The Fortune Is In the Follow-up + Celebrating the 3X Growth of HighwaymanSigns.com + Join Eric Trump At Clay Clark’s Nov. 5-6 ThrivetimeShow Business Conference In Tulsa, Oklahoma

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Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi -million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you, and they have a lot of time on their hands. This started from the bottom, Now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former U . S.

Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zunder. Two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women, 13 multi -million dollar businesses. So on today’s show we’re talking about why the fortune is in the follow -up. Yes, yes, yes. You see, ideas maybe have value, but ideas, and listen, executed on or unless they’re implemented, unless they’re actually acted upon, they’re really worthless and they actually might end up being a distraction.

So again, the fortune is in the follow -up. And so on today’s show, I’m interviewing a longtime client who’s grown his business successfully from an idea into one successful location. Now he has 11 locations. He’s the founder of windowninjas . com. They have 11 locations.

It is a franchised model. And with that being said, Gabe, welcome onto the throne. How are you, sir? I am awesome, Clay. Thanks for having me today. Let’s talk about the fortune is in the follow -up.

I want to talk about this for a second. So you’re in a meeting at windowninjas . com. I’ll pull up your website so people can know you’re a real company. And you’re in a meeting, and let’s just say that you’re in the meeting, and you have a great call center, a great team, and somebody in the meeting has a new idea. and you’re the leader of the company.

Meanwhile, last week’s idea hasn’t been implemented yet. They got a new idea, but last week’s idea hasn’t been implemented yet. How do you follow up at Window Ninjas to make sure that last week’s idea gets actually followed up on, as opposed to skipping ahead to a new idea this week that goes on to the scrap heap of other new ideas that were never implemented? Because many companies stay in the doom loop where they just have an idea festival and nothing gets done. Whereas at windowninjas . com, more often than not, you guys actually implement and you implement a strategy that works over and over again.

How do you follow up on old ideas, aka the idea from last week, and how do you keep new ideas from this week from all of a sudden becoming the most important thing and then forgetting about last week’s ideas? I see that happen so often, Clay, in other people’s businesses, man. We do a really good job over here. If we definitely have something that needs to be implemented, it pretty much goes through our leadership team. And once it’s decided by the three of us and we have a plan of action, then we basically assign that task to somebody. immediately.

And then we give them the actual task, we give them a deadline, and then we have them follow up with us in between the start of the task and the deadline to make sure that they’re staying. We wanna make sure that they’re staying on track. But it’s typically done that way. And when we assign a task to implement something new, It typically goes to a part of the leadership team. So somebody on our leadership team is going to get assigned that task and they’re going to have a directive and they’re going to have a follow up date. Either it’s going to be finished by this date, or you’re going to follow up with.

phase one, two, or three, whatever the case may be. But yeah, we definitely have a definitive plan of action for things of that nature. Now, I’m going to put this on the screen so people can follow along. And I’m going to break it down here. And I want you to really just explain why this works. In my office, in your office, in every office where productivity happens, what happens is, let’s just say that we need to clean the bathrooms, OK?

So here we go. We’re going to say 624, Carl, clean the bathrooms. And you have to put a date on it, and you have to put a name on it, and you have to put the action item on it. And then you have to follow up until it gets done. But again, you have to have the date the items needs to be done by, the name of who’s to do it, what needs to be done so that the format is you need to have the deadline, right? Got the deadline here, okay?

Then you got the name of the person that’s supposed to do it. Then you have the action item, right? And then you have to follow up. Is it done? Yes or no? Is it done or not?

And if you skip any of these steps, it’s not going to happen. So what happens in companies is you assign a deadline, you assign the item, and then a bunch of people say, yeah, yeah, we are going to get it done, but we get anything done. It’s one person that has to be accountable for the thing. Why do you have to have a deadline and a specific person assigned to it? And why do you have to follow up until it’s actually done?

Hey, man, the magic’s in the follow up. And that what the old saying is that said, man, if you don’t follow up, how do you know it’s going to be done? You don’t. So again, it goes back to leadership. If you have a good leadership team, you’re signing directives, objectives. Hey, and you got to have that follow up, which is which like I always give that.

But I want if I if I assign something to somebody, I’m always going to say, How long is it going to take you? And they’re always going to say, Clay, well, it’s going to take me two days when you know it really don’t take them one day. OK, well, great. I’m gonna give you one day and I’m expect by five o ‘clock tomorrow you come to me. Show me the production that you’ve got and we’re done. We’ll mark it off.

Off we go. But yeah, or else, you know, but it’s some way or shape or it’s some way or shape in that format. It’s going to happen with what we do over here. And all of our stuff typically gets done. And it does get done. And give losers out there some sort of context.

I mean, you have 11 locations. You started from nothing. You got 11 locations. You have a call center that is absolutely booming all day, every day. The phone’s ringing, your teams. What would happen if you got rid of a culture of follow -up?

Nothing would get done. I mean, it’s just that simple. I mean, if nobody followed up, I mean, Hey, I mean, you got to check the leads. You got to make sure that the leads are working. You got to make sure that the advertisements are still running. Hey, how’s the website?

Is the website working? If a sales call comes in, a customer sending a service request, I mean, hey, who’s following up with that lead? And again, I keep talking about leadership teams, Clay, and you and I are very similar. I mean, you’ve got a lot of people that are working for you, and I’ve got a lot of people that are working for us, a lot of moving parts. And so you need to have somebody that is going to be able to take responsibility for maybe three or four people. Right.

And instead of going to four people, you’re actually just going to one who’s supposed to be leading that team and whatever they’re responsible for. Hey, you just got to check in with one person because that one person has to check in with the four. And so you just keep following up. You make a checklist. I mean, a lot of we use a lot of checklists around here. They seem to work pretty well.

You definitely can’t remember everything, but it definitely has to be written down, documented and assigned to somebody and then followed up with. I mean, that’s pretty much how it goes. Now, if you follow up with people, what you’re going to find is there’ll be three excuses that humanity will give you if they don’t get something done. One is they’ll say, I forgot. Number two is they’ll say, there was a miscommunication. Number three is they’ll give an emotional justification.

So let me walk you through the listeners here. I’ll walk the listeners through this real quick here. If you’re watching this, I forgot. So you follow up with me, you say, Clay, did you clean the bathroom? And what a lot of people will say if they fail to get something done, they’ll say, oh, I forgot. I am so sorry.

Thank you for reminding me. And if you’re not careful, they’re going to forget again today and tomorrow, and it never will get done. The second is they’ll say there was a miscommunication. You see, I thought we used to clean the bathroom. I thought you meant clean the windows. Or I thought you meant don’t clean the bathroom.

Or I misunderstood. And the third is there’s an emotional reason. Like, my sister died last weekend. My cousin died last weekend. It’s the 12th anniversary of when my sister died. It’s the anniversary of 9 -11.

It’s the anniversary. It’s the week of Easter. It’s the week of Christmas Oh, it’s raining so much. I’m sick. I’m so sick. My car won’t work.

What am I on? child? You have to micromanage me. There’s always, there’s just an emotional reaction people get. So let’s go through them one by one here. I forgot.

Do you ever hear people say, Oh man, you know, Hey Gabe, I forgot. You know, Clay, I don’t really get that one anymore. I think I’ve had enough. Um, I’ve given enough. positive reinforcement on that one that doesn’t really come over to me anymore. But I used to hear it all the time, that’s for sure.

We don’t hear it anymore. There it is. Second is, hey, there was a miscommunication. Like, oh, when you said clean the bathroom, I thought you meant don’t clean the bathroom. The miscommunication, how often do you hear that excuse? Miscommunicate, you know?

It’s been a while since I’ve heard that one too, Clay. I remember back in the day, I used to hear it all the time. But I honestly can’t tell you the last time I heard that one. Now, what about the emotional argument? The reason I didn’t get it done because of a wedding, a funeral. I’m sick.

I’ve got a headache. I’m tired. I’m overwhelmed. Oh, man, it’s Martin Luther King month. It’s a holy moly. It’s Christmas month.

It’s November. Some sort of emotional justification. How often do you hear that? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not around enough people. I don’t know.

Well, you’re an effective manager now, so people know not to use those moves on you. But when you started out, Did you run into that before you began? Oh, yeah, all the time. Back in the day, in the beginning. I think well before we hooked up, me and you. Yeah, I heard all those excuses.

And I mean, it’s pretty common in today’s society. I think it’s actually gotten a lot worse. You know what, Clay? You know where I hear those excuses? The guy that’s supposed to deliver my dinner to me at the house when we order in. Or the lovely lady that’s waiting on our table for me and Melissa when we’re going out to eat dinner.

And, oh, I forgot to bring your dessert. Yeah, I do hear it. I just don’t typically hear it. within my organization and within my leadership team. That’s amazing. And that’s because you have a culture you’ve created where people are held accountable.

Your business is growing because of it. That company’s window ninjas dot com with the final 60 seconds we have somebody out there is thinking about, you know, they’re wanting to buy a franchise. They’re wanting to maybe team up with somebody and they’re wanting to buy a business that will create or gives them the opportunity to create time, freedom and financial freedom. If somebody wants to buy a franchise or wants to learn about potentially buying a franchise, what does that process look like? Man, it starts with filling out the form online, going to winterninja . com forward slash franchising, or hey, they can even call us on our 800 number and reach one of our agents over here and we can start the process by just a conversation.

But typically what we see, Clay, is we’ll get emails come in from where people have filled out a form. They’ve sent it over to us. And you know what? We reach out immediately. It’s real, real simple. If they don’t answer their phone or, or, or answer their first text or answer the first email that we send over to them, we just keep doing it over and over and over again until they remember that they reached out to us and wanted to find information on a franchise.

Um, so yeah, the first step go to the website or just, like I said, give us a call eight three three ninjas dash one. Once again, folks, that website is window ninjas . com. And again, folks, the fortune isn’t the follow -up. Gabe Salinas, thank you for your time today, sir. And we’ll talk to you soon.

Sounds great. See you, Clay. Bye -bye. Sure. My name’s Kenneth Sutherland. I own Highwayman Signs, and our website is highwaymansigns .

com. So obviously if you’re within driving distance, we’re a full service sign company. So everything from business cards all the way up to full lighted signs, channel letters, monument signs, you know, full big time construction as far as the signage industry is concerned. Now, if you’re not within driving distance, you need something shipped, we still do, you know, smaller print items. We do banners, yard signs, magnets, decals, that kind of stuff. And we’ve got an online store now.

So you can just check that out. I think we’ve almost tripled. We were under a million. I think we were like 700 ,000 like that. We’re on track to 2 million this year. And that’s pretty much where we’ve been.

grown so much is like, you’ve helped us get, you know, leads from Google and all the SEO that we’ve done. And it also helps us, you know, speak SEO that that’s helped us get the types of jobs that we want to get in. Because, you know, for years and years, we just we were kind of like a prince prince shop, but we did we did big signs, but you know, we mostly did banners and little signs, decals and things like that. And we kept trying to break into bigger cities and get bigger clients. And that was just really, really difficult for us. And, you know, through the website that you built for us and the SEO is that’s helped drive, you know, leads to our business.

And now, you know, it’s nothing for us to do a big channel letter or a big monument sign for a company that, you know, years ago, we might get one of those a year. Now we’re we’re doing several of those, you know, a year, one or two months. So, you know, It’s been a big boon for us. It’s definitely been great. Years ago it was. You were kind of sitting around waiting for the right moment.

you know, and now it feels like, uh, you know, we obviously don’t have that problem. Uh, in fact, it’s, it’s more of how do we manage all of the jobs that are coming in? Um, can we, can we make sure that we can, we can serve every person and we’re picking up the phone. We never, you know, we, we always pick up the phone. We always follow up with people and we follow up relentlessly. So, um, it’s definitely been that, that portion of my mind is definitely, uh, less worrisome.

It’s more of now, how can we make sure that we take care of every customer? Well, folks, there are many phases to growing a business, but I’m going to oversimplify it into three phases. There’s phase number one, which is how do you get customers? That’s phase number one. Most people, they start a company. They have a great idea.

They have a lot of equipment. They’ve got a new concept, maybe even a logo. They want to change the world. They want to revolutionize the industry, but no clients. And if you have no leads, then your business can’t succeed. Now, step number two.

You got to learn how to deliver the product. I mean, if you have a lot of leads, but you can’t deliver on what you promise, then you’re in trouble. So again, step number one, you’ve got to generate leads. Step number two, you’ve got to be able to fulfill the actual promise that you made to the customer. Deliver a product that they love. And then the third is you’ve got to learn how to manage people.

This is often referred to as working on your business. You’ve got to build a team and build systems and processes. And on today’s show, we’re interviewing a longtime client who’s doing very, very well because he does generate leads. He does wow his customers with a great service. And now he’s building systems that allow him to scale. Kenny, welcome to The Thrive Time Show.

How are you, sir? Doing great, Clay. How are you? I’m doing great. Now, for anybody out there that wants to verify you’re not a hologram, could you share with us your first and last name and your web address so people can look you up there, sir? Sure.

My name’s Kenneth Sutherland. I own Highwayman Signs, and our website is highwaymansigns . com. And what’s the history? of the company, Highwayman Signs? Is Is it a family -owned thing?

Did you start it from scratch, or how did this company come to be? Yeah, so, yeah, it’s family -owned. My parents actually started it, but I was there from the get -go. Mom and Dad, they were doing some decals on the side and things like that, and decided to start an actual sign company. And I came up with the name even, Highwayman Signs, because that’s what was on my dad’s van when they were doing decals and banners at small trade shows and rodeos and things like that. And I was like, yeah, let’s start a business called Highwayman Signs.

So I worked there after school and started doing graphics and things like that from that age, like 17 years old. So we’ve been in business for 24 years now. Now, you’re doing signs now which are on your website for Arby’s, for McDonald’s, for Voice of the Martyrs, the Village Apartments, Metro Christian. I mean, big companies, countless companies that aren’t even featured on the pictures because there’s only so much room. But you have Taco Bell, you have Brahms, you have Cavendish, you got Milo’s, State Farm. Countless brands that aren’t pictured, Colaw Fitness, Pizza Hut, Dave and Buster’s.

And just to give the listeners out there a little bit of context, again, for anybody out there that wants to learn more about you, it’s highwaymansigns . com, highwaymansigns . com. How much have you grown since you and I met, as far as if you had to quantify it? Oh, gosh, I think we’ve almost tripled. So we were, yeah, we were We were under a million.

I think we were like $700 ,000 like that. We’re on track to $2 million this year. You were referred to me, I believe, by Charles Kolaw. Let me pull up his website. I think Charles Kolaw kept telling me, he said, Clay, there’s this sign guy that we’re using for our signs who does great quality work. And I bet you you could help this guy.

He does great work. work. I think what he needs help with is generating more leads and maybe building some systems. Do you remember how you first, I mean, maybe I’m misremembering that or how did you first come in contact with us? That’s exactly right. Charles has been a client of ours for years and now a good friend.

And we’ve, we’ve done all the signage at all their different locations, which I think you’ve helped, you know, help grow that, you know, their business into. And yeah, he was, we were, we talk a lot about business. He’s somebody I can kind of confide into. And he kept saying, yeah, you gotta, you gotta check out Clay’s place. And he’s got a lot of, a lot of different processes and systems that you can use to grow your business. And, you know, And that’s pretty much, you know, where we, we’ve grown so much is like, you’ve helped us get, you know, leads from Google and all the SEO that we’ve done.

And it also helps us, you know, speak SEO that that’s helped us get the types of jobs that we want to get in. Because, you know, for years and years, we just, we were kind of like a print, print shop, but we did, we did big signs, but you know, we mostly did banners and like, little metal signs, decals and things like that. We kept trying to break into bigger cities and get bigger clients and that was just really, really difficult for us. us, you know, through the website that you built for us and the SEO is that’s helped drive, you know, leads to our business. And now, you know, it’s nothing for us to do a big channel letter or a big monument sign for a company that, you know, years ago, we might get one of those a year. Now we’re, we’re doing several of those, you know, a year, one or two months.

So it’s been a, it’s been a big boon for us. Now, final question I have for you about the growth side of things, and then we’ll get into the systems you’re building. What impact do you think it’s made on your business knowing now that you have an influx of leads, just knowing that you never have to worry about, are we going to have leads coming in this week? What’s that done for your mindset or for your business overall? Well, it’s been, it’s definitely been, you know, great. We, you know, years ago it was, you know, you were kind of sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, you know, and now it feels like, you know, we obviously don’t have that problem.

In fact, it’s, it’s more of how do we manage all of the jobs that are coming in? Can we can we make sure that we can we can serve every person and we’re picking up the phone? We never you know, we always pick up the phone. We always follow up with people and we follow up relentlessly. So it’s definitely been that that portion of my mind is definitely less worrisome. It’s more of now.

How can how can we make sure that we take care of every customer? So So now when you have an influx of customers coming in, again, your quality standards have never been questioned. I mean, that’s something that you do independently. That’s a skill set you’ve mastered. You guys have great processes for that. But I want to skip ahead to phase three, learning how to manage a team of people.

And I just wanted to brag on you for the listeners out there. You have really spent a lot of time in the past 12 months, 24 months working on the business and not just in it. What does that mean? So instead of being the guy that makes all the signs yourself installs the signs yourself. You’re building a team. And I wanted to see if we could break it down into three things that you’ve put in place that I’ve noticed as an outside observer that I wanted to appraise you for.

One is you have checklists and documented processes. You have checklists and documented process. Could you walk us through how you went about making checklists and documented processes? Yeah, absolutely. So basically, we like for our front desk, for our sales team, everybody walks in the door, we have a we have a checklist for that team specifically, they have to make sure that they’re checking emails, make sure they’re following up with their clients, and basically just blocked out, block blocks of time that are blocked out, so they don’t forget anything. It’s not that these people, you know, are incapable of thinking through

but as busy as you are, there’s too much to do. There’s too much to try to keep it all up in your head. You’ve got to have it down, wrote down. It’s just a good reminder. my own checklist for myself that I keep my anything I think of, I type it in there and I put it on a Google, you know, Google Doc. And that way I can check it off during the day and make sure I’m doing the things that I need to be doing.

But yeah, it’s it’s essentially been just making sure that we don’t leave any stone unchecked during the week. We don’t leave anything up to chance, uh, and make sure that we’re repeating the same processes every day that we’re following up with our, our leads every, you know, daily, weekly, uh, bi -weekly and monthly, uh, just to make sure that, you know, we’re not, like I said, again, not leaving any stone unturned. Secondary. I want to brag on you as you, you are working on yourself. And I’m not asking you to share where yourself was and where yourself is and all those kind of things. I’m just saying, you’ve been really thinking about, OK, how can I be the leader that my team needs?

How can I be an effective communicator? How can I be an effective manager? I want to just get your thoughts on that. Because there’s somebody watching this show that hasn’t been on our coaching calls and that doesn’t have a coach. And they are, in fact, their biggest limiting factor. The business owner themselves are They are, in fact, their biggest limiting factor.

They are what John Maxwell calls the law of the lid. Their biggest limiting factor, the throttle for their business is ultimately their ability to lead people. Can you talk about some of that self -improvement that you’ve done over the last couple of years, really becoming a manager that, frankly, people like to work for? Yeah, absolutely. So I’m by nature, I’m a production guy. I like to make things.

It’s easy for me to go, you know, pull up my task list and knock out a bunch of tasks and make a good product. But it’s really difficult for me to have other people do that. It’s just easier to say, well, I’ll just do it myself. But I was realizing I was picking up everything. I was wearing so many different hats with the business and that’s just not the desired future that I want. I don’t want to be chained to this place.

I’ve got a family. I want to be able to spend time with them. And so I just basically took time Um, and really just, okay, how do I, how do I get myself out of this? How do I get myself out of this? And I had to stop. I had to tell myself, no, I can’t do this.

I had to hire good people. And it took some time, you know, it took some time. It’s like finding really good people and making them specialists. So I’m wearing 10 different hats. Okay. Well, then I need 10 different people to wear each one of those hats.

And so it’s like, okay, and now that’s not it. You have to train them. Okay. So that means making, you know, standard processes, giving them their checklist, things like that. And then following up with later. let’s see, every week daily if necessary.

But yeah, I’ve got I have department meetings every day. I’ve got a sales meeting on like I had a sales meeting this morning. Tomorrow I’ve got a production meeting. I’ve got a graphic design meeting on Wednesday for our graphic designers. And so what I do is I sit in on those meetings, we talk about, we train on certain things that they’re struggling with. We talk about the same types of of times like with sales, meaning we’re going to, we’re going to review numbers, we’re going to see where everybody’s at, are we hitting our numbers for the week?

Are we getting close to our monthly goals, making sure that we’re hitting all those kinds of things with production, we’re making sure that, hey, how’s the schedule? Is the schedule optimized? Are we getting our billable hours? You know, we’ve got it, we’ve got to hit so many billable hours per week to make sure that the guys are, you know, earning their pay, essentially. And then also, you know, we’ve implemented bonus structures and stuff for every different department to they all have kind of different metrics and stuff that they have to hit. And all of that came from essentially falling on my face several different times.

But also just making sure that okay, I want I want a really good pay So number one, I have to start with really good people. But that’s not all you have to follow up all the time. You have to make sure that they’re not only doing what they said they’re doing, but they’re doing it at a good pace. And yeah, just making sure that you are constantly checking in, you’re trusting them, but you’re verifying. That’s kind of the big thing.

Now, final area I want to brag on you about as far as working on the business. There are so many things that you do well. But if people go to your website, and by the way, you sell products that people in all 50 states could purchase. There’s a lot of great products that you provide over there at highwaymansigns . com. You have never, ever, ever let your standard go lower as you’ve gotten busier.

I mean, so people say, well, how do you get video testimonials from so many great customers? Well, it’s because you wow them. People say, how do you get Google reviews from so many happy customers? It’s because you wow them. And I want to applaud that because you, much like Charles Kola, you haven’t let your standards go lower, which is, by the way, the default setting in companies. The standards haven’t gone lower as your business has grown more.

Your standards haven’t gotten lower as your business has grown more. And I want to applaud you for that, because it really is a powerful thing for a guy to say, look, I’m not going to let the standards go lower as the brand gets bigger. Not normal. Not normal, typically as a company expands, the quality goes down. But we’re seeing more and more customers wowed every day. Talk about that for a second, your insistence on making sure that the customers continue to be wowed, despite the fact that you’re growing dramatically.

Absolutely. We’re starting to deal with bigger and bigger customers, McDonald’s, Arby’s, you’ve mentioned some of them. But still, I have a heart for small business owners. That’s what I am. That’s what I came from. grew up probably sub -poverty line.

And so for me, it’s like, we have to provide a, a product and a system for people that works for them. And that is a good value because that’s, I think that’s such a thing that we’re missing so many in this day and age, you know, that people, they go out and they buy, they buy a new car or they buy a new appliance and they just know, okay, well, it’s just going to fail. It’s just, it’s going to fail in three or five, three to five years, you know? And I just remember, you know, When you’re growing up, it’s like, hey, we had to make things last. We couldn’t go buy a new TV every month. And so it’s like, OK, we’ve got to make things last.

We’ve got to make sure that our customers are getting their money’s worth. And not only that, I want to sell high quality signage. Because for me, again, back to that small business owner, really good signage is important for them so that they can grow. You know, that’s, I think small business is the backbone of this country. And, you know, it’s like, if they succeed, then we succeed. And I really, you know, we talk about here, our kind of our mission statement is that we make people’s dreams come true.

And that’s kind of a general thing. I think a lot of people think that, but we do, we have, we’ve had, we had a single mom come in here that was starting a flower business. You know, and, you know, floral shop and she came in and she had this idea for a rap and she she was like, I want to be able to deliver my. deliver my flowers and stuff in style and we created something and she came and she almost cried because it’s exactly what she had pictured in her mind, you know, and I’m just like, okay, cool. Her success is tied to our success. And I’m like, I can’t sell subpar products.

I can’t sell, you know, ugly signs, uh, to people. It’s like, we’ve got to sell them something nice and, you know, make, make it worth their money. So that’s, that’s just big thing for me. Final question. I wanted to ask you here, I’m going to pull up your website because there’s a, and I didn’t mean to cut you off the sound cut out here for a second. my end, is a lot of our wonderful listeners, in fact most of my clients are not in Oklahoma, what are the kinds of things that all of our listeners could buy if they’re not within driving distance?

Some of our listeners that are watching this show from Maine or California or Florida or Minnesota, do you have anything you could sell those folks? And then what about for the guys who are within driving distance of your locations? Oh, absolutely. So if you’re obviously if you’re within driving distance, we were a full service sign company. So everything from business cars all the way up to full lighted signs, channel letters, monument signs, you know, full full big time construction as far as the signage industry is concerned. Now, if you’re not within driving distance, you need something shipped.

We still do, you know, smaller print items. We do banners, yard signs, magnets, decals, that kind of stuff. And we’ve got an online store now. So you can just check that out. at howmanscience . com slash store.

OK, there it is, folks. And again, I can’t speak highly enough about Kenny and his wonderful wife and the great family and the business they’re building there. Kenny, I’ll give you the final word. There’s somebody watching this show who’s right now going, oh, man, I got to get more leads. And we can help them do that. And there’s somebody else saying, I got to build my team in a way we can wow the customer, and we can help you with that.

And there’s somebody else that says, I’ve got to build systems so I can work on my business or in my business. But hearing this all at one time, about working on your business, not just in it, and wowing the customer and generating leads. It can be overwhelming. What do you say to an entrepreneur out there that feels a little bit overwhelmed? There may be where you were years ago, where you’re kind of waiting for the phone to ring a little bit. What do you say to all the entrepreneurs out there that are maybe waiting for that phone to ring?

Number one, get Google reviews. That’s the way the world works now. So Google reviews, get some video, video testimonials, product videos, you know, just talk about the jobs that you’re doing, get those up and then hire, hire really, really good people all the time. Make sure you’re hiring really good people. You cannot, you cannot succeed with a bad team.

Amen to that. Again, folks, one more time, if you want to help our incredible guest today, if you want to help his website rank higher, if you’ve learned anything today, go to highwaymansigns . com. That’s the website, highwaymansigns . com. And folks, just by you visiting that web address and then sharing it on your social medias, if you’ll just go to highwaymansigns .

com and share it on your social media, it will help Kenny and his wonderful family to reach more customers. It helps the website to rank higher. Kenny, thank you so much for your time today. I really do appreciate you. And we’ll talk to you later this week. Thank you, sir.

Bye -bye. All right. Have a good one. 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 there’s no better business coach in the world that has the way he works, the way his mind works.

But he’s also got a team of other other business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries. So he’s worked in every industry. His staff has worked in every industry. He’s got videographers, web designers. I mean, just for the fact of like just just the website alone is worth the same amount of money. 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 it’s like there’s no way that you can get that kind of value for $1 ,700 to have a whole team of coaches. Graphic designers, web developers, anybody that has that type of knowledge, you know, in your back pocket. And then in the whole thing is run your business with being somewhat conservative.

Make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time. But by doing that, you have that that skill set. You have that you have those. It’s tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like, it’s just like the cost of doing business. Like, just, just understand it.

That’s a, that’s what I think there’s a, there’s a, sometimes the payment we make, I feel like is peace of mind, even because there have been multiple times throughout the years that we will, we will either be butting heads on something. Um, we’re super confused about something. We’re fearful about something, something in the markets changed and, It’s a quick call to Clay. Hey, my name is Michael Levine and for the last 43 years I’ve owned a very prominent PR and branding firm. I first learned about Clay Clark probably a decade or so ago, which is a good long time. He came out to Los Angeles and we met.

I admire him enormously. In the last 43 years our company has represented 58 Academy Award winners, 45 Grammy Award winners, and 61 New York Times bestsellers. Some of those people would include Michael Jackson and David Bowie and Charlton Heston, Prince, Kareem Abdul -Jabbar, John Voight, Fleetwood Mac, and Bill O ‘Reilly, and dozens and dozens and dozens of more major celebrities. The reason I think Clay is so impressive is because he brings a degree of common sense to the problems of our time. One of the things he taught me was always, always, always.

That’s three always. Always be looking for great, interesting, clever, smart, determined, hungry people. Now if you’re not willing to give up, much of anything, then you’re not going to get much of anything. You don’t have a goal. You have a bunch of fun ideas floating around your pretty head. Write it down, which is a big Clay Clark principle.

Clay helps with that. So now you say, well, should I do video? Should I do promotion? What should I do? And I’d say, well, if you want to be unsuccessful, don’t do much of anything. Marketing is very important, and I can’t think of anyone better that I am aware of, and I think I’m pretty good at this, than Clay Clark.

Clay is just the greatest tour guide that I’m aware of for the small business, entrepreneurial owner, and just really honored to call him my friend. If you come here, you better be damn ready to envelop yourself in life -changing stuff. You’re not here to slow dance, darling. Don’t come. Trust me, the place is packed. But if you’re ready, if you’re saying, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired, then I’d say, well, come.

Come here. Take Clay’s hand and go on this life -changing journey. I met him when I had more success. I had already given advice to three US presidents. both political parties. I had already had that level of success met Clay and I still learn from Clay Clark.

attend the most real, the most authentic, the highest rated and most reviewed ultimate business growth workshop. During this two day interactive business workshop, you’re gonna learn everything you need to know to make your business grow. Learn how to generate more sales, learn how to produce additional high quality inbound leads, learn how to create repeatable systems, learn how to build a successful business and learn how to do it now. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to start and grow a super successful company, this is the event for you. At our two -day interactive business workshop, we will teach you specifically every step that you need to take to start and grow a super successful company. We will teach you specifically how to get to the top of the Google search engine results, how to dominate artificial intelligence search results, how to market via social media, how to generate more leads, and how to get in front of your ideal and likely buyers.

We’re going to teach you the step by step -step processes that you need to learn in order to hire, inspire, train, and retain high -quality employees and teammates. We’re going to teach you specifically what you need to learn to manage a team of people. We’re going to teach you how to manage your finances, how to look at the numbers, and to figure out the specific steps that you need to take to create a time freedom and financial freedom producing business. At the Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshop, we’ve been teaching entrepreneurs everything they need to know to start and grow a successful company since 2005. In fact, at our two day interactive business workshops, we’re going to teach you marketing systems and scaling.

human resources, accounting, social media marketing, branding, search engine optimization, sales training, financial management, and so much more. You can learn more and request tickets today simply by going to Thrivetimeshow . com. Yes, you can request tickets today simply by going to Thrivetimeshow . com. That’s the website.

Join Eric Trump, myself, and Team America live and in person at the Thrivetimeshow two -day interactive business workshop, November 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My name is Kevin Thomas and the name of our company is MultiClean. We are a commercial janitorial service and we serve the entire state of Oklahoma and Kansas and soon to be Arkansas. We have probably grown probably five times. We’ve added, I think when we first started with you, we had 60 to 65 employees and now we have a little over 300 employees. We got involved with Thrive Time.

We didn’t really have any systems or processes in place. I’ve probably been to, oh, in six, seven years, I’ve probably been to 12 to 13 businesses. conferences. And amazingly, each time I go, I learn something new. And I’m so excited to bring it back and, and show the team about marketing and how to implement. Okay, Aaron Antis, November 5th and 6th.

Guess who’s coming back to Tulsa? I will give you a hint. His first name is Eric. And his last name is Trump. And his father is the 47th president of these United States. Yes!

Eric Trump is joining us once again here September 25th and 26th in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the two -day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. But Eric Trump is bringing friends. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Amanda Grace will be in the place. Dr. Stella Emanuel will be here in T -Town in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Julie Green will be on the scene.

Mel K will be here to say hey. Dave Scarlett from the His Glory team will be here. It’s gonna be a blasty blast right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you wanna start or grow a super successful company, if you wanna make your wallet great again or make your wallet great for the first time, if you wanna learn marketing, systems, scaling, human resources, accounting, social media, landing, search engine optimization, sales training, financial management, and more. Get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow . com.

Once again, it’s Thrivetimeshow . com. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you. The linear workflow, the linear workflow for us in getting everything out on paper and documented is really important.

We have workflows that are kind of all over the place. So having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards is pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely enjoy it. just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility.

like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super. It’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool.

The people are nice. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is awesome. Hilarious.

I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which, you know, we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, and so the humor definitely helps, it breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts, and it’s very interactive, you can raise your hand, it’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak, you know? The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. Um, you’re definitely, it’s, it’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars.

So you’re missing the thought process of someone that’s already started like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information, but just getting in the thought. Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today.

I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right?

His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. People don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. There’s not 50 employees. The Trump Organization, again, most people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. And while Donald J. Trump was the 45th president of these United States, he needed a competent man to run and execute his business plans. So tough!

man that runs the Trump organization for Donald J. Trump as he was the 45th president of the United States and now the 47th president of the United States is Eric Trump. Eric Trump is here to talk about time management. Promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build. I mean, everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages them. Billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it. You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint.

I mean, who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand? I mean, look at it. And this is the man behind the business for the last pretty much since 2015. He’s been the man behind it. So you’re talking, we’re into nine going into 10 years of him running it. And we get to tap into that knowledge.

That’s going to be amazing. Now think about this for a second. Play Clark, man. He is one character. It’s a good word for character. Yeah, that is it.

Good, driven, smart. And I’ve never met a guy who was so hyper all the time. He’s doing so much good. And then I met his mother and she just says, She just lets him be Clay Clark. I mean, so he’s endorsed by his mother and he’s doing magnificent work. So it was great meeting you out there and all the people that he surrounds himself with.

His Clay Clark starts his days at five o ‘clock in the morning. Oh, it’s incredible. Yeah. He’s, he’s like, he’s, he’s a machine. He’s a machine. But his, you know, I could, I have problems with my company starting at nine o ‘clock.

He has hundreds of people showing up at five o ‘clock. a .m. m. in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Man, he’s a leader of a leader. He’s a fantastic young man.

No, he is. The lineup continues to grow. And this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show. If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always done it that way.

Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody. I grew up without money. I totally understand what it’s like to be in a tight spot. So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That’s how I do it.

And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket. Now, we only have limited seating here, but the most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation. Jim Brewer came here, the legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa, and we had 718 people. 718 people. And I thought to myself, there’s no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple people had VIP seats in the men’s restroom.

No, I’m just kidding. So I thought, you know what, we should probably add on. So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to Thrivetimeshow . com. Go to Thrivetimeshow . com.

When you go to Thrivetimeshow . com, you’ll go there, you’ll request a ticket, boom. Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now. Just text my number. It’s my cell phone number, my personal cell phone number. We’ll keep that in mind.

Private between you, between you, me, everybody. We’ll keep that private. And anybody, don’t share that with anybody except for everybody. That’s my private cell phone number. It’s 918 -851 -0102. 918 -851 -0102.

I know we have a lot of Spanish -speaking people that attend these conferences. And so to be bilingually sensitive, my cell phone number is 918 -851 -0102. That is not actually bilingual. That’s just saying Juan for a Juan. It’s not the same thing. I think you’re attacking me.

talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show workshop? So, Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past seven, eight years. So let’s talk about it. I’ll tee up the thing and then you tell me what you’re going to learn here, OK? OK.

You’re going to learn marketing, marketing and branding. What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? Oh, yeah. We’re going to dive into, you know, so many people say, oh, you know, I got to get my brand known out there like the Trump brand. Right. You want to get that brand out there.

It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is and make it a household name. You’re going to learn some intricacies of how you can do that. You’re going to learn sales. So many people struggle to sell something. This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell. So we’re going to teach you sales.

We’re going to teach you search engine optimization, how to come up top in the search engine results. We’re going to teach you how to manage people. Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your career and thousands of contractors. And most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people? Well, because first of all, people are, you either have great people or you have people who suck.

And so it can be a challenge, you know, learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re really good at selecting great ones. And we have a process we teach about how to do that. find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable. they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people all pulling in the same direction.

So we’re going to teach you branding, marketing, sales, search engine optimization. We’re going to teach you accounting. We’re going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance. We’re going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time? How do you get more done during a typical day?

How do you build an organization if you’re not organized? How do you do organization? How do you build an org chart? Everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two -day interactive business workshop. Now, let me tell you how the format is set up here. And again, folks, this is a two -day interactive 15.

Think about this, folks. It’s two days. Each day, it starts at 7 AM, and it goes until 5 PM. So from 7 AM to 5 PM, two days. It’s a two -day interactive workshop. The way we do it is we do a 30 -minute teaching session, and then we break for 15 minutes for a question and answer session.

So Aaron, what kind of great stuff stuff happens during that 15 minute question and answer session after every teaching session. I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops because here’s what happens. I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them. And you go in there and they talk in vague generalities and they’re constantly upselling you for something trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing or this program or this membership. And you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business or your employees or what you’re doing on your marketing.

And what’s awesome about this is we literally answer every single question that any person asks. And it’s very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we allow you as the attendee to write your questions on the whiteboard. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard. And then we take a 15 -minute break to stretch and to make it entertaining when you’re stretching. It’s a true story.

When you get up and stretch, you’ll be greeted by mariachis. There’s going to probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone. I mean, there’s just – You had a crocodile one time. That was pretty interesting. You know, I should write that down. Sorry for that one guy that we lost.

The crocodile, we duct taped its face. Right? We duct taped – It was a baby crocodile. Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody. But it was really cool bouncing that thing around. I should do that.

I should. We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It’s going to be great. And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs. So there’s not a lot of people in America today. In fact there’s less than 10 million people today according to U .

S. debt clock that identifies being self -employed. So if you have a country with 350 million people That means you have less than 3 % of our population that’s even self -employed. So you only have 3 out of every 100 people in America that are self -employed to begin with. And when Inc. Magazine reports that 96 % of businesses fail by default, By default, you have a 1 out of 1 ,000 chance of succeeding in the game of business.

But yet, the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double this. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. I have thousands of testimonials to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back it up. But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size of the company within 24 months. And you say, double?

Yeah, there’s businesses that we have tripled. There’s businesses we’ve grown 8x. There’s so many examples. But again, this is the most interactive, best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet. I was looking to learn how to take my business, like they’ve said today, from being very successful to being systematic.

I’ve got a very successful practice in three different cities. I make good money. I just want to take it to the next level with systems and processes to where I can drive my cars more. Paul Hood. been a CPA for 33 years. And what kind of growth have you and your great team had here over the past, let’s say, five, six years?

When I met you five years ago, we were doing $3 million. This year, we’ll do $24 million. and you say clay i still i’m not gonna get a ticket unless you give me more okay fine we’re gonna serve you the same meal both days true story we have we cater in the food and because I keep it simple, I literally bring him the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Esconzito’s, an incredible Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen. And someone says, I want more.

This is not enough. Give me more. OK, I’m not going to mention their names right now because I’m working on it behind the scenes here. But we’ve got one guy who’s given me a verbal to be here. And this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma. And nobody really knows who he is because he’s built systems that are very utilitarian that offer a lot of value.

He’s made a lot of money in the it’s the it’s where you rent. It’s short. It’s where you’re renting storage spaces. He’s a storage space guy. He owns this. What do we call that?

The rental, the storage space, storage units. This guy owns storage units. He owns railroad cars. He owns a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis. But they’re not like Most people don’t know who owns the mini storage facility, or most people don’t know who owns the warehouse that’s passively making money. Most people don’t know who owns the railroad cars.

But this guy, he’s giving me a verbal that he will be here. And we just continue to add more and more success stories. So if you’re out there today and you want to change your life, you want to give yourself an incredible gift, You want a life changing experience. You want to learn how to start and grow a company. Go to Thrivetimeshow . com.

Go there right now. Thrivetimeshow . com. Request a ticket for the two day interactive event. Hey, how’s it going? I’m Thomas Crosson, owner and founder of Full Package Media in Dallas, Texas.

I’ve been a coaching client with Clay Clark since the beginning of our business. We started about a year ago, August of last year. I had no clients, no idea what we were doing, no clue, really. was going on. And now we’ve grown to where we’ve got six photographers, we’ve got office space here. I have an admin sales person that works for us full time, developing an online system.

And a lot of that growth we attribute to Clay helping us. And there’s so many things that, I mean, his stuff is not revolutionary. It’s not this crazy walk on hot coals and all this stuff. It’s just real, Real stuff. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. Don’t do the smoke your way to thin conference.

That is, I’ve tried it, don’t do it. Chain smoking is not a viable, I mean it is life changing. It is life -changing. If you become a jade smoker, it is life -changing. It’s not the best weight -loss program, though. Right.

Not really. So if you’re looking to have life -changing results in a way that won’t cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at Thrivetimeshow . com. Again, that’s Aaron Antis. I’m Clay Clark. And reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two -day interactive Thrivetimeshow workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I promise you, it will be a life -changing experience. We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. What kind of growth have you had since you and I’ve been working together over these past few years? 3 .45 million. I got those stats before I got on here. So you’ve grown by 3 .45 million?

Yeah. 3 million, 450 ,000. Would that be like if you took the combined revenue and maybe doubled it? Have we gone up by 3 million? about, uh, almost three, not quite.

Transcribed with Cockatoo