Cleaning Business Podcast | How to Practically Build a Turn-Key Business Model to Help You Earn Both Time and Financial Freedom | 7 Clay Clark Client Success Stories
Transcribed with Cockatoo
Clay, you’re an entrepreneur, I’m an entrepreneur. And as they say in stoic, the obstacle is the way. And so if you let these pinheads get in your way, you’re in trouble. Octononverba is the motto of the U . S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kingspoint, New York.
I had appointments with Naval Academy and Kingspoint Merchant Marine Academy. And Merchant Marine Academy’s motto was Octononverba. In other words, don’t listen to what a person says. Watch what they do. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show and thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects.
You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you.
So congratulations. 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. 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.
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 help you guys implement the SEO. The coaching is just great because there’s accountability. It’s just a fantastic way to grow your company. Having a relationship with Thrivetimes, it’s just been amazing for multiclaim. Oh my goodness, it frees me up because then I don’t have to take a class on search engine optimization or learn marketing or shoot video. That’s not what we do.
What we do is commercial janitorial service. And you guys were the experts on marketing. And you teach me and hold my hand and show me how to do it right.
And therefore, now my company is much, much larger. Folks, on today’s show, we’re joined by a real client. He may look like a male model. He may look like a hologram, but he’s a real person. He’s a longtime client. He’s a man that we consider to be a friend of The Thrive Time Show and a friend of mine.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the show Kevin. Welcome on to The Thrive Time Show.
How are you, sir? Clay, I’m doing great.
I had a great Christmas holiday, and I’m glad to be here.
OK, so first question, can you tell us what is your name, first and last name, and what’s the name of your company, sir?
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.
And how long have we worked with you approximately at this point, sir?
It’s been about six, seven years. Fire Nation, is this your year to take your business to the next level? Attend the world’s highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump’s son, Eric Trump at Thrivetimeshow . com slash EO Fire. Again, request life changing tickets today at Thrivetimeshow . com slash EO Fire.
All right, Fire Nation, we are kicking off by breaking down the 1 ,462 % growth of Stephanie Pipkin.
And I can’t wait to tell this story.
and we have a step -by -step process is going to blow your minds But first off I want to bring Stephanie on the mic because she’s been a longtime listener of entrepreneurs on fire She told me pre -interview that she was accomplishing a lifelong goal of being a guest so I’m really excited to be able to be here while she’s accomplishing this goal and Stephanie say hello to fire nation and then kind of just take us through the the story of how you first heard about Clay Clark and his business growth coaching. Hey, GLD and hey, Fire Nation. Thank you so much for having me. I actually heard about Clay Clark while cleaning a bathroom, listening to EO Fire. time I ever heard of who Clay Clark was. And it was a podcast episode about SEO and website optimization. And so that’s how I heard about him.
I ordered his SEO book and we were off to the race from there. Basically wanted to look at my website, see how I could optimize it. And I had absolutely no interest in business coaching whatsoever, as he could probably tell by my call with him. I was not interested at all. I was like, I don’t need business coaching. coaching.
I only cry like seven times a week. There’s no need to have business coaching. But obviously there was room for improvement. And so that was in March of 2020.
We started working together and here we are now. Well, off to the races, I think it’s a little bit of an understatement because you won the Kentucky Derby. I mean, 1462 % growth. And I love that visual that you gave us of cleaning a bathroom because I know that I chuckled and I know that a lot of people in Fire Nation have chuckled because we’ve all listened to podcasts in really interesting and strange places. And I mean, I actually love when people send me an email and say, John, I was listening to you as I was trekking Mount Everest or as I was, you know, splunking in in the Philippines. or whatever they were doing.
And I’m just like, I just love hearing those stories, you know, even when it’s cleaning a bathroom in Fire Nation. Yes, your life can be changed when you are multitasking, cleaning a bathroom, and listening to entrepreneurs on fire. So Stephanie, before we get into some real amazing details from Mr. Clay Clark himself, where are you from?
What’s the name of your business?
Break it down for us. Yeah, I am from rural western Wisconsin. My business is serene. So we do residential and commercial cleaning. And we have two locations, one in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, which is a town of 5000. And one in Sparta, Wisconsin, which is a town of 9000.
So very rural.
And that’s people get kind of surprised about our numbers, when I tell them how smaller population is, is my business and where I’m from.
Well, Fire Nation, you can check out more about Stephanie at Serene Clean, and that website is serene -clean .
com. Off -topic question, Stephanie.
Have you seen the show Made on Netflix? I have.
I enjoy it immensely. I think it’s a fantastic show. I mean, Fire Nation, M -A -I -D. Put it on your list. If you’re watching Christmas shows right now, I get it. But when you get the chance, watch Made.
M -A -I -D. It’s a fantastic show. on Netflix for a lot of great reasons and we have waited too long to bring a man that can literally and figuratively match my energy on a microphone and he’s going to take us through the eight steps that he took Stephanie Pipkin through en route to growing her business.
So Clay Clark, say hello my man and then take it away. Well hey I appreciate you for allowing me to be here with your listeners and I encourage everybody to grab a pen and a pad because you know Thomas Edison once said that vision without execution is hallucination. And if anybody learned something today and they don’t apply it and directly apply it to their lives to improve their quality of life and the quality of their business, I feel like today’s show could be potentially a wasted opportunity. So grab a pen and a pad, maybe an Etch -a -Sketch or a crayon, whatever you choose to write with.
And hopefully we drop some knowledge bombs that you can directly apply beginning today. Well, I love the fact that you’re using my language, knowledge bombs, value bombs. We’ll be dropping all of them, Fire Nation. And I do want to just start with a quote because this is a quote that you love that I just had to pull out to make sure we talked about, which is, a goal is a dream. with a deadline. So talk to us about that goal.
Talk to us about this first step that you took her through as we go through the process. Well, first thing we want to do, if you’re listening right now, you want to go to Thrivetimeshow . com forward slash EO fire. You go to Thrivetimeshow . com forward slash EO fire and you need to look at the testimonials. Look at people like Stephanie, look at people on the web, look at people like Randy Antrokin, Look at these people.
A lot of them are EO Fire listeners, by the way. I bet you 5 % of the testimonies, we have thousands of them out there, I bet you maybe 5 % of them are EO Fire listeners. And ask yourself, is there anything about them that qualifies them to have success? that disqualifies you to have success. What is the difference between them and you? You’re going to find that basically, the difference is that they took, and Stephanie, maybe it took longer, but I think it took about 30 seconds to put your name, your phone number, your e -mail in there.
So step one, we schedule an assessment. Stephanie, did it take longer than 30 seconds?
Was it about a 30 second?
Very quick and easy. Okay. So you fill out the form. So step one there, Jolly Doom, is we do a 13 -point assessment. Now, the assessment is with myself. And we get, previous to this interview, about 50 people a week that reach out.
And we have a call screener. And what they’re doing is they’re trying to find out, are you a good fit? for the program? So just so I don’t waste anybody’s time, if you have an actual business that actually solves a problem for humans on the planet earth. that doesn’t simultaneously violate the rights of others or hurt people, you’re a good fit, OK? But if you’re calling me and you say, bro, I want to invent an app that organizes my apps, bro, and then an app that reminds me of when I should start organizing the app that I’m creating, bro.
If that’s you, that’s probably not a good fit. So you have to actually have a real product or service, OK? So you fill out the form, JLD. That’s step number one. Fill out the form.
We’ll schedule a one -on -one consultation. Takes about a half hour. Fire Nation, I know that you don’t fit that kind of individual that Clay was just describing right there, because we’re all doing more than just creating apps that are organizing apps, because you have a desire and a goal, Fire Nation, to change the world. Now, Clay, you’re the second step, and again, I love these quotes that you have. This is kind of a long one, so let me go ahead and go through it. It’s from Michael Levine, which is, if you give someone a present, and you give it to them in a Tiffany box, it’s likely that they’ll believe that the gift has higher perceived value than if you gave it to them in no box or a box of less prestige.
That’s not because the receiver of the gift is a fool, but instead because we live in a culture in which we gift wrap everything.
Our politicians, our corporate heads, our movie and TV stars, even our toilet paper. So step two, break it down. Well, what you want to do, and again, by the way, I paid Michael Levine. I paid Michael Levine $20 ,000 to have that conversation. Wow. He was the PR consultant for Nike and Pizza Hut and Michael Jackson.
I thought, man, I got to reach this guy. I’m not kidding. I paid $20 ,000 to spend an afternoon with Michael Levine for that quote. So there you go, folks. Now, what you got to do is you got to ask yourself, is your business looking good or is it looking hood? Now, what do I mean by that?
And I’m not attacking. I’m from Oklahoma, so I’m not attacking. attacking Oklahomans, but this is something I see a lot of times. I see great people from Oklahoma who have a wonderful website. I see great people in the great state of Florida, great people in all these states in the union, Florida, Minnesota, wherever, Wisconsin, and they’re great people. And I can’t see how great they are because I can only see the website that represents them.
So I look at it. I mean, I just talked to a guy today. He has a multi -million dollar company, JLD. And he says, you know, Clay, I just have a hard time getting new business. I keep the clients I already have, but I’m having a hard time getting new business. Well, if you look at the website and the website doesn’t look good, that’s a problem.
So what we did with Stephanie is we sat down and we did an audit and we looked at her website, her logo, her about us video. Her online reputation, her gallery section of her website, her FAQs, the services, everything. Everything that a customer can see online. We just had an honest assessment of what can we do to improve this. And to Stephanie’s credit, she’s been diligently wowing clients since we first started working together. So again, once you generate leads, you actually have to deliver.
So to Stephanie’s point, she’s been over delivering. She’s been wowing her clients at serene -clean . com. And those happy clients now become part of the branding. Now she has testimonials. She has Google reviews.
Her online reputation is next level. So what we’re going to do, JLD, is we want to just take an honest assessment and say, How are we gift wrapping the product? And just so the listeners know that it is totally doable. JLD, I took algebra three times only because I think the teacher got bored with me and eventually just pushed me through. I took my ACT three times. And I’m not a guy who did well in formal education.
And when I built my first company, DJConnection . com, I went to a beautiful venue called Five Oaks in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I remember I asked Claudia. I was like 19 years old, JLD. I was doing probably three to four club events per week, doing weddings, that kind of thing. en route to building DJ Connection, America’s largest wedding entertainment company.
And I said to Claudia, I said, Claudia, what can I do to improve? And she said, Clay, you don’t even have a linen on the table. You’re charging people $500 for their wedding entertainment. You have a white plastic table without a linen. It looks terrible and your cords are all ratted. And what are you wearing?
What are you wearing? And I’m going, uh, just, uh, I’m an idiot, I guess, you know, cause it was like, she was giving me feedback and I asked her for feedback, but it was kind of like that scene from Tommy boy where he’s like, Tommy, what are you doing? And Tommy’s like, I just working on the rotary girder on the end. I just felt so like, I just felt like a psychologically nude when she pointed out to me. how bad all of my marketing and materials were. And she said, Clay, if you weren’t such a great entertainer, you understand that nobody would ever pay you, because your setup is terrible. And I remember talking to her husband, Randy, and I said, Randy, that’s really good.
He’s like, brother, she’s been wanting to tell you that for a year. So again, it’s just being coachable. And thankfully, Stephanie was like, OK, well, what could I do to improve? And we implemented everything. I want to say, Stephanie, I think we got your website created, your branding.
We got all the core branding. I think we got it done in maybe, like, 90 days, is that accurate? Or is it longer than that? No, it definitely was very quick, I think. And that was just because I was very like, okay, let’s go, let’s go.
Like I wanted to move it along to not like hemming and hawing over silly details that I think people get hung up on. Cause it’s like, we just need something right now. We can always come back and make it better, but just need something better than what it is now. So a guy that I’ve interviewed twice so far in my journey with Entrepreneurs on Fire is a guy by the name of Brian Scudamore and he’s the founder of 1 -800 -GOT -JUNK. And when you were talking, Clay, it reminded me so much of his revelation that he had. He said, you know what, when people wanted to get trash taken out of their house, usually what happened was this like ratty truck showed up and these people that kind of had like, you know, filthy clothes and they would come in, they’d track dirt onto your floor and take your trash away and they’d take your couch away and all the other stuff and with no kind of care or thought in the world.
And he’s like, what if we could be different? What if we could show up with a sparkling fresh paint job of a truck that was beautiful? What if the people were like had polos on and like really nice, you know, put together clothing and what if, you know, they actually put on booties before they went in the person’s house to respect that person’s property, like, without even having to have that person ask them, like, what if we did those things? And all of a sudden, he took just that one idea and turned it into the nationwide behemoth that it is today. So think about that fire nation, how that can make such an impact so quickly.
Now, another person who I’ve been very fortunate to interview twice, Michael Gerber of The E -Myth Revisited, his quote is, If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business, you have a job.
And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic. And Clay, both you and I know that would be true because we’re both lunatics in our own personal, funny, amazing ways. So take us through step three. And everyone that I’m quoting today is somebody that I’ve actually met, you know, so Michael Gerber, I’ve spent time with Michael Gerber. And one of my things I love to do, I love to read the books from these great authors. I like to call them and text them, email them and LinkedIn them and basically get short, everything short of being arrested for stalking to see if I can meet these people.
And I met Michael Levine. I was at the Trump International Hotel in Chicago. And we were talking about these systems. And one of the things that he was talking about in person, as well as through his books, is you have to have a turnkey marketing system that allows you to generate clients or leads in a sustainable, scalable way. So what happened is when I built the DJ company, or when Stephanie started her business, or when your listeners out there started their business, initially, you start with the tools you have. It’s about being
It’s not about resources. So you’re passing out cards and pretty soon you discover, wow, if I pass out 100 cards, 100 business cards, or I knock on 100 doors, I’m going to get one client. So we get good at it. We start to go. And we go faster, door to door. Pretty soon, I mean, the whole neighborhood just boom, boom, boom.
There are signs that say no solicitation. We don’t care. We just keep going. And we’re just boom, boom, boom. And we discover, well, I can kind of sprint almost. So we try to play it off like we weren’t out of breath when we knock on the door.
We’re like, so we go door to door and we get excited about it because it’s working. And we were generating revenue and we’re getting one or two leads a day from door to door or networking or speed networking. Those are always my favorite, where you have cheese cubes and pineapple and you meet with a group of people at a chamber event and you speed network. But that requires your personal time. And eventually you go, wow, I’m out of time. I got a lot of money, but no time, no time.
So right now, as we’re listening to this show, as we’re doing this show together, you know, one of the brands I work with called Oxifresh will undoubtedly book today, 2000 carpets. And JLD, this is incredible. The brand I’ve worked with now for 13 years, Oxyfresh, they have 460 locations. It’s a franchise. And if you were to buy an Oxyfresh franchise, you’re buying a business that generates leads. That’s why you’re buying it.
You’re buying a business because it’s a turnkey system. But you don’t see the actual owners of an Oxyfresh running around going door to door trying to generate leads. or I was building my DJ company. I was actually going, if you can believe it, I went to every chamber event possible trying to book weddings. And then it occurred to me fairly quickly, there’s not a lot of brides at these business chamber events, predominantly filled with elderly men. So I decided I had to look for a turnkey way to market.
So what we needed to do with Stephanie’s business, and I’ll tell you how we did it, first off, we wanted to dominate the search engines. And we don’t have time to get into all of that, but that’s part of the coaching we do.
We walk you through how to dominate the search engines.
And Stephanie, how many leads do you get a week from the search engines? right now? From Google alone, we probably get anywhere between like on a low week three, all the way to like seven to 10. Okay, so we’re getting online leads. The second thing we want to do, you want to have advertisements, digital advertisements that are out there putting the brand in front of your ideal and likely buyers. And through social media, you can decide the demographic.
You can decide, I want to show my ads to people who live in this zip code, to women who live in this zip code, who make about this much money, that kind of thing. So we do demographic focused advertisements. We do all that for you. And then what you want to do next is you want to make sure you’re managing the online reputation. So when people do find you online and they do their research, they actually find clients you’ve actually worked with. You want your ideal and likely buyer to find objective reviews from real clients.
Nobody’s perfect, but you want to gather objective feedback from real clients and you want to get that online.
What we do at JLD is we track the results.
What we found with Stephanie’s business, and I don’t want to exaggerate the number, but it’s like per, let’s say, Stephanie, you generate a lead for maybe every $30 you spend on advertising or every $50. Do you know how much you have to spend for every lead you generate on average? Do you know that? Yeah, it’s very, very low, less than $30.
It’s almost free, it feels like, because of the online reviews. I think when we started together, I had 12 Google reviews. Now, between the locations, I have like 200 plus. So think about that. I mean, if you could generate leads for $30 of cash, and then your cash flowing positive, so obviously you’re bringing in much more revenue than $30, you’re spending $30 on advertisement, and you’re bringing a lot more than that, that’s called a scalable business. And that’s how JLD, if your listeners go to thrivetimeshow .
com forward slash EO fire, Um, that’s how like Randy Antrikin, one of the testimonials you’ll find up there, this guy, we grew, helped him grow his business. Think about this folks.
PMHOKC .
com went from 50 ,000 a month of revenue to $1 .3 million a month of revenue, whatever percentage that is. I mean, think about that. That’s great.
And how does that work? You don’t do that by having a marketing system that involves your personal time and effort. So we have to build a scalable turnkey marketing system. Man, I mean, Fire Nation, if your face is not falling off with just the possibilities, I don’t know what to do for you because we’re moving on to another amazing quote.
This was from Napoleon Hill.
We look at a successful person in the hour of their triumph and wonder how they did it, but we overlook the importance of analyzing their methods and we forget the price they had to pay and the careful, well -organized preparation that had to be made before they could reap the fruits of their efforts. And not to call you out, Clay, but I have a hard time believing that you met Napoleon Hill as he passed away in 1970. And I think we’re about the same age, but that could have been a past life. Let me tell you what I did with Napoleon Hill. This is probably really weird. Okay.
First thing I read the book, Thinking Grow Rich, and I thought, Totally. I’ve got to meet this guy. And then I discovered, like, this guy’s definitely dead. So I reached out to Jim Stovall. S -T -O -V -A -L -L. Jim Stovall.
S -T -O -V -A -L -L.
And by the way, this is going to be a great interview for your show. He’s a blind man who became a multimillionaire after going blind. And he now is the head of the Napoleon Hill Foundation. Wow. And I’m going, this homeboy’s in Tulsa. So I call him.
Jim Stovall answers the phone.
I said, Jim Stovall, Masterminds, Napoleon Hill.
We should meet. We connect. Next thing I know, I didn’t know this, but Jim Stovall was actually a pallbearer at Napoleon Hill’s funeral. What? Oh, this is real. So I ended up learning everything there is to know about Napoleon Hill.
I was one of the first guys in America to get the book called Outwitting the Devil when it came out. I met Sharon Lecter, who worked with Robert Kiyosaki to write Rich Dad Poor Dad. I spent time with Sharon Lecter. I interviewed her about Outwitting the Devil, the Napoleon Hill book that she edited. I began to spend time with Jim Stovall. I began spending time with all these people that knew Napoleon Hill.
And what I discovered was Napoleon Hill was a guy who was basically a very non -successful writer who was struggling with his marriage and struggling with his business. And it wasn’t until he discovered the proven path that he began to have massive success. And so Napoleon Hill was running around, and I don’t mean this to be sacrilegious, he devoted his life to teaching the gospel of wealth. He was teaching people how to achieve wealth in a capitalistic society. And so I named my son after Napoleon Hill, and that’s a fact. So my son’s name is Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark.
That’s my son’s name, Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark. And all of his friends, because my son’s 14 now, his friends are like, dude. Why is your name Napoleon Hill? And he’s like, ah, it’s this guy who discovered how to become rich. And my dad grew up poor, and he read his book. And so it forces that conversation.
And if my wife would have let me, JLD, I would have named my son Napoleon Hill, but she wouldn’t let me do it. So I just call him Napoleon Hill when no one’s looking. But that’s the story. But with Stephanie’s business, we had to then implement proven processes that are a little bit grueling, a little bit tedious, a little bit time consuming. And that’s called documenting proven processes. and making checklists.
And I have yet to meet any entrepreneur, I mean this, outside of Stephanie, Randy Antrican with PMHO at KC, Aaron Antis with Shaw Homes. This guy, by the way, shawhomes . com, we grew his business from 24 million a year of sales to 141 million in three years. And these are the only three entrepreneurs that I can think of who actually seem to enjoy making checklists. I feel like Stephanie likes making checklists. I could be exaggerating, but I feel like when we got to that part, she was like, oh, yes, I love making checklists.
And the checklist, what it does, it allows you to create repeatable success. So going back to the 1 -800 -GOT -JUNK experience, once you’ve nailed down the experience and you’ve come up with what the process is,
experience looks like, you have to make a checklist. Otherwise, your team will always fall to the lowest level of preparation, and people will begin forgetting simple, repeatable steps.
And then what I call jackassery occurs. And jackassery is where you intended to produce excellence, but you failed to do so by not having a checklist, thus creating a bad experience. jackassery but but stephanie do you like checklists i mean is that something i mean am i exaggerating that you are not exaggerating because i know checklist checklists are going to make my life easier and make me more money pretty much um i don’t ever want and employee to ever be able to say, I didn’t know that we were supposed to do that. Like that is not words that should be uttered in my business ever. See, I love that. And for me, Fire Nation, checklists mean freedom because I sit down, I create a checklist.
I’ve just freed myself from ever having to take somebody else through that process because now they have the step -by -step and they can make it happen. And I love this phrase that Clay really loves as well. Nail it and then scale it.
So once you’ve nailed it, Now you can go ahead and scale, and that’s a Clay Clarker.
I love that one. Now we’re moving on to step five, which is a John Maxwell quote. A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. Now John Maxwell, he’s best -selling New York Times author of 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and tons of other fantastic books, past guest of Entrepreneurs on Fire, and Clay, talk to us. Now, I have interviewed John Maxwell and I’ve had numerous conversations with the guy. So I have done that.
I will tell you with John Maxwell, how he changed my life was I read his book, 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, when I had 21 irrefutably unmanageable employees at my company called DJConnection . com. I mean, I had, if you just remember when I built my first company, DJConnection . com, before I built the photography business, before I helped scale the dentistry, before I helped to scale an optometry clinic, before I helped to scale a dog training business. If you go to timetofreeamerica .
com or you go to thrivetimeshow . com, thrivetimeshow . com, you can see all the businesses that I’ve grown, but I don’t want anyone to be intimidated by that. I want everyone to know that I was once unaware of what to do. So I read John Maxwell’s book and I determined, JLD, I had a lot of gross revenue coming in.
Now, this is how I encourage people to think about gross revenue.
Gross revenue, it’s gross, it’s nauseous. Because you feel like it’s yours. You’re like, oh, yes. It’s almost like a Smeagol. You know, Smeagol. My precious.
I see a lot of entrepreneurs going, my precious. If you ask an entrepreneur at lunch, just try this. You walk up to a typical entrepreneur, you say, hey, what kind of sales do you do? It’s almost like guys in a gym who are comparing how much they can bench press. They’re always going to A, exaggerate the total amount that they can bench press. And they’re also going to exaggerate how much gross revenue they make.
But they never talk about the net. So they go, oh, man, I’m killing the game. I’m doing 1 .4. And they don’t ever say million or thousand. You’re like, well, you’re doing 1 .4 thousand. They go, no, I’m doing 1 .4 million.
You go, oh, 1 .4 million. And if you say, well, how much are you netting? What’s in the net? What’s in the boat? How much fish do you actually keep in the boat? They go, well, my accountant, he overall handles.
Now, this once articulate man that was just bragging to you that he did 1 .4 is now going to go, well, overall, Basically, I mean, my accountant, what he does, and you determine quickly, most people have no idea how much they’re paying in taxes and where their money is going, which is one of the things I love about your story, JLD, is you sat down with your accountant and had the thought, hey, if I relocate to Puerto Rico and I follow the letter of the law and I follow the tax strategies that are available to me, based upon the fact that you live in Puerto Rico, you could dramatically reduce your income tax. And that would be a conversation that most entrepreneurs would never have because they never look at their numbers. And so with Stephanie and every client we work with, we spend half the time on defense, which defense is accounting and legal. And the other half is offense, which is marketing, branding, sales. And I think a lot of people are used to coaching or consulting.
That’s a hundred percent focused on marketing, branding, vision sales. But if you don’t play some defense, I don’t care how many points you score, you’re not going to win the game. And so we have to equally divide. There’s offense and defense, and then there’s special teams. And special teams is the unique product or service that you offer. And so we have a lot of our listeners, a lot of my clients that do B2B sales.
They actually make a product. One of my clients, Master Machines, they make parts for Tesla in the US Army. Then we have another client I work with that sells direct to doctors. It’s doctors. They’re just B2B sales, business -to -business sales. Other people are business -to -consumers.
Other people are selling mortgages. Everyone has their own industry, and that’s your special teams. But every business shares in common, they have offense and defense.
Defense is legal, accounting, bookkeeping, and offense is marketing, vision, strategy, leadership, hiring, that kind of thing.
And I can just say, Stephanie was very coachable with that. And I’m just going to put this out there for the listeners out there today. I, in the last 30 days, have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit for myself through real estate. Which, JLD, I’ve never talked about real estate on your show. Yeah, you haven’t. I have never talked about it.
But what happened? Because I saved money. I saw 17 acres of land available in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, which is a suburb of Tulsa.
And I thought, I don’t think there’s 17 acres of available land anywhere else in our suburb.
I’ll buy it. So I bought it. JLD, I put in a pool that would be, that would fit into Puerto Rico. It’s maybe not as sweet as your backyard, but almost. Put in this beautiful waterfall, hot tub.
It was bougie. And people said, well, why did you buy it? I bought it low, and I intend on selling it high. And I kept it. I did nothing. I lived there.
I had a great time. My wife and I and our five kids lived there. And I just sold it. And I made hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I did that because I am very fastidious about my finances. And so I encourage everybody out there, whether you decide to become one of our 160 clients or not, you got to look at your numbers.
And thankfully, Stephanie was very coachable and approachable.
And there wasn’t a phobia about money. But if you’re out there and you do have a phobia about money and just bringing up money at all, maybe at your home, you couldn’t discuss money at the dinner table. If you have a money phobia, you gotta look at it. You gotta measure what you treasure, JLD. That’s what you have to do. You gotta measure what you treasure.
And Fire Nation, you know how passionate I am about this topic as well for 99 months in a row. 99 months. This is back in 2013. we’ve published a monthly income report, which I’m sure Stephanie has listened to it. She’s been cleaning some kitchen somewhere because she’s a listener of the show as well. And hopefully she took some inspiration from that as well, because I always talk about every single one of those episodes.
What is our net profit percentage to our gross revenue? And for us, the last three months, by the way, have been over 90%, which is mental. I mean, that’s just next level, but we’re always over 80%. In the rare months where we’re only 70 % or higher, then we go back and we say, What are we doing that’s letting this percentage slip? Because we measure everything. We keep our finger on that pulse.
And Fire Nation, if you think we’re even close to being done dropping value bombs, you get another thing coming. As soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors, we got the next steps. So Clay, we’re back. And man, there’s been a lot of great steps here, a lot of great quotes. We’re not going to stop and
Brian Tracy’s next. No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals. Brian Tracy.
Take this step away, Clay.
Now quick Brian Tracy story for you. I, you know, early in my career, I was 20 years old. Stephanie, how old are you right now? How old are you? I am 25, 25. I mentioned this because somebody is like, I’m too old to become successful.
I’m too young. And I think it’s 25 is a great age to start at 35, 45, whatever. I just know when I was 20 ish, Brian Tracy came to Tulsa, Oklahoma. to deliver a speaking event and to, to speak at a motivational seminar. I thought, I love this guy. I’ve got his books, baby.
And I, and I bought everything he would sell me. I just wanted to touch his hand. Cause I knew JLD, if I touched his hand, I would have the moves. I didn’t want to wash my hand. I want to touch his hand, not wash my hand. And I just, cause this guy’s a sales training wizard. And what I discovered quickly after taking notes and listening to his audio CDs is that I did not know how to lead a team.
And you say, well, how did you learn about hiring a team at a sales seminar? Well, it turns out I was very good at sales, but I wasn’t good at teaching a sales team. And Brian Tracy kept talking about a team and building a team and leading a team. And I’m going, I would love to lead a team, but I don’t have a team. It’s always just me. And I kept thinking, maybe I could motivate myself.
I was trying to apply maybe the daily huddle. I could motivate myself. But eventually, as I grew the DJ business, I discovered I would need a team. And for a lot of people today, and this has nothing to do, I’m not going to get into a political thing here, I’m just telling you the culture we live in today, it is very difficult for many people to hire, inspire, train, and retain quality employees. So if you go to a big shopping mall right now or a shopping center, you’re going to see restaurants right now that say, we can’t find good people.
There are signs you will see at restaurants. Right now in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a very prominent restaurant says, due to labor shortage, we’ve trimmed our hours or whatever. And I can tell you, thankfully, my clients don’t have that problem. I don’t have that problem.
But we had to teach Stephanie the process to hire, inspire, train, and retain quality people. Because if you’re not careful, you could spend months. months of time looking at resumes, doing one -on -one interviews. We taught Stephanie this process called the group interview. Stephanie, I want to see if you could just share just a brief, maybe a 60 -second overview of how the group interview works for you and how that’s eliminated your need to look at just tons of individual one -on -one resumes and just do all these one -on -one interviews. Yeah, the group interview is really a game changer.
So I think when we started, I believe I had like seven part -time employees, and now I have over 60 employees. And that’s due to the group interview process. Basically, every week at a set time that I decide, Tuesdays at 430 for us, we send out the mass invites to anybody who applies.
I never even look at a resume. Everybody just shows up. I quickly go over the positions that we have available, open it up to any questions, and I answer everybody’s questions on the spot. My managers are typing away at their computers, watching people. And then we’re just literally, it’s a funnel and we’re vetting people like they showed up late there. Close somebody’s mind, but I want you to understand this.
I handle the, I handle the hiring for Oklahoma’s largest home building company and the hiring for Oklahoma’s largest men’s grooming haircut chain and the hiring for Oklahoma’s largest marketing company. And I have to interview these people. I personally, I mean, cause I really do believe for me personally, the quality of the team I have. is the quality of the dream I get to live. The quality of my team determines the quality of the dream.
I really do believe this.
Without the team, you can’t make the dream happen. It’s like I’m a football coach, and I’m recruiting great people. So I’ll have typically 40 people a week that will, maybe 50 a week, maybe 100 during peak seasons, that will apply for a job, and I tell them all, I’d love to interview you this Wednesday at 5 30 and it’s a controversial move. I’m telling you folks, but it works. It’s so great. And then they show up and I bet you half and maybe I’m exaggerating.
Maybe I feel like I’m, maybe I’m being sarcastic.
Maybe I’m being, I don’t know.
I feel like half don’t even show up to an interview that they just confirmed themselves to. I believe in Stephanie. Maybe I’m maybe that’s a, I feel like half of my candidates never show up to the interview that they definitely confirmed they were coming to. Is that accurate? Minimum half, usually we have like a quarter of who say they’re going to show up, show up. And then of those that do show up, the ones that show up, that’s like half the battle.
Literally half the battle is just showing up. And then the ones that show up, there’s about a quarter of those that are just looking to get unemployment checks by saying they went to an interview. And so now I’m down to the final quarter and I get to answer all their questions. It works very well. And that’s something we teach all of our clients. There’s a lot of details.
I mean, you have to write job posts that get people to fill out the form. You have to have an automated autoresponder, almost like a click funnel. When someone fills out the form, you want to send them information that’s compelling. You want to have a now hiring video. Anyway, there’s a lot that goes into that. But we will teach you.
We taught Stephanie. We can teach you. And again, folks, you heard, she now has over 60 employees. So if you’re having a hard time hiring, inspiring, training, and retaining great people, That’s part of the business coaching program. And JLD, the reason why I only take on 160 clients is because I actually know Stephanie. And when I see her at a conference or something, I don’t feel like I go, I would say, Hey, you guys.
I mean, I know everybody. I know the clients. and for me I’m not saying that that was that’s a move for anybody out there in consulting I’m not saying you should cap it I had a very good conversation with Michael Gerber about it he was very curious as to why I only have 160 clients and I’ve just found that with 160 clients we have They’re going to gross this year, which is a gross number.
You want to focus on the net. They’re going to gross to over $2 billion of gross revenue this year, 160 clients. I mean, it’s massive revenue, but it’s 160 individuals that I work with. And I like to keep it smaller. And that’s just how I like to work. And Fire Nation, I think you can see by the stats, it’s working.
Now, we have a couple of quotes for this next one. Vision without execution is hallucination. Thomas Edison. And we’re going to talk about Only the paranoid survive. Andy Grove, break it down, Clay. Well, okay, the co -founder of Intel, I mean, he escaped communism.
He escaped the communist -controlled Hungary to build Intel, okay? He explained it, just literally his paranoia is what allowed him to survive. Also, when he’s making microchips, you don’t want to, at scale, fail. I mean, you don’t want to mass -produce a microchip that does not work, okay? So you have to have a little bit of paranoia, but you also have to have optimism. The seventh step we had to work with Stephanie and other people on implementing, is you have to be able to simultaneously learn and apply.
I’m just going to teach everybody, this is the rhythm of entrepreneurship.
Everybody out there, here we go. Get yourself, get a woodblock, get a cowbell, get a chime, get a triangle, get whatever. You do what you have to do, but this is how it goes. You define, you act, you measure, you refine. Here we go. You define what you think is going to work.
You define, you act, you measure, you refine. Again, you define, You act, you measure, you refine. Here we go. You define, you act, you measure, you refine. Here we go. And then you just keep doing it.
And then eventually every week, that’s what we meet our clients every week. Every week you learn something. And I had a client just this morning, a funny story. Um, and I’ll be very vague cause I’m not trying to be disparaging of a client. Cause it’s, it’s, but this was client came in today and he was like, man, I am never going to do that billboard again. And I go, I, I, I, I agree.
He goes, remember that billboard? I go, I do remember the bill. And he just got that wild hair a few years ago to commit to a major billboard campaign. And JLD, we didn’t talk to me about it first. I didn’t know he was doing it. We didn’t have the conversation.
He got fired up. There was a good sale. He showed up at his life. who invited him to some swanky gala. Maybe he had an adult beverage or seven. Next thing you know, he signed.
No, I’m serious. This is a move. Big, big TV, mainstream media outlets do this. They will cold call you. They will flatter you and say, we’re so excited about your business. You’d be great on a billboard.
We got a big special. They take you to an event. And he got a little bit emotionally lubricated there. And he signed up for a 12 -month billboard agreement. And nobody I mean, nobody hired him as a result of that billboard. And it was like the billboard of shame.
Because three months in, he was like, dude, this billboard is not working. I’m like, oh, yeah, but you get to see it on your way home and on your way to work. I mean, it went everywhere. And so you have to measure. And thankfully, with our program, because I’ve been doing this since 2006, I’ve been consulting clients since 2006, I’ve been self -employed since I was 15 years old, we have best practices. So if Stephanie were to say, Clay, I think I might want to try this.
My coaches and my team and I, we could say, well, this has been proven to work or been proven not to work. So we don’t have to do guesswork. We get to implement what we know works. And that’s a powerful thing. But again, just because we know what works, it doesn’t mean we have to be dead to all new ideas. So the weird emotional state of an entrepreneur is you have to learn and simultaneously apply.
You have to be hopeful. also being realistic. You have to dream while also measuring. And Stephanie is one of the unique entrepreneurs that has been able to do both of those. And I wanted to brag on a few other clients while we’re here. Oxifresh .
com. I mean, this guy, I met this guy in college. He went from a man cleaning carpets to now 460 locations. And his current day, JLD, if anyone looks up Jonathan Barnett of Oxyfresh, if you ask Jonathan Barnett, if you say, what are you doing today? His day currently consists of trying to recruit high school athletes to play for his elite basketball team. He has an elite basketball team where, like, the point guard is 6 ‘8″. These are high school students who are 6 ‘8″.
He has a center that’s 7 feet tall. It’s like an AAU mutant team on steroids. I believe the Oxifresh team is now rated in the top 20 of all American high school basketball teams. And you can’t spend your day… He just bought a gym, JLD. He bought a gym and called it the Oxifresh Arena.
You can’t buy the oxy fresh arena.
If you’re not profitable or Randy Antrican with PMH, okc .
com. He just bought himself a dream, a dream home. That’s a guy based in Oklahoma city, oxy fresh based in Denver. Just bought a gym. How cool is that? A former division one athlete literally just bought a gym.
What? And then, and this team’s in the top 20, by the way, and then full package media. Another guy, this was a paramedic. who was a startup, who knew a little bit about photography, and now he has a multimillion -dollar company, FullPackageMedia . com. They’re all clients just like Stephanie and JLD.
Why we charge clients $1 ,700 a month is because, as you know this, Stephanie, when you hire an employee, if you hire a minimum -wage employee or you hire somebody and you pay them $15 an hour after taxes, There’s no way to hire a full -time employee and spend less than $2 ,500 a month.
It’s just not possible after taxes. I had the vision to build this in 2006. I wanted to make a system where it was the financial impact it’s month -to -month program, month -to -month, but it would have the same financial impact of hiring one minimum wage employee. So you’re getting the photography, the videography, the web development, the financial coaching, the mentoring, all of that for less money than it costs to have an employee, but it’s also month -to -month. And I think, Stephanie, when you and I connected, I think that was a big thing for you was that When you discovered it was month to month, I believe that was kind of a breakthrough.
Am I remembering that correctly? Yes, for sure.
I was very hesitant to do anything like long term without seeing some results first. So I just I wanted to make sure that it was worth my while since obviously like when we started together. even that was still like a big amount of money now. And now it’s not obviously, but it was a big deal to spend that on something that I was just like, hesitant about. So for it to be month to month made me like it. And I could very quickly see within that first month, like, oh, this, this is the right decision, for sure.
But yeah, it was make it made it easier to take that first, like leap of faith.
And what’s crazy, too, is variation, you should know this, if you’ve done any research into this type of coaching, I mean, This is literally three times less expensive than most other truly effective other business coaching programs.
So Seve, I do wanna stick with you on this one because this is $1 ,700 a month. It’s not an insubstantial amount of money. As you mentioned, for you now, with the revenue that you’re pulling in, it is kind of insubstantial because you’re turning that $1 ,700 of value into exponential dollar amounts from that. How important was that month -to -month? I mean, I know you just went through it because you were hesitant, but you got the photographers, the videographers, the web developers, the search engines, even with all that, that month -to -month was still very important for you. And so describe how when you did make that decision, because of the fact that it was not this huge 12 -month commitment like that billboard person that we talked about earlier,
Describe how that month to month was and how your experience was working with Clay and his team specifically. Yeah, it made me every single month be able to say like, yes, this is still a good decision. It’s still a good use of my money. Instead of feeling like regretful or buyer’s remorse about anything and not that I would ever feel that with this coaching for sure. But if it was a different coaching and I was like sucked in, mother snazzy marketing and then realize oh crap this is a huge waste of my money i would be pretty resentful but um overall well just Life changing is how I would describe working with Thrive Time. Obviously, it has changed my life in every single way, not only from a money standpoint, but the freedom standpoint of seeing what the potential of this business is and just showing me that it’s scalable and you can have a life outside of just working.
Obviously, we’re entrepreneurs. We love to work. We live and die to work. But if you’re just doing it and you’re running your life into the ground to make it happen. It’s really not a fun way to live. We all have to do that in the beginning, of course, when you’re literally, you know, cleaning till your hands bleed to make it happen.
But you don’t want to do that forever. And so they helped me and showed me the path of, like, this can be a sustainable thing and completely removing myself from, like, the day -to -day operations, if that’s what you want, which is what I wanted. And so they’ve just made every single piece of my business just flows so effortlessly to the point of when I first started, obviously my coach is always like, all right, what burning fires do we need to work on this week?
There was so many burning fires because we were small and everything was just all over the place. And now I literally can’t even tell you the last time I had a burning fire. We meet, we go over the numbers, which is like my favorite part of my tracking sheet for sure. And then it’s like, everything is so so smoothly. I literally, what’s the biggest limiting factor you always ask?
And it’s like, it’s almost hard to pinpoint because it’s running so smoothly and just, yeah, it’s just so steady. Well, Stephanie, I’m truly happy for you. I’m incredibly proud of what you’ve accomplished. honored by the small role that I played.
The fact that I could introduce you to Clay through this podcast is truly an honor, and I’m so glad that that happened.
And Clay, I want to hand it back over to you. We’ve been on the mic now for 45 minutes. This is a massive episode time -wise and content -wise. So take us home, brother. Take us home. You get a couple bonus nuggets of knowledge for us.
You have an explanation of your free 13 -point assessment Take us home. Well, I’ll just say this. You know, if you look up the stats and please don’t believe me, folks, look it up yourself right now, OK? 96 percent of businesses fail within 10 years. So just type into Google or DuckDuckGo, type in 96 percent of businesses fail within 10 years and type in Inc. Magazine.
You can see Forbes has a similar study. We could spend our whole day there. But the point is, statistically, it is not probable that you will have a successful company. However, statistically, it is very improbable that you won’t be successful. I repeat, statistically, it is very unlikely that you will not have massive success if you work with us. Because when we take people down a proven path, I’m not guessing.
And the only reason that I’m doing business consulting is because when my father, you know, my dad passed away from Lou Gehrig’s disease now four years ago. When my dad died, you know, I’m 41, OK? So when my dad was 41 years old, he was, you know, I remember very vividly when my dad was 37, he was delivering pizzas for Domino’s and he was working the night shift at Quick Trip gas stations. So my dad was working two jobs after earning a college degree. to support me. Contrast that to me. I just took my kids with me to a massive event in Dallas the week before I took my care of the month before I took my kids to a massive event in San Antonio.
You know, we stayed at a beautiful house in Breckenridge for Thanksgiving. My wife’s able to donate to the charities and causes that she believes in. There’s just, I mean, I bought my mother -in -law a house. There’s just a lot of things I can do now that I couldn’t do. And money’s just a magnifier. That’s all it is.
So if I’m a terrible person, money is going to make me a exponentially more terrible person. Money allows you to be more of who you already are. And we could have whole shows about that. But the point is, you’ve got to decide right now, are you serious about having success? And so I’m going to give your listeners four options today, four options they can take. Option number one, You can go to thrivetimeshow .
com forward slash EO fire and you can schedule a 13 point assessment. And the assessment is really before you even fill out the form, I would encourage you to watch the testimonial videos, do your research, go to serene -clean . com, serene -clean . com, you know, do your research. When you schedule an assessment, that’s one way we can help you. The average client sticks around for six years.
If you do the math, that means we have usually a client opening about every month and a half. So if there’s a little bit of a waiting list, that’s par for the course. The second thing you can do is you can go to thrivetimeshow . com and you can attend one of our business conferences. Now, JLD, I don’t know of any other business conference that does this, but this is what I tell people. It’s $250 to attend or whatever you want to pay.
People say, what? I mean, literally, it’s $250 or whatever you want to pay. And people say, you got to be kidding me. No, I mean, this is what I do, $250 or whatever, because I wish that my dad would have been taught these things. So I hired my dad. I was 27 years old.
I remember that was a highlight of my life at that point. I called my dad, and I hired him. I said, Dad, you want a full -time job? You can join me. It was like Darth Vader in reverse, kind of. It was like Luke Skywalker.
was proposing to Darth Vader or something. But the point is, and he was so excited about that. So again, you can come out to one of the workshops. Many describe it as life -changing. You can see the testimonials at thrivetimeshow . com.
$250 or whatever you can afford. And option three, always a great option as well. If you go to thrivetimeshow . com forward slash free dash resources thrivetimeshow . com forward slash free dash resources, you can download all of the books I’ve ever written for free. You can download all the books I’ve ever written for free.
And you can also listen to our podcast. We interview Wolfgang Puck and John Maxwell and Damon John, all these big names, you know. And that’s that’s always free as well on iTunes, iHeart, radio, Spotify, that kind of thing. So, JLD, I’m honored to be here with your listeners.
I hope this educated, empowered, inspired somebody out there. And this isn’t a passive aggressive compliment of or a backhanded compliment of Stephanie. But Stephanie is diligent and she’s hardworking, but she’s not any more intelligent or less intelligent than your average listener. I promise everybody out there can do it. The difference for her is she’s a very diligent person. She’s determined, she’s committed, and she’s coachable.
And if you’re out there and you’re committed and you’re coachable, I know you can do it. But you can learn more about it by going to thrivetimeshow . com. And Fire Nation, from everything I heard today, Stephanie’s also an amazing person, which means this money is going to magnify her amazingness.
And believe me, if you’re listening to Entrepreneurs On Fire, I believe in my core that you’re an amazing person.
So let’s allow money to magnify your amazingness, because you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
You’ve been hanging out with Clay, Stephanie, and JLD today, so keep up the heat. Head over to eofire . com, type in Clay in the search bar, and you’ll get the show notes and the links to everything that he just mentioned.
your strong call to action. Thrivetimeshow . com slash eofire. Thrivetimeshow . com slash eofire. assessment today.
Clay, Stephanie, thank you for sharing your value bombs with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flip side. Impressed how big you guys are. But what really impressed me was you have this huge congregation. They’re all about guys your age. They’re on fire.
And you start your classes at five in the morning. Now, let me talk to you about study here. We show our books here. This is how I study. You know, this is the creature from Jekyll Island. It’s on the Fed.
And Clay’s doing the same thing. We study. So I go out to Clay’s place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s built this huge compound out there. And you guys start at five o ‘clock in the morning. That’s not by Zoom.
They drive there. They show up five o ‘clock, bright -haired, bushy -tailed, and all this, and they’re on fire. Your group is on fire. So that’s what was unclear. This technology, you tell your group. I was so, so impressed because, like I said, study has become a bad word.
I got into fights in my own company because our staff didn’t want to study anymore.
And I don’t know how they cannot do that.
So Clay, anyway, welcome to the Rich Dad Radio Show. That’s what I wanna talk to you about, is how do you do it? Five o ‘clock in the morning, you have hundreds of people showing up in your huge, huge, huge auditorium on your property to study.
Anyway, welcome to the show, Clay, and what turns you on so much? That’s what I wanna know. Give us a little bit about your background.
My name is Karime Schofield, and the name of our company is Whistle While You Clean. I am Sophia Schofield. We live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and we service the tri -state. So Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana. We were getting a phone call and we were like, why is someone calling our business line?
That’s unusual. And we picked it up and it was a lead. I mean, it’s, it’s been incredible, Clay. It’s, we’ve had like, we’ve gone from zero to like a hundred percent growth. Like we’re like a full functioning company. It’s great.
Like we were blown away at how well we’re doing. So working with you guys, you guys have really taught us a lot about generating leads and pursuing our dream 100. So we have a list of customers that we want to market to. And so we’ve been making phone calls. We’ve been showing up in person. We’re trying to get near the businesses that they would visit if they were visiting like a hair salon or something.
And then we start calling them and we just start pursuing them. And then the other thing that we do is when we do do cleans, we take a lot of video testimonials and we post those to our website so other customers can see. And then we also upload a lot of images of the things that we do. And so We’re also asking our clients for Google reviews after we’ve cleaned their houses. And so it’s this constant cycle of doing those things over and over and over again. I would say if you’re on the fence, go to one of Clay’s conferences.
They are hilarious. They’re fun. They’re educational. They’re so good that even my teenagers like them. And I would say don’t let fear hold you back. If you want to start a business, do the obvious thing and hire someone who knows how to run businesses.
If I wanted to get in shape, I’d hire a gym person, you know, a personal trainer. This is like the personal training for business. It has been absolutely amazing. I mean, our coach is. encouraging. When he first met with us, he said, Do we want him to be like a drill sergeant with us?
You know, what level of intensity do we want him to give us? And I will say he is incredibly, incredibly encouraging all the time. And he just hits the same mark with us every single time. It’s very repetitive, but I feel like, I think we both really learn a lot every time we sit down and have a conversation with him over the phone.
It’s it’s he keeps pushing us to go further and he can recognize when we’re afraid to do something and he’ll give us a little bit of grace. But that next week he’s drilling us again, like pushing us to go harder.
Our no brainer offer is we are offering your first clean for a dollar. And that sounds absolutely insane. It even sounded insane when I was talking over it with our business coach. And I will tell you that that has generated some of our hugest clients.
I mean, that has been like a game changer because it opened up the door to more clients, more recommendations, more leads.
And we were surprised how far that dollar clean got us.
How important has it been for you to work out that scripting? Even though you offer a dollar for the first clean, how important has it been for you to nail that down?
It’s been really important, because it kind of, it hones in, so that you’re not just all over the place when you’re trying to explain what it is that you do.
And a lot of times, it’s like you’re a good person offering a good product, and you have integrity, and you want to communicate that.
But when you go to communicate without a script or without practice, it’s just like, a mess coming out of your mouth, as opposed to having this, you know, honed in practice where you know what you’re going to say, you know how you’re going to say it, and you can almost expect results when you do it that way. Had you ever been an entrepreneur before starting this particular business? No, never.
Did you ever think about wanting to own your own business someday? Or what was the first time you thought, you know, maybe I would like to open my own business?
Absolutely. I’ve probably been dreaming about it for about 10 years.
Okay.
And let me go to your daughter here. Uh, had you ever thought about wanting to team up and open your own business? Or was that something that you were maybe excited about or not, not so much? Well, for me, my parents would always listen to your podcast and business podcast. And as I started listening to them, I started realizing that I wanted to own a business. www .
whistlewhileyouclean . com. Honestly, the hardest thing was getting over the fear.
It was the fear of the unknown.
It was there was like a cloud of doubt that, you know, you can’t do this. You’re going to fail.
There was a few sleepless nights there when we did pull the trigger and join your team and start the coaching process.
Even my husband put a little bit of pressure on me from time to time because it just it was just absolutely scary to take that jump and actually start a business. Whoa. You’re an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur. And as they say in stoic, the obstacle is the obstacle. way.
And so if you let these pinheads get in your way, you’re in trouble. Octononverba is the motto of the U . S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kingspoint, New York. I had appointments with Naval Academy and Kingspoint Merchant Marine Academy.
And Merchant Marine Academy’s motto was Octononverba. In other words, don’t listen to what a person says. Watch what they do. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects.
You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations. 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 help you guys implement the SEO. The coaching is just great because there’s accountability. It’s just a fantastic way to grow your company. Having a relationship with Thrivetimes, it’s just been amazing for MultiClean. Oh my goodness, it frees me up because then I don’t have to get, take a class on search engine optimization or learn marketing or shoot video. That’s not what we do.
What we do is commercial janitorial service. And you guys were the experts on marketing and you teach me and hold my hand and show me how to do it right.
And therefore now my company is much, much larger. Folks, on today’s show, we’re joined by a real client.
He may look like a male model.
He may look like a hologram, but he’s a real person.
He’s a longtime client.
He’s a man that we consider to be a friend of The Thrive Time Show and a friend of mine.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the show Kevin. Welcome on to The Thrive Time Show.
How are you, sir?
Clay, I’m doing great. Had a great Christmas holiday, and I’m glad to be here. OK, so first question, can you tell us what is your name, first and last name, and what’s the name of your company, sir? 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.
And how long have we worked with you approximately at this point, sir?
It’s been about six, seven years.
Clay Clark is here somewhere.
Where’s my buddy Clay?
Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy.
I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. 4 ,000 % from February to February. Now, I can better that.
OK, Clay, I don’t think you know this.
I don’t think you know this. I’m pinching myself. And if I cry, forgive me.
In the last two and a half days, we have bettered our entire month of February in the last two and a half days. So, and the phone’s blowing up. Everything’s just blowing up, blowing. You’re right. It is like a rocket ship. So, we’re pinching ourselves, actually.
I learned at the Academy at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does.
not what they say. But I recognized at the age of 15, I’m going, you know what? I am not going to live that way. And so I started a company out of my parents’ basement called DJ connection . com. And I decided I am going to have success.
And so I reached out to millionaires and people that I kind of knew through church and friendships and people that parents of my friends. And I said, what book would you recommend that I read? I’m a 15 year old asking this question, true story. And I kept being told you got to read. Hello, hello, hello, Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Radio Show.
It’s an exciting time.
Also I think a treacherous time, a spooky time also. But it’s always, you know, danger is a good time. Today my guest is Clay Clark and I went out with Tom Wheelwright to visit Clay with Eric Trump also. And the reason I wanna talk to Clay this morning is a very important subject called study. And the reason I say that is things are changing so fast And many people are completely missing the show. Things are changing at rapid, rapid, rapid speed.
Technology’s changing. So I went to Tulsa, again, with Tom Wheelwright and Eric Trump. And the thing I was so impressed about Clay is this word called study. I don’t know. You guys must be in your water or something, Clay. But boy, I was so, so impressed.
how big you guys are. But what really impressed me was you have this huge congregation. They’re all about guys your age. They’re on fire. And you start your classes at five in the morning. Now, let me talk to you about study here.
We show our books here. This is how I study. This is the Creature from Jekyll Island. It’s on the Fed. And Clay’s doing the same thing. We study.
So I go out to Clay’s place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s built this huge compound out there. And you guys start at 5 o ‘clock in the morning. That’s not by Zoom. They drive there. They show up 5 o ‘clock, bright -haired, bushy -tailed, and all this.
And they’re on fire. Your group is on fire. So that’s what was on Clay, this technology. Tell your group, I was so, so impressed.
Because like I said, studies became a bad word.
I got into fights in my own company because our staff didn’t want to study anymore.
And I just, I don’t know how they can not do that.
So Clay, anyway, welcome to the Rich Dad Radio Show. That’s what I want to talk to you about is how do you do it? Five o ‘clock in the morning, you have hundreds of people showing up in your huge, huge, huge auditorium on your property to study.
Anyway, welcome to the show, Clay. And what turns you on so much? That’s what I want to know. Give us a little about your background. My name is Karime Schofield, and the name of our company is Whistle While You Clean. I am Sophia Schofield.
We live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and we service the tri -state, so Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana. We were getting a phone call, and we were like, why is someone calling our business line? That’s unusual. And we picked it up, and it was a lead. I mean, it’s been incredible, Clay. We’ve gone from zero to 100 % growth.
We’re a full functioning company. It’s great. We’re blown away at how well we’re doing. So working with you guys, you guys have really taught us a lot about generating leads and pursuing our dream 100. So we have a list of customers that we want to market to. And so we’ve been making phone calls.
We’ve been showing up in person. We’re trying to get near the businesses that they would visit if they were visiting like a hair salon or something. And then we start calling them and we just start pursuing them. And then the other thing that we do is when we do do cleans, we take a lot of video testimonials and we post those to our website so other customers can see. And then we also upload a lot of images of the things that we do. And so We’re also asking our clients for Google reviews after we’ve cleaned their houses.
And so it’s this constant cycle of doing those things over and over and over again. I would say if you’re on the fence, go to one of Clay’s conferences. They are hilarious. They’re fun. They’re educational. They’re so good that even my teenagers like them.
And I would say don’t let fear hold you back. If you want to start a business, do the obvious thing and hire someone who knows how to run businesses. If I wanted to get in shape, I’d hire a gym person, you know, a personal trainer. This is like the personal training for business. It has been absolutely amazing. I mean, our coach is encouraging.
When he first met with us, he said, do we want him to be like a drill sergeant with us? You know, what level of intensity do we want him to give us? And I will say he is incredibly, incredibly encouraging all the time.
And he just hits the same mark with us every single time. It’s very repetitive.
But I feel like I think we both really learn a lot every time we sit down and have a conversation with him over the phone. it’s it’s he keeps pushing us to go further and he can recognize when we’re afraid to do something and he’ll give us a little bit of grace but that next week he’s drilling us again like pushing us to go harder. Our no -brainer offer is we are offering your first clean for a dollar.
And that sounds absolutely insane.
It even sounded insane when I was talking over it with our business coach.
And I would tell you that that has generated some of our hugest clients.
I mean, that has been like a game changer because it opened up the door to more clients, more recommendations, more leads.
And we were surprised how far that dollar clean got us.
How important has it been for you to work out that scripting?
Even though you offer a dollar for the first clean, how important has it been for you to nail that down? It’s been really important, because it kind of, it hones in, so that you’re not just all over the place when you’re trying to explain what it is that you do. And a lot of times, it’s like you’re a good person offering a good product, and you have integrity, and you want to communicate that. But when you go to communicate without a script or without practice, it’s just like, a mess coming out of your mouth as opposed to having this, you know, honed in practice where you know what you’re going to say, you know how you’re going to say it, and you can almost expect better results when you do it that way. Had you ever been an entrepreneur before starting this particular business? No, never.
Did you ever think about wanting to own your own business someday or what was the first time you thought, you know, maybe I would like to open my own business? Absolutely. I’ve probably been dreaming about it for about 10 years. Okay. And let me go to your daughter here. Had you ever thought about wanting to team up and open your own business or was that something that you were maybe excited about or not so excited about?
Transcribed with Cockatoo