Business Coach | How to Grow a Successful Business? Celebrating the 10.78X Growth of Long-Time Client ShawHomes.com & Diligent Doer, Aaron Antis + Celebrating 3 Clay Clark Client Success Stories | More At: ThrivetimeShow.com

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

We love it here. We come every weekend. We never want to go home. Hi, I’m Bob. This is Annemarie. We moved into this house in October of this past year.

It’s our second home. We love Eagle’s Nest. We love the summers here because they’re cooler than where we’re from. We bought this lot because we love the view. We wanted to build a house here. Driving around Eagle’s Nest, we saw the Sky House sign on one of the new construction houses.

So I looked him up online. They had a form to fill out if you were interested to talk to them. And I filled it out. They called me right away. We set up a meeting with Jeff Pell. The chemistry was terrific.

We hit it off. The budget seemed realistic. Our plan seemed realistic. So we hired him. You know, and, uh, but in my clients don’t have a hard time finding people. Yeah.

My customers do not. My clients do not have a hard time finding my home, the 160 brands we work with. They don’t have a hard time finding people because they’re always implementing the group. Interview process. And now you have a highly skilled workforce. You have to hire high skilled people to do what you do.

Can you tell the business owners out there the importance of constantly never stopping that ongoing hiring process? It’s another one of those core implementations into the company that maybe I fought it even for a year. At least a year, maybe two. Maybe COVID came and I put my foot down and I was like, let’s get going. I ended up having to move a group interview to the Homebuilder Association because there was like 26 people coming. I felt like I was public speaking.

And actually, there was one person out of that group, and she still works here today, and she’s killing it. It’s so it’s absolutely, you know, what it does, it gives you your first of all, your you get into the hang of it, I do them Wednesdays, at five o ‘clock, or Thursdays at five o ‘clock for two different positions. They don’t show up, they don’t show up, go about my day. um in their group interviews and you’re i’m not in the need to hire but i’m always in the need i’m always going to hire if it’s an a player the right fit you know a players have jobs they probably may be having a crappy week and and hate their boss and they’re going to go look for other stuff so i want to get in front of those people um and i also don’t want to be put in a position where I feel like I’m forced to hire somebody that my gut doesn’t tell me will be a great fit that will help become a pillar of my company. So it’s great for you to be able to stay true to your culture and your cores while growing the business. Um, it’s not the funnest thing to do every single week, every year, you know, all year round, but it’s not that big of a deal either.

Um, and if you create a system in place, you can hire somebody, you can have a checklist in place that they do it all. And all you do is show up at five o ‘clock for the interview and they let you know if they canceled or not. So that’s what I do now. And it’s all tracked. If you have a business that is stuck or remotely stuck or very, very, very stuck, if you are running a company or you want to run a company and you’re just kind of stuck, I encourage you to tune in to today’s show. On today’s show, we’re interviewing Aaron Antus.

Aaron Antus, who’s Aaron Antus? Aaron Antus is the sales director, the former president of a company called Shaw Homes dot com. And we had the pleasure of working with Aaron Antus and his company Shaw Homes dot com for many years. And when we started working with Shaw Homes, they were at approximately They were at approximately $14 million a year of annual sales. And we helped them to grow the company to $151 million of sales.

So from $14 million to $151 million of annual sales. And you say, well, how did you do it? What were the specific steps that you had to take? Well, on today’s show, we’re going to walk you through the specific steps that we taught the Shaw Holmes team. But if you’re listening to today’s show, I will tell you as a quick disclaimer, if Aaron Antis would not have diligently implemented the systems that we were teaching, then the success would have not happened. What I teach is a proven plan.

I teach a proven system, a proven process for growing a successful company. However, if you don’t diligently implement the proven systems that we teach, then no matter how well the system works and how great the process is, nothing works if you won’t work and so on today’s show a big shout out big celebration of Aaron Antus and the diligence of Aaron Antus and his team if you’re out there today again if you have a company that’s stuck and you want to learn how to take it to the next level grab a pen and a pad and tune in to the lab enter into the dojo of mojo fo show it’s the thrive time show in your ear and right here on your podcast download my name is clay clark I encourage you to see thousands. I encourage you to go to thrivetimeshow . com to see thousands of client success stories like Aaron Antis right there at thrivetimeshow . com. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does.

Two men, eight kids co -created by two different women, 13 multimillion dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrive time show Yes, you are in for a 10 -minute laser show thrive nation We are joined here today with Wes Carter, the attorney of choice for many, many successful companies. And his firm, Winters and King, that he’s a part of, represents TD Jakes. They’ve represented Joyce Meyer. They’ve represented Pastor Craig Rochelle, some big names out there.

And we’re here with Oklahoma’s largest home builder, Aaron Antus over there. So we got Aaron Antus over here in the corner. Hello. We got Wes Carter over here rocking the mic. So we got an attorney. We got a marketing director.

And then we have the new guy. The new guy. The new guy. Now what we’re talking about today is once you nail it, scale it. Unpacking the ultimate Shaw Homes sales machine. We’re unpacking the ultimate Shaw Homes sales machine.

So let’s get right into it here. Aaron Antis, how did you and I first meet and when did you and I first meet? We met in 2016. There was a gentleman named Steve Currington that introduced us and he introduced us because he said, hey, you know that one home building company who will remain nameless on this show? Yes. Is just crushing it and just killing it in sales.

And that is your arch nemesis. And I said, yeah, I know exactly who they are. He said, would you like to meet the guy who’s been helping them with their sales and marketing? And by the way, he just basically doesn’t work with them anymore. So you could potentially move in and start working with them. ” And I went, yes, I would like to meet that guy.

Demystify that real quick. Whenever I work with somebody, I have a relationship with somebody. So the relationship I have with Shaw Holmes is little bit unique, and I have a relationship with Aaron Antus. That’s my point guy. But I know of Glenn Shaw, and I respect him.

And I know of, and I’m getting to know Chuck Ramsey more, but I have a relationship with a guy. And at the previous person, the guy I had a relationship with moved out of the day -to -day operations, which then the relationship was broken. So I don’t keep a relationship with a company unless I have a contract. So I decided to make myself a free agent. I did that. And so you and I met and at that time during January of that year Do you remember approximately how much sales you did and new home sales during January of the year before you and I met?

Approximately or maybe yeah. Yeah, it was less than a million dollars less than a million dollars I looked at it the other day and I think it was 323 ,000 because I was doing this comparison just recently and just to be fair and safe So listeners know in the world of home sales for every home builder the lowest month of the year year is typically January. Is that correct? Yeah, it’s a slow month. Do you have seasonal parts of sales over there at Winters and King? I mean do you find there’s more legal stuff at the first of the year or at the end of the year or is it pretty even all year?

The very end of the year sometimes people are trying to get stuff done or started before the end of the calendar year but in our business it stays fairly steady. Okay, so fairly steady but for you it’s very seasonal. Yeah, a lot of realtors are sleeping all through January and February. They wake up in March. So it contributes to our world. And then if you could share with the listeners, how much sales did you do this January?

So this is January 2020. And January of 2016, you did 300 ,000. How much sales did you do in this January of 2020? $12 .8 million. $12 .8 million. Now, Wes, if you can help me with the math on there, I’ll let you kind of look it up and use a calculator if you want, but we’re going to go from $300 ,000 to $12 million.

So $300 ,000 fits into a million roughly three times. So it’s 36 times more sales this January than last January. Yeah, is that correct? Yeah, actually, it’d be almost 38 because it was 12 .8 million. So yeah, about 38. That’s a boom.

Okay, so now we talked about that. That is a boom deserves a boom. So I want to break down the nine steps we had to take in order to do this together. You did your part. I did mine. One, we had to have an optimized website.

Why do we have to be top in Google? Why do you have to dominate the search engine results? Apparently, people have replaced the word search with the word Google. Instead of, I’m gonna search for that, I’m gonna Google it. So it’s a thing now. Business Insider says that 90 .8 % of humans use Google to search for products and services.

90 .8. So step one is getting in leads. Step two, you had to have a no -brainer, because people knock on the website, they’re interested, but they don’t fill out the form unless you’re offering something beyond the norm. Norm, what’s the hot offer that you make over at Shaw Homes? Right now, if you are purchasing from us during this month, you will get $15 ,000 in free upgrades. So step one, you got the websites optimized.

Two, you used your experience of knowing what would work. and my experience knowing that we need a hot offer, and we came up with a no -brainer. Step three, you relentlessly advertise. According to the book, The Retargeting Playbook by Adam Burke, the average person has to see an ad 4 .7 times per month before they convert. Advertisement, we’ve been pretty consistent with those ads. Do we turn them off?

Never. We keep them on? Always. Okay, so we got the optimized website, the no -brainer ads. Now the leads come in. Now we have to have a script.

You and I have worked on the scripts. You’ve been selling homes. Before I even met you, I think you had done like $700 million of homes or $800 million of homes. I was about $750 million when we met. And you had those scripts. You already had them.

Yeah. And I just hope you simplified. You already had those scripts. Yeah. I think you definitely made them better, and I can be humble and say that. Okay.

And you added some that I was missing. So now you got the scripts, and now when someone fills out the form, we have to have a sales team that hits their key performance indicators. So now you’ve chosen to outsource the calls, and our team averages about 300 outbound calls per eight hours. There’s two people that each make 300 calls a day. relentlessly calling those leads to set appointments. Have you seen the appointments go up on the average since the calls have been going up?

Oh, for sure. So we got this step one, optimized website. Step two, no brainer. Step three, advertisements that work and we keep them on for the scripts. Five, the key performance indicator managed salespeople. They’re hitting their numbers.

Step six, it’s the follow -up. Now, here’s where it gets fun, and this is where we can introduce our new guest in a moment. Oh, so good. Follow -ups where you say, I know you know what to do, but are you doing it? So we put cameras up in the homes, call recording. And by the way, if you think it’s weird, there’s cameras at Target.

Wes, have you seen the cameras at Target? There are cameras. I have. There’s cameras everywhere. Cameras everywhere. So when you watch the person on the camera not following the system, you’re forced to get to the fork in the road that says, does the person not know what to do?

Or are they choosing not to do? Is it my fault or your fault? Yeah, there you go. And Aaron, to a fault, is probably the most gracious, kind guy that doesn’t want to fire people. You want to keep them around. I would like to.

And so we upon further review realized certain people know what to do, but they’re choosing not to do it. Am I correct, Aaron? Oh, yes. Those people don’t work here anymore, but yes. And so whenever you prune a tree, it creates room for new growth. When you fire somebody, it creates opportunities for somebody else.

Yeah. When somebody chooses to throw away their opportunity, it creates another opportunity for somebody else. Enter in the man that was teaching my kids how to flip. He’s a gymnastics teacher at Oral Roberts University, a graduate, I believe. He served in the military. And my wife said, that guy’s crazy.

great energy. And he was a client. I worked with him with his tumbling business. And when he decided to exit the partnership and to do something else, to go from being a self -employed person to becoming an employee, I said to him, hey, why don’t you call? And I gave him the numbers of four or five people that I knew that owned companies. And you were one of them.

Yep. When you met him, when you met Colton, what did you see in him that said this guy would do well within the systems of Shaw Homes? Well, first of all, he’s a Marine. So he’s used to, yes, sir, whatever you’d like me to do, sir. Hoorah. So he was all about that.

And I know like military guys like to kind of follow the path and, you know, they’ll respond to the person in command. And so I saw that I saw a ton of warmth and energy and a person who genuinely cares about other human beings. But you also saw a guy that had never done home sales, never done it, who was previously coaching, cheerleading, tumbling. Yes, he actually did a backflip. shortly after I met him and I was like, wow. And how much sales did he do in the month of January?

Because remember, in 2016, the whole company did $300 ,000 of sales. How much did Colton Cruz do in sales during the month of January? If we’re counting all contingencies, about $6 million. What’s a contingency? So somebody who still has to sell their house first before they can actually, we can start building the home. And then without contingencies, it’s about $3 .5 million.

So, if you, without contingencies, people that are just free and clear, you pay these guys a 1 .75 % commission, is that right? Or 1 .5? 1 .77. 1 .77. So, if we do the math, 1 .77 % of $6 million, which would be the homes with contingencies, that means that he could have made $106 ,200 during the month of January. Yes.

Is that real? That’s real. That’s real. And then there are… He’s excited over that. There’s a huge smile on his face right now.

No, but is he the top sales guy on the team or at the bottom? Is he in the middle? Where does he fit into the team right now in terms of sales just this month? Well, this month he would be the top guy. And just so you know, he started in August, which is just a little over, you know, it’s five months ago is when he started. So he’s really kind of brand new and still learning how to do this.

But because we have a lot of good training and systems in place, he was able to just plug in and kind of skyrocket to the top with a great attitude. And he’s the guy who follows it exactly the way that we tell him to do it. And first first couple months, he kind of questioned some of that and was like, are you sure that’s how? But I’ve got this great new idea of some other things we could do. And finally, one month I said, would you stop with the idea festival? I don’t need new ideas.

I already know what works. Just do this. There it is. And then he was right. One hundred percent. That’s when he went.

Yes, sir. Idea Festival. Let’s not do what works. You guys have been around almost 40 years. I’ve got new ideas, folks. Right.

I mean, that’s a little bit. That was pretty much what was happening at the beginning. And so if we’re going to praise, we have to kick him in the crotch, too, to be fair and balanced. So then we have a follow -up, step six. Step seven, though, is a weekly sales meeting. Yes.

That’s the relentlessness, that weekly sales meeting. Step eight, you’ve got to have sales tools, like one sheets, like print pieces, so people can see a path that walks people through the home buying process. There’s a lot of visuals we’ve had to create together. John Kelly helped on a lot of that as well. Huge help. And then tracking.

You got to actually track the numbers. Now, in a company where there are poorly designed systems, we interviewed the legendary Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen on this podcast before his recent death, unfortunately, and he talked about how in a company where there are not systems, it takes forever to train people and they’re expensive to train people. And so, Wes, I want to get your take on this. How often do you see a small business owner that maybe you’re working with, you’re guiding them from a legal perspective, and maybe you hear them fretting, worrying, lamenting that a key person or two, usually they go in twos, would be leaving and that they’re like, I mean, how often do you see where a company is super worried about the non -compete and the non -solicitation to the point where they know all of our sales are going out that door if that person leaves? A lot.

I mean, we’re not even talking about small business. I work with some small businesses that are on the other side of that, and national companies are coming after them, because they know that one sales guy will take half to stay with them, because it’s all about relationships. So, I mean, it’s not just a small business, it’s a large business. It’s like a universal principle that without having those processes and procedures in place, you’re relying on that one person keeping them happy, and then what happens then? They’ve got you over a barrel. And so, you know, if they decide to leave you, they’re going to be pay more than you want to, or they’re going to leave you in a lurch, or just all kinds of bad stuff happens.

So I want to make sure anybody watching this or listening to this gets this idea. When we build systems, when I build systems for my clients, they create freedom for both parties, not one party. So at some point, if Colton says, you know what, I want to go back into the tumble game. I want to get back into the cheer world. I want to go back into the military. I want to buy a boat.

I want to be out on the water exploring the Mediterranean. I have a new vision. My wife and I are moving to Alaska to live in one of your houses without paying rent. If he came in, you would be sad that he as a person would be leaving because you like him. He’s a great guy. But you wouldn’t care in terms of the business because it’s like next.

Because he could teach anybody the system. So it creates freedom for him to leave if he needed to. So he’s not held hostage. Oh, we got a group interview this week. And you’re not held hostage. Right.

Somebody out there is thinking about coming to work for Shaw Homes right now, or somebody’s thinking about trying to build a system like you have now. Let’s unpack this, and you tell me the hardest parts for you. Was it hard to optimize the website with our help? No. Was it hard to create a no -brainer? No.

Was it hard to manage the online ads? No. Was it hard to write the scripts? No. Was it hard to track the key performance indicators and get people on the phone? No.

Was it hard to follow up every week? No. Was it hard to do weekly sales training? No. Was it hard to make sales tools that work? No.

It was fun. Was it hard to track the numbers? No. So what’s the hard part in growing a company by 38 times? What was the hard part? What is the hard part?

The hardest part is to humble yourself as an expert in your industry, which I considered myself an expert in our industry. I mean, obviously, having sold hundreds of millions of dollars prior to meeting you, I had definitely came with an ego of, I know what I’m doing. This guy can’t tell me how to do my business because he’s never worked in my industry before. And so what I quickly found out was, Actually, he’s got some really great ideas because he’s worked with so many different types of businesses, so many different types of industries that he brings a fresh perspective to an industry that I’ve been in all my life and couldn’t see the things I couldn’t see. And so I loved that about it. And I very quickly was looking at other clients you were working with and I saw some people resistant to change, resistant to new ideas who would falter and not do well and then I watched others who were open to change and would be humble about looking at new perspectives and I was watching massive

growth with those other companies. So I also, like I mentioned at the beginning, you had been working with someone who was a major competitor to us. And I watched them come on the scene as a company that was brand new and explode onto the scene. And that’s hard to do in our industry because it takes a lot of time, typically, to grow like that. And they had exploded onto the scene. So I was already ticked because I knew what you did with them.

And I’m like, OK, I got to know what to do with our stuff. And I want to make sure that we get this idea. There was a West. You remember watching the dream team? Oh, yeah. With the first dream team.

And you remember the story about what Michael Jordan and Tony or what Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen did to Tony Kukoc. Do you remember the story or did you ever hear that story? I don’t think I ever heard that story. The owner of the or the general manager for the Bulls was going to bring on Kukoc to join the Bulls. And to get him, he was the best player in I think Croatia at the time. And so he decided to offer Scottie Pippen dramatically less money.

And he was going to give that money, the remaining money to Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and to Tony Kukoc. But the only person taking a pay cut was Scottie Pippen. And Scottie Pippen’s like Michael Jordan’s guy. And so Jordan was really mad about the thing. If you look it up on, it’s worth watching on YouTube. Just type in Tony Kukoc, destroyed by Michael Jordan.

So Michael gets the guys in the locker room and he says, here’s the deal, guys. I don’t want Tony Kukoc, he’s the top scorer in European basketball. I don’t want him to touch the ball during the entire game. And I’m not going to stop until he cries because his parents are here. So this is and they’re like, what? Because he just signed on the bulls and Jordan was pissed.

If you watch it, it’s the craziest thing ever. It’s like wolves that are just like on like a stake. It’s crazy. So Jordan gets on him and he’s not even worried about offense. He just will not let him touch the ball. It’s deny ball, deny ball, just on him.

And Kukoc is never, he can’t even keep up. I mean, he’s athletic, but he can’t keep up. He’s knocking the ball loose every time. He’s batting the ball away. He’s talking to him when he’s out of bounds. He’s following him off the court.

Wild. Well, then Pippen switches to him and they just keep doing this. We’re on the third quarter, the shoulders are, this is the best player in Europe. He kind of starts to cry. Like he’s like, and then Jordan keeps talking, saying horrible, crazy things. He could trash talk.

And they said that it almost destroyed his career. because he lost so much confidence. I think he had zero points on like something like four attempts. He never got and Michael at the end of the game is like clapping in his face. They won by like 50 points and Jordan was still I think they’re up by 50. He calls a timeout to stop him.

He just is like well and I don’t know how to explain that that ferocity. But that’s sort of like my mindset to growing a client. If I work with a client, like I just want them to win and I don’t want anyone else to win because my client, I want my client to win. And so we aggressively went down that path together for the past three, four years together. And I want to get Colton’s take on this now working in a system where you have a guy who’s kinder than me. Aaron who’s built systems working with me and there’s kind of intensity.

There’s that creativeness that that collaboration You’ve now got all the tools the systems the follow -up the no -brainer the website How hard has it been for you to learn the Shaw homes sales system? Not at all actually so like you said I came from teaching kids how to flip and And now I’m selling homes. And from day one, Aaron was on a video teaching me how to be my own CEO. So it was like how to basically run my own part of the company. And he was just giving me the tools to do everything I needed to do. And it’s been fantastic.

And so that was like a two week deal where I’m watching videos and learning firsthand, shadowing people. And then I get put out in the model home and it’s like, there was no fear whatsoever because he covered everything. Have you ever worked at a job where there are no systems? Absolutely. How’s that? Terrible.

I just think there’s a big difference. I think people don’t understand this. We talk about bad employees a lot because this is an entrepreneur show. Yeah. But Wes, there are bad bosses and I have certainly been one early in my career where I had nothing written down. Everything was like a spiritual epiphany.

It was all just in my mind. It was just sort of all here. I’m sure, Aaron, you’ve never been there. But I mean, talk to me about this, Wes. Do you see that? Is this an epidemic problem?

It’s a lot. I mean, one of the things I always talk to people about, well, the people who can handle these kind of conversations is, you know, they want to determine an employee. This so -and -so, you know, it’s an emotional. We’ll let him out. And it’s something we talk about on the show. You know, first thing you do is look in the mirror.

You know, if the employee is not doing something, have you told, you know, have you set expectations? Have you, you know, shown them the tools they need to do that for you? And a lot of times, unless you’ve gone down this road and done these things, a lot of the problems you’re facing with your staff are your own doing. So true. You’re not putting the processes in place. You’re not putting the procedures in place.

They don’t know what you expect from or you’re a moving target. You know, every day you come with a new idea, a new system. We’re going to change it this time. And they just can’t keep up with all these, you know, wild things you’re throwing on the wall to see what will stick. I was pretty emotional this morning because a Jocko Willink agreed to be on our podcast and the guy who started Square. And so I came into work today like thinking, I didn’t say this, of course, this is like before my meta time, but I’m thinking like, And then we’re going to open up conferences on other planets.

Yeah. And then the aliens will be. And I had like all the I mean, seriously, it was like, and then it will disappear in a charade of fire. I mean, we are just fired up. We can coach Martians. But then there’s been days where like Seth Godin recently is a great guy.

By the way, Seth, you’re watching. You’re a great guy. But I asked Seth to be in my new book, you know, to be featured in there. And he has the right to say no. He said no. And it’s like you don’t want to broadcast the emotion.

to the team. So I try to keep it kind of stoic or on the up and up. But I’m not perfect at it, but that’s that’s the goal. We have time for one more tip for you from you, Aaron Antus, and for anybody looking to work at Shaw Homes right now or anybody out there that wants to apply for you. What kind of person should apply to work at Shaw Homes? What kind of person is going to, what kind of person is Colton, like what kind of person is going to make it here and do well in their first five months and, you know, who frankly just should not apply.

Yeah, I would say the person who has got warmth and energy in their personality, which is definitely, Colton has that in spades, and somebody who is willing to follow a system off a cliff, knowing that the company behind them already figured it out for them. We’ve done it a few thousand times. We don’t need somebody to tell us how to do it. We already know how it works. And so that kind of person is going to have incredible success like Colton has. Yep.

And then somebody who really cares about other people. Yeah. I mean, because Colton has that, like I said, and then the person who would not do well, not do well. That is going to be the person who has a new idea every day. And the old. Yeah.

And they have a stone face. No matter what you say, you can crack a joke and they just stare blankly at you like a zombie. Yeah, like that doesn’t do well because people ultimately buy from people they like yes and trust Yes, and so they have to like you which means you have to smile from time to time Have you not found this is so cool But when you when you guys have surveyed people who’ve bought houses from you and you follow up and I know you guys do that a lot Yeah, do we not constantly hear that people? They say, well, I really liked the person I met. It’s like, why did you decide to buy with Shaw Holmes? All the time.

I read the reviews and I like the salesperson. I mean, don’t you hear that a lot? Yes, I hear that and that they enjoyed our process. a lot because we actually make it fun to go look at homes and buy a home. It shouldn’t be a painful, arduous task like getting, you know, like a root canal. It shouldn’t feel like that.

It should feel like you’re at a carnival and you’ve got a guide taking you on it. And it’s just a blasty blast. And tag team is performing. There it is. while Jim Gaffigan is serving ice cream cones. That’s what kind of party we’re talking about. Yes.

Now, Colton, what are you doing? This is my final question for you. What are you doing during a model home all day? Someone says, I’m thinking about working at Shaw Homes. What are you doing all day? How do you fill your time?

Are you doing yoga? Are you polishing granite countertops? Are you testing the plumbing? What are you doing? I’m not. No, I’m waiting for somebody to walk in while I’m not dealing with a client.

face -to -face, I’m making phone calls, I’m going back and working with all the clients that I’ve already scheduled model home tours with. How many calls a day? 75 calls a day. Shunda. Oh, that’s so good. So and you know, whenever you’re working with a client, there’s a lot going on in the background that you have to get for them.

You know, if they’re looking for a custom option, we got to send that in and get approvals for that. And so there’s a lot of work on the on the inside, but got to get those those calls in per day. Yeah. Networking with realtors. That’s a big that’s the big one. So when I first came on, Aaron explained to me that it’s like a rocket ship.

And he’s like, I want you to go to YouTube right now and I want you to type in NASA rocket taking off. And so that’s what I did. He’s like, this is all the fuel that you’re burning at the very beginning. But once you get through that fuel, then you’re just on your cruise zone. No pun intended for my last name, but you’re just cruising. I know, right?

It just kind of popped out. Right, right, right. You’re just cruising. And now this is after you’ve dealt with realtors, and it’s like, I’ve never even met you. I’ve talked to you on the phone, and you’re sending me people, which, you know, me money so I’m happy with it I think everybody out there you say what am I supposed to do as a result of this go through the checklist and ask yourself do I have an optimized website do I have a no -brainer Do I have ads that are on relentlessly, or do I turn them off when I get emotional?

Do I have sales scripts that I actually use? Do I have key performance indicators I hold my people accountable for? Do I follow up, or do I abdicate? Do I have weekly sales training meetings? Do I have sales tools that make sense, or are they all in my head? And do I have tracking?

And if you have those things in place, congratulations, you’re Shaw Holmes. And everybody out there, we want you to grow, except if you’re in the home building business in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We hope that you don’t suffer bodily harm. We hope you’re okay. We just hope that you have an emotional injury. that’s hard to put a finger on that causes you to want to just open up like a lemonade stand and just shut it all down.

Yeah. Because we only work with one person in each city and we work with Shaw and now Oklahoma City and Tulsa. And we like to end each and every show with a boom. So Colton, are you psychologically prepared to end with a boom? I am so psychologically. Wes, are you legally prepared to end with a boom?

I’m doing it. Aaron, I mean, you know, from a perspective of a guy who sold almost a billion dollars of homes now, are you, are you kind of, are you ready to, are you ready to do the whole, the billion dollar boom thing? Oh, boom shakalaka. Oh, here we go. Three, two, one. Here we go.

Here we go now. One time. Here we go. I built them systems. Yes, I did. This is just how I live.

That’s what I do. Make business. Boom. I’m the humblest. I’m the humblest. I’m the humblest.

I’m the humblest. I’m the humblest. I’m the humblest. Number one, I I am the most humble -est. Chose myself cause I’m at the peak of where my humble gets. Started from the bottom, but now I’m at the top.

Listing all the things that my humble self bought. I bought chickens and trees, and rabbits and cats. I bought my wife a massage, and with them all I could nap. I bought car insurance, so I could insure my car. Pondered that all week, so deep I’m bizarre. So ladies and gentlemen, I introduce myself.

And now, more from a man who’s never been called beautiful. Your host, Clay Clark. Hi, my name is Christina Nemus. I’m the owner and operator of Angels Touch Auto Body and Detailing in Bourne, Massachusetts. We have been working with Thrive and their coaching for say eight to nine months. And it took us about six months, five to six months to get on the top of Google and with their help with the website and marketing and the SEO and retargeting ads with Google.

And it has been phenomenal. We just have light and day business coming in, phone calls coming in, walk -ins, referrals. It’s just through the roof and we couldn’t be happier. At the moment, we are up 50 % this year from the previous year. And not only is that part of our own hard work and diligence, but also with the help of Thrive and what they’ve done for us and getting us on the top of Google and, you know, all their knowledge and coaching. And yeah, so super grateful, super pumped to see what the future holds for all of us.

Thank you. I’m the owner of Nook and Cranny Homekeeping. I first heard about Clay on the radio on 1170 KFAQ. I was just switching through the radio stations and I heard them talking and they were kind of funny, so I hung around a little bit. Clay’s team has impacted my amount of internet leads through Google. We have skyrocketed our reviews, and we just have people calling us almost every single day saying they found us on Google.

So it’s definitely broadened our horizons and our clientele. But we also have people that find us in other avenues, and I always direct them to our Google reviews. The typical interaction during our weekly meetings is fun. It is accountability. It’s an hour of hard discussions and a lot of learning. We try to laugh.

I always share concerns I had during the week. The team always asks me what I need help with, and then they help put me back on track where I need to be. Every business owner needs Clay Clark and his team because they put a path out in front of you, a proven system of success, and then they coach you along the way. They don’t do it for you. They don’t hold your hand. They just stand right beside you.

They cheer you on. They share with you what you need to hear, whether it’s good or it’s bad or it’s what you want to hear or it’s what you don’t want to hear. Every business owner needs that accountability next to them, that proven person next to them that can keep them going. Most people think that they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because human nature tends to say we can do it all. And sometimes we believe that. Or maybe people are prideful and they don’t want to ask for help.

I’m not really sure. I believe that one of the smartest things I’ve ever done in my whole life, definitely in my business, is hiring Clay Clark and his team. Somebody is missing out on years and years and years of experience if they don’t hire them. You can either make mistakes in your business because you don’t hire them. the experience, so you just go out there and you make mistakes. Or you can have somebody next to you that has been there, they’ve done that, and they can give you a heads up, you’re going in the wrong direction.

Or they can give you just that wise advice that says, maybe you should go in this direction. That’s what they’re missing out on. They’re missing out on years of experience that they have not gleaned themselves. The name of your company, a little bit more about what you guys do at Living Water Irrigation, where the name comes from. Absolutely, positively. Living Water Irrigation, the most important part of that to me is John 738.

It’s mentioned in the gospel a number of times, we’re the living water, but our specific scripture that we drew our name from is John 738. It says, whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow through him. We have a very distinct vision as a company on who we are and what we want to do. And I believe that I was put here to go make some money to give it away. How long has this particular business been around? We’ve been around just two years, sir.

Two years. And you guys, we first met, how did we first meet? So it would have been October or November of 17. October or November of 17. Yes, sir. And in terms of your growth as a company, how have you, how much have you grown this year?

So this year, we’re up 450 % year over year. So now that you’re implementing this program, you’re getting more calls, right? Are you getting more calls? Absolutely. Sales are going up. You’re gathering reviews from your real customers, adding content to the website, adding a gallery of work.

So I’m going to actually take a minute and make you really uncomfortable, Clay. Nice. I don’t think I want this to happen. Because I know how humble you are, and I know you don’t want to hear this kind of stuff. It’s only my paleness that keeps me humble. So when we started with y ‘all, it was awesome.

We had a little company, just me and one dude and one little van. And 17 was great. I ate more than ramen noodles, but not much. Um, 18 was really good. We started to implement the systems, got start here, got the boom book, went to a couple of conferences and said, okay, I’m going to buy in. I’m going to sell out.

We went to the coaching, got coached by Marshall and Victoria and. started to implement as opposed to just listen to actually be doers. It’s in James. It says don’t just be hearers of the word, but be doers as well. And so we implemented scripts, we implemented systems, we implemented checklist, we implemented a pro forma for quoting and all these things that you talk about. Yeah.

And So just as a real person, and I’m real, I promise you, there’s a bunch of Josh Wilsons out there. Like I’m a famous baseball player and football player. Oh, wow. And a gospel singer. Oh, wow. But this Josh Wilson just digs ditches for a living.

But I just want to say thank you. Standing here for all the systems. I encourage everybody out there. Go pick up Start Here. Go pick up the Boom Book. The stuff you hear on this show, it actually sincerely works.

It’s not just some nonsensical guy sitting in an awesome man cave who’s bored so he wants to record a show. And then from there, here’s another super -duper move for you. Schedule your day. Oh, come on. Wait a second. Wait a second.

That right there is a hot tip. So I was listening just a few months ago and I was running all over the Tulsa metro area from Glenpool to El Paso to Broken Arrow back to El Paso to Jinx to Midtown and I’m like man why am I getting nothing done? Well your issue is that you’re running places you gotta drive. Well, obviously I wouldn’t have his belly if I was running, Jonathan. So my wife says to me, hey, how was your day, honey? Oh, I worked all day.

I did all these things. And I’m like, wait, I have nothing to show that I did anything. So super move number one, you’ve said it 17 ,000 times. Whatever gets scheduled gets done. So now my day is scheduled. Come on now.

So if it’s not on my schedule, nope, doesn’t happen. But you’ve got to implement the best practice systems. You have to implement the proven systems, checklists, and processes that have been shown to work time and time again. additional outside 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 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult.

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.

And I’ve never met a guy who was so hyper all the time. He’s doing so much good. And then I met his mother and she just says, she just lets him be Clay Clark. I mean, so he’s endorsed by his mother and he’s doing magnificent work. So it was great meeting you out there and all the people that he surrounds himself with. His Clay Clark starts his days at five o ‘clock in the morning.

Oh, it’s incredible. Yeah. He’s he’s like, he’s he’s a machine. He’s a machine. But his, you know, I have problems with my company starting at nine o ‘clock. Yes.

Hundreds of people showing up at five a . m. in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Man, he’s a leader of a leader. He’s a fantastic young man. No, he is.

He is. 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 right before we opened the third location now to six locations. And so we’ve more than doubled our revenue. And these are ground up build gyms.

And so it’s not the barrier for entry is pretty high. It’s 20 plus staff at each location. So yeah, it’s been a lot as far as running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when and how, training us on that. 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 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 $1 ,700. Just the ability to take any of their proven systems, whether that’s a marketing thing, or whether that’s a staffing thing, like one thing done in the month, it pays for itself. And then to understand this, there’s a part of where, you know, 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 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. 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, You have the resourcefulness.

Maybe today’s show is the show you need to hear, because this is a couple. They started this business together out of their house, 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 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 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 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 and 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, um, we just started building. 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.

I was like, I want to make sure that, you know, I can provide for my family. And, um, 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, uh, yeah, next thing you know, we had about 160 clients coming in and out of the door a week. And it’s me and about four or five of the trainers training out of our living room. 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. 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? 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. 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 first DJ would come to load up gear at four in the morning. And our last guy would come home at three in the morning. And it was just a wild thing. I 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. So Charles is he’s relentless and he’ll fill any hour he can. And so he would start as early as 5 a . m. with his first client. And, you know, sometimes it would last until about 10 o ‘clock at night.

And so it was, it was, it was just a revolving door. And we always blocked out the middle of the afternoon at two o ‘clock every afternoon. And him and I, and as we added staff, we would all work out together. So it became this big, you know, workout session together. It was awesome. And this is a real thing.

Now, Amber, I’m not looking for anything super salacious. 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, you know, our kitchen became like the staff break room. And so all of a sudden, I’ve got everybody’s lunches in my fridge. And I remember one day, a guy had went to get the barbecue sauce out of the fridge and just drops it. And it just shatters all over the kitchen floor, but his client was here. So he he looks at me kind of like, uh, and I was like, just, just go.

I got like some cleaning up barbecue sauce out of the kitchen. Um, one morning I had gotten out of the shower and I come out of the bathroom, which is at the top of the stairs. I, and I’m just making that short little. Jagged over to my bedroom door. And so I had my hair in a towel and a robe on and I opened the door and right there at the bottom of the stairs, Charles has one of the clients doing calf raises and they just, good morning. And I thought, get this out of my house.

Yeah. Yeah. The trainers napping on the couch between clients. And, uh, our middle son was in pre -K at the time. And so he’d come home half the day. And he’d sit on the couch.

He was just so little, his feet would just stick straight off the couch. And he’d try and watch cartoons. 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 got the bride, we got the groom, we got a knife, it 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 jockey every week. So Havana, my oldest, who’s now 20, she starts running around in the office going, ladies and gentlemen, coming up next, the cutting of 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 OK, but I’m just trying to make sure we’re getting this idea.

This is a real couple that I would now classify as a super success story, but they had to start somewhere. And it’s not about resourcefulness. It’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness. 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? 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, absolutely.

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 big 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 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 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, 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 this is real people. And if you’re in the Florida area, and you’re looking for a job, if you’re in the Joplin, Missouri area, and you’re looking for a career, not just a job. Koloff Fitness is a company that’s going places. I’m not prophetic.

I’m not claiming to have some view of the future. I just see patterns. And I work with clients, and I help them implement patterns that work. And I also know of the clients that’ll work. Nothing works unless you work, right? So nothing will work unless you work.

And I look at the Kola family, and I look at the fuel that you put into the business and the diligence that you bring. And I’m telling you, folks, this is a brand that’s going somewhere. If you’re looking for a career, check it out, kolafitness . com. Box number four and five, these kind of fit in together. Box number four is you have to determine your unique value proposition.

That’s a unique thing. But what is it that makes you unique? you unique? What is it that separates you from the competition? If you’re watching today’s show, let’s think about your website, your print piece. your auto wraps, your business cards.

Let’s think about everything about your business. 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 Chick -fil -A successful when there are many other fast food chicken restaurants? What is it that makes Quick Trip super successful when there are so many gross, nasty, Uh, dirty, uh, convenience stores. What is it that makes Chick -fil -A successful?

What is it that makes QuickTrip successful? What is the secret sauce? that allows Brad Stevens, the coach of the Boston Celtics, to bring out a winning lineup year after year. Brad Stevens took a dysfunctional Butler College basketball team and turned them into a top -four basketball team. Think about this. He took a college called Butler, the size of Oral Roberts University, and took them to the Final Four multiple times.

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 Koloff Fitness unique versus other fitness companies? Oh, for us, it’s culture, hands down.

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

We train, develop, encourage that we’re the biggest part of the company that we are still a part of is the culture part. Yep. And that’s the big problem. Just kind of jump a little bit more unapologetic in our Christian component to that. Think of if Planet Fitness is the McDonald’s of gyms, Cola Fitness is the Chick -fil -A. And what I mean by that is.

We are a strong Christian culture. We hire and we look for people that match that. They don’t have to be a Christian, but they do have to align with those values. 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 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 opposed to like a McDonald’s,

So that’s where we have to be very, very, very specific on how we do culture differently. than the competition who’s just, you know, scaling out like crazy. But people like the greatest currency in life is how you make somebody else feel and want to make other people feel like the highlight of the 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. This is I’m telling you, folks, this is so important.

I talked to a guy the other day who applied to work for your business, true story. And he’s kind of a gremlin. I know him because he didn’t get hired by a friend of mine. And so a 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 to $100 million. now to 500 plus locations. And 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 start to figure out what doesn’t work. And so with Stacey Purcell with her wonderful business, we found out that LinkedIn didn’t work 100 % of the time, thus saving her $8 ,000 a month by turning it off. I just had a client this week. True story, we found he was spending $4 ,000 a week on YouTube ads, Instagram ads, and TikTok ads. 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 is 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. And so you may be able to talk more on the marketing. That’s your.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, we’ve tracked what they come from. Sometimes you do get clicks or you do have like sometimes Facebook shows you make it, but it’s really not getting people to walk through the door and convert people into members and convert people into higher ticket items. And so you really want to make sure that what you’re spending money on is actually quantifying out into dollars. And so Clay’s really been good with us to track that.

We’ve done that for years. 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 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 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 just, 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, if it’s not paying my bills, I could care less. I mean, I can watch TikTok on my off time, but I’m not going to put my marketing dollars into it just because that’s what everybody else is doing. And, um, 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, OK? So a guy called me here today. And I thought, man, I’m going to send this to him right away, OK? Guy reaches out to me.

He’s in the construction space, OK? 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. Client, Mr. Potential Client, who I’ve known forever, I said, Clay Stairs describes me as the ass man. And he’s like, the ass man? And I said, yeah, Clay Stairs, longtime client of mine.

He’s been a client of mine for like 15 years. He literally tells people that I’m his ass man. And they go, what? 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 coachable. And that’s the biggest thing is most business owners, they don’t have the ability to stay, keep a humble, coachable heart and be willing to grow.

When you work with somebody that has a proven system, they’ve worked in every industry, they’ve got a team of videographers, graphic designers, web developers, people that will help you grow. build the back end of your business correctly, the proven systems of continuous hiring of staff team, like group hiring that you always have staff ready to go. Somebody in the bullpen, so I’ll take it. You always have continuous training staff. You’ve never held hostages 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, checklist, and personnel ready to go.

And to run six different businesses in four different states, from Florida, in the Midwest, we have to have good systems, checklists, workflows, and so on, and making sure people are holding to that. Clay’s been really great for helping set up the system. But 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 him. and Clay. Amber, I wanted to tap into your wisdom on this.

There was a statement that was made years ago by Robert Kiyosaki. It really resonated with me. I heard this about 20 years ago. But he said, amateurs don’t have a coach. Professionals do have a coach. And at the time, I thought, you know what, from a legal perspective, I probably need a a coach or mentor to help me. So I hired wintersking .

com, and I’ve used that company for, what, 10 plus years? And it’s really helped me. 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. So, but it wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t coachable. and if he wasn’t willing to coach. And you guys have done such a great job over these years implementing, and I just see the future is so bright here. So when we look at your website now, could you talk about just that weekly meeting and making those little iterations and every week making it a little better?

Because I think some people want to get rich quick. They want to become successful in 10 minutes. 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 in 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, um, but like, I, I, I, I mean, I’ve got an MBA in, in school, but I’m telling you, like, it’s real life is so much more important and having good people that have good feelers. It’s like, it’s, you’re not, you’re only as good as your team. And, uh, Clay brings a whole team to your team. Um, and anyways, are, we have a weekly meeting, our weekly meeting. We look at like, what are the key things that, you know, impact us, it’s going to be signups, signups over cancels, what are those signups, which ones upgraded to higher tier options, whether that’s membership, higher tier membership options, or whether that’s tearing up into higher services like fitness coaching, like one -on -one coaching or fitness training, nutrition coaching or group training, but getting people into those things and understanding the scripts, how to role play that over and over again, making sure your staff understands how to communicate effectively with the customer, play role play until that socially awkward, you know, young person can totally get it and they understand how to 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 cost, and then show them that if you don’t do it, this is what won’t happen. And you want to show them that you’re going to really change their lives and save their life, add years to the life quality to your years by changing new habits. And when people see that value, you’ve got the right staff articulating it, you close a lot of deals, you upgrade things, and you change a lot of lives. Well, one thing, Clay, I think with the coaching is it’s been beneficial. It’s kind of like you’re our blind side, 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. Um, but it’s about um, it’s it’s the it’s about business and it’s about where we’re going and you really help keep us on track There’s that accountability like you talked about you guys are super about your set of eyes is super valuable. Yeah. 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 gotta 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 gotta have checklists and processes.

Box number 11, you have to manage people. Manage people, what? This just in, we have to manage people. We gotta 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. And box number 12, you’ve got to have a high standard with the A players, the B players. You’ve got to coach up the B players to become A players. You’ve got to coach those A players to become future leaders.

You’ve got to coach the C players out into another job or to the local bus station. 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, um, everybody needs a belonging and worth and they need to feel, um, 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, uh, start of the whole company, it was just his desire to help people and his love for them.

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

And your wife can one up you. So here we go. Two final questions. Yes, sir. 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, you know, they would say Clay’s program is, you know, business, business without the BS. There’s no bull crap. He tells you the proven system, real proven systems, that have grown and scaled hundreds, if not thousands of companies, add millions, like we are millions of dollars more in revenue because of these systems that we’ve implemented. 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 right place. 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 good in place pretty much like a comedian. 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, they’ll show you proven processes, there’s going to be a pathway that you can be successful.

And if you’re a diligent doer, and you just do one or two action items every week with your coach, the whole thing is, it’s just being a more of a marathoner than a sprinter. When you’re working with a coach, just your do your two or three action items. And that two or three If you times that by 52 weeks, that’s 150 next 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 applications. items.

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

Charles, what do you say? What kind of impact has the coaching that we’ve had with you guys over these past seven or eight years made on the impact or the success? What kind of impact has the coaching made on colawfitness . 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 the number one personally and then professionally, to have a whole bullpen of a whole a whole data set of lots of different industries, best practices, whether that’s, you know, generally it’s either a sales issue, like you don’t have enough sales, or then it’s a staffing issue, you don’t have the right staff, whether it’s a scaling it, how do I, you know, build this into a franchisable prototype? It’s all stuff that they’ve done over and over and over again. And to where you have like a cognitive dissonance, like a mental disease with understanding it, they don’t. And when you have somebody that gives you peace because it is something they’ve done before, that’s, it’s priceless.

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

your net worth. I mean, that is hands down. If you’re hanging out with the old friends that have unsuccessful businesses and you’re hanging out with the old people 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 $1 ,700.

Just the ability to take any of their proven systems, whether that’s a marketing thing or whether that’s a staffing thing, like one thing done in the month, it pays for itself. And then to understand this, there’s a part of where, you know, some maybe some week you may be like, well, you know what, I’m not getting a whole lot. out of this call. But the bottom line is, it’s like when you read the Bible, there’s times you’re just reading it. And then you’re like, you know what, I really and then you read it that one time. And it’s like, God really speaks to your heart.

And the whole truth is, is like, there’s no way that you can get that kind of value for $1 ,700 to have a whole team of coaches, Graphic designers, web developers, anybody that has that type of knowledge, you know, in your back pocket. And then in the whole thing is run your business with being somewhat conservative. Make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time. 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. Um, inevitably something like that will come up and like, that’s our peace of mind. Like he’s, you’re like, uh, a crucial team player, you know? Well, you know, I, I, it’s an honor to serve you guys. And everybody’s watching right now. I encourage you, if you’re looking

for a career. Now, if you’re looking for a job, don’t fill out the form, but if you’re looking for a career, go to colawfitness . com because if you live in what Joplin, Missouri, Charles, Dallas, Texas, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Amber, uh, we live in Topeka, Kansas. Uh, 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. Thank you, Clay.

Awesome. Take care, guys. Bye -bye. The Thrive Time Show, two -day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 -point business systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. I mean, we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website.

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Transcribed with Cockatoo