(Speaker 19)
But I mean, at the most. At the most, you’ve got to be ready for that.

(Speaker 12)
You’ve got to be ready for it.

(Speaker 1)
Right.

(Speaker 12)
It’s kind of like, well, OK, you’ve got $100 ,000 in. If I’m putting $100 ,000 in, why are we not more equal? Why are you only going to give up 2 % of the company? Don’t be stupid like that. You watch Shark Tank at all. Those guys come on there with these ridiculous ads.

(Speaker 12)
So Bob, does that feedback help you? And do you have any final closing question?

(Speaker 1)
I’ll just drill into that question a little bit deeper. It really wasn’t so much how much to give up You see, Dr. Z, you see a lot of stuff.

(Speaker 37)
People crying shark tank you all the time.

(Speaker 12)
And I’m just curious if I were, not that I’m going to do this, but I just mean on the quality of the kind of product that comes across your desk, is this the kind of thing that you see that has legs or is this the kind of thing that you say, you know, next, let’s go do something else?

(Speaker 1)
I think it has legs. I think it’s kind of fun.

(Speaker 4)
It’s kind of a fun, novelty, but yet useful gift.

(Speaker 12)
And really, your final price point on it is going to be roughly what?

(Speaker 5)
What are you thinking?

(Speaker 36)
Oh, well, just for easy talking purposes, $100, but that includes shipping.

(Speaker 35)
See, I think $150.

(Speaker 18)
I think a guy would pay $150 because this is a completely unnecessary item.

(Speaker 1)
Well, that’s the fun of it. I think, though, you keep it $99 .99.

(Speaker 28)
Really?

(Speaker 12)
$99 .99? Yeah.

(Speaker 34)
What if it was, like, in the shape of an Uzi or an AR?

(Speaker 4)
I mean, for an AR -themed one?

(Speaker 19)
It looks pretty cool.

(Speaker 12)
It looks pretty cool. It looks like James Bond would, like, you know, go and take over the country.

(Speaker 30)
But, I mean, if they had, like, an AR version, I mean, would you spend up to $150 ,000?

(Speaker 1)
You might have to. You could have a rifle.

(Speaker 31)
You could have a little .22 version, a little bitty flame.

(Speaker 33)
If you’re a cigar lighter, you know, you want to light your cigar.

(Speaker 1)
You know, the grill blazer, the grill gun could be, you know.

(Speaker 32)
You could have different variations.

(Speaker 31)
Down the road, you know, you could have the, you know, I’m serious.

(Speaker 1)
I’m going to pump up the fire.

(Speaker 21)
Or you can have a product that’s always fun.

(Speaker 30)
You give the gift, and it’s the Grillblazer line of landmines.

(Speaker 18)
Yeah.

(Speaker 12)
That’s also fun.

(Speaker 29)
So it just randomly starts.

(Speaker 26)
I buried that in your yard and at some point it will emit flames.

(Speaker 1)
And for a hundred dollars, I’ll tell you where it is.

(Speaker 2)
If not, good luck.

(Speaker 7)
I don’t need you on my marketing team.

(Speaker 24)
Oh, you do.

(Speaker 1)
Oh, so good.

(Speaker 4)
Great tagline.

(Speaker 1)
It can grill charcoal and squirrels at 30. Take back control of your yard for a hundred dollars. charcoal in 60 seconds. Yes, I do think it has legs. And like I said, it’s a fun gift because it works. It’s clean.

(Speaker 1)
It looks good. It’s well built.

(Speaker 18)
I’ve already fired the trigger myself. And I think, like I said before, it kind of gets into that, you know, like those catalogs you flip through on the airplane.

(Speaker 24)
Oh, yeah, it does.

(Speaker 1)
Oh, you should be on that. Finger hook catalog. Get myself a finger hook catalog. Oh, yeah. Get myself a recliner with a back scratcher. Oh, yeah.

(Speaker 1)
And get myself a grill blazer.

(Speaker 18)
And get myself a whole collection of Chinese finger locks. And then I’m set. That’s all I need.

(Speaker 1)
That’s all I need.

(Speaker 28)
For the man, for the guy who has everything, now you have your grill gun.

(Speaker 1)
The grill gun. Yeah. You can grill a squirrel or charcoal in under 60 seconds. Guaranteed. Endorsed by Batman. That’s right.

(Speaker 27)
Okay, Bob, I appreciate you.

(Speaker 1)
And check Norris.

(Speaker 18)
Bob, it’s grillblazer .

(Speaker 1)
com. Our listeners out there, I know they’re gonna go check it out. Grillblazer . com. Check it out. Z, you could be one of the first 1 ,400 people in America to buy this beautiful item.

(Speaker 1)
The drill gun endorsed by Chuck Norris. I think that’s the tagline. By the way, if Chuck did endorse this, wouldn’t it be over for him if he got a celebrity endorsement from Chuck Norris? That’s one of the moves. That’s a move. That’s a move.

(Speaker 1)
That’d be a great move. Bob, I appreciate you so much. And Zee and I are going to go pontificate about the NFL upcoming draft. We’re going to be talking about all things NBA. We got a lot to cover here, Zee. So thank you so much, Bob.

(Speaker 1)
Have a great day. Jason, have you sincerely ever had an idea to invent something? Um, yeah, but they’ve always been bad. I don’t, they don’t really, like, service a need.

(Speaker 7)
Okay, so it’s just more of something that you’ve, you’ve had an idea, thought about it for maybe half a day, then you move on? Yeah. Okay. Well, if you’re out there and you sincerely have an idea or an invention that you want to refine and you want to get launched and turned into something that could make money, that could become a business, I would highly recommend that you start by thinking of problems that real people have, and look for a better way to solve that problem, or a way to solve the problem that people really have. That’s why I think that the grill gun will do well, because men like to grill, and they sincerely want to use charcoal, because it typically tastes better.

(Speaker 7)
But now you can use the grill gun to light your charcoal grill in just 60 seconds. Oh, and I’ve used it, and it saved me so much time. I don’t have to taste lighter fluid. It’s awesome. And it’s a lot of fun. Oh, it’s so much fun.

(Speaker 7)
It’s like a gun -shaped torch. It combines grilling. You’ve got the fire. You’ve got the gun to hold. It’s a fantastic gift. I encourage you to check out the website today.

(Speaker 7)
Again, in case you missed it earlier, it’s called grillblazer . com. And if you’re interested in learning how to become the best inventor you can possibly be, I would recommend that everybody goes out and purchases a copy of the book called Secrets from an Inventor’s Notebook. Secrets from an Inventor’s Notebook by Maurice Kanbar, the creator of Sky Vodka and a guy that is the holder of An incredible number of patents.

(Speaker 8)
The modern needle protector, you know, that’s Maurice Canbar’s invention. Oh, wow. The Sky Vodka, that’s his invention. It’s huge. You have the modern traffic lights. A lot of people don’t realize this, but the modern traffic lights, a lot of them are using Maurice Canbar’s patented invention that makes a strobe light that strobes so fast that the average person doesn’t see it strobing, but it dramatically reduces the amount of electricity being used because it’s not on the whole time it’s strobing interesting this guy’s got a ton of inventions and he wrote how he did it how to do it how to invent things the process is not a random thing he’s doing here it’s a proven process he’s done time and time again and you can

(Speaker 8)
that book today. It’s called Secrets from an Inventor’s Notebook by Maurice Kanbar, the creator of Sky Vodka. It’s an incredible book. Everybody out there should own it if you’re looking to become an inventor. And we like to end each and every show with a boom. And so without any further ado, 3, 2, 1, boom.

(Speaker 8)
I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer to insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations.

(Speaker 4)
I answer to my patient, and that’s it.

(Speaker 1)
My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself.

(Speaker 13)
I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out.

(Speaker 9)
But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63 ,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult.

(Speaker 9)
He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development. and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic.

(Speaker 9)
as a recommended listening. So I started listening to the podcast. I was a little suspicious or skeptical because I thought there was going to be like an upcharge or an upsell, but the idea of the month -to -month canceling really appealed to me and I kept waiting for the shoe to drop and for the upsell or for the scam to come in, but it never did. It’s very legitimate.

(Speaker 2)
Since working with Clay, I’ve gotten a much firmer grasp on how business works. Even in medicine, business is business. I’ve learned a lot about marketing, especially how Google reviews work and how important that is. That’s very important, even in medicine. At least once a week, if not every day, I get a new patient because somebody Googled eye doctor in Tuscaloosa. or ophthalmologist in Tuscaloosa.

(Speaker 2)
And you’d be amazed how many patients just look for an eye doctor that way. And so he’s really changed our business. Our business has grown a lot, maybe 15 to 20 % this year. And so we’re really grateful for the things he’s done for our business. And the last question was, when did I perfect the laugh? I would say that you can never perfect the laugh, you just keep working at it.

(Speaker 2)
just keeps getting better and better each day. But you gotta keep working at it. The ripple effects from you are good ripple effects. You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations.

(Speaker 2)
to run a business more efficiently. The atmosphere is second to none. It’s a high energy, really cool atmosphere to be around. Contagious, I would say. Just something every entrepreneur, I think, would appreciate and love. I’d say humorous, high energy, and full of substance, which I think is the key.

(Speaker 2)
A lot of business coaches or seminars Maybe you’re high on motivation and making you feel good, but don’t have a lot of substance that you could take back and implement, you know, the following Monday, where his does. Man, there’s a lot of valuable things. I’m gonna say, like, I came to, this is my second workshop. The first workshop I took back, really, the importance of a group interview. I used to spend hours and hours interviewing people, screening resumes, and that saving my time on that part is valuable. It was that and then the sales scripting that have been two major things just so far.

(Speaker 2)
And I think they’re missing out on expert advice from somebody who’s been there, done that, built companies, has learned a lot of lessons. That’s what I’m always looking for is somebody that I can learn from. that’s ahead of where I am. And I think if you choose not to come, you’re missing out on a lot of good advice that could help your business. Hi, I’m Aaron Antus with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them.

(Speaker 2)
And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden. So I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate. So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay, and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15 -year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing.

(Speaker 2)
I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes.

(Speaker 6)
And I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us and it’s just been an incredible experience.

(Speaker 6)
I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field.

(Speaker 6)
Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses, that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because The results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do.

(Speaker 6)
I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic, and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town.

(Speaker 7)
And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with Clay, I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35 -year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way.

(Speaker 7)
I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1 ,800 % increase in our internet leads, going from 10 a month to 180 a month. That would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

(Speaker 7)
After being a stay -at -home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full -time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide, what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand. and we just rolled with it. I love people.

(Speaker 7)
I love working with people. I love the building relationships. But one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things, the processes and the advertising and marketing.

(Speaker 13)
I knew that I did not have what I needed to be successful. make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us.

(Speaker 17)
We launched our brokerage our real estate brokerage eight months ago. And in that time we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due.

(Speaker 26)
And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing.

(Speaker 3)
Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer to insurance companies.

(Speaker 3)
I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all my life. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out.

(Speaker 3)
But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63 ,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult.

(Speaker 3)
He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show and thank you for all you do.

(Speaker 3)
I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects, you know what I mean? people rave about what they learned from you. So congratulations. this year to succeed. So we’re pretty excited about that. Pretty much just listening to what they have to say, their hiring process has just really been incredible as far as finding good quality help and just the accountability of meeting up with them weekly and such good insight, the resources that they have for specific business questions.

(Speaker 3)
It’s all been really incredible. It’s been a great experience, so I’d recommend it to anybody. What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system, and it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day -to -day basis. Hi there, my name is Stephanie Pipkin. I am 24 years old and I own Black River Falls Cleaning Services.

(Speaker 3)
We opened in April of 2019 and it is now mid -June of 2020. So I wanted to talk today about the success and growth I have achieved by implementing the Proven Path with Clay Clark’s team and my business coach, Luke, from Thrive Time. It has been insane, to say the least. I started working with them in mid -February of this year, so we’re about four months in of working together and it has completely transformed my business in pretty much every facet.

(Speaker 13)
So I’m gonna check my notes here. So in four months, my leads have tripled. I was getting probably like two leads a week, now I’m getting more in the like 10 to 15 leads a week. I have doubled my number of employees. I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company, week to week it seems like. We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now

(Speaker 13)
to 15 appointments a day. Hiring quality employees has become much simpler and less stressful by using their systems for hiring. I typically only get maybe two complaints a month, if that, and everybody shows up to work. I just have really high quality employees now, especially in something people typically consider a high turnover type of work, you know, cleaning houses, cleaning businesses.

(Speaker 9)
I have amazing employees now, and I get rid of the ones who are not so amazing and bring on new ones because of, you know, group interviews and interviewing every single week.

(Speaker 25)
It’s just been great and I don’t waste as much time on interviews.

(Speaker 13)
low quality candidates anymore. Um, and your coach will hold you accountable. I mean, which I love again, the tough love is really great, you know, looks like a, a stern father figure, but he’s also nice, but also stern when he needs to be when I’m being lazy and not doing the things that I know I need to do because I don’t want to do them. So that’s just a great, um, worth every penny. I mean, I’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can, and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but, um, I would just say, go for it. If it seems like a good fit, just go for it.

(Speaker 13)
Do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous, just do what they say because it’ll work.

(Speaker 25)
You know, people, when they look at my business, you know, people in my town, they think I’m lucky. They think I’m just, you know, things just happen for me.

(Speaker 13)
And you know, maybe I am lucky, but it has a lot to do with hard work and, you know, perseverance and, you know, working till you cry sometimes. That’s just being an entrepreneur, which if you’re a business owner, you understand that.

(Speaker 24)
But it’s having these systems in place of, you know, of course I’m going to be successful.

(Speaker 5)
It’s an absolute, because I have all this stuff in the background happening. And I have Luke and Clay and everybody on their team working really hard to make sure that I’m a success.

(Speaker 4)
And I can tell you,

(Speaker 8)
are just so excited every single week when I’m having all these wins and things like that. They’re so excited for me. So it just it’s the best thing ever and I would suggest to anybody to work with them. So sorry for the long winded reply but I just had so much to say and I could go on for hours probably about how amazing they are. But thank you to Clay and Luke and the entire team there. Everything you guys have done for me and I am so excited to continue to work with you for years to come.

Thanks so much for watching. My saying is, if it’s important to you, hire a coach. And I think that’s one of the reasons people are not successful is they eat a cheeseburger instead of hiring a coach. And so my coach pushes me. They’re younger than me. They push harder.

They’re trained. And as my rich dad always said, amateurs don’t have a coach, but professionals always have coaches. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important. My rich dad was one of those persons. But Clay Clark, man, he is one character. It’s a good word for character.

Yeah, that is it. Good, driven, smart. And I’ve never met a guy who was so hyper all the time. He’s doing so much good. And then I met his mother and she just says, She just lets him be Clay Clark. I mean, so he’s endorsed by his mother 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. 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 could, I have problems with my company starting at nine o ‘clock.

He has hundreds of people showing up at five a . m. in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Man, he’s a leader of a leader. He’s a fantastic young man. My name is Kevin Thomas, and the name of our company is MultiClean.

We are a commercial janitorial service, and we serve the entire state of Oklahoma and Kansas and soon to be Arkansas. We have probably grown probably five times We’ve added, I think when we first started with you, we had 60 to 65 employees, and now we have a little over 300 employees. Before we got involved with Thrive Time, we didn’t really have any systems or processes in place. I’ve probably been to, in six, seven years, I’ve probably been to 12 to 13 business conferences and Amazingly, each time I go, I learn something new and I’m so excited to bring it back and show the team about marketing and how to implement.

Transcribed with Cockatoo