Business Coach Mystery Shopping 101 | Dr. Zoellner & Clay Clark Teach How to Mystery Shop & Know Your Competition + 7 Super Moves + Join Eric Trump & Robert Kiyosaki At Clay Clark’s March 6-7 Business Workshop!

Audio Transcription

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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?

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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 Zilmer.

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Two men.

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Eight kids, co-created by two different women.

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Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses.

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We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here.

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We started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to give what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hoops, I break down the books. The seeds bring in some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive, so if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi.

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It’s the CNC up on your radio, and now 3, 2, 1, here we go!

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We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Yes, yes, yes, and yes!

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Thrive Nation on today’s show we have a very special occasion because Dr. Z is next to me which makes it always ecstasy and we’re talking today about mystery shopping. Yes sir. Mystery shopping. Now Dr. Z, just to give the listeners out there a little bit of a background, you started and then grew one of Oklahoma’s most successful, or Oklahoma’s most successful auto auction.

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Is that accurate? Yes, sir. You also started a very successful, and you still run and operate a super successful optometry clinic. How many years have you been in business approximately?

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We started in 1991, so you do the math.

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Oh, there you go. So, not well.

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33, 34.

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34 years. You’ve had a lot of success there. Steve Currington, you have built a mortgage company called stevecurrington.com. Is that correct, sir?

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Yes, sir.

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Very inventive on the name, by the way.

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Thank you.

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I mean, that’s clever.

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Thank you.

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And Anthony was born yesterday. So, Anthony, but he just graduated from a Bible school of sorts this weekend. Is that right?

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Yes, sir.

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Okay. And so we kind of know the background we’re talking about today, but we’re going to talk about mystery shopping. I really want to get Z your wisdom on this because with your optometry clinic, with your auto auction, with your durable medical equipment company, with my haircut chain, with the dog training business, with the mortgage business, we all have to mystery shop. Yes. And so I’ve got some specific steps.

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I’m going to tee up the steps. We’ve got seven steps we’re going to go through. And Dr. Z, I want to see if you can pontificate and share your wisdom with us. So step number one, everybody out there, you have to know who your competition is. It seems obvious. It does. But I, typically when I meet with an entrepreneur, they act, they look at me like they’re befuddled, like they’re shocked,

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like they, like they’ve never done it. I say, hey, who’s your biggest competition? Right. And what do they charge? Yeah. And I almost, every time, and I’m gonna go to you, Steve, as well. So, Dr. Z, it seems to me as though every time I ask a business owner, who’s your competition and what do they charge?

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They’re always unaware. Why is that sir? Well because they didn’t do the homework and and that’s one of the things that you have to look at whenever you’re starting in a business in an environment who’s already there. It’s very difficult to be the first one in you know I mean if you’re first one in God bless you that’s awesome by the way you know. Hey I came up with this new fizzy drink called, I’m going to call it a soda pop. And no one else is doing it and we’ll call it Coke

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and sell it around the world, you know. So it’s very, very seldom that you can be the first one in a product. So you have to do your research. You have to get, you know, back in the day we used to do a phone book. You remember those? The big old yellow?

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I do.

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Do you remember the phone book? I do, actually. It brings back a lot of memories.

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Well, you and I had a lunch at Ruby Tuesdays. Oh, yeah. And I remember you asking me, you said, Clay, how much are you spending on advertising? And I looked at you like I had never heard the question before.

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And I’m like, I’m going to djconnection.com, which by the way, went on to become a very successful company, but at the time we were doing like two or three events a weekend. And I said, I’m not, I’m relying mostly on word of mouth. Yeah.

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And you’re going, buddy, you know, yellow, like advertisement is like the gas pedal for your business. It’s like you have to put, it’s like the oxygen for your business. It’s the gas for your business. It’s the throttle of your growth. And I had never advertised it all.

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I want to maybe go into that idea for a second.

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But the thing about it is now it’s dumbed down. It’s easy. You use this thing I think called Google. Is it Google? No, you’re saying it wrong.

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Is it?

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Yeah, it’s Google.

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Oh, is it Google?

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Yeah, sorry.

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It’s Google. That’s what they call it.

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I hate to correct the Z, but yeah, it’s Goog. And a quick search shows you all your competitors right up front, you know, and then you can look at them and deep dive into their page. You can do a lot of work on them without really, you know, mystery shopping them. That’s the beginning of the mystery shopping is know thy enemy. Know thy, and people go, enemy?

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Yes, business is war. The art of war and the art of business are very closely tied together. And knowing your enemy is step one in the battle plan.

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So again, let’s just talk about it. Step one, action step number one for everybody watching today’s show. Make a list of your top five competitors. You have to do it. So Steve, I’m going to go to you for a second.

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Your company is stevecurrington.com. Anybody can look it up. stevecurrington.com. That’s where you go to learn about Steve. Steve, how long have you been in the mortgage industry?

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20 years.

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20 years.

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Beginner. I’m going to brag on Steve.

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I’m a beginner. See, this is a story I want to brag on Steve. This is hilarious. We had a business conference about 10 years ago-ish, and there was a competitor of Steve’s that came to the conference. And I never work with two competitors.

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I just won’t do it. I never. So I’m not going to work with, like, you know, two optometrists in the same city, two pizzerias in the same town, two mortgage companies. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to do that. And so this guy is in the audience and he’s pretending to be an insurance salesman.

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I don’t know if you remember this story, but he came up to me, Steve, and he’s asking me all sorts of questions. He’s like, I’m thinking about getting into the mortgage game. Not only. Right now I’m in the insurance game, but I’m thinking about getting into the mortgage game. And he’s trying to talk over here because he knows that Steve can kind of hear over

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here. And then Steve looks at me, we make eye contact, it’s one of those Tom Brady to Randy Moss kind of eye contact moves. And I said, Steve, so Steve comes over, I said, do you know this guy?

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And he’s like, yeah, that’s a mortgage guy in town. I go, he said he does insurance. Steve’s like, not true, this guy’s a mortgage guy. I said, what do you want me to do? You want me to tell him to buzz off? Steve said, no, I think it’d be great if you worked with him.

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And I go, really? He goes, oh, because he won’t implement anything. I’ll learn if he’s doing anything well. It’s going to be like, and I go, okay. And so I go, you sure? And Steve’s like, no, sign him up.

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Steve, do you remember this company? And they signed up and four months later they went poof. The Magic Dragon?

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Poof, the Magic Dragon.

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Yeah. This guy would not do any action. Steve said, Steve, he won’t show up to meetings. He won’t do action items. It’s like a way of kicking someone’s ass without them knowing you did it.

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You know what I mean? Yeah, that’s very nice.

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Yeah, he literally, yeah, he sucked anyway. He knew he sucked. So it was just a matter of time before he figured that out. So I’m still kicking his ass too, by the way.

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So again, you have to be your top five competitors. Now, James, you’ve got a list here. So I’m gonna have you and Anthony kind of sharing that mic a little bit today here. So on the, you’ve made a list and we’re going to, this is a fictitious scenario. So we’re not talking, we are not talking about Tulsa and this scenario. Steve, this isn’t even true.

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Steve? This isn’t even an accurate- We’re not talking about Tulsa on today’s show. You get that? So I don’t want you to infer, or you don’t use a hypothesis. What about Bartlesville?

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Don’t use any of this sort of reverse psychology. Don’t hint. Don’t infer. We’re not talking about Tulsa. We are talking about a jewelry store.

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Okay.

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Oh!

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We’re going to- So we’re going to talk about that, but we’re not talking about Tulsa. We’re talking about other cities.

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Now we’re talking.

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Okay.

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You say it right, jury. So I want you to do, is I want you James, I want you to kind of change the names as you can, okay? So that way we’re able to discuss this without talking about any real scenario, okay? Yeah. So we have decided on behalf of this potential client, we’re going to mystery shop the jewelry

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stores in that market to find out who’s the best.

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I love this.

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Who’s losing? Who’s winning? So it’s kind of like this is real research we’re doing on behalf of real people, but we’re just going to change the scenario. Change the name. So the name of this city moving forward is not going to be Tulsa.

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It’s going to be Tuscaloosa. Tuscaloosa.

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Tuscaloosa.

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Oh, start with T, so that could be a little squirrely there. A little squirrely. We’re just going to keep in mind it’s not Tulsa. It’s Tulsa. It’s Tuscaloosa.

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Tuscaloosa.

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See, that right there, we got to keep that top one. Okay, so James. I got you, I correct. So you went out to Tuscaloosa.

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Yes.

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And how many jewelry stores did you go in Tuscaloosa? How many did you go to?

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I went to six different jewelry stores.

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In Tuscaloosa.

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And how did you know to go to those six?

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I went to Google and I…

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Whoa.

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Yep.

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Okay.

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Oh, there we go.

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Okay, so you went to those.

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Now, let’s talk about…

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Oh, you didn’t go to Yahoo?

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I did not go to Yahoo.

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OK, now, step number one, make a list of your top five competitors. We did that. Now, step number two is you want to engage with the competitors. Now, what does that mean?

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If it’s a plumbing company, you would call all the competitors. If it is a haircut chain, you would go into the stores and call them. If it’s a jewelry store in Tuscaloosa, which is not near Tulsa. So James, you actually drove out there, you went to them, tell us about it.

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I did. And so, I wasn’t really impressed with any of the store fronts actually, but I saw some really ugly ones that I didn’t like at all. And the main thing that I noticed is the best one that I liked, we’ll call it Pee Wee Herman’s Jewelry, the glass cases, the case that they kept all the jewelry in, it was fully glass all around and it had bright lights shining on the diamonds so that you could see the

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brilliance of the diamonds. You need that brilliance. Now what I do here because we are talking about Tuscaloosa, okay, so let me just give an example. If I was talking about Steve and in this particular situation there, you would change his name to Bede. OK? So that way, we kind of have an idea of what you’re talking about.

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But if you can replace everyone’s name with a different kind of name, that way we can keep track. But it’s somewhat similar for Tuscaloosa. That way it’s similar, but not specifically the same. Thank you. Is that what you’re saying?

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We don’t want to put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable, because that gets weird. OK. So you went to five.

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Yes.

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And of those five, was there one that emerged to you as the big kahuna that you could brag on for Dr. Zellmer? Just so you can kind of hear the game. Well, I’ve got a top two.

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Top two?

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Really? Oh, wow. Yeah, I’ve got W. Mavid and then Marids. Oh, wow.

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Okay, all right.

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All right, so you went to… So those are your top two. And tell us why you liked them. That was, by the way, very good code language, yeah?

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Well, I really liked, like I said, the glass case with the lights on it. I thought that was really impressive to see the shiny sparkles of the diamonds. I figured everyone likes diamonds because they sparkle and that’s really why. And so some of the other ones, they didn’t really have nice glass cases. They’re a little bit dirty, but these had nice clear glass cases with the light shining on them. And then there was candy on the desk. And then one thing I really liked about Marid’s was that they had a custom design studio. So if you’re a guy or girl and you’re looking for wedding bands, you could go in there and you could choose your

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band as well as you could choose the centerpiece on the band and you could kind of mix and match the rock and the band.

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So I’m making a list here of what you liked. So you’re saying the one, the custom design studio, that was a wow to you?

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That was a wow.

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Now what was the other one you liked? What did you like about the other one?

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I just really liked their glass cases.

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Their fixtures.

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The fixtures. OK, the fixtures mattered to you, the display. Now, Z, let’s go back to optometry for a second. You’re located there right next to the mall, Tulsa’s most relevant mall, or Oklahoma’s most relevant mall. It would be a Simon property.

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It’s called Woodland Hills Mall. It’s been out there forever. And they just added a Shiels right in front of your store. I drove by there, I took my wife, or I took my kids, because my wife was at a cheer tournament, I took my kids to the seafood restaurant

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called Juicy’s nearby there. Oh yeah, Juicy’s. That place was, that place was packed. Like I’m serious, like right in front of your parking lot, I’m sure you’re getting people who are coming to Shields parking in your parking lot now.

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Yeah, they wander into my place wondering if we have Ferris wheel. So I’m like, will we go have a Ferris wheel yet? Has it picked up your traffic? I mean, are you getting more people driving by?

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Yeah, this is a busy time of the year anyway, but I think it doesn’t, it doesn’t hurt.

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Dr. Z creates the traffic. But I mean, are you, are you, you, I mean,

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Shills is happy that I’m creating traffic for them. Shills is happy that they come to my office going, oh my God, there’s a Shills there. They walk out and they’re like, oh my God, I can see. And they go buy Shills. They go buy 10 shotguns and, um. So let’s recap this real quick. I wanna make sure we’re getting this.

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So Dr. Z, step one, you make a list of your top five competitors.

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Bingo.

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I think that, again, I’m being real for someone watching today’s show. I have yet to have a client, I mean this, who’s actually done these steps before guiding them. I’ve never met a client and they’re like,

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oh, I’ve already done that. So they usually have like, they know their top one, maybe top two, but have you really made a list of your top five.

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One question I would ask, we kind of skipped a little segment in there. Did you physically call them or did you just walk in? Did you make any phone calls using the phone?

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Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

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No, I drove there and walked right in.

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See, now that’s the difference with kids these days. My generation, you kind of pre-judge if you will because you know we’re all very judgy judgy. We try not to be. We’re not supposed to be but yet we are. So that would have been interesting to go back now and to call and just see how they handle a phone

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call and how they handle that hot lead. I think I might have audio of the actual call. I think James might be underselling. Let me see if this is the right call. He didn’t make a call. Well, I don’t know. It could be a different call. We have a call recording system at the office. It may be a very similar call. Let me play the call. See if this is the right call. Well, he made a call. James said he didn’t make, but it could have been

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something. Maybe Jack can make a call. James Chapman speaking. Is this Yaganich? Sure is. Listen, my name is Roy D. Mercer. I got a bone to pick with you. What? My boy Raymond was down there about a month ago. He’s a senior in high school and he wanted to sign up for the Navy and you told him he’s too scrawny and needed to get too scrawny and he come home and he charged up about $200 worth of dumbbells and about $100 worth of protein powder. And that ain’t the worst of it. He’s in there trying to get them dumbbells put together, and his little pet hamster,

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Liberace, got loose and was down on the floor. It ain’t funny. He dropped a 20-pound weight on him and he squirted. Poor Liberace. Poor little Liberace. It ain’t funny.

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Okay, so that was not the call. My bad. Sorry, wrong call. So, okay, so you didn’t call me, you went to them.

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I did go to them.

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Now, this is what Z said is so powerful. It’s a powerful teaching moment. Again, because you have to think like your ideal and likely buyer. Now, Steve, let’s switch to the mortgage industry for a second. I’m not going to mention the names of the people. I’m going to change their names a little bit. But there was a friend we met, James, I’ll change his name. We’ll call him Heen Joe.

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Heen Joe, an Asian friend of ours from the Reawakened Tour. And Heen Joe, he reaches out to me and says, hey, I’ve reached out to your buddy Steve and I’m going to go with him. I like him. And I said, do you call other people? He said, oh yeah, I call multiple mortgage companies.

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Now again, even though he had asked me, who do you recommend? And I told him you, he said to me, he called all the companies. Steve, even though I recommended it, even though he came to me and said, hey, who do you recommend for mortgages? Even though I told him you, why did he go to somebody else? One more rhetorical question for you and then we’ll go to you. In our office, all the time people come to me and they say, Clay, who should I use for

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my mortgage? And I’ve told every single member of our team, I’ve said, hey, Steve Currington is a great client, I think you should go with him. Now I go, well, is there somebody else you’d recommend too? Because I always want to get two options. And they always end up going with you, but why is it that a person with a sound mind is probably going to go to two jewelry stores, two mortgage

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companies, two car dealerships. Why is that, Steve? I think it’s the same reason if you go to the doctor and he says you have cancer and you have eight days to live that you probably go to a different doctor because, you know, people trust your, yeah, people trust your referral, but at the same time, they don’t want to get got, right?

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So they’re always looking for like, is there a backup that reinforces that this is great. Which actually, in my opinion, if you’re doing business right, it’s really good for that to happen. Because they get to go experience subpar service compared to what you can deliver, and then it just drives them right back to you. So if I had a jewelry store and I was in Tuscaloosa, then I’d be glad for them to go to the Mavids,

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you know, or whatever it’s called, or Marids, to check it out because if I’m really over delivering in my store, it should just raise me up higher because now they’ve seen the competition. So let’s do it again. Let’s go back to it again. I’m making sure we’re getting all seven of these steps here. So step number one, you’ve got to make a list of your top five competitors.

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Somebody out there watching today’s show, you’ve got to do it. Step number two, you’ve got to engage with your competitors. You’ve got to engage. Now I want to go to Anthony real quick here because Anthony, you just graduated from some kind of a Bible school of sorts. Can you tell us what the Bible school you graduated from or what you went to?

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So it was John 3, 16’s Refuge. So for most guys, it is a recovery program. But for me, it was a place for me to be, to be in position when time came for me to be here.

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Also, the church that I’m at, and I just came because God told me to come to Tulsa, and

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that’s where he wanted me to go.

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How long did you have to engage with this organization before you thought this is a good fit for you to invest your time and to take this very detailed Bible training course?

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Actually before I actually went there, I got the direction from God that, hey, this is where I wanted to be, so I had to get over myself and actually submit my will to His

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and say, okay, I’m going to give up.

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Did you call them?

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Did you visit them? Um, actually I was at, um, their shelter, which they have a shelter for guys who just want to stay and do what they do. And I met a coach on the 16th day that I was there and he told me more about it.

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And so you engaged with a person. Yes, sir. And then ultimately that’s what made the decision. Like, or was it, did you, did engaging with somebody make the deal more obvious to you?

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I had actually met one of the students before, and like two days before, and then he came

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and we had a conversation and I asked him, what do I have to give up?

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But the website itself didn’t convert you. Like you didn’t just take action because of the website. No, sir. I’m trying to communicate this idea because I think a lot of times people, they build a great optometry website or a great mortgage website and they think, oh, it’s so good it’ll sell itself. But ultimately, whoever answers that phone, whoever

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greets you at the door, that has a big impact on the actual level of transactions that are done. Z, can you pontificate about that? Because I think people miss that part. Yeah, I mean, it really boils down to your website

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gives you the golden look.

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It is.

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And the golden look is the opportunity. So they’re going to go through the top five, top six, top seven, whatever, however many are in that category. And they’re going to maybe do a quick, quick once over on the website, and then maybe call three of them. And due to all that, that gives you the golden look.

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Not the business, not the business, but the golden look. And that means they’re going to walk into your facility and give you the opportunity to get your money for what you sell on them.

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Now you go back to mortgages, Steve, I find that in your business, speed is quality, quality is speed. Speed is quality, quality is speed. I just had the same conversation today with a colleague and a friend of yours in the insurance business. I was telling him, quality is speed, speed is quality.

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And I can’t have that conversation enough. Speed is quality, quality is speed. I’m just saying, hey, it’s wonderful if you’re getting leads, but how quickly are you responding to the lead? Are you calling the lead? Speed is quality, quality is speed.

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That’s how people, that’s how the consumer perceives it. Steve, you guys call people back within, what, an hour at SteveCarington.com?

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We just answer the phone. I mean, what is that?

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Oh my gosh. I don’t have to call them back.

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Is that legal?

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Is it ethical?

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Oh my gosh.

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I had someone text me this morning and I read whatever they sent. I forgot to reply and I said, hey, sorry, I read that. That’s crazy. Some guy put 300,000 miles on a Lamborghini Murcielago. And he goes, I hope you were calling your leads. Because he’s got the, your leads won’t call yourself book.

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You know, so it’s great. But yeah, I answer my phone. I mean, that’s the biggest, just.

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Oh, that’s a holy, that’s a. That first look that you get. Wow.

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That’s wow, that’s, that’s incredible. So I’m just, I’m hoping that somebody out there is engaging with this. I’m going to go back to you, James, here. So again, step one, let’s recap. You make a list of your top five competitors. If someone says, why are you so repetitive?

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I’m so repetitive because I think in our world, there are so many podcasts and broadcasts that generally talk about things from a broad perspective. I’m trying to dial in today.

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Step by step.

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Just linear. Here we go. Step number two, engage with your competitors. Call them, visit them. Back to you, James. You went, you engaged.

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This week, you’ll call these companies in Tuscaloosa, but you’ve already gone to them physically. Yes. And when you went to the competitors, was there anybody that stood out to you where you’d say, definitely would buy from that person, or anybody who you thought, hard pass, not buying from them? Yeah, so when I went to Marid’s, first of all, the lady that greeted me there, she was

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one of the, just a very nice, very feminine person, and she really was interested in telling you about diamonds, and telling you about jewelry, and she was just so passionate about it and she was like genuinely interested in this fake wedding that I was having. Yeah, what was your cover? You were a groom to be. I’m a groom to be in this scenario. That’s your fake cover. Yeah, yeah. That’s your fake cover. But the thing is if James continues

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being the kind of guy he is, soon he will be a groom to be. You see what I’m saying? It’s like he’s playing the part. He’s acting the part.

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He’s prophesying.

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He’s prophesying.

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He’s prophesying. Okay, so step number two, you engage with the competitors. Step three, make a list of what your competitors do well. So I’ve written down here, we’ve got the incredible fixtures. Do you have photos of these, James? I do, and they’re on the document.

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Okay, so Dr. Zellner can see that document? Yes. Does he, do you have the document in front of you?

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How did you scroll around and get the pictures? I mean, it’s kind of odd just to go around and take pictures of a video. So it was your way here again. What was your cover?

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I just started slinging it. I was like, you know, I’m going to spray and pray and I’m just going to take pictures. And if anyone thinks it’s weird, I’ll play dumb or numb.

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Oh, wow.

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OK, your generation, that’s that’s kind of really well, that’s going to that’s kind of obvious. I mean, they take pictures of their their omelets and for breakfast. So this is not weird.

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You’ve got to go. I do. And you said incredible fixtures, incredible design studio. Yes. Now I want to talk, this room right here, the room we’re in, the studio room, if it’s possible, Natalie, if you could kind of walk around the room real quick, kind of film around.

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This room approximately is what we’d say maybe 15 feet wide, Z, I think maybe 15 feet wide-ish. Yeah. And then maybe 20 feet, 15 feet long, maybe 15 by 15. Yeah, it might be more like closer to 20 by 30.

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OK, but was the jewelry store bigger than this room? They were bigger than this room. But one thing I did like about Marid’s and another one of the stores is that they actually had a room within the room. It was glass.

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And within there, they had the jewelers working on different jewelry. They’re live, and they’re wearing their white suit. Like they’re a… Impressive. Yeah, it was pretty impressive.

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They got their glasses on.

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When I went, there was a jewelry store I worked with back in the day. And my wife and I, we were going to New York at the time. And so I thought, I’m going to go to every jewelry store there. And I went also to San Diego, because we were just happened to be where we were traveling at that time. And I went to every jewelry store while we were on this trip.

2
And I noticed that the footprint of those stores was about the size of this room. Because the real estate expenses were so high, but they were really nice. And so my question I have for you is if you walked in and the store was this big in Tuscaloosa that was built out to win here, would it need to be bigger than this room if it wasn’t a good location to wow you or not? Would you care?

13
Does it matter? I wasn’t really impressed or not impressed with the way that the insides were. I mean, one of them had a really nice inside, and it did look good. But my main focus when I was in there, because I was looking at diamonds and jewelry,

13
it was, how does it look inside the glass? And then one thing I found that I really liked was that inside the glass, they had the prices of the actual jewelry, what it is total, as well as what it would be financed.

2
And then one of the stores…

52
Yes.

2
Wait a minute. Hey now, hey now. So I’m gonna make sure on step three, we kind of have to unpack. There’s different parts under step three, okay? And I tell all my clients this. You got to make a checklist for the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the experience. Let’s try that again. Sights, sounds, smells, experience. So the sights, we just talked about that. The sounds, was there music playing?

13
There was music playing.

2
What kind of song was playing?

51
It was like…

24
Rock?

13
No, it was like old school classic rock.

2
Okay, old school classic rock was it? Did anybody in particular a song it was playing?

13
I can’t remember the song.

16
California Love?

13
It was like Guns N’ Roses or something.

2
Are you serious?

51
Yeah.

2
That’s all I’m asking. See, you like going to nice restaurants. Here’s what I’m saying is if you go to like In The Raw, the nice sushi restaurant in town, you walk in, it’s a… You know, there’s certain restaurants that have a certain up-tempo atmosphere. Other ones where they’re not intentional.

2
Did it feel intentional or did it feel random?

13
It could have went both ways. Maybe a little bit intentional. There was one that didn’t have any music. Did it feel like this?

11
A little bit. Did it feel like this?

13
It felt good.

2
Are you saying, was it Guns N’ Roses?

13
I think so. It felt good when I was in there looking at it. I was eating the candy off the countertops, looking at some knives. Was it like a slower Guns N’ Roses, kind of fast-treating.

2
Help me out here, I need to know this.

16
Oh, that was it. I bet that’s it.

13
Was this? It wasn’t this, but it was like this. It was that same genre.

2
What I’m saying is because I, very few businesses are intentional about the beats per minute or the music. Very, but see if you go into a spa, you’ve been to a Miami spa, Miami salon, you’ve been to an Aruba salon. Oh yeah.

2
They’re intentional. Very intentional in the music they play. It’s all very calming, very soothing. I don’t want to punch anybody right now.

7
And so why would we not be intentional in the jewelry space, right?

2
I’m encouraging everybody to think of it. So sights, sounds, smells. Did it smell a certain way? None of them really had a good smell to it. I was surprised by that.

13
There wasn’t anything that I was like, wow, that smells good. Anthony, back to you real quick. Have you ever had a roommate that smelled like cheese?

2
Anthony, have you ever had a roommate that just had a smell that wasn’t awesome? Have you ever had a roommate in your life where you’re going, you know, there’s something that smells not terrific right now, and it’s you. Has that ever happened? No, most definitely. Now, this is real.

2
I want to ask you, Z, I want to ask you the same question, Steve. Have you ever had to tell an employee they don’t smell awesome? Now, let me just, I’m going to share my story. This is a true story. We had an employee in the call center like six feet that way. We’ll call it a few years back, six feet away from me behind the glass here.

2
And I’m going, oh wow. That’s a commitment to that smell. And I’m sure true story. I talked to the young guy. I said, hey, privately one-on-one. I said, hey, I don’t know if you’re aware, but there’s a certain aroma that you’re putting

2
out there. And he’s like, I hadn’t showered in a while. And a while ago, a couple of days, we’re talking like a week. I just, I probably should shower. I go, yeah.

2
But I mean, nobody else wanted to say something, but people were like avoiding, they were looking the other way. It’s awkward. It’s awkward. So these are the kinds of things

2
you gotta be intentional about. Is there any particular place, Anthony, you like to eat that smells a certain way?

14
A particular place? I would say a Brahms.

24
And it-

21
Really?

50
Yeah, I was about to say.

2
The hamburger smell, that’s what you like?

21
I don’t necessarily like the hamburger smell, but more so just the ice cream smell.

2
Okay, now Steve, the smell, are you a big smell guy? Does it bother you if you walk into a place and it smells nasty?

49
Yes.

2
Does it freak you out?

11
I just leave.

48
Do you really?

2
Yeah. Most people do too, but people never think about this. Sites, so Elephant in the Room, we have this eucalyptus smell we put out there and people always compliment me. I love the smell in here. What is it? It’s on the checklist. So sights, sounds, smells, James, anything else? The sights, sounds, smells, experience, anything else you want to share about your favorite jewelry stores in Tuscaloosa? Yeah, well, they had the lady that greeted everyone that walks into the store.

2
Her desk was right at the entranceway. So as soon as you walk in there, she’s like, hey, how you doing? Can I get you a water a coffee a soda is there anything that I can help you out with today so door at the entrance yeah like a desk at the entrance they offered you a beverage they did what kind of beverages water soda and coffee water soda coffee hard vodka no okay so water soda I sell more jewelry if they have water yeah yeah

2
water other than other water soda and coffee coffee no see and you ever take your wife out to go get a pedicure? Sure. And they offer beverages at these places. They offer beverages. And so in the jewelry space if someone offered you a wine, would you have been like, get out of here lady? What would have been your thoughts there James? Did anybody offer you wine or was it just

13
water, soda, coffee? There was no wine there and I did go at like noon so maybe if I went at like 4.30pm I’ll have a glass of wine.

2
And granted, you were bringing your own bag. I mean, see, he rolled in with his own brown box. So, Steve, if you went to a jewelry store, they said sights, sounds, smells, and they offered you a water, soda, coffee. Is that impressive to you?

14
Do you care?

2
It is. I mean, it just, to me, running a business, it tells me that they’ve thought about that. A lot of the high-end, like Zeno’s this, you go to Miami, you go to Gucci, you go to Louis Vuitton, they’ll always ask you, do you want some water or do you want soda water? You want water with your $4,000 purse, sir. I mean, $6,000.

2
Yeah, but they’ve actually thought about it and they’ve taken the time to think that people might want something to drink while they’re shopping. Where people rock in uniforms, sights, sounds, smells, where they walk in, a lot of times in the jewelry game, people want to dress up, see, they want to dress up like doctors. I’ve seen that move. I’ve also seen the like, hey, we’re a really cool, we’re a high end sushi bar. We’re going to dress a little bit cooler than the average

2
person because that’s what we are. And they’re going to kind of come at you with that little bit of a cool, like the cool vibe, cool energy. They made a certain uniform they had on theirs. It was just all business professional. And then all the girls were wearing a bunch of jewelry, a bunch of nice jewelry, too. OK, so we got the sights, sounds, smells. Anything else about the sights, the visuals that you could share, the build outs, the decor?

13
Yeah, the decor, it was nice. Your wife would do a great job designing one, Clay. And then also another thing was going back to the finance charge on the actual diamonds. With that, one of the stores had a 5% rewards card. So if you go there and you finance a thousand dollars you’ll get a $50 credit

2
Towards a future purchase now I know this is a little bit radical here But when the price of a diamond the diamond rings you’re looking at the price none of those a fictitious scenario But what was kind of the budget they were suggesting that you should spend? Oh, yeah, what’s gonna suggested budget they throw out at you? It was about two to three months of your salary Wow what did that you know what, they’ve captured that and they’ve stayed true to that.

2
And they all agree on it. They all agree.

7
And it’s total BS.

2
So let’s just say though that you’re making $50,000 a year, so they’re saying, hey, it’s $15,000 or $10,000, I mean, it’s two to three months of salary. They all said the same thing?

13
Right, yep.

2
Well, that’s much more true then, right?

13
And then the strategy is you put the engagement ring on the finance and then you get that 5% back on a future purchase that you could then use to purchase the wedding band or put money down towards the wedding band.

2
Why not? Now let me ask you this here now as far as the financing goes how much were the payments per month? You said this is what it would cost, this is the payment, what kind of a payment term?

13
It was 12 months no interest and then if you went beyond that 12 months, then they said, oh yeah, you have to call the bank and see what the interest rate is if you don’t pay it back in that 12-month period.

2
Now, Steve, can you explain to our listeners, you do mortgages, you don’t do jewelry financing, but can you kind of explain how that works? Because I don’t think a lot of people, back in the day I did some coaching with a furniture store, a very prominent furniture store in Tulsa, and I was just telling the sales guys, just take the customer when they walk in this massive furniture store, get them in there, go to the financing desk and say, hey, we’ve got 0% down today, 12-month financing.

2
We’ll just see how much you get approved for. Then we can take you shopping. And they’re like, what? I’m going, I’m telling you, when you meet a customer, say, you know why you’re shopping today? They say, I’m looking for a mattress.

2
I’m looking for a TV. You go, well, hey, we’ve got a great special right now, 0% financing for 12 months. If you want to see, just we’ll do a quick soft poll to see how much you qualify for. And once you start, Steve, once that customer comes back

2
and we go, excuse me, sir, you’re pre-qualified today to spend $26,000? They almost always spend all of it, Steve. Why? And then how does that even work?

16
Well, it’s the same thing when someone gets a pre-approval for a house. It’s like a check in their hand. And they’re like, I get to go spend this now. Right.

2
But the way the interest works, you don’t pay it in 12 months. Then they lop on all the interest for the whole year. So that’s the idea, is because they’re banking on you not paying it off within that 12 months. This particular company that brought me in, I knew of this company because, it’s kind of a weird scenario, but the wife of the man tasked with managing it was the one who referred me over.

2
Was it Rathus Mothers? It could have been. And so, but I’m over there, and the sales staff didn’t, the sales staff, it seemed like nobody in the sales team recognized that the power of financing. It seemed like the sales people that were doing the top sales, they all understood, see, that if we do financing, that’s where the money’s made.

2
Oh yeah. And the people that weren’t aware of that, it seemed like they were doing no sales. I’m going, guys, look, the company you work for, they’re not even offering the financing. It’s a third party financing solution. They’re going, huh? Huh.

2
And there’s no, and that no, listen, there is another company out there that is officing in your building, okay? And they are- They’ve got money in their pockets waiting to give it away. And as soon as the person buys the furniture, right, the furniture store gets their money minus certain fees, and now the customer owes the money to the finance company. That’s how it works.

44
And they’re like, what?

2
What? Can you kind of explain that a little bit? I’m not asking you to nail down the specific mechanics, but how does

7
third-party financing work, approximately? Very few businesses floor their own loans. So like in my auto auction, we have companies in there that actually would floor the cars for the used car dealers that came in to buy the cars. Now when you get big enough and it’s very profitable, you can start to floor some of your own deals. Yep. And that’s kind of a super move down the road. So let’s say hypothetically,

7
you’re gonna start a jewelry store. Step one, you would have all third party vendors come in that do the loans. And then hopefully you’re making money, a profit. And then down the road, your goal is to maybe say, listen, okay, at this credit score,

7
we’ll take those on ourselves internally. At this credit score, we’ll take these on internally. And then you start doing a finance leg too, and now all of a sudden you are doing what we call the proverbial double dip. The Super Bowl is coming up, so double dip is a big deal coming up soon, you know. And double dipping is…

16
That’s when you like dip it and then you…

2
You dip twice.

7
You dip it again. You dip it again.

2
Now I want to make sure we’re getting this idea here, just so we’re clear. If you’re out there and you’re a business today, and you’re listening to today’s show, and you’re not offering third party financing, what are you doing? Why not?

2
I mean, you got it. If you’re a furniture store listening to today’s show.

16
Well, a lot of those guys will get kickbacks too, from the, which is legal. They’ll get it from the finance company,

7
where they’ll get a $100 back. Most people do, and it’s called a credit card. And that’s like the very low end level of it. This, you know.

2
I’m just telling you, I have worked in the jewelry space quite a bit and this particular brand I’m thinking of that I have worked with for some reason they were not pitching that it wasn’t prominent It wasn’t like front and center I mean it should be a super was it pitched prominently at this point to the place in Tuscaloosa that you went to or the places In Tuscaloosa no none of them actually pitched the finance

13
It was something that I asked about after seeing a sign saying 12 months, no money down, no interest.

2
See, and this is what they need to do. I’m gonna tell everybody out there, if you’re in the jewelry game, this is what you do. You say it’s no money down, 12 months, no money down, no interest. And even if you go into the payments,

2
worst case scenario, it’s 60 payments over a period of five years, and your payment would be X amount a month. And the customer goes, oh. And then at that point, they’re like, well, yeah, sign me up.

2
I mean, can I do five months? Is it ethical to do five months of my salary? Is that okay? I really like her a lot.

7
Yeah. You know, you could put an optional rider on there, in other words, an extra payment for a breakup clause. It’s kind of like, you know, when you go on vacation, you buy the insurance in case, you know, there’s a hurricane or something happens and you can’t cancel. So you have a breakup rider on there.

2
Now, you know, cause I’m gonna tell you what I did with this jewelry store, not related to these examples. Okay. So they were having a hard time getting some commitments. And I said, Hey, you throw in the move that if you buy the engagement ring from us, we’ll actually send a photographer to the proposal.

7
Okay.

2
Oh, we can’t guarantee the photos are going to turn out great. We hope so. Right. Yeah. But if you’re going to propose wherever you’re going to propose, we’re going to send a photographer there to get that reaction when you ask her.

2
Yeah. If she says no, we throw the phone in the woods, we throw the photo away, we don’t talk

47
about it.

2
But if it’s a good photo, think about that photo. And people are like, you guys include that? Yeah. And you know who we got to do it? Other photographers that wanted the referrals. That was just a move.

7
And then they got it because now they got the business.

32
They got the business.

7
They can say, hey, let me do your wedding. Let me do your wedding picture.

2
Let me do your occasion picture.

46
It’s the move.

45
Wow.

7
It’s the move.

2
It’s the move. Now, this particular jewelry store that I coached back in the day, their first location, Steve, I won’t mention the city, it was in a suburb. And it was kind of in a suburb, and it was a decent location. And the signs, there was no signs that made you wonder. The signs were kind of like, they kept saying, I don’t want to make my signs tacky.

2
I don’t want them to be too obvious. And I’m going, well, you’re achieving that. Nobody sees you. Signs and wonders. Did you see any signs when you were driving by? Was it hard to find any of these places there, James,

2
in Tuscaloosa?

13
I didn’t really see any signs that really spoke to me.

26
What the?

13
Yeah, I was disappointed. I was expecting to see a lot. Not even in Jixby? Not even in Jixby.

20
Wow.

2
Spectre Z, why is it that other optometrists, other auto auctions, are always hesitant to put out signs that make people wonder, signs and wonders. Why is it that people are like, well, I don’t wanna be tacky, I don’t wanna be too bold. I don’t, what is that?

7
Well, I’m old school, and this is a true story. So 30 some odd years ago, I’m in school, and practice management is a class you take. And that’s where you learn all your business secret super moves, right? Right.

7
And the professor had three moves.

20
Three moves.

29
Three moves.

25
I’m ready. So we’re all on the edge of our seats.

11
Nice, and he’s never run a business, right?

7
Of course not. Three moves. Here’s what they were. First move is you put a sign on your door as small as you can.

2
You gotta get small.

7
You gotta get small. Squint. Because small shows that they’ve had a kind of work to get to you, and it shows you how important you are. It’s an inverse proportion to how important you are. All right?

7
Wow. On your business card, the more white you have on there, it shows how serious you are

2
as a doctor.

44
That makes sense.

2
If you don’t think about it.

7
I mean, if you just, just more white. Sounds very racist. The third super move was to join the biggest church and be one of the guys that passes out the buckets for the offering. Those were, when I was in school, my three lessons on how to prosper my business.

2
And all the guys that took that advice ended up coming to work for you.

43
Yeah, pretty much.

2
Unbelievable. I encourage everybody, again, so we have these five steps. So step one, you want to make a list of your top five competitors. It’s so important that you do it. Now, step number two, you engage with your competitors. Step number three, make a list of your top competitors and what they do well.

2
Step number four, step number four, this is so important. You need to document your findings in a way that creates a clear comparison chart. Z, a lot of times we get information, but it’s not actionable. It’s information where you have so much, it means nothing.

2
Why do you have to organize the information in a way that actually makes it actionable?

7
Well I’m still very curious as to what song was playing from Guns N’ Roses. And the fact that he didn’t write that down, the fact that he didn’t make note of that, I’m still bothered by that. Because I want to know. Curious minds want to know. I want to know.

2
James, you’ve got to take note of that next time.

13
I will.

2
So you’ve got to organize the information in an actionable way.

7
Now, let me check photos. I mean, he has his documents. He’s got photos. He’s got notes. And those are the things that you build. You build a little portfolio of each of your competitors.

7
And then you go back, as you’re going to say here in a little bit, and you sort through all those.

2
Now, step number five is you want to build a business model that costs you nothing to build. It’s a completely fictitious model. Like, the model you’re making, it’s like, it’s not real. It just exists.

7
Can you make it with Legos? Can you make it with Legos?

42
Yep, definitely.

2
And to give people some traction on this, I mean, this would be like a spreadsheet. Maybe it’s a drawing, it’s a sketch, it’s a conversation, it’s a documentation. But Z, you don’t have to open the business yet. You don’t, I mean, if you’re already in business

2
and you’re doing this, then obviously you’re already in business. But I think some people, Z, they go out there and they take action and they put all this money up before they even think about is this feasible. And Zeke, can you talk about that?

2
Because I think you have to work on these details in your mind and make what might be called a proforma, basically a projection of future financial performance. You’ve got to have some sort of way that you’re documenting what you’re learning and putting it into some sort of model that costs you nothing first. Why do you have to do that part? Well, you’re not going to remember everything, i.e. the Guns and Drones of Song. You’re not going to remember everything. So you

2
have to document, okay? And then when you sit down to try to build a better mousetrap, because that’s what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to build a better mousetrap. Because if you can’t build a better mousetrap, you might look at a different set of businesses to go after, right? Yeah. I mean, they’re going to be better than you at everything. Better cost, better locations, better the way they look, better the way they smell, better beverages when you walk in the door. I mean, it’s an uphill battle.

2
That’s a tough war to pick on, okay? So as you put all these things together, you’re trying to build that better mousetrap. And so you go, okay, location. What did I think was the best location and why? Who’s my most likely buyer? And one of the other things we can do, we’re talking about mystery shopping, your competition.

2
You can also think about, where else is that person shopping and why? In other words, you’ve got to create this model of the person that’s walking in the door more times than not and really think about that person, get in their mind. I know that sounds a little creepy.

2
You got to get in their mind and go, okay, is this person that’s gonna buy there, are they shopping at Whole Foods or are they shopping at Walmart grocery stores? Right. Are they shopping at XYZ or are they shopping at where?

2
And you build a model in your brain of this person that you’re going after and that helps you design a business, which costs nothing at this point, design a business that’s going to be a better mousetrap. And you go, listen, this business has better signage, better location, better

2
fixtures, better music, better smells, better interior design and you know what we’re gonna work on the second half of the show or the next show we’re gonna talk about employees and I’m gonna fast-fire with you about employees so sure hang on your seat about that. So step number six here, step number six okay is we want to create better branding and marketing materials than your competition.

2
It’s so important. See, they just got to be better than your competition. You got to look at it and go, okay, who is my competitor and just objectively is my website better or as good as my competition? Right. That’s a never-ending thing, but let’s recap these things one more time here.

2
So step one, make a list of your top five competitors. Step two, engage with your competitors. Step three, make a list of what your competitors do well. Step number four, organize the information in an actionable format so you can actually do something with it.

2
Step number five, build a business model. Step number six, create better branding and marketing materials than your competition. And step number seven, final step I want to give you before we break, and we’ll come back for part two. This is so important for everybody to grasp this idea.

2
Start with a lean startup. Like, there’s no need to have big overhead if there’s no customers coming in. So you want to start this thing with a lean startup. There’s a book called Lean Startup by Eric Ries. The idea is you want to keep your costs so low when you start. So Steve, now obviously stevecurrington.com, you’re doing a lot of mortgages now. Dr. Z, Dr. Robert Zellner

2
and Associates, drzellner.com. You’re doing a lot of revenue now. But when you first started, Z, you were the one seeing the patients. When you first started, you were the one answering the phone.

7
I had one employee.

2
Can you talk about that, Zeke? I think a lot of people start off with like 17 employees, and now the overhead’s just killing them. Can you talk about why you got to start lean?

7
Yeah, you start small and you grow big. I mean, you think big, but you start small. And you have to do a lot of this thing, a lot of stuff to yourself, you know? And I mean, I was answering phones day one. I was greeting patients day one.

7
I had one employee, and we were just handling it. And then pretty soon, you, through the magic of advertising, through the magic of actually being nice to people, this word of mouth got out there. We, I needed to hire a second one and then a third one and then a fourth one and then a fifth one.

7
And so you let it grow as it needs to grow, but don’t think it’s going to, you know, have like you said, have, I could have started with six employees and I would have been cooked because the cost of that, the cost of those employees, I didn’t have enough businesses to make it work.

2
Another way to look at this is be fruitful, then multiply, or maybe you might tell a customer, you know, rush to revenue. Whatever the mindset is, you have to have it. Nail it, then scale it. Nail it, then scale it. And so what I did with my photography company, and I’ll go to you, Steve, I built a company

2
called Epic Photos back in the day. And I remember I had had this idea, I discussed the idea with myself, I ran the idea, then after myself, I told my wife what I was thinking, and I called a guy by the name of Derek Scott,

2
who’s still a photographer in the Dallas area. I called Derek, I said, Derek, I would like to start a photography company. I know, I have built a very successful DJ company, I’ve never done photography before, and I would just like to pay you 5% of all revenue,

2
and then you can teach my future photographers how to do photography. But I’m gonna go sell it. And he’s like, you’re gonna sell photography, but you’ve never done photos? I go, well, I’m gonna set up a bridal show booth,

2
and I’m gonna say your bridals or engagements are free, and then we’re doing the shoots for free, right? And so the photographers that we’re gonna send out to do the bridals or engagements, if they’re not good, they’ll learn real quickly, because you’re gonna teach them.

2
And he goes, got it. So I’ll be like the lead photographer, they’ll be my assistant, and I say, yeah, and I’ll book them all on Saturday. So essentially, you’re working one day a week, you’re making all that money.

2
He goes, Saturday won’t work for me, I do weddings. What about Thursdays? We figured out a schedule that worked. But anyways, we were at the bridal show and brides are like, so epic photography, what do you guys charge?

2
I don’t own the company, I haven’t owned it like 10 years. But I said, well, we will be at any competitor’s price and your bridals or engagements are free so you can try it before you buy it. And I mean, it was wild. Brides were going, yeah, we’ll sign up for that.

2
And we also have a chance to win a dream vacation to Hawaii if you sign up. Some brides are like, wait a minute, the bridal’s engagements are free, bridal’s or engagements are free. I get a chance to win a trip to Hawaii just for trying it and you’ll beat any competitor’s price. What’s the catch? And I’m going, oh, there’s no catch. You just, if you’re happy, hopefully you’ll hire us. And they go, okay. And we went out there and we jacked up some weddings. I mean, we did some terrible engagements, some terrible bridals.

2
Because Derek was mentoring up our photographers and he was doing a great job and he was taking the lead photos, but the guy he was training all of a sudden was in a situation where maybe he had to be the lead for the bridal shoot. He thought he would be the number two. And again, they’re not paying anything. So the ethics of it, we weren’t paying anything.

2
The bride wasn’t paying anything, but the photographer would call me and go, I don’t know how to turn my camera to the setting. It’s too dark out here.

41
Or it’s too light.

2
And it was kind of that awkward deal. But we learned real quickly. And the brides, they weren’t paying anything. And it took us probably three or four weekends of some really rough bridals or engagements to make a checklist for everything. And so we didn’t actually hire, we didn’t actually have hardly any overhead at all until

2
we were actually bringing in revenue. And I think every business owner, the challenge I would have for you, Steve, if you’re out there listening today, before you open a mortgage company or before you open a dentistry or a law firm or whatever, is can you get a demand of customers that are calling you and reaching out to you before you have a lot of overhead? Steve, can you talk to the listeners out there about why you choose to keep your team lean? Yeah. I think to your point

2
and to what Z was saying earlier, the beauty of that is that you’re working in the business, and you’re the one that’s gonna build a lot of those systems that other people are going to complete later. And so if you haven’t been there doing it,

2
and you hired 19 people to start, then you’re really out of touch with what’s going on on the daily. And for my business, that’s what I did. I’m working in it every day. And until you get to that point where

2
you can step back a little bit, and you’ve hired this person to handle this, and this person to handle that, you at least, like I can step into any job, just like ZCAN, right? Into any job in my company, I can step in and handle it

2
because I set the processes up, I set the systems up. I did everything for that. And, but back to the reason why it’s lean is because you just don’t need as many people as some people think, you know? Right.

2
More bodies doesn’t necessarily mean more revenue and more bodies doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. It’s more people to manage. There are certainly different schools of thought on that. There are some guys that have massive teams. I choose to keep my production really high and I build a team around my production.

2
Some guys like to go hire 15 or 20 loan originators that close two or three loans a month. They manage 15 guys instead of just closing loans themselves. What we’ll do right now is- Hold on, hold on one second. I have a master’s thesis super move

7
to put on Mystery Shopping.

2
I got it, I’m ready.

7
Before we’re wrapping that up. This will be secret move number eight.

2
Number move number eight, secret move number eight. Here we go.

7
Secret move number eight is this. Is find a business that’s doing very well,

40
kicking it.

7
Kicking it. That’s in your category. So we were doing jewelry stores and we’re going to open one up at Tuscaloosa. So maybe we go to Birmingham or we go to Atlanta or we go to some other city and we find one that’s really killing it and we befriend them and we say, a lot of times guys that are doing really well want to kind of brag on their store a little bit.

7
What are your super moves? What did you find that worked for you? What did you find that didn’t work for you? And you go to school and say, can I buy you, can I pay you $100 to buy you lunch? Can I sit down and buy you dinner

7
and pick your brain for a minute, you know? And a lot of guys that are successful see that as a compliment. And you’re like, I wanna do what you’re doing over here. I’m not gonna compete against you, sir. And the super move is you find someone that’s doing it well,

7
and then you pick their brain. And I’ll tell you what, because we know in business, you learn through mentorship or mistakes.

2
That’s true.

7
And so not only now have you figured out what your competition’s doing, but you’ve gone to another area, and you’ve figured out what they’re doing, and you’ve kind of deep-dived kind of behind the curtains. Right. Because you don’t want to go behind the curtains with the guys in Tuscaloosa that you’re mystery

2
shopping because that’s just kind of weird. Yeah. And I again, I the move that you’re talking about, I’ve seen that countless times. And I think about famous examples like a Quick Trip gas stations. There you go. They’re very successful now, but people don’t know this.

2
But the founder of Quick Trip, he actually reached out to the founder of a competitor based in Oklahoma City. And they had a gentleman’s agreement that Quick Trip would never go into Oklahoma City as long as the founder of Quick Trip was alive. And that agreement was honored during the entire lifetime of the founder of Chester Kajo.

2
Chester Kajo started Quick Trip and that’s how he got, and they became the Oklahoma City gas station chain owner. He and Chester Kajo became like best friends. And they shared their super moves. They did. 7-Eleven was the Brown family, I

2
believe. Yeah, and they just agreed, hey, we’re not going to compete, but we’re going to share ideas. And at the time, 7-Eleven was way ahead of Quick Trip. And so they were more on the giving end of the advice. But then over time, Quick Trip became a massive juggernaut and those two became the best of friends. It’s a great move. Yeah, it is a move. It’s a super move. Number eight. So that’s a master’s class. Now, for anybody out there, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take a brief break.

2
We’re going to come back after the break, and then we’re going to go into the employee side of things.

7
Oh, I’ve got a lot of good questions for you.

2
We’ll come back here. It’ll seem like seconds for the listeners, but for everybody out there who’s not watching online, we’ll take about a 10-minute break here. We’re going to recalibrate. We’ll load all the video footage, and we’ll come back here for part two of today’s show on Mystery Shopping 101.

9
Hi, this is Ricky with Axle Service Plumbing. So I just want to thank Thrive 15 for the great job that they’re doing.

2
Well, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we have a two-for-one special here for you. First off, if you’re looking for a service provider, if you’re saying, wow, I am looking for a plumbing company I can trust, you may just find the best plumbing solution you’ve ever heard of.

2
And if you’re looking to grow your business, you may also learn some pro tips on how to grow a successful company. Ricky Hudson, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

22
Hey, thanks, Clay.

9
Doing great.

2
Hey, well, first off, full disclosure, we use you guys often to do plumbing for our businesses and we’re super happy to hire you guys. You guys do a phenomenal job. But switching gears for a second, how did you guys at actsofserviceplumbing.com, how did you guys first come in contact with us? Do you remember that?

9
Yeah, it was my brother-in-law. He had a window glass company and he had told me about you all and said that you were a great company to work with and that he had gained quite a bit of traction just working with you guys.

2
Now I wanted to ask you because my memory doesn’t fare me super well, but I think when we first started working with you, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you guys hadn’t really generated leads online previously. I think you guys were kind of in that pre-online lead flow. I think that’s kind of where you were before you reached out to us. Is that accurate or am I getting that wrong?

9
Yeah. That’s pretty accurate. We had a website, but it wasn’t very good and we weren’t doing any really a lot of Google reviews or doing any Google ads or anything so we were just kind of floating.

2
And I believe that you know you I think you first came to a business conference is that kind of the first interaction you and I had together was I think you came to one of our workshops? Yes sir, that is correct. And how would you describe, I mean people sometimes come to the workshops because we have you know somebody like the former CMO of Harley Davidson shows up and you know people get a chance to learn from Ken Schmidt how to turn around a company or they might show up

2
because Tim Tebow is there and they want to learn about the right mindset or they might see an Eric Trump in attendance and they want to learn about the Trump approach to business or Robert Kiyosaki from Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and they want to learn his perspective. How would you describe the experience of attending an in-person workshop?

9
I like it because it’s kind of an intimate setting and you get to meet the speakers. You go up and talk to them. They’re very friendly. They’re open to questions. And I’ve never been to any, really, anything like it before. And getting to meet people and there was the one guy that came

9
up with the fire gun invention, and we were able to get on the ground with him and invest in his project and just being able to sit there and interact with the other attendees and see how they’re doing. And I built a lot of good relationships over the years just going to the seminars and meeting different people. And I even met my chiropractor there, Brett Caswell, and he’s still my chiropractor, so I’ve made a lot of good connections there.

2
And I think you guys met Grillblazer, the founder of Grillblazer.com, Bob Healy. I think you met him before he even launched his product. I mean, he’s gone on to be super successful. I think you were at the first one where he was bringing his prototype to the conference. Was that right?

9
Yes, and I got one.

2
Oh, so you’re one of the original guys.

9
I bought one of his first ones.

2
Yeah, that’s awesome. Now, okay, so now I want to ask you this here. As far as the plumbing service, tell us about all the services that you guys provide at actsofserviceplumbing.com.

9
We do anything from residential plumbing to replacing garbage disposals, faucets, hot water tanks, tankless units, work on sprinkler systems, anything around the house we can work on. We can fix it or replace it. We also work with commercial companies. We do all of Hideaway Pizza’s plumbing for them. in several tankless systems for their commercial buildings,

9
work for several local restaurants. So you guys do plumbing of all kinds,

2
and I believe your sons work with you today, right? It’s a family business? Yes, I have two of my sons that are in the business with me

9
and that’s going really good. We have a exit strategy already designed to where when I hit a certain time, then they’re going to take over the company and it’ll keep going.

2
Now again, full disclosure, we do utilize your plumbing services from time to time and we’re super happy with the services there. Could you talk about the impact that initial business coaching was able to make on your business for anybody out there that is, you know, we always talk to people that are plumbers and doctors and dentists and they’re like, hey, you know, what kind of impact did the conference in conjunction with the coaching make on your

2
business?

9
It made a tremendous amount of impact because we didn’t really know like the impact of getting the Google reviews until we had come to one of your conferences and started interacting with the coach. We didn’t really know the importance of having a really great website. We had someone just design it and it was just out there. And when we came with you guys, you guys re-did it for us, changed the whole look of the webpage and actually started kind of monitoring it for us to make sure it was always running and running good. We also didn’t know about looking at our numbers and how to really dive into the numbers until we started working with the coaches.

9
We found out how to look, see if we’re profitable, see if we’re making the right changes or not. And then just how to do the interviews. We were doing just individual interviews and then we went to group interviews and that was just a big change for the company. We instead of wasting our time just doing one individual person at a time, we just bring in a whole group of people, sort through them real quick, and pick two or three

9
that we wanted to follow up with. And that just really helped us to save a lot of time. And then after we had been with you several years, I was actually able to take two and a half weeks off and go with my wife on a nice belated honeymoon that we never really got to have, and go down to Costa Rica and spend two and a half weeks down there, and the company ran while I was

9
gone. And that was all because of what we learned from you all.

2
Now drilling into that a little bit here with the limited time we have, and again I encourage everybody if you’re in the Tulsa area and you’re looking for a plumbing service you can trust, you know one of the great things about the conference is we meet people, most of the clients we work with are not in Tulsa, you know, but occasionally we get to meet people like you that are in Tulsa and we get an opportunity to use your services at actsofserviceplumbing.com, great website, actsofserviceplumbing.com,

2
great company there. You know, having a weekly meeting, I think that is a super important thing because I think a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, we’re so busy, we’re so perpetually bombarded with urgent demands. Ricky, we have so many things that are urgent upon us. We’re always doing a job, we’re always processing an invoice, we’re always calling somebody back.

2
Could you talk about just the importance of having that weekly meeting and then really drilling down and developing those new habits and those new routines, just that weekly meeting and drilling down and developing those habits and routines?

9
Yes. Yes, just having that face-to-face conversation once a week, it helps keep you accountable and helps keep you on track because they’re going to give you homework to do. They’re going to say, okay, I need you to do this. I need you to look at your numbers, look at, you know, how you’re doing.

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Are you increasing your profits or are you going down?

9
And just having that accountability has made a tremendous impact. It helped us develop different aspects of the company, who’s gonna be in charge of what, because as an owner, you tend to want to just do everything, wear all the hats.

9
And eventually you have to just get to the point where you say, okay, you take care of this, Michael, Casey, you take care of this, and I’m trusting you guys. And we set up systems through the whole process of how things should be done so that we’re not just throwing rocks in the river and hoping, you know, we hit the right mark. We just drilled it down to where this is our goals, this is where we want to be at in six months, a year, five years and help us set those goals.

9
And then things have just been so smooth since we started working with the business coach. And it has made a difference in my life and it’s made a difference in my kids’ lives because they feel comfortable now as well to be able to take that company over

9
and continue to run it for the next generation.

2
And looking at the numbers, and I know you’ve done a lot of changes, a lot of updates have been made between the time I first met you at that business conference where you met Bob Healy, the founder of the Grill Gun, and Bob’s gone on now to sell. It’s incredible. Bob now has a multi-million dollar company.

2
His company, GrillBlazer.com, is now a multi-million dollar brand, and he came to that conference with that very first prototype. And I know you guys have never stopped improving the business. How would you describe where you’re at now versus where you were when we first met at that conference?

9
We were sitting, you know, financially, I think we were sitting around $400,000. And this last year, we did $1.2 million. So, the company has continued to grow and increase. We’ve set to where we have set up the bar really high with our guys to where they have to meet a certain standard. Another thing that they had taught us about was production pay, you know, paying them based on how they’re performing and not just getting them an hourly dollar a month, and they have no motivation to increase. And so that was,

9
it really helped us to set a standard for our own team so that they’re reaching higher and higher all the time trying to get to that next level so they can get a pay increase and be a better provider for their families.

2
Now we’re off to a good start here in February of this year and you guys are rocking and rolling and pretty much everyone out there in the Tulsa area that’s looking for a plumber they can trust. In the closing a couple minutes we have here, could you tell us about your service and what makes your plumbing service different than your competition because again somebody

2
right now they’re probably needing a plumber. We’ll be calling you about a renovation we’re doing that’s actsofserviceplumbing.com. What separates acts of service plumbing dot com from the great competition that you have in the Tulsa Oklahoma area? One of the things we do is we give amazing warranties whenever we do work.

9
And we also give up front pricing before we ever pick up a wrench. The customer is not going to be surprised if things don’t go the way we thought they were and it takes us a little longer. We’re not going to charge them extra. We gave them the price up front. That’s what it is.

9
We lock it in. They don’t have to worry about that price ever going up. We put on shoe covers. We put down protective material on the floors to protect their house, take care of it like it’s our own. We stand behind our work so that if something does go wrong, they know that we’re going to take care of it.

9
And we always send them a text message on the way so they know exactly when we’re heading that way so they don’t have to wonder, is this guy ever going to show up or not.

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We keep our word.

9
We’re there on time and provide great outstanding service. And all of our guys have been there around four years, so we have great stability with our guys. And if somebody wants the same technician, they can always ask for the same guy. They’ll get the same guy and build a good rapport with them.

9
And we use the best materials on the market. We don’t get cheap stuff. We use the best stuff so that they’re getting the best and you can get a great warranty whenever we do any repairs or installs for them.

2
Well, final question I have here for you. You know, again, most of our listeners are not in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A lot of our listeners will probably run into you at our next in-person workshop. They might see you at the workshop, but for anybody who won’t get a chance to shake your hand or see you in person, how would be, I guess, the best 30 or 60 second way to describe the impact that hiring a business coach had on your business?

9
Well, like I said before, it was just life changing because when you try to do things on your own, you’re not always seeing the big picture. Sometimes you get a narrow vision and you get so many fires, you’re trying to put out buyers that you don’t realize, okay, I need to be working on the business, not in the business. And you have to get to that point where you can finally turn part of it over to either

9
some of your sons or daughters, if they’re working with you, or some of the employees you trust. You have to get to that point where you just say, okay, I need to be doing the $1,000 an hour job and let them do the $100 an hour job. And that was just a big changer for me that made such a difference. And I would recommend coaching to anybody out there that is thinking about growing their

9
company and getting better and more proficient and eventually wants to get to a point where you could step away for a month if you wanted to and the company is going to run without you being there.

2
Well, I appreciate you so much for carving out time for us today, and I can’t wait to see you at our next in-person workshop. And again, for anybody out there that might have missed that web address there, that’s actsofserviceplumbing.com. That’s Ricky Hudson. Ricky Hudson, thank you for carving out time for us, and we’ll see you very soon, sir.

9
Thanks, Clay. Yes, sir. Appreciate you.

22
Bye. Bye.

8
My name is Josh Wilson, and I’m the owner of Living Water Irrigation. So, I’ve been working with Thrive since December of 2017. So the biggest changes we’ve seen as a company is, first of all, just systematically how we do things, how we present things. Our Google presence is phenomenal.

8
Our website’s a million times better. And just the overall accountability and the process by which we’re conducting ourselves. So our biggest win since working with Thrive is we have, we literally, March was a record month for us. It was almost twice as much as our biggest month prior to that. In the last week or so, we’ve

8
closed about $250,000 worth of business. We’ll have to go dig a bunch of dishes and get it done, but we signed about $250,000 worth of business with the relationships we built, the things that they’ve implemented through Victoria and Clay and everybody here at Thrive. So I would recommend Thrive to other business owners simply because they can point out where you’re flawed and what you need to work on. You just have to be real and honest with yourself on what you need to improve

8
upon. So that would be first and foremost. The other, the huge reason why I do it because it works. It actually, everything that they said when we came in for our initial meeting to today, absolutely positively has been accomplished.

2
Thrive Nation on today’s show we’re answering a question from a listener while also teaching something that we probably don’t teach enough on the show, and that is managing humans. You know, it’s getting people to do what they’re supposed to do. So if you own a copy of the Boom Book, or maybe you don’t, you can download, John, I believe if you go right now to the Thrive Time Show website and you click on the podcast button, I believe in the right column you can download all of my e-books. Am I correct? Okay, so you go there and you can

2
download the book, the Boom Book, and in the Boom Book on page 163 of this edition or on step 10 which is a just go to chapter 12 of the Boom Book you can find it there. I wrote in the book, I wrote here, management consists of your ability to get the members of your team to execute your business plans, systems, and processes with excellence. So what I’m going to do is, Andrew, I’m going to have you jot down on today’s show notes specific areas where I get crazy massive amounts of pushback on a daily basis.

2
Employees who work for me, for the elephant in the room, Men’s Grooming Lounge, have to do a great job. Let’s define that. They have to be on time. We’ll just start there. I want to get your take on this, John.

2
It’s work at the Elephant in the Room men’s grooming lounge. We have 4,000 members who pay a membership fee to get their hair cut. We have about 1,000 in Oklahoma City. John, your haircut is scheduled at 11.30. One of our clients has an appointment scheduled at 11.30. How late can we be before the customer gets upset?

19
One minute. I mean, yeah, it’s one to five minutes.

2
So the appointment is scheduled at 1130, right? And the stylist, the grooming professional is running late, not cutting hair, but just running late to work. How long can you and I put up with that before the customer takes their money, aka their

19
vote to a competitor? I’d say probably the second time somebody is late to a haircut, the customer is no longer going

4
to be a customer of ours.

2
Interesting. So you’re saying that we have to be on time. Right. So how do you get people to be on time, John? Because you do a great job managing the team of dozens and dozens of ladies. How do you convince them to be on time?

2
Well, one, you’ve got to write up, reprimand when it doesn’t happen. You want to make sure that they know the expectations to be there on time, but two is also have them get there earlier than they’re supposed to, knowing full well that they’re not going to get there

19
on time.

2
A little notable quotable. You can get a tattoo of this if you want. Without friction, your success is a fiction. So without friction, your success is a fiction. What do I mean by that? I mean by, John, what happens if, it just happened this week, and again, we release these shows months after we record

2
them. But just on this Monday, you had to release somebody. And we’ll say we don’t know what gender they were. We had to release somebody. It could be a man, it could be a woman. We had to encourage said human to go ahead and go work somewhere else.

2
Why?

4
They were not a good fit for us, meaning they couldn’t do their core task at the level of excellence that we needed.

2
And specifically, they couldn’t be on time, am I correct?

23
Right.

2
Over and over and over. Yeah.

19
They couldn’t be on time for the training. Yeah, and it’s always like something else. So when you talk to somebody, it’s always like they need something else, whether it’s more training, more tools, more this, more that. And so eventually, you just have to realize that this person is always going to be that

4
way and it’s just better off for them to go find those things that they claim they need somewhere else.

2
Now, is it shocking to you that this person, regardless of how old they are, regardless of where they’re from or how much experience they have, they have moved around quite a bit from job to job when talking to the person and they’ve had a hard time finding a boss that can… I mean, is it interesting to you that people shop around jobs, that people tend to be job hoppers if they can’t be on time?

19
Well, it doesn’t shock me because typically when you’re a crazy person in one area, you don’t just let your crazy out in one job.

4
It just kind of bleeds into all areas of your life.

38
Everywhere, yeah.

2
It’s like crazy people get crazy, you know? But think about this, Josh Wilson, you have a team of people at Living Water Irrigation. Am I muted?

8
There you are.

31
Yes, sir.

2
Hey, we’re in. Okay, so you have a team of people at Living Water Irrigation. Yes, sir. And you have crews, and you have a bilingual crew, am I correct? Oh, we do. And you have to get your employees to be on time.

2
That is correct. What happens if they’re not on time and you let the employee get away with it a lot? What would happen by default to living water irrigation if you were over time to let it

37
drift?

19
We’d be out of business.

22
Interesting.

2
Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey.

4
I’m originally from Tulsa, born and raised here. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business and I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school and I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school.

4
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.

4
The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating, the walls are super, it’s just very cool.

4
The atmosphere is cool, the people are nice, it’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally wanna model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side.

18
I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just wanna give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark.

4
Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us.

23
This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live two years ago. This is our old neighborhood.

20
See, it’s nice, right?

4
So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy.

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This is our new house with our new neighborhood.

22
This is our new van with our new marketing.

18
And this is our new team. We went from four to fourteen. And I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome but Ryan is a really great salesman so we didn’t

18
need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year.

4
In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that

4
you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you times a thousand.

18
So we really just want to thank you, Clay, and thank you, Vanessa, for everything you’ve done, everything you’ve helped us with. We love you guys.

11
Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects. You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations. And we went from expecting maybe $250,000 this year to we’re at $400,000.

17
Hi, I’m Kelsey with K&D’s Wooder Finishing. I’m a business owner at 23. So I’ve been working this K&D’s company for about five years now and we started working with Thrive not too long ago.

8
And we went from expecting maybe $250,000 this year to we’re at $400,000.

30
That’s what we’re going to headboard this year.

17
So congratulations. And we went from expecting maybe $250,000 this year to we’re at $400,000. Hi, I’m Kelsey with K&D’s Wooder Finishing. I’m a business owner at 23. So I’ve been working this K&D’s company for about five years now and we started working with Thrive not too long ago.

17
And we went from expecting maybe $250,000 this year to we’re at $400,000. That’s what we’re going to headboard this year. So congratulations. And we went from expecting maybe $250,000 this year to we’re at $400,000. That’s what we’re going to headboard this year. And we went from expecting maybe $250,000 this year to we’re at $400,000.

17
And we went from expecting maybe $250,000 this year to we’re at $400,000. And we went from expecting maybe $250,000 this year to we’re at $400,000. That’s what we’re gonna hit or exceed. So we’re pretty excited about that. It’s been pretty much just listening to what they have to say. Their hiring process has just really been incredible as far as finding good

17
quality help and just the accountability of meeting up with them weekly. And it’s such good insight, the resources they have for specific business questions. It’s all been really incredible. It’s been a great experience. So I would recommend it to anybody.

1
Hi, I’m Amy Chaney. My husband and I are owners of Chaney Construction here in Pampa, Texas. And I was able to speak with Clay myself, I thought we need to give this a chance. So we were able to determine that the savings that we have from the decision that we made each month is going to be roughly about $2,000 a week. So it’s about $8,000 a month. Plus we also made the decision to get rid of a billboard that hadn’t really brought us any business, and that was another $475 a month.

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It’s really in at $8,500 a month. And that’s a really big deal. So my first watch when Clay introduced us to the weekly Know Your Number system was no big deal. We don’t need to do that. We have a secretary that’s an amazing QuickBooks person.

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And so she enters all of that stuff every single day for us. So we don’t need to do that ourselves. QuickBooks will pull a report, that’s all we need, we don’t need anything else, there’s no sense in me double duty,

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Clay, do you understand how many transactions are in our bank statement every single month? It would take me forever to do, and so very resistant because I thought, we already know our numbers, we already have everything into QuickBooks,

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and we already know what we need to know, and we can pull a report to provide you with that information. So some of the struggles and being able to complete this action item were getting the want to do it and once I actually decided okay Clay you can stop asking me I’m actually going to sit down and do this every single week and actually got through it and that was it like I’ve

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made that commitment it takes me maybe 20 minutes on every Saturday morning to go in and do the previous weeks. Now that I’ve been doing it for a while, I’m kind of on a roll, and so it makes it a lot easier. So one of the things we discovered when we started looking at the money this closely was that my husband doesn’t want to know the numbers, first of all. He pays good money to have someone do that for him because he just doesn’t want to know.

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It’s not his thing. And so I had worked for an accountant previous to this, so that’s kind of my thing. And so for him to be able to sit down and take a look and see some of the things we’re spending the money on that he probably didn’t even realize,

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or to realize how much we’ve been paying some employees that were not operating as A players. And that was the big eye opener for my husband. But when he saw the numbers of what we were paying in payroll expenses for two team members that were not operating as A players

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and hadn’t been for quite some time, that was a huge eye-opener for him. And he realized that he needed to take that emotion out of that decision and make it a business decision. It’s accountability for your secretary as well, or your bookkeeper, whoever does your book,

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especially if it’s not yourself, because if you’ve not ever had anybody embezzle money from you, then you’re very fortunate. So it’s really good to have that accountability. We’ve had that happen in the past to us. My secretary actually even came back to me and said, hey,

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Amy, I really appreciate that you’re doing this now, because now, at the end of the month, if there’s not any money, then you know exactly where the money is. You and Jimmy have known exactly where the money is gone. So we’re not coming to her going, where’s all our money? You know, because that’s not a good position for her to be in either. So, like I said, just knowing where your dimes are going is a huge deal.

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And being able to know where to cut back from that’s a big deal, but also the accountability for everyone on your team.

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My name is Danielle Sprick and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full-time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide what do I want to do. My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate.

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He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people. I love working with people. I love the building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things.

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The processes and the advertising and marketing, I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time, and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago.

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And in that time, we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week, we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today building a business having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due and Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us Has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing Don’t ever limit your vision when you dream big big things happen. I

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Started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it.

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My thought when I opened my clinic

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was I can do this all myself. I don’t need 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,

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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

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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.

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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.

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I’m Dr. Chad Edwards

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and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic.

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What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system and it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day-to-day basis.

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Hi there, my name is Stephanie Pipkin. I am 24 years old and I own Black River Falls Cleaning Services. We opened in April of 2019 and it is now mid-June of 2020. So I wanted to talk today about the success and growth I have achieved by implementing the Proven Path with Clay Clark’s team and my business coach Luke from Thrive Time. It has been insane to say the least. I started working with them in mid-February of this year so we’re about four months in of working together and it has completely transformed my business in pretty much

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every facet. So I’m gonna check my notes here. So in four months, my leads have tripled. I was getting probably like two leads a week. Now I’m getting more in the like 10-15 leads a week. I have doubled my number of employees. I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company,

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week to week it seems like. We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now 14 to 15 appointments a day. And hiring quality employees has become much simpler and less stressful by using their systems for hiring. I typically only get maybe two complaints a month, if that, and everybody shows up to work. I just have really high quality employees now, especially in something people typically consider a high turnover type of work, you know cleaning houses cleaning businesses I have amazing employees now and I get rid of the ones who are not so amazing and bring on new ones because of

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You know group interviews and higher interviewing every single week. It’s just been great and such a I don’t waste as much time on Low quality candidates anymore and your coach will hold you accountable, which I love. Again, the tough love is really great. Luke’s like a stern father figure, but he’s also nice, but also stern when he needs to be. When I’m being lazy and not doing the things that I know I need to do because I don’t want to do them. So

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that’s just great. Worth every penny. I mean, I’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can, and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but I would just say go for it. If it seems like a good fit, just go for it. Do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous, just do what they say because it’ll work. You know, people, when they look at my business, you know, people in my town, they think I’m lucky. They think I’m just, you know, things just happen for me. And you know, maybe I am lucky,

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but it has a lot to do with hard work and, you know, perseverance and, you know, working till you cry sometimes. That’s just being an entrepreneur, which if you’re a business owner you understand that. But it’s having these systems in place of, you know, of course I’m going to be successful. It’s an absolute because I have all this stuff in the background happening and I have Luke and Clay and everybody on their team working really hard to make sure that I’m a success. And

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I can tell that they are just so excited every single week when I’m having all these wins and things like that. They’re so excited for me. So it’s the best thing ever and I would suggest to anybody to work with them. So sorry for the long-winded reply,

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but I just had so much to say and I could go on for hours probably about how amazing they are. But thank you to Clay and Luke and the entire team there, everything you guys have done for me and I am so excited to continue to work with you for years to come.

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Thanks so much for watching.

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

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They’re trained. And as my rich dad always said, you know, amateurs don’t have a coach, but professionals always have coaches. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important. My rich dad was one of those persons.

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I wanted to learn how to play Monopoly in real life. So he was my coach.

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Well, Carter, you know, we have an opportunity here at the Thrive Time Show to work with some really great business owners, people that are actually serious about growing their company. They go to thrivetimeshow.com and they reach out to schedule a free 13-point assessment. Oftentimes I hop on the phone with these folks and we figure out if they’re a good fit. Once we start working with a client, our goal is to help the client actually grow their

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actual business. On today’s show, we’re joined with a man who we’ve had the opportunity to work with. The company’s called NWA Dutter Perfection. And my understanding, Carter, is that they’re up over 60 percent. Is that right?

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I would say that’s correct.

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Yes.

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DJ, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

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Good.

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How are you doing, Clay?

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I’m doing great.

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So for anybody out there who is doubting whether you’re a hologram or not, what’s the name of your company, sir?

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Gutter Perfection.

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How did you guys first hear about us? Do you know?

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It’s actually a friend of mine found out about your business conferences there, and then we went there.

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And I guess I was sold the first conference we went to.

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If you go to nwagutterperfection.com. You can see they’re a real company, they’re a real business, they really are growing. What markets do you service there, DJ, for people out there that might be looking for your services? What’s the market area that you service? Pretty much all of northwest

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Arkansas, Bentonville, Springdale, Fayetteville, Rogers, you know, the little surrounding towns

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down there too.

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And again, if you go to the website here folks, nwagutterperfection.com, you can see there are real business, real people having real success. DJ, I really do appreciate your time today, sir, and we’ll talk to you soon.

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What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system, and it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day-to-day basis. And that simplicity brings power with it. So it shocked me how simple some of the stuff is. And at times I’m like, why did not think about that?

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Workflow creation, systematic marketing, and coaching has helped our church so much. You know, the workflow creation is what it really is, is they’re going to look and see every moving part of your church, of your ministry, what needs to be done. And it’s going to go up on a massive board. And so now what it does is it takes what you know needs to be done out of your heart and out of your head, really takes the pressure, the stress off your shoulders, and it puts

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it on the board where your entire team, your ministry can see exactly what you want them to do every day. And so they know this is the playbook, this is what we’re doing. And then there’s a laser sharp accountability with a meeting afterwards, did it get done or not?

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Clay, you’re an entrepreneur, I’m an entrepreneur, and as they say in Stoic, the obstacle is the way. I think YouTube is a tremendous educational platform for good and bad. So you’ve got to really choose your teachers wisely, as anything else. So the biggest, best lesson that sits in the back here, and I think you do it and Dr. Z does it. Once you learn something, if you really want to learn it, you gotta teach it.

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I think it was life-changing for me and how I approach business. Could you explain Okta Nonverba, what it means and how our listeners can apply it?

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Clay, you gave me goosebumps, man. I’m glad it hit you as hard as it did. Okta Nonverba is the model of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York. I had appointments with Naval Academy and Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy. And Merchant Marine Academy’s model was opto non verba. In other words, don’t listen to what a person says. Watch what they do.

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Well, the first time that I ever met you, Clay, was at that first conference in Tulsa. And that was an incredible conference. And I was so impressed with just the whole thing, just the professionalism, you as a person, your business, your work ethic, and really just who you are. And I was very impressed with all of that and I thought, gosh, you know, this might be someone that I would really consider working with, like maybe he could really help me. And that’s really what got me interested because I was so impressed with just the professionalism of all of it.

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And I learned a lot. I come about once a year to a business conference, and I’d like to come more, but every year I try to come with my marketing girl with me, and we always learn something. We always learn something, and I think next year I’m going to bring my husband because

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he really needs to come too.

2
And you’re in McKinney, Texas, right? So how long have you been an orthodontist in McKinney, Texas?

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So I’ve been an orthodontist for 26 years.

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And when you went to medical school, what percentage of the time in medical school or dentistry school, dental school, did they spend teaching you how to market and or grow your own practice?

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Absolutely zero. Zero marketing skills.

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Okay, okay.

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And from what I talked to Andrew, you’re the coach who works with you, I’m always hearing that more and more patients are coming in from Google. Could you talk about that? How much of an impact has it had having maybe a rebranded or updated website and Google leads coming in?

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It has had a huge difference, absolutely huge difference in our patient load coming in. And you know, before I really wasn’t tracking really well. And that’s one of the things I learned from Thrive Time Business was how to track patients coming in, how to really, how to see where they’re coming from. And at the time, I really didn’t know much about Google. And, you know, being an orthodontist for 26 years, I didn’t really know a lot of, I kind

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of went through a time where I went through shock. It was really what I call culture shock because the old ways of marketing were not working anymore and because I really didn’t know about online marketing, I really didn’t, I was still doing, you know, phone book ads and magazine ads and all of these things. And so Thrive Time has really helped and I will take, I will say that it’s a process. It doesn’t happen overnight, but if you stay the course, you’re going to see results.

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Because I’m absolutely convinced.

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Dr. Christ, thank you for allowing us to take up some of your valuable time today. I really do appreciate you, and I can’t wait to see you in person here soon.

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All right. Thanks so much, Clay.

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Clay Clark is here somewhere.

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Where’s my buddy Clay?

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Clay is the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens.

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I saw his compound.

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He’s like the greatest guy.

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I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

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So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right?

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His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing.

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Okay, Aaron Antis, March 6th and 7th, March 6th and 7th, guess who’s coming to Tulsa,

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Russia?

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Ooh, Santa Claus?

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No, no, that’s March, March 6th and 7th, you’re going to be joined by Robert Kiyosaki. Robert Kiyosaki. Best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Possibly the best-selling, or one of the best-selling business authors of all time. And he’s going to be joined with Eric Trump. We’ll be joined by Eric Trump.

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We’ve got Eric Trump and Robert Kiyosaki in the same place. In the same place. Aaron, why should everybody show up to hear Robert Kiyosaki. Well you got billions of dollars of business experience between those two, not to mention many, many, many millions of books have been sold. Many, many millionaires have been made from the books that have been sold by Robert Kiyosaki. I happen to be one of them. I learned from the man. He was the inspiration. That book was

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the inspiration for me to get the entrepreneurial spirit as many other people. Now since you won’t brag on yourself I will. You’ve sold billions of dollars of houses am I correct? That is true. And the book that that kick-started it all for you, Rich Dad Pornhub, the author the best-selling author of Rich Dad Pornhub, Robert Kiyosaki, the guy that kick-started your career, he’s gonna be here. He’s gonna be here. I’m pumped. And now Eric Trump, people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has

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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, and soon to be the 47th president of these United States,

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he needed someone to run the companies for him. And so the 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,

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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 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?

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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. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet and then you add

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to that Robert Kiyosaki the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad you add to that Eric Trump the man that runs the Trump organization you add to that Sean Baker now you might say but Clay is there more I need more! Well, okay, Tom Wheelwright is the wealth strategist for Robert Kiyosaki. So people say, Robert Kiyosaki, who’s his financial wealth advisor? Who’s the guy who manages?

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Who’s his wealth strategist? His wealth strategist, Tom Wheelwright, will be here. And you say, Clay, I still, I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more! Okay, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days. True story. We cater to food and because I keep it simple, I literally bring in the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Escovedo’s, an incredible

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Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen. And Jill Donovan, our good friend, who is the founder of Rustic Cuff. She started that company in her home and now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products. That’s rusticcuff.com. And someone says, I want more! This is not enough! Give me more. Okay, I’m not going to mention their names right now because I’m working on it behind

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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 term, it’s where you’re renting storage spaces.

2
He’s a storage space guy. He owns the, what do you 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 customer facing.

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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 given 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, 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

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Thrivetimeshow.com. Go there right now. Thrivetimeshow.com. Request a ticket for the two-day interactive event. Again, the day here is March 6th and 7th. March 6th and 7th. We just got confirmation. Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He’ll be here.

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Eric Trump, the man who leads the Trump Organization. It’s going to be a blasty blast. There’s no upsells. Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible, and there’s somebody out there right now, you’re watching, and you’re like, but I already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin.

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You think that’s going to change your life? I promise you this will be ten times better than that.

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It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

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Don’t do the Smoke Your Way to Thin conference.

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That is, I’ve tried it, don’t do it. Chain smoking is not a viable, I mean it is life changing.

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It is life changing.

2
If you become a chain smoker, it is life-changing.

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Not the best weight loss program, though.

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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 reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two-day interactive

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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.

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My name is Claire Yinger.

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I was looking to learn everything about business, which I have learned so many things. It’s like drinking from a fire hydrant. I’m gonna have to do it again, multiple times. What I’ve learned so far has been, I mean, just a lot about processes, systems,

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the power of them, your due diligence. I mean, the list can go on and on and on. Well, listening to Clay is like very entertaining because he is entertaining, but also just meeting all the different people and having time and space to like, you’re learning a lot,

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but then also being able to discuss with other people what they’re learning and just getting different perspectives. So, very entertaining, very funny, very thorough, but also could be random because it’s full of a lot of stories, but it’s also intentional. It’s like everything he’s doing is intentional, but you wouldn’t be fully aware that it was, It’s like everything he’s doing is intentional, but you wouldn’t be fully aware that it was,

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but it is.

Transcribed with Cockatoo