The Art of Getting Things Done | How to Get 10X More Done Everyday + To-Do List, Calendars & Team Management 101 + Join Tebow At Clay Clark’s April 9-10 ThrivetimeShow.com Business Conference + 9 Success Stories

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Hello, my name is Ross Clark and I’m the CEO of Basin Fleeting. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the to -do list that Clay Clark and his team uses. I shattered him for a couple of days and after seeing him and his team use it throughout the day, I had to try it for myself. and I came home, implemented it with me and my managers and we’ve been doing it for a couple of months now and I cannot imagine not doing it at this point. This is what mine looks like. I’ve tried other programs like Tony Robbins RPM program, objectives and key results, all of those things and none of them quite stuck like this did for me.

So if you’re having any doubts about whether it’ll work or not, I’m sure just try it for a couple of weeks and you won’t regret it. Thanks.

My name is Sonya Bryant. I am the owner and CEO of Zadiebees and our website is Zadiebees .

com.

We have seven stores and we have a corporate office. We have a huge team, amazing team in fact. And the last week we’ve been focusing on one word and that word is accountability. And accountability is so important when you’re trying to grow a business and this can apply to your spiritual life, This can apply to your personal life if you don’t have accountability. you’re not going to grow. It’s not control, it’s commitment.

Sometimes we think, you know, with the carnal mind, we think of things like, it’s a control thing. They’re trying to control me. No, it’s a commitment. Growth begins where excuses end. We’ve seen huge growth in the last week or two with some of the things that we’ve instituted at Save the Bees with our employees, and we’re super excited. Seeing people step out of their box, do things because they’re being more accountable.

Discipline is self -love and action. That means, you know, people that are successful in the world, whether it’s business or personal or spiritual, whatever, you can apply it to wherever in your life. If you’re not accountable, in another word, interchangeable to me would be disciplined. If you’re not disciplined in life and you’re disciplined in your Whatever it could be your eating habits. It could be your you know, whatever you do, but I just want to encourage you today Look at this word examine this word and see if this word is something that you need to incorporate in your life accountability and I know I had to reflect on some things that I felt like I had like kind of let go by the wayside and I’ve decided I have to be more accountable. It starts at the top and it trickles down.

So if I want my company to be successful, I must be accountable first off and then I can ask my employees to be accountable. So I’m asking you today, think about these things and maybe there’s some things that you need to change or add to your life, but I just want to encourage you. Think about it.

All right.

You can’t afford to let the day design you. You must become the architect of your life. You must build your own experience. You see, every day is a blank slate. Each morning you have an important decision to make. Who are you going to be today?

What attitude are you bringing to the table? And what about your time and energy? Where are you putting that each day? That’s another question that needs answered every morning. That’s when you get to look back and give yourself an honest review. Did you do what you set out to do?

Did you get a little better than you were yesterday or did you slide backwards? And here’s the most important one. Who are you becoming? If you want to direct your life, you’ve got to direct your day. You have to get up and do all that before the world tries to direct it for you. The morning isn’t for reacting.

It’s for designing. It’s for setting the compass, not just checking the weather. Too many people wake up with their foot caught in the door of yesterday. They’re still stuck on yesterday. They need to watch the news to see what happened. They start the day with the weight of the past, dragging it forward like a heavy, bag.

And then they wonder why they they’re mentally exhausted by noon. Why the day always seems to be ahead of them instead of under their control. Want to take charge of your life? Then that first hour belongs to you, not to the world, not to your job, not to anybody else. If you really want to see what you’re capable of, then give yourself that window before the world comes knocking.

One of our accountants had said, you’ve got to meet this guy, Clay. So we ended up meeting with Clay. He’s helped us go from right before we opened the third location now to six locations. And so we’ve more than doubled our revenue. And these are ground up build gyms. And so it’s not the barrier for entry is pretty high.

It’s 20 plus staff at each location. So yeah, it’s been a lot for us running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when and how training us on that. Clay’s helped a ton. We would not be where we’re at without him. So huge win.

Charles, from an ROI perspective, if someone’s going to look at it and go, return on investment, I pay you $1 ,700 a month. Will I make more money than I’m paying you? How would you maybe tackle or how would you respond to what kind of return on investment have you seen for the $1 ,700 a month you’re paying?

Well, for example, Clay has got, there’s no there’s no better business coach in the world that has the way he works, the way his mind works. But he’s also got a team of other other business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries. So he’s worked in every industry. His staff has worked in every industry. He’s got videographers, what web designers, I mean, just for the fact of like, just just the website alone is worth the 1700.

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

And then in the whole thing is run your business with being somewhat conservative. Make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time. But by doing that, you have that that skill set. You have that you have those. It’s tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like, it’s just like the cost of doing business.

Like just, just understand it. That’s a, that’s what I think.

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

Well, Thrive Nation, it’s a very special occasion because a lot of times on The Thrive Time Show, I get to interview people that I am friendly with or have an acquaintance with that kind of thing. And I enjoy that. But it’s really an honor whenever I get to interview someone who I consider to be a friend or people that I consider to be friends of our family. And it’s awesome when we can celebrate a success story, because it’s a life -giving thing. And for somebody watching today’s show, if you feel you need like a checkup from the neck up, if you feel stuck, if you feel like you don’t have the resources to get started, but you have the resourcefulness, maybe today’s show is the show you need to hear. This is a couple, they started this business together out of their house, and they’ve now grown it into a multimillion dollar, super successful company.

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

Great. Thanks, Clay. It’s awesome to be on here with you.

Yes, we are excited.

Okay, so I got to ask this real quick, because people think you’re a hologram. How long have we had the opportunity to work with you? Or how long have we worked with you guys together from a kind of a coaching relationship?

We started back in 2017.

Yeah, we’re looking at seven, eight years.

Yeah, it’s coming up on eight probably, a little over seven.

And from that time, I mean, you guys have experienced tremendous personal growth and business growth. I mean, could you, Charles, maybe talk about, I’m not looking for your specific financials, but could you maybe talk about maybe the size you guys have grown over these past seven or eight years at colawfitness .

com?

Absolutely.

We started off, we were getting ready to open our third location. And one of our accountants had said, you’ve got to meet this guy, Clay. So we ended up meeting with Clay. And he’s helped us go from, you know, Right before we open the 3rd location now to 6 locations, and so we’ve more than doubled our revenue and these are ground up build gyms. And so it’s not the barrier for entry is pretty high. It’s 20 plus staff at each location.

So yeah, it’s been a lot as far as running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when and how, training us on that. Clay’s helped a ton. We would not be where we’re at without him. So huge win.

Now, I’m going to ask you guys this story because I want you to be able to encourage somebody. I’m not sure who’s going to watch this show, but I view every show as kind of a message in a bottle. So somebody is watching this show, and they’re going to relate to this story. I’m going to let Amber go first because I think she’ll maybe have a less rosy view of how it was. But you guys started colawfitness . com doing personal training to individual clients in your actual home.

So like your living room was where the squat rack was, or the bench press was in the kitchen. Amber, what was that like when you started colawfitness .

com?

Well, I think when you’re starting something like that, you don’t see a bigger picture. You’re not thinking that far ahead. You’re just kind of thinking you have to work, you have to survive, you’ve got to make money, and you’re doing what you love. And so with that, it was just it was kind of more as a of a survival. And also, we couldn’t afford furniture to go in our formal living room, a formal dining room. And so.

So, um, we were kind of stuck in a situation where Charles needed a place to train and he had a full clientele. And so we just were, why don’t we find like a big universal piece, stick it in the living room that cause it’s just an empty room. And, um, the dining room became more of the office. And so we bought a big universal piece and threw down some rubber flooring, ripped up the carpet and put some big mirrors on the wall. And we just started doing what we needed to do at the time with no, I mean I definitely did not think it was going to be in my house for a couple of years for sure.

But, yeah, a lot of it was fear of failure. was like, I want to make sure that you know, I can provide for my family. And we were trying to just I was every lead I had and follow up with every client I trained want to make sure that it gave me good results. And yeah, next thing you know, we have about 160 clients coming in and out of the door a week. And it’s me and about four or five of the trainers training out of there, out of our living room. And so it became a revolving door of fitness.

And then Amber also did some hair. So she had a hair salon in the back of the house. So it’s like a training studio in the front of the house and then a hair salon in the back of the house.

So yeah, the win.

Now, I want to share this story because I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this story with you, but I think our listeners need to hear this because your story is better than mine. But let me just show this to the listeners real quick here. If we go to 111th and Memorial in Tulsa, Oklahoma, my wife and I, we were 20 years old -ish, and I remember I was so excited to be able to build our house. I remember telling my wife, honey, We can afford to build a house. We are going to build a house, a brand new house. She was so excited.

I remember we were driving down Riverside. She was like, we’re going to buy a house? And I go, yeah. She’s like, we’re going to build a house? I’m going, yeah, because we’re a young couple. We’ve just been married a couple of years.

We’re right here at 111th and Memorial. I found a builder named Rob Brewer, who did a phenomenal job. I would hire him again. And this is a true story. So I built this house from scratch. And so my neighbor comes by, Wendy, God bless her.

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

And I’m going, well, what do you mean what I do? She’s like, this is a residential neighborhood. What are you doing? I said, well, I’m running a business. She said, you can’t run a business here. So I had back here in the backyard, no kidding, I had eight different vans back there.

And then neighbors kept asking me if I was running drugs. I mean, people were concerned because the fact DJ would come to load up gear at 4 in the morning, and our last guy would come home at 3 in the morning. And it was just a wild thing. I got to ask you, with the gym, Amber, how early were people coming to work out, to do squats, and bench press, and cardio? What time were they showing up?

How many people were showing up?

Oh, yeah. He’s relentless and he’ll fill any hour he can. And so he would start as early as 5 a . m. with his first client. And, uh, you know, sometimes it would last until about 10 o ‘clock at night.

And so it was, it was, it was just a revolving door. And we always blocked out the middle of the afternoon at two o ‘clock every afternoon. And him and I, and, um, as we added staff, we would all work out together.

So it became this big, you know, workout session together.

It was awesome. And this is a real thing. Now, Amber, I’m not looking for anything super salacious. But I mean, did you ever have awkward situations? I mean, because you’re sleeping there. You’re living there.

Do you guys ever have just, like, I remember with the DJ business, my wife, about once a week there for a while, she would come downstairs. And one of my DJs would get, Clay, where’s the bathroom? I’d say, right there. And they would walk into our master bedroom. And I’m like, get out of there. That’s my bathroom, you sicko.

I mean, did you ever have just weird client interactions? Oh, yeah. Totally, from our kitchen became like the staff break room. And so all of a sudden, I’ve got everybody’s lunches in my fridge. And I remember one day, a guy had went to get the barbecue sauce out of the fridge and just drops it. And it just shatters all over the kitchen floor.

But his client was here. So he looks at me kind of like, uh. And I was like, just go. So I’m cleaning up barbecue sauce out of the kitchen. One morning I had gotten out of the shower and I come out of the bathroom. which is at the top of the stairs and I’m just making that short little.

jagged over to my bedroom door. And so I had my hair in a towel and a robe on. And I opened the door and right there at the bottom of the stairs, Charles has one of the clients doing calf raises. And they just good morning. And I thought get this out of my trainers napping on the couch between clients and our middle son was in pre K at the time and so he’d come home half the day. And he’d sit on the couch.

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

And so, oh yeah, the whole family was in on it. I just remember when I was building DJConnection . com, I would train my DJs out of my house. So we would practice announcements, like, ladies and gentlemen, coming up in just a moment, we’re going to introduce the bride and the groom. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the intro. And we would practice, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, we’re going to be cutting the cake.

Once again, we’ve got the bride, we’ve got the groom, we’ve got an act that should be exciting. And I’m practicing, and they have a script, and I’m practicing. So adult males are in my house, and we’re practicing introducing. Because, you know, we grew DJ Connection to do 4 ,000 weddings a year. So I’m training 30 disc jockeys every week. So Havana, my oldest, who’s now 20, she starts running around in the office going, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, the cutting of the cake.

Because she had heard it so much. She’s like, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, the Soul Train line. She knew. Because it was like, and I don’t think if you’re watching today’s show and these stories, you can’t relate to it. That’s okay, but I’m just trying to make sure we’re getting this idea. This is a real couple that I would now classify as a super success story, but they had to start somewhere.

It’s not about resourcefulness. It’s not about resources. It’s about responsibility. Again, it’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness. Look at the backyard.

I turned half my backyard into a concrete slab so that we could park all the vans back here. I mean, look at all the trees I planted to block the view. So now you look at Colaw Fitness and you go, Wow, this is a super successful company. Wow, I want to be the next Koloff Fitness. Wow, these guys are really doing it. I want to be a kolofffitness .

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

There are 14 things. that we need to do and a lot of details on those 14. So we’re going to go step by step on today’s show. I’ll go back and forth between Charles and Amber. And for sake of time, we’ll just go back and forth rapid fire. So here we go.

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

What are your weekly revenue goals? What are your annual revenue goals?

You have to know your revenue goals.

Charles, why do you have to know your revenue goals? rules. Yes, you have to know your revenue goals so you know if they’re going to be making money or not. And for us, we want to make sure that we’re staying bankable, that we can open more locations. Our gyms are a ministry for us. We want to make sure that we continue to expand and making sure we got at least a 20 % profit margin off of all of our expenses to income over expenses.

And we know how many memberships we have to sell. We know how many clients that we have to service to hit those goals for our set overhead costs. And yeah, so you got to know how many units of items you have to sell every week, every day. And so we track that stuff. And for us, we have a lot of recurring revenue.

But the whole point is, we want to make sure that we have enough of the payable, viable buyers in the system to continue to grow. And you track this stuff. And so we’ve got wonderful members of our team. We’ve got a young member of our team named Natalie, who’s learning all of this because she’s developing into a coach. And when you work with a new client, a lot of times the client’s going to have a bias to focus on just marketing, just branding.

But you have to know these numbers. Amber, anything else you want to talk about as far as the numbers? Because I know your husband is passionate about fitness, and you are as well.

But why do you have to focus on the numbers and not just marketing, or not just branding, or not just social media? Why do you have to focus on those numbers? Well, I think the numbers, it’s like the steering wheel that steers the ship. I mean, if you don’t understand the numbers, you have no idea where you’re going. And so I think that’s probably the biggest thing, like it just, it, it leads the whole way. And I think a lot of people tend to do, I’m going to do the marketing or I just want to perform the service.

I think a lot of it because people are scared of numbers.

I think they, they feel like numbers are overwhelming and they try to make numbers way too difficult. So I think that’s the biggest thing. This is such wisdom, folks. I’m telling you, if you’re not familiar with colawfitness . com, go to their website. These guys give away a Bible.

Every time they sell a new membership, they set aside a portion of the funds to give away a Bible to first -time members at their gym. It’s an incredible, it’s a ministry, it’s a business. It checks all those boxes. Let’s move on to box number three. Define the number of hours you’re willing to work. Now, Amber, you happen to be married to a man who’s willing to work every hour of the day if need be.

I will say this, though. Most of my clients, if I had to think about my 160 clients I work with, And I had to think about the average client. 90 % of them are not willing to work as hard as you guys. Most of my clients are willing to work 40 hours a week or 50 hours a week. Some will work 60 hours a week, but nobody is willing to work go sprint from 4 AM to 8 PM, 10 PM every day if need be.

Your husband is willing to do that.

Why is it important for you guys, Charles, to define the hours that you’re going to work, the hours that you’re not going to work, block out time for the family cruise, for the family trip? Why is that an important box there, Charles? That way my wife will stay married to me. Well, I’m like you. I like to just go, go, go. And then we do definitely, we take off and we go to church on Sunday.

It’s important for us to hold the Sunday as a Sabbath, as a day off. Other than that, I like to work. You talked about vacation, to vacate or to leave something. I love to work.

I love to build the systems and build the documents and train staff, build the systems and so on. But we do have to make sure that once a quarter, we try to look at taking time off, go ahead. Well, I would say the biggest thing that we always talk about in marriage, family, and work, expectations and boundaries.

Those two things have to be very clear all the time. So as long as he understands what my expectations are, and I need him to fulfill a husband role in addition to working, as long as he understands that these are my expectations, and then these are my boundaries, and as long as we communicate that, then we’re good. I’ll say one more thing is that for us, we’ve kind of at the spot to where, you know, we just work on the business, not in the business. So we don’t actually do the day to day stuff, but we work on the bills, business systems, checklists, workflows, training, coaching people remotely, because we do live in Florida. Our clubs are in the Midwest, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Kansas. And so running remotely and running all that stuff, we’ve got to kind of say, what, how do we want to live our lives?

Like you’d say, Charles, how do you really want to live it? You got to kind of map out and clearly, define that. For us, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, those days are just all in on Zoom calls, training, coaching. Working with staff. And so those days are really, really full days.

And then the rest of the time, like on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, those are all lighter days that we don’t block in a lot of meetings. It’s like no meetings that we plan, but we are still, I’m still working on things that I want to work on, but I’m not leveraged to having to. So I’ve kind of created my three day Work week that’s like super long. And then the rest of the time I don’t have meetings, I don’t get held hostage on a lot of stuff.

And people have to kind of have a gatekeeper to get to me. But other than that, that’s how I’ve tried to map that out so that I can continue to mastermind and kind of grow the brand and have some meta perspective on how I want to continue to grow. So there’s just So much, again, for folks, if you want to learn entrepreneurship, this is real people. If you’re in the Florida area and you’re looking for a job, if you’re in the Joplin, Missouri area and you’re looking for a career, not just a job, Koloff Fitness is a company that’s going places. I’m not prophetic. I’m not claiming to have some view of the future.

I just see patterns. And I work with clients, and I help them implement patterns that work. And I also know of the clients that will work. Nothing works unless you work, right? So nothing will work unless you work. And I look at the Colaw family, and I look at the fuel that you put into the business and the diligence that you bring.

And I’m telling you, folks, this is a brand that’s going somewhere. If you’re looking for a career, check it out, colawfitness . com. Box number four and five, these kind of fit in together. Box number four is you have to determine your unique value proposition. That’s a unique thing.

unique? What is it that separates you from the competition? If you’re watching today’s show, let’s think about your website, your print piece, your auto wraps, your business cards. Let’s think about everything about your business. Let’s think about the sights, the sounds, the smell, the ambiance, the employees you have. What is it that makes you different from the competition?

What is it that makes you unique? -fil -A successful when there are many other fast food chicken restaurants? What is it that makes Quick Trip super successful when there are so many gross, nasty, dirty convenience stores? What is it that makes Chick -fil -A successful? What is it that makes Quick Trip successful? What is the secret sauce that allows Brad Stevens, the coach of the Boston Celtics, to bring out a winning lineup year after year.

Brad Stevens took a dysfunctional Butler College basketball team and turned them into a top four basketball team. Think about this. He took a college called Butler, the size of Earl Roberts University, and took them to the Final Four multiple times. And then he takes that same recipe and goes to the NBA, and they win a championship, and he’s putting out a winner year after year. What is the secret sauce that allowed Phil Jackson to win year after year? Michael Jordan couldn’t win a championship.

without Phil Jackson? He played a lot of seasons without Phil Jackson. He only won his championships with Phil. Kobe Bryant never won a championship without Phil Jackson. By the way, Kobe Bryant played a lot of seasons without Phil Jackson.

What is that magic formula? A big part of it is you have to understand your unique value proposition. So Amber, what is it that makes Kola Fitness unique versus other fitness companies? For us, it’s culture, hands down. It’s culture all day long. And we worked really hard at our first location to set the culture and make it what we wanted it to be.

We wanted a fitness center that everybody could be a part of. And I mean, not everybody, not everybody likes it.

But It’s definitely our culture and that was something we knew we had to be able to duplicate when opening other locations. And so that is probably the number one piece that we train, develop, encourage that we’re the biggest part of the company that we are. still a part of is the culture part. Yep. And that’s the big part. I’m going to just kind of jump out a little bit more.

We’re unapologetic in our Christian component to that. Think of if Planet Fitness is the McDonald’s of gyms, Cola Fitness is the Chick -fil -A. And what I mean by that is We are a strong Christian culture. We hire and we look for people that match that. They don’t have to be a Christian, but they do have to align with those values. All of Christianity summed up in one word is the word agape.

That’s an unconditional love. We want to make sure that we actually hire people that are into customer service, that likes people. Who’d have thought customer service, we’re going to find people that actually like to serve people. And so we really vet that pretty heavily on the front side, on the onboarding with our, you know, like our Christian culture. We play a video, we talk about who we are. We talk about the Christian values, devotion to God, discipline in living, denial of self, dream great dreams for God’s glory, determination to stay the course.

So the Christian side of it is kind of strong. So either people lean in or lean and lean back. And so when we do group interviews, this is where you’ve taught us a lot of great systems, you see people lean in and see people lean back. So when everybody’s on the boat rowing in the same direction, and they really match that value set, the culture is just it’s just better. And when you hire people to actually like people, like hire people that like people they want to acknowledge your presence close the gap give them a fist bump a high five make somebody feel like the highest like the highlight of the day when they walk through that door so we train people on those systems so we took the the culture that we did when we first opened the club and we defined it into actual ways that we can role play and script it with our staff so that you have not a purple hair mcdonald’s perpetually distracted cran -mark tattoo person You have a person posted like a McDonald’s, something that runs up to your car like a Chick -fil -A that’s you got their polo on and says, my pleasure. So that’s where we have to be very, very, very specific on how we do culture differently than others.

who’s just, you know, scaling out like crazy. But people like the greatest currency in life is how you make somebody else feel and want to make other people feel like the highlight of the day and hire people that are sincere. They’re just genuine that truly like people. If you do that, well, you have to lock the doors to keep people out. I’m telling you folks, this is so important. I talked to a guy the other day who applied to work for your business, true story.

And he’s kind of a gremlin. I know him because he didn’t get hired by a friend of mine. And so a friend of mine’s like, hey, I didn’t hire this guy. He’s kind of a gremlin. I said, what do you mean, gremlin? He’s like, yeah, he’s just kind of a curmudgeon, kind of a negative guy, Debbie Downer.

And he’s got a big background in fitness, though. And he’s into fitness. And he played sports at a high level. And he’d love to come work for you, Clay. And I go, OK. And he’s like, yeah, I guess he applied for the Colaw guys a couple years ago, didn’t get the job.

And I’m going, OK. Interesting. And I knew that you, and I met the guy, I’m like, this guy, I understand why you didn’t hire him. And I didn’t hire him either. And I’m just telling you have certain standards. And if people aren’t up to those standards, they can come back and reapply later after they turn that frown upside down.

But you have a certain standard there. Now, box number six, the three -legged marketing stool. At Colaf Fitness, with every business we work with, every business that I work with, what we do is we develop a three -legged marketing stool. Now, I’ll give you a moment, Charles and Amber, to reflect on this. And maybe this is true for you, maybe not. But a lot of my clients that come into my life, I think about Stacey Purcell, longtime client, great lady.

I think about Shaw Homes, shawhomes . com. We helped Shaw Homes grow from $14 million a year to $150 million a year. I think about Satellite Phones, Tina, her company, SAT123. We’ve helped them grow to $100 million a year of sales. I think about Oxifresh, oxifresh .

com. We’ve helped them grow now to 500 -plus locations. And every single time I sit down with a business owner, they have not a three -legged marketing stool. No, no, no. They have a variety of things that might work. And through tracking, we’re

to figure out what doesn’t work. And so with Stacey Purcell, with her wonderful business, we found out that LinkedIn didn’t work 100 % of the time, thus saving her $8 ,000 a month by turning it off. I just had a client this week, true story, we found he was spending $4 ,000 a week on YouTube ads, Instagram ads, and TikTok ads. Got a lot of clicks, got a lot of views, No leads.

Another client, I’m using a stream of consciousness, another client of mine, they were doing mailers, getting zero response. Another client of mine was doing billboards to the tune of $6 ,000 a month between all their locations. And as you look at the different businesses and you track, you can really, really become much more profitable by nailing down a three -legged marketing stool. Could you talk about that, Amber? Maybe the impact it’s had or hasn’t had, tracking the results. getting rid of what doesn’t work and focusing on what does work?

Yeah. Well, I would say, um, none of that is my part of the business. And I’m so thankful. I hate marketing, but I would, what I would say to that is that has everything to do with, like, we were talking about your numbers and the tracking. So you’re talking about tracking these things. That’s my side, the financial side.

And I want to know that when the money’s going out, that that return is coming back. Right. And so I do that side of it with we talk about a marketing budget and watching that and holding true to that and watching those numbers and watching, you know, the revenue that comes back from that marketing so you may be able to talk more on the marketing that’s your yeah no absolutely well we’ve tracked where they come from sometimes you do get clicks or you do have like sometimes facebook shows you make it but it’s really not getting people to walk through the door and convert people into members and convert people into higher ticket items and so you really want to make sure that we you’re spending money on is actually quantifying out into dollars. And so Clay’s really been good with us to track that. We’ve done that for years.

And so we can really kind of see in our industry, we market in a five mile radius, really heavy. That’s kind of our ideal and likely buyers within that five mile radius or a 12 minute drive time. We target those. We see what marketing works best. And a lot of times it’s the same proven stuff that Clay teaches with a lot of his clients is really seeing to making sure that you’re dominating on certain platforms. And I can go into that, but the whole point is, is Clay has done it in every industry.

And when we follow the system, track it correctly, we can monetize our marketing dollars a whole lot better. And so there’s, there’s ways you want to get in front of your ideal likely buyer. We make sure we got the right product offering in front of the right ideal likely buyer. And the things that Clay’s been doing with his clients over the last seven years with us, it doesn’t change much. There’s a few little things that adjust, but it’s a proven system and that’s what works. And we’ve done that.

We’ve gone from three locations to six and we’ve more than doubled our revenue.

So it’s been a huge win. Well, I think sometimes people want to market in a certain way because that’s the cool thing to do. Like I want to be on TikTok.

If TikTok doesn’t pay me, if TikTok is not paying my bills, I could care less.

I mean, I watch TikTok on my off time, but I’m not going to put my marketing dollars into it just because that’s what everybody else is doing. And I think another part of that is everybody has marketing advice for you.

Everybody, everybody thinks there’s a marketing guru, you know, because they see ads.

And I don’t think that’s true either.

I’m going to ask you this, Charles, and I’m not ready for your answer yet. I got to mentally prepare myself for this, but you do not have the ability to not be honest here. Okay. So, um, a guy called me here today and I thought, man, I’m going to send this to him right away. Okay. Guy reaches out to me.

He’s in the construction space.

Okay. And he goes. what would it? This happens every day, by the way. But he says, what would a relationship look like if I hired you guys as my coach? If I hired you, Clay, and your team, what does that look like?

And I said, well, we charge you $1 ,700 a month. So it’s less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. That’s what it is. We have a weekly meeting. And we follow a proven system. And anyway, and I said, there’s accountability.

So there’s kind of three parts to it. One is we have a team that helps you get your photography, your video, your web, your search engine done for you, all those things.

The second is we provide coaching down a proven path.

And then the third is we have workshops every couple months so you can kind of get a tune up. And I said, Mr. Potential Client, who I’ve known forever, I said, Clay Stairs describes me as the ass man. And he’s like, the ass man?

And I said, yeah, Clay Stairs, longtime client of mine. He’s been a client of mine for like 15 years. He literally tells people that I’m his ass man. And they go, what? He goes, Clay has helped me grow my company, claystairs . com.

He’s helped me get into political office. But he kind of is like an irritant who follows up on the same things every week until they get done. So I wanted to ask you, Charles, how would you describe what the coaching relationship looks like for somebody out there that’s saying, what is it like to work with specifically me and my team? Well, to shoot you straight, I mean, Clay’s highest desire isn’t always your comfort in that coaching. His highest desire is your continued development, that you do hit your goals for financial. And a good coach, think of a good coach.

A good coach tells you what you need to hear because he doesn’t just care about the comfort in the room or the comfort of the conversation. He cares about your character development, your personal development to becoming the better leader. And if you want to run a great company, you have to be a great leader. You have to be the avatar. You have to be the great person. And Clay’s really pushed that in me.

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

Somebody in the bullpen, so I’ll take it. You always have continuous training staff. You’re never held hostage because there’s somebody that doesn’t know a skill set. You can always replace somebody. Because if you don’t create a system, you’re going to be a limited resource. And Clay creates the systems, helps you with document creation, file organization, and make sure you’ve got that stuff so you have a proven template.

It’s really more like a franchisable prototype that you can handle the lowest skill set.

So great people are great, but Clay’s been really good at shooting me straight. If you have a humble, coachable heart and you’re willing to grow and you take two or three action items every week, next thing you know, 50 weeks, 52 weeks in a year, you’ve got a bunch of systems, you’ve got a way better website, you’ve got checklist workflows, you’ve got staff following systems, you’ve got backup for each position. Because if you don’t have people in the bullpen, you’re going to be held hostage. And so you want to make sure that you’ve got the right systems, checklists, and personnel ready to go. And to run six different businesses in four different states, From Florida, in the Midwest, we have to have good systems, checklists, workflows, and so on, and making sure people are holding to that. Clay’s been really great for helping set up the system.

But it’s, to be honest, it’s not always, the conversations are definitely sometimes challenging, but understanding that both parties, me as the client, him as the coach, is really trying to have the highest desire to make you grow into a better person and to help your company grow and be better. And for me, that’s a good coach. And that’s why I like working with Thrive and Clay. Amber, I wanted to tap into your wisdom on this. There was a statement that was made years ago by Robert Kiyosaki. And it really resonated with me. I heard this about 20 years ago.

But he said, amateurs don’t have a coach. Professionals do have a coach. And at the time, I thought, you know what? From a legal perspective, I probably need a coach or mentor to help me. So I hired wintersking . com, and I’ve used that company for a long time.

What, 10 plus years? And it’s really helped me. And I thought to myself, from an accounting perspective, I need probably to have her a coach. So I hired CCK. And so in the areas where I want to improve, I really do firmly believe in having a coach. When I wanted to become a better speaker, I hired Carlton Pearson.

And I worked with Carlton for as long as he would work with me. Because at the time, he was the top televangelist in America.

And he was a phenomenal verbal communicator.

But it wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t coachable. and if he wasn’t willing to coach. And you guys have done such a great job over these years implementing, and I just see the future is so bright here. So when we look at your website now, could you talk about just that weekly meeting and making those little iterations and every week making it a little better? Because I think some people want to get rich quick.

They want to become successful in 10 minutes.

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

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

We get coaching feedback from you on best practices. And one thing is, is that you’ve not just worked in our industry, but lots of industries. And having a team of people, a team of coaches that say, hey, this is what’s working, this isn’t what’s working, it’s super valuable. And so, like, I mean, I got an MBA in school, but it’s telling you, like, it’s real life is so much more important and having good people that have good feelers.

It’s like it’s you’re only as good as your team. And Clay brings the whole team to your team. And anyways, we have a weekly meeting. Our weekly meeting, we look at like, what are the key things that impact us, it’s going to be sign -ups, sign -ups over cancels, what are those sign -ups, which one’s upgraded to higher tier options, whether that’s membership, higher tier membership options, or whether that’s tearing up into higher services like fitness coaching, like one -on -one coaching or fitness training or nutrition coaching or group training. But getting people into those things and understanding the scripts how to roleplay that over and over again, making sure your staff understands how to communicate effectively with the customer, roleplay, roleplay until that socially awkward, you know, young person can totally get it and they understand how to do it until the cognitive, the critical thinking face has gone away. They know how to do it.

Now you’ve got staff that knows how to communicate well, how to show the product offering benefits over costs, and then show them that if you don’t do it, this is what won’t happen. And you want to show them that you’re going to really change their lives and save their life, add years to the life quality to your years by changing new habits. And when people see that value, you’ve got the right staff articulating that, you close a lot of deals, you upgrade things, and you change a lot of lives. Well, one thing, Clay, I think with the coaching is it’s been beneficial. It’s kind of like you’re our blind side, blind spot coach. This is what we’ve created.

There’s a lot of emotions attached to it. It’s what we love. It’s what feeds our family.

And so we can become very emotionally charged.

And I think you’re super helpful to kind of bring us back in and go, hey, like, so you kind of keep us focused, separating the emotions from it.

And I’ve heard a lot of people say to you or, you know, in conversations we’ll have and they’ll say, yeah,

but you don’t understand landscaping. It’s not about understanding landscaping. We don’t talk fitness every week when we meet. But it’s about business, and it’s about where we’re going. And you really help keep us on track. There’s that accountability, like you talked about.

You guys are set up super valuable. Your set of eyes is super valuable. Yeah. I’ll just say this. I mean, Colawfitness . com, if you’re looking for a career, folks, I’m telling you, check out Colawfitness .

com. Now, point number seven, sales conversion. We have to have scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, lead trackers. What? We need to have sales scripts, recorded calls, all the visuals in the store. We call that internal marketing.

There’s external marketing, marketing to your ideal and likely buyers. But internal marketing, letting your current gym members know that you offer personal training or group fitness. Box number eight, you have to have a sustainable customer acquisition cost. What? You have to know what does it cost you to land a new customer. Box number nine, you’ve got to create repeatable systems.

When you clean the bathrooms, every day. When you clean the showers, every day. When you clean the locker rooms, every day. When you clean the equipment, every day. When you clean all these things, multiple times a day. When you change the light bulbs, every day.

When you have to maintain the fitness equipment, every day. When you have to hire people, every day. You have to build repeatable systems or your head will explode. You’ve got to have checklists and processes.

Box number 11, you have to manage people.

Manage people, what? This just in, we have to manage people. We’ve got to hire people, manage people. How do you hire, inspire, train, retain? We have to do it. sustainable schedule.

What is the schedule that your company will keep? What hours will you be open? What kind of shifts do you have? What kind of org chart? Who’s in charge? Who isn’t?

How do you deal with somebody that doesn’t want to follow the systems? Because this just in, a customer will fire you if you won’t fire your bad employees. In box number 12, you’ve got to have a high standard with the A players, the B players. You’ve got to coach up the B players to become A players. You’ve got to coach those A players to become future leaders. You’ve got to coach the C players out into a

job or to the local bus station. You’ve got to get them out of your life or they will ruin your business. And then box number 13, you’ve got to make sure you’re making money. It’s not about how much money you make, it’s about how much money you keep. Box number 14, you have to sit down every day and say, What does God want me to do? If every day is a gift, what does God want me to do?

If every day is a gift from God, what does God want me to do with my faith, my family, my finances, my fitness, my friendship, my fun, my focused time? What does God want me to do with this day? That’s all these things we have to think about there. And I’m telling you folks, everything we’re talking about on today’s show, it wouldn’t matter if Kola Fitness was not obsessed with wowing the customers. Charles Kola and Amber Kola are obsessed with helping you take your fitness to the next level.

If you’re out there today and you are enjoying You’re in Joplin, Missouri. You’re in Texas. You are in all the different markets they’re in. Go to colawfitness . com. You can see the markets they’re in.

I’m telling you, these guys are obsessed with wowing customers. So I’ll go to you, Amber. Then I’ll go to you, Charles. Everything we talked about doesn’t work if you scam your customers. Everything we talked about doesn’t matter if you don’t wow your customers.

Can you talk about why at the core, even though we’re going over all this business stuff, all these details, at the end of the day, you guys at Colaw Fitness have to wow the customers. Why is that so important, Amber? Well, I think for us, it’s important because we love people and everybody needs a belonging and worth and they need to feel important and they need to feel cared for. And like, that’s our passion. We just love loving on people.

That’s where that’s what made Charles such a phenomenal trainer when that was the initial start of the whole company.

It was just his desire to help people and his love for them.

And that was the same reason. You know, a million years ago that I did a hair. So I think for us, that’s just what we’re passionate about. We’re passionate about people feeling like they are loved and they have value. And if we can pass that on through all of our front desk staff, if we can open more locations and bring in that many more people in these communities to feel loved, excuse me, and also spread the gospel at the same time, let them know God loves you. And so that’s really what drives our passion in the coaching and development even of our staff.

I’m Charles Cole.

I got two final questions for you. And your wife can one up you. So here we go. Two final questions. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

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

How would you describe them, sir? It’s just, it’s raw and real.

I mean, if you really want to try to get, if you really, really, really want to build a company, not just get like a, like if you go to school, you get a business degree, you, they would say Clay’s program is, you know, business without the BS.

There’s no bull crap. He tells you the proven system, real proven systems, that have grown and scaled hundreds, if not thousands of companies, add millions, like we are millions of dollars more in revenue because of these systems that we’ve implemented. And we’ve been able to scale and not have to actually work in the business. We work on the business, just the business system. So we can live in Florida. We’re definitely engaged with our staff that runs these locations and they’re great lieutenants, but we have the systems, we have the checklist, we’ve got the workflows, and we have the systems that we can hold people to.

We’ve retained the right talent. We’ve got really people in the bullpen for every position.

So they were held hostage to happen to do that. But all that to say, it’s going it’s funny. He’s very, very. I mean, Clay’s pretty much like a comedian. It’s hilarious. to listen to.

If you’re willing to be coachable, if you’re willing to have a humble and coachable heart that’s willing to grow, he’ll show you proven processes. There’s going to be a pathway that you can be successful. And if you’re a diligent doer and you just do one or two action items every week with your coach, the whole thing is this, it’s just being a more of a marathoner than a sprinter. When you’re working with a coach, just do your two or three action items. And that two or three, If you times that by 52 weeks, that’s 150 next day, you got a way better website, you got a way better lead funnel, you got way better staff hired, you’ve got systems, checklists, workflows, all document created into mind -free templates, sales flows, training and development of staff, all that. So you got people in the bullpen for each position, and you’re no longer being held hostage as an owner, and you’ve got a proven system.

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

I always get something new out of it. It’s very practical. You’re not sitting in this huge ballroom with want, want, want speakers that you feel like are trying to sell you something and you’re trying to stay awake. That’s not the case at all. It’s a circus. There’s a whole lot to take home.

Even if you go to the conference and you decide, hey, this is not for me right now, or coaching is not for me, Hands down, you will leave with practical business application items. Final question I have for you guys. Just like Kola Fitness, I mean, you put your name right there on the brand, Kola Fitness. You can’t really go to thrivetimeshow . com without seeing my cranium. And so I take a lot of pride in that.

what I do and wowing our customers. But But for somebody out there, in particular, this guy today who’s in the construction space, who’s like, hey, what would coaching look like for me?

Or is coaching for me?

He’s reaching out. Charles, what do you say? What kind of impact has the coaching that we’ve had with you guys over these past seven or eight years made on the impact or the success? Or what kind of impact has the coaching made on colawfitness . com? Well, I would say first off, personally, I’ve developed a great friendship with some really great people.

And I thought that’s been huge for me. That’s personally, and to know people that are in the same type of pressure that you have is running a company running a business to have people that have that are intelligent, and they care. As a friend, that is huge. That’s number one, personally, and then professionally, to have a whole bullpen of a whole whole data set of lots of different industries, best practices, whether that’s, you know, generally it’s either a sales issue, like you don’t have enough sales, or then it’s a staffing issue, you don’t have the right staff, whether it’s a scaling it, how do I, you know, build this into a franchisable prototype? It’s all stuff that they’ve done over and over and over again. And to where you have like a cognitive dissonance, like a mental disease with understanding it, they don’t.

And when you have somebody that gives you peace because it is something they’ve done before, that’s, it’s priceless. So, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, I would say that You were talking about it hasn’t just affected us in our business, but it has affected us in our personal life, too, because all of these things that you learn can be rolled over into your personal life. So that’s been huge. And like Charles was talking about the connections that we’ve made with other business owners.

You know, Clay, you said at the very first conference we went to your network is your net worth. Amen. I mean, that is hands down. If you’re hanging out with the old friends that have unsuccessful businesses and you’re hanging out with the old people who are complaining about having to work an eight hour day. You know, if you’re spending your time with them and you know, it’s just going to break the bank to go to Chili’s for dinner, that you’re going to stay there.

You’re going to stay in that influence of people. And every conference we meet new people and we’ve got some of the most awesome friends that own businesses across the country. from the cheesecake store to a pizza shop, right, to dog training, to, I mean, we’ve got some of our friends that live in cities that we have gyms and they’re members at our clubs. And it’s just, it’s so powerful. It gives us a whole community to bounce ideas off of and get encouragement from. Charles, from an ROI perspective, if someone’s going to look at it and go, return on investment, I pay you $1 ,700 a month.

Will I make more money than I’m paying you? How would you maybe tackle or how would you respond to what kind of return on investment have you seen for the $1 ,700 a month you’re paying?

Well, for example, Clay has got, there’s no better business coach in the world that has the way he works, the way his mind works. But he’s also got a team of other business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries. So he’s worked in every industry. His staff has worked in every industry. He’s got videographers, web designers. I mean, just for the fact of like, just the website alone is worth the 1700, just the ability to take any of their proven systems, whether that’s a marketing thing, or whether that’s a staffing thing, like one thing done in the month, it was pays for itself.

And then to understand this, there’s a part of where, you know, some maybe some week, you may be like, well, you know what, I’m not getting a whole lot out of this call. But the bottom line is, it’s like when you read the Bible, there’s times you’re just reading it, and then you’re like, you know what I real and then you read it that one time and it’s like God really speaks to your heart and the whole truth is it’s like there’s no way that you can get that kind of value for $1 ,700 to have a whole team of coaches, graphic designers, web developers, anybody that has that type of knowledge, you know, in your back pocket. And then in the whole thing is run your business with being somewhat conservative, make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time. But by doing that, you have that, that skill set, you have that you have those, It’s tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like, it’s just like the cost of doing business.

Like just, just understand it.

That’s a, that’s what I think. There’s a, there’s a, sometimes the payment we make, I feel like is peace of mind even because there have been multiple times throughout the years that we will, we will either be butting heads on something. Um, we’re super confused about something. We’re fearful about something, something in the markets changed and it’s a quick call to clay. And so that quick call to Clay, and he’s outside the situation, and he has other data points. I mean, we’ve had times that, Clay, you’ve got a quick response, and you can tell us and direct us real quickly.

And we’re right off the phone. And there’s other times you’ll go, I’ll call you right back. And Clay will jump in, and he’ll call his other contacts and get back with us. Sometimes it takes longer.

But there are times when you feel that way, when you’re like, Is this worth it?

You know, I don’t feel like we’re doing much right now or we’re not growing. Inevitably, something like that will come up and like that’s our peace of mind.

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

If you’re out there, Arlington, if you’re out there, go to colawfitness . com if you’re looking for a career and not just a job. Thank you, too, for carving out time with your busy schedule. Oh, yeah. And I’m so glad to have you here today. Thanks, Clay.

Awesome. Take care, guys. Bye -bye. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do. I hear.

The ripple effects from you are good ripple effects. You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations. Uh, we are probably going to have an amazing business conference here at Tulsa, Russia. Yes.

We’re joined by Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow is going to be joining us right here at the thrive time show world headquarters, June 5th and 60s, a very successful football player, obviously a Heisman award winner, but he’s also a very successful entrepreneur. Now, when you work with real clients, Sean, real clients, you really work with help them grow their companies. Do you ever hear a business owner tell you that they didn’t have time to get something done every day? How often? is not having enough time a problem for business owners?

All the time. It’s almost, it’s like maybe 90 % of the issues as people are trying to grow their company. Well, Tim Tebow is going to come join us here at the in -person Thrive Time Show two -day interactive business workshop, and he’s going to teach us time management and his approach to personal self -discipline and getting things done. Also at the workshop, I’ll put up on the website so people can see it here. Also at the two -day interactive workshop, Sean, we are going to be teaching accounting, systems creation, marketing, human resources, how to hire, inspire, train and retain great people, accounting, social media advertising, search engine optimization. Sean, what’s the area where most clients ask you for help the most?

Is it creating leads? Is it hiring people?

What’s the biggest issue that most business owners have by default before they come to one of our workshops?

Well, I think it’s management because time is the most valuable resource for these business owners and being able to manage their time is the first thing. Once they get that under control, then generally the numbers You know, being able to track their business and be able to make the best decisions based on numbers rather than emotions is a big area. And we teach all of this stuff at the business conference, particularly you, Clay. You love to hammer on time management. It’s my favorite part of the conference. Now, I’m going to pull this up real quick here, because we’re going to go through it.

If you’re not excited, I want to get you excited about what we’re going to cover at the workshop here, OK? OK. All right. The two -day interactive workshop. This is my 20th year hosting workshops. So I’m telling you folks, we’re in rare form here.

So one is the idea of establishing your revenue goals. I think most entrepreneurs don’t know their revenue goals. Would you agree or am I off my rocker? No, that’s totally a very important point we do with every one of our new clients that come on board is we have to establish the revenue goals. And generally speaking, we have a vague idea, but not an exact idea that can be engineered down into like the daily goals for sales. And so that’s a really big one.

break even numbers. What kind of sales do you have to do to even break even? Third is how many hours per week do you want to work? What is your ideal schedule as an entrepreneur? Box number four, how do you stand out in the clutter of commerce? What makes your company unique from all the different businesses?

In a world of brown cows, herds of brown cows, proverbial brown cows, the analogy of brown cows, how can you be the purple cow that stands out? How can you be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil? Box number five, branding. How do you improve the that people have of you, your business, your brand. Box number six, marketing. Your three -legged marketing stool.

What is a turnkey way for you and your company to generate revenue? so you can succeed? Because if you don’t have any leads, your business will bleed. If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell. You’ve got to generate leads. Sean, how often do business owners by default tell you they have a hard time generating leads?

It’s almost all of the time. It’s really a huge struggle. And many times they may be creating leads, but just through word of mouth. So they get to a point where we’ve implemented systems, and then they need to create more. But they’ve never had to do it. So there’s a lot of different scenarios where business owners are like, how do you create leads?

Something we hammer on at the conference a lot. you’re a lawyer, you got to have sales systems in place. We help you with that. Box number eight. What does it cost you to get another customer? Step number eight, what does it cost you to actually acquire a customer?

Step number nine, it’s hard to build organization if you’re not organized. We’re going to teach you how to create repeatable systems, processes, file organization. Box number 10, we’re going to teach you how to manage people, real people on the planet Earth. This just in, we’re going to teach you how to manage real people on the planet Earth. Box number 11, how to create a sustainable schedule that works for you and your family. Step number 12, how to create human resources systems for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining great people.

Box number 13, accounting.

This just in, we have to cover accounting. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep. We’re going to cover all the accounting things you need to know. And step 14, finally, what is the point of even achieving success? We’re going to go over what is the point of even achieving success, how to design a life that you’re excited about, how to design a life where you carve out enough time for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, your fun. and where you’re going to spend your focused time.

We’re going to go through that, all this and more. Now, the workshop, Sean, it’s April 9th and 10th. It’s a two -day interactive workshop. And tickets, we always do it. It’s $250 or whatever price that someone can afford.

Sean, why do we let people name their price?

Why do we have scholarship tickets available if somebody can’t afford the $250 general admission ticket? Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it. You could be at a startup fair. or you could be way along in your business, but we want to make it accessible for everybody. I think it actually goes back, too, to a story of your dad. And it goes all the way back to how you’ve always done this as a business coach, trying to make sure that your average people out there have access to the things that work.

Now, 7 AM to 5, Sean, why don’t we go from 7 to 5 both days? I mean, it’s 10 hours a day.

20 hours of training over two days.

Why do we do 10 hours a day, Sean, of back -to -back workshops?

We do a 30 -minute teaching session, we do a 15 -minute question -and -answer session, and then we take a break. 30 minutes of teaching, 15 minutes of question -and -answer, then we take a break. Why do we do that format, Sean? That format is so that we can keep people engaged and not just sitting there listening, but also getting involved. We really encourage people to ask questions, and that’s really where the juiciness of the conference comes out, is you can put your personal and your questions on the board, and Clay will tee off and give you direct advice. Even without being in our coaching program, you can get direct coaching from Clay.

It’s really a very engaging format.

I enjoy it a lot.

Once again, folks, this event is April 9th and 10th, 2026.

Get those tickets at thrivetimeshow .

com. Once again, that’s thrivetimeshow . com. two -day interactive business workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I think it’s, did you say it’s $250 or whatever you can afford? That’s right, $250 or whatever you can afford.

Sean, how do you spell Eric Trump backwards?

P -U -M -U -R -T C -U -R -T I -R -E.

Ooh, that took a long time.

I’ll have to listen to this.

All right, again, that’s Shawn Lohman. I’m Clay Clark, inviting you to come join us at the in -person Thrive Time Show two -day interactive workshop. This event is April 9th and 10th, 2026. Get those tickets at thrivetimeshow . com. Once again, that’s thrivetimeshow .

com.

Right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tim Tebow, baby.

It’s Tebow time in Tulsa, Russia. 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. I’m excited as they come in. 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. We got involved with Thrive Time. We didn’t really have any systems or processes in place. I’ve probably been to, oh, 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.

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. I heard about it on the podcast, started listening to the podcast, became a fan and then figured out about the workshop. I own an insurance and financial services agency, and I was hoping to learn from the workshop systems and processes.

I’m big on systems and processes. always learning better ways to run a business more efficiently.

The atmosphere’s 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. A lot of business coaches or seminars maybe are high on motivation and making you feel good, but don’t have a lot of substance that you can 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, 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.

Man, 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, You know, 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, this is Charles and Amber Kola. We’re the owners of Kola Fitness. We heard about Clay Clark through Paul Hood, our CPA. We’ve worked with Clay Clark for the last two years. Clay Clark has helped us take our three locations in three different states and create checklists, workflows, task lists, time blocks for every employee. He’s helped us with creating systems and audits for every department, quantitative scorecards for each department.

in every position so that everybody has a number. It’s been able to give us a lot of time freedom and financial freedom and peace of mind to know that everything’s running efficiently and it’s been helpful with a lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google and pretty much every area of the business. It’s been very, very helpful. Clay as very energetic. He’s full of energy. He’s very encouraging, very motivating, but also accountable.

So he keeps us accountable and we love that accountability. It keeps our drive in the right direction so we’re not chasing things that aren’t worth spending our time on. He’s a great coach. He helps push us on certain areas, helps coach us in certain areas. You know, we’re all emotional creatures and we go up and down and you actually will tell us kind of where we’re at, how we can get from there.

And even like emotionally, like when we’re stressed about something, you’ll have a story to relate to. And it really helps us in every area of our business. It’s been very, very helpful. I think Clay’s ability to have a whole team behind him that helped him with all of his clients, all his coaching clients, is that it allows Clay to do what he’s really good at and that’s working one -on -one with the client and coaching them and then he can have his amazing staff come in and help you accomplish all these goals that you’re setting. And of course, he has all these resources, whether it’s videographers or whether it’s web developers, that they can quickly jump on your project, knock things out.

He can quickly give you the right coaching. He’s just got a whole team of people that whatever area you’re lacking in, in your own company, he’s got resources from like video, web design, search engine guys, who are just knowledgeable in that. Even though he knows a lot of that stuff, he’s got these capable lieutenants that are ready to just take off and help you get that stuff done. More stuff gets done on a weekly basis than you would on like probably most individual or some other company. We’ve worked with several companies before and it just Not as many things get done on a weekly basis, so it’s been very helpful.

Well, the conferences for me, I’m a slow learner, so I have to learn over and over again, hear things over and over again. I’ve been to, I think, eight different conferences, and each time you come, I learn a few new components. Some things are repetitive, but a lot of the stuff just resettles, and I get a little bit more depth into each component. So, I mean, I’ve been to eight of them. They’re all super entertaining. He’s very funny, very encouraging.

You get to kind of self -reflect a lot. A lot of the stuff is really polarizing. You do a personal inventory of yourself, and you’ll think like, hey, I’ve really got to work on this, really got to work on that. So every time you come, I still get a lot of value out of it. And as much as every conference is the same, it’s totally different. So I think we’ll hear stories we haven’t heard before.

He’ll have entertainment, or he’ll have speakers he didn’t have before. And you, like you said, you just always catch a different part of the material that maybe you didn’t catch before. It’s worded differently. And it’s really cool because some people that you’ve seen like a year ago at a conference, now they’re, you know, being showcased as a success story and you get to see their website, you get to see how their stats and all their metrics have improved and the revenue improved. So it’s really cool to see people that just a year ago, that of course we’ve been here two years, that just came, that I met, is now being successful. It’s really encouraging to see other people, you know, accomplish that stuff.

So McClay has helped us optimize our website and helped with really topping the right search engines that we need to make sure that we are very, very competitive with all of our other competitors.

He’s done, basically he outlines exactly what you need to be accomplishing and he creates tasks that we have to accomplish and his team has to accomplish.

I would say over the last two years, we’ve re -totally ramped our website.

We’re topping Google in every one of our markets. We’re just doing, I would say just doing really, really good. I feel very, very confident in all of our future locations and making sure that we’re in front of the ideal and likely buyer. It’s very encouraging. It’s important to me that to know when I’m working with Clay, you know, I’ve been in business for a while and met with him even when I already had three, three businesses in three different states. And to know that what I share with him is staying private.

He’s not sending that out to anybody else. to know that when he’s working with me he’s only working with one other, no other gyms that are in direct competition with me. It’s very encouraging to have something you can trust and rely on that he isn’t going to like somehow tell your trade secrets or give information away. Just really awesome that he’s a trustworthy guy, really cares about you as a client. For us, it’s been a complete mind freedom, because Clay has helped us create a lot of different documents and one sheets for every department, put quantitative scorecards to each department. And so for us, it’s been very encouraging.

It gives us peace. As an entrepreneur, it’s stressful. You go to bed at night, you’re worried, like, did we cover this? Did we cover that? So he helps extract everything out of your brain, everything from your business, put it into document creation, put it into checklists and workflows for every person in each department, and make sure that everything’s getting done every week, every month, and funnel that all into KPIs or Key Performance Indicators, as you can see, on a weekly basis to make sure you’re moving the needle in the right area of your company. It’s very encouraging, and it gives you a complete mind, freedom, and peace to know that that stuff’s created, so you’re easy to duplicate,

scale your company. Right, and then we can spend time doing what we’re really good at.

and just trust the system. I honestly believe everybody needs a coach. I think we’re all inherently lazy, selfish, and carnal. I truly believe that humans are humans. If we’re standing, we’d rather sit. If we’re sitting, we’d rather lay down.

And if we’re laying down, we’d rather be asleep. So to have somebody that challenges you, have real active candor, and be honest with you on every aspect of your company, is really, really encouraging to me because I want to know, I want to work on what we’re weak at, I want to see any areas that we’re not doing well in and see his perspective. from a third party becaus your own business and jus good to have somebody wh reflect on your company a in the armor to make sur to you and that you’re su in the big picture. So yes friend, great courager to friend. He’s also you can wealth of knowledge. He’s worked with so many different companies and different businesses.

He could take a concept that he’s used before in the past with somebody in a totally different industry and see how it would work perfectly for you in whatever niche market you’re in or whatever type of service you’re providing. And so his brain is just a wealth of knowledge and just to have that type of perspective as a part of your team and your own company is huge and super valuable. So I would definitely encourage people to use him. But one thing is you’ve got to be coachable. You’ve got to be wanting to get feedback. You’ve got to be wanting to really grow your company.

You gotta want to put that extra 10 hours a week to working on your business and not just in your business. And so, yes, I would recommend it to anybody who’s wanting to grow their company and promote their business. systems, checklists, workflows, great encouragement, and have accountability. mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. 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. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. 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. 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.

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.

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. And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. 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. 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.

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. 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. I knew that I did not have what I needed to 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.

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. 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. 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. 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 myself.

I don’t need additional help. help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63 ,000 investment.

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. 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. 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. From expecting maybe $250 ,000 this year to we’re at $400 ,000 with K &D’s wood refinishing business owner at 23. So working this K &D’s company for about five years now and we started working with Thrive too. So we’re pretty excited

about that. That’s 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. 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. 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.

So I 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 and We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now 14 to 15 appointments a day. and 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. 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.

It’s just been great and I don’t waste as much time. low -quality candidates anymore. And your coach will hold you accountable, which I love. Again, the tough love is really great. Luke’s like 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 great.

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 I would just say go for it. If it seems like a good fit, just go for it. Do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous, just do what they say because it’ll work.

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. 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 until you cry sometimes. That’s just being an entrepreneur, which if you’re a business owner, you understand that. But it’s having these systems in place of, you know, of course I’m going to be successful. 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. And I can tell that they are just so excited every single week when I’m having all these wins and things like that. They’re so excited for me. Um, so it just, it’s the best thing ever. And I would suggest to anybody to work with them.

So, uh, sorry for the long winded reply, but I just had so much to say. Um, and I could go on for hours probably about how amazing they are. Um, 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, um, years to come. Thanks so much for watching. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever is important.

My rich dad was one of those persons. I wanted to learn how to play Monopoly in real life. So he was my coach.

Transcribed with Cockatoo