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Thrive Nation, on today’s show I’m going to interview a couple of people, a wonderful group of people who’ve actually worked with us. They have a family business and they’ve allowed us to help them to grow their business and I’m here to celebrate their success and to hopefully encourage you that you too can grow your business. And without any further ado, we have the founders of Glue and Nails on the Thrive Time Show.
How are you guys?
We’re wonderful, thank you.
Well, I’m going to let you, Greg, kind of introduce your wife and your team, just so people know that you’re not a hologram.
That’s my wife, Dawn.
She pretty much runs the operation around here.
And how long have you guys worked with us here at the Thrive Time Show and Make Your Life Epic Business Consulting?
It will be two years, June 11th, I think, right about there.
Two years?
Yes.
And what kind of growth have you seen? Have you grown by a half a percent? Have you grown by 1%? What sort of growth have you seen thus far?
So far this year, 92% over last year. Last year was similar numbers.
Wow. And now, what’s your website? I know people want to go to your website now and again verify that you’re not a hologram.
Glueandnails.com.
OK.
I’m going to pull it up on the screen here so people can see it. It’s glueandnails.com. Glueandnails.com. And I want to brag on you guys for a second because what I do is I grow businesses, but I can’t grow businesses unless I work with diligent clients that are willing to put in the effort to actually implement the proven systems.
And so you guys have grown your business dramatically, but it’s not as a result of just coming to a weekly meeting and then not doing your homework. So I’d like to get your thoughts here, Dawn. What was the most challenging first step that you guys had to take? Because I sit down with every client to make a plan,
you know, a 13 point assessment, then I give you guys a plan. What was the biggest first challenge that you guys had to overcome en route to growing your business and actually implementing the plan?
We had to realize that we were doing it wrong. And you pointed out you just have to stick with what you point out, what you say, put the numbers here, put the numbers there, and sticking with it, doing it constantly. Every day.
Every day.
And I think that a lot of people, because people email in a lot, or they’ll ask questions, they’ll say, what was the one thing that moved your business the most? And I would just say, it would be like asking, and maybe as someone who builds cars,
you know, what’s the most important one part of the car that makes it work? Because one could make a compelling argument that the tires are the most compelling or that the steering wheel is the most important or the transmission is the most important,
but it’s all of those systems working together. So I want to go kind of piece by piece. Let’s start with the numbers. Let’s start with the accounting for a second or the bookkeeping. I know for a lot of people, that is a source of overwhelm, looking at their numbers and being intentional about charging enough to hit your financial goals.
And I think, if I’m correct, I think you guys were guilty of undercharging, where a lot of people try to take advantage of people and overcharge. I think you two were guilty of undercharging. Greg, am I accurate there? Were you guys undercharging at one point?
We didn’t want to upset our customers, Clay. You are absolutely correct, yes. In fact, our hourly charge is currently
three times what it was when we started. Now, when working with you guys, you guys have always done excellent work, you know, and so when people go to your website, they’re going to see excellent work and craftsmanship, home remodeling, next level work. One thing I think you also, Don, that you guys were guilty of is underbranding yourself. Like you guys do great work and you’re super humble people, but you weren’t running around saying, we’re awesome. And you were actually kind of underbranding your website, underbranding your before and
afters, underbranding your testimonials. Can you talk about how much that’s helped you guys to actually update the branding, update the marketing that you’re doing to get more customers?
The customers see the before and after. to see that they just the pictures, the quality, the honesty that we have, the customer, a family owned business, just to see before and afters. They like to be able to see that the pictures, posting them on the Google business, they have to see that and that has helped us show customers this is what, getting it out of their head and putting it in person.
Again, you guys have grown, Greg, as a percentage, how much have you guys grown? I mean, is it safe to say you’ve doubled your company? Is it, have you doubled in size?
Oh, yes. I would say our average year previous to meeting you, two to 300, maybe 350 maximum gross income per year. We’re staring right down the barrel of 900,000 this year, and we just went through first quarter, which is traditionally the worst quarter for construction or remodeling.
And so you guys have tripled your business.
Yes.
And again, what I love about your story is you’re super humble, kind to people. And you know, someone thinks, well, wow, Clay, what do you do? Is it just accounting? Is it just marketing? Is it just branding? It’s all of it.
It’s end to end. I’d love to get your thoughts on this, Greg. Having the consistent meeting every week, knowing that that’s a rock in your schedule that you can kind of build upon, how big of an impact does that have for your family business?
It’s huge. And we’re very fortunate to be close to your office too so that we get to have those in-person meetings. We could Zoom, but when I was young, I was told if you work really hard, you’ll be wealthy. That’s not true. You can pound your head against a wall for many years, which I did. And that’s hard work, and you have blood, sweat, and tears involved,
but it doesn’t produce anything. You have to have a system. You bring the other half of that system. It works for us. We bring the hard work, you bring the intelligence,
and it works. It’s a good, great system.
And what are all the systems, or all the processes that you guys have had to refine? I mean, have you started working on sales scripting yet? Again, for a lot of people, they think, you know, marketing is an event. All of a sudden, you’re going to get more sales, but you’re really marketing. Branding is step one. Marketing is step two. So branding is improving the look and the perception people have of your business. Step two is getting in front of your
ideal and likely buyers. And then selling is actually a different thing. That’s kind of step three here. Have we worked with you guys yet on the scripting and the selling? Have you started
implementing those systems yet, Greg? We have not implemented any particular sales system mainly because so far the business is coming in is almost overwhelming for us to handle. So we’re still
building the system there, but we are certainly working on sales script. That’s coming soon.
So you’re saying is you have so many leads coming in, it’s almost like a fire hose?
It is.
It is.
Really? Now, Don, you, if I’m correct, I believe you do a lot of the numbers in the business. You look at the accounting and the numbers. I find a lot of wonderful people, humble entrepreneurs and contractors,
tend to die a death by invoice, where they become almost like a bank. They don’t want to be a bank, but they offer the customer terms like, hey, we’ll remodel your kitchen, and you can pay us 90 days after it’s done, or 60 days after it’s done.
And then all of a sudden, the customer doesn’t pay, or they pay late, and then you end up being stuck with all the overhead, all the bills, and none of the money. Have you guys, have we worked with you on that at all, as far as refining the billing process?
Absolutely. We – you told us don’t be a bank. You’re not a bank. So, we refined the invoices where we do deposit up front, and then we’re able to use that in stages, phases for the contract or the work.
Yes.
That was one of the first words out of your mouth in our first meeting was, don’t be the
bank.
Don’t be the bank. And quite frankly, we did take draws in the past, but they weren’t well thought out. It was just some arbitrary number. Now we have, I write most of our spreadsheets and we try to stick to that. And well, the pain is much less than it was in the past.
You guys, just like oxyfresh.com and tiptopk9.com and a lot of the brands we’ve worked with for years, you guys have been to the workshops. You’ve actually been to my home. You’ve met the staff. You’ve really taken it all in. I’d love to get your thoughts on the workshop, how that may have helped you in your growth there, Greg. How have the workshops helped you guys?
We’ve been to six or eight workshops. I’ve lost track. We go virtually every time because you can’t learn it all the first time. Bless you’re smarter than me, which wouldn’t be very difficult,
but we learned something new from some entrepreneur every single time we come to one of these meetings. There’s just always something new to learn. You can’t get it all in one anymore than you can read the Bible and know everything that’s in it just because you read it once. So it’s the same thing here.
We go each time and find something new, some new thing.
Don, can you maybe comment on the format of the workshops? Because when I was growing my first company, DJConnection.com, every once in a while someone would reach out to me or mark it to me and say, you need to come to this workshop. I would go, no, I’ve been to it. I know what it’s going to be like. It’s going to be some guy who’s not going to answer any questions.
It’s going to be focused on motivation stuff, motivational. That’s going to be the angles, motivational or inspirational. At no point will somebody have specific action items. I’m going to waste a day or two of my life, and then at the end, just as a nice reward, they’re going to try to upsell me something that I don’t want
or some secret program. Or they’re going to try to sell me on being certified. Could you maybe explain, Dawn, what the workshop was like from your experience?
Every workshop we’ve been to, depending on what stage we were in in our business, we would pick up little nuggets of information at each workshop. Whether that be you up front or someone else up front or just from another business owner or entrepreneur, just those little little nuggets. I would take notes and when I go back through those notes, I knew that this part here was
the important nugget for this particular workshop, that whatever phase we were on in our business, that helped us. And then we would implement that where we needed to put that.
I would say this, one thing that I do is I try to keep the clients on track. If you’ve ever been on a road trip with a bunch of kids, you’re on a road trip and the kids are like, can we go to the bathroom? If you want to ever get to Iowa and you live in Oklahoma, you have to say, hold it until we get gas, or there’s got to be somebody that’s going, all right, stay focused, or if you’ve ever been a, let’s say, a bus driver and you’ve ever had to, okay, guys, stop it, we’re back to, or if you’ve ever been a tour guide or a whitewater rafting
tour guide, or you’ve ever had any position of leadership, sometimes you have to be Mr. Not Fun and keep people on the path, because the new ideas and shiny objects sometimes can distract others. Has it helped you, Greg, at all to have a team that’s keeping you on the path? Does that help at all?
100%, yes. You know, what we got from our last meeting, by the way, which we’ve heard every single time we go to the meeting, and I’m a believer, but sometimes you just have to beat somebody in the head with things.
You have to have a calendar and a to-do list. You ever hear that before, Clay? You have to have, there’s a sign, people don’t know this, but there’s a sign at your place that says things that get scheduled get done. And you cannot accomplish your goals
if you don’t write it down. And that means every minute of every day. Something comes in, put it on the list. Right. It’s just a quick thing, it has to happen.
Yeah, and then now having a team to help you do your videography, your photography, your web development, your online ads, all of that so you don’t go back home and have to recode your website or figure out how the ads work, how has that impacted you, Dawn, as far as having a team that handles a lot of the technology and all of those things behind the scenes?
So we don’t have to do it.
And we probably would do it wrong. We’ve learned so much about one, how we were doing it wrong, but now that we have your team doing that, it’s changed everything. I don’t have to be a web designer. Some customer commented, oh, your website is just wonderful. We just love your website. How did you do it?” I said, I just… we have a business coach. I don’t have to do that. I have to build things and I’m really good at that.
Well, you know, one thing about the growth of a business, too, is its iterations. It’s not… as an example, there was a guy I saw in South Dakota who was a wood carver. He carved big pieces of wood into animals, into a bear or to eagles. And I thought so highly of his craftsmanship that I bought one and brought it back to my office.
So I bought one and I sent JT to South Dakota to go pick it up and drive back a short 24 hour road trip there. But you look at somebody, these skilled artists, they take a block of wood and have a chainsaw and you watch it.
And at first you have no idea what they’re doing. It looks like they don’t know what they’re doing. And at first, if you don’t have a lot of faith in the process, it looks kind of weird. They’re just chopping stuff up. And if you sit there for like an hour or two, which I did in South Dakota, all of a sudden you start to go, I think that’s an eagle.
That could be an eagle. Is that an eagle or a bird? Is that a cardinal? And pretty soon you go, an hour later, and then all of a sudden you’re chipping away at the details. Now you’re making the details,
and you come back four or five hours later, you go, that is an amazing eagle, and then you think you’re done, and you come back five hours later, and he’s still chipping away, and now it’s like a piece of artwork.
And that’s how growing a business is. You start with the big idea, and you chisel it away every day, and I think now what I’m excited about is we’re getting into the details. You know, we’re starting to really optimize your core pages
in terms of we can focus on, you know, what’s the best video testimonial to add to the website and maybe which one should be at the top. Whereas at first, it’s just kind of like, if we can get a video testimonial, let’s add it to the site.
But now we’re starting to get enough where it’s like, well, let’s put the best before and after at the top of the site. So now we’re able to really start to make some iterations. Is it more fun now, Greg, now that there’s some momentum and now that you get to be more selective about what leads to take on and what projects to work with? Can you maybe talk about that?
We can select our customers now, now that things are under control. Look, every day is a challenge. We work endless hours. People say, how many hours do you work? I say all of them. I don’t know. We we just don’t stop but now we we actually see How this is going I had no idea how to
Nail and then scale as to use your terminology our business I knew how to get up every day and drive nails and cut wood and make it look pretty and I’m really good at that And I’m a freak about details and organization and numbers and so forth.
But you have to have an engine
to drive that really pretty car, and you guys are the engine. Now we see that, we see the destination. The sooner the better, is the way I see it.
Let’s get there.
Well, two questions I have,
I’m gonna ask each the same question. So I’m gonna go with you, Greg, that way your incredible wife can one-up you here, okay? So for anybody out there that’s thinking about coming to an in-person workshop, they’re thinking about going to thrivetimeshow.com
and requesting a ticket. I’m very clear on these shows, you can pay $250 for a ticket, or you can name your price if you’re in a tight spot. Or for anybody thinking about scheduling a one-on-one consultation,
that’s the first step somebody has to take. They schedule a 13-point assessment with me to see if they’re a good fit. What would you say, Greg, to anybody thinking about coming to a workshop or thinking about scheduling a one-on-one consultation?
You couldn’t possibly spend better money, in my opinion, and I’m not being paid to say that, I’m paying you. So I don’t think you could possibly invest better money into your business than hiring effectively a $9 an hour employee that has turned us into a now 200%, 300% of what we started at.
I’m seeing the sky is the limit. Don’t pass up that opportunity. You would make a big mistake. And I guess as a follow-up to that,
then I’ll go to your wife.
If you were to not have the weekly meetings, let’s just say those meetings were weekly or quarterly, what would happen to the business if you didn’t have that weekly check-in there, Greg?
Well, I don’t know that we would have survived some weeks. Lest you think you’re going to sign up with Thrive 15 and just suddenly, boom, you’re successful, that’s not the truth. You’re still going forward on the path that you were on. quite rough and you’re going to hit the potholes, but now we can see the potholes before we get to them. And even though that’s the road we’re on, it’s easy for us to handle that as we go now.
If you didn’t do that every week, wow, we’ve had some tough weeks. We’ve come in there whining a few times, like, oh my gosh, it’s going to be a rough week. And it is, but we find a strategy, we attack it, we beat the problem down and move on to the next week. And they seem to be getting better every single week.
Don, what do you think would happen if you didn’t have the weekly meetings to kind of keep things on track?
We would fall apart. The weekly meetings are… You can’t go without them.
You can’t.
It has to be weekly because you’re held accountable for doing the tracking sheet, putting in the numbers, doing all the paperwork, keeping the phone calls organized.
You have to have it weekly. Have to. us? You have so many doctors and dentists and lawyers, and whenever I talk to these folks at a conference, they always tell me, I wish I would have called you 10 years ago. And I go, well, did you know about this 10 years ago?
And a lot of times they go, yeah, I’ve listened to your podcast like every day for, you know, seven years or eight years, and I just never filled out the form. What would you say to anybody who’s just thinking about coming to a conference or filling out that form and requesting a one-on-one consultation?
Go and there’s going to be a nugget that you’re going to find of information. Something is there that you need to hear. Something. business, you have to be able to have the ears. And like I said, my notebook, I’m a note taker. He’s not really, but taking of the notes and then going back to the notes and what was that? Oh, yeah, that’s what he said. And using that, that’s your little nugget of information that you can get at any of the workshops.
One, you can’t get all the information in just one workshop. It can be overwhelming, but there’s something there that you need to hear.
Well, guys, I am so honored to work with you guys. It really is a pleasure to work with you guys and to see your business grow. And as you know, when you’re in the office, the reason why I only take on 160 clients is because I’m always busy. Just yesterday one of our long time great clients we’ve had for over 10 years, his SSL certificate expired because his card got stolen.
With 160 clients that kind of thing happens to one of my clients every week. That’s why I only work with 160 clients and it’s an honor to work with you guys and I’m looking forward to seeing you guys hit that five million dollar mark. It’s gonna happen and you guys are doing great work. So thank you for carving out time for us. I hope you guys have a great weekend. Thank you for carving out time for us. Take care guys. Bye bye.
I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay
and Vanessa Clark. 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. This is our old house. Right?
This is where we used to live a few years ago.
This is our old neighborhood.
See?
It’s nice, right?
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.
This is our new house with our new neighborhood.
This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team.
We went from 4 to 14 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 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 10 locations in only a year.
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 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. 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.
Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month.
And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use
a proof and turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Industry from 1983 to 1985
The Thrivetime show two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet You can learn the proven 13-point business system that dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate.
We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop.
It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered.
The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness.
And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after
our next workshop.
And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. Every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to
Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop
ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it.
My name is Jennifer Sandoval and I’m originally from Oregon, but now I work as a home builder with my business partner, Frank Winkley in Branson, Missouri with Winkley Home Builders. I have been in the home building business with my business partner, Frank, for a few years now. We originally learned about the Builders Training Academy when we attended a Thrive Town Conference in Oklahoma.
We thought it would just be a couple days, learn a few tips, but it’s evolved into so much more. When we came to the in-person workshop, we learned a tremendous amount. For me, it really helped me recognize that you weren’t just going to come and learn about how to run a business, you were also learning about how to work on your business. And it also challenged me as to how much time would be devoted to that each week, because they’re both equally important to grow a business. So that was a new concept for me. And then we just learned so
much about marketing and the website and the SEO and so many things that I recognized as two entrepreneurs starting a business that we were going to need some help with. The weekly coaching meetings with Aaron are like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. And it took a while to kind of get in the groove, but these are working meetings These are not meetings where you take a piece of paper and you write some notes down And then you say you’re going to do something and then you come back and it’s not done boom No, the computer is on the agenda is live and you are producing things in the meeting. It’s probably The most productive 60 minutes that you would have during your week, because it’s all about accountability too.
There’s no room for whining and there’s no room for excuses. So if that is your go-to, this would not be a good fit for you. But if you’re ready to see your business explode, then this would be a perfect fit for you. I would describe Aaron’s presentation and coaching style as phenomenal. phenomenal he has this incredible balance of being genuinely encouraging and
Sincere and full of wisdom while at the same time Pushing you to this brink of where you think you can’t do something but along with his encouragement and in the proper tools and the training and the resources and the websites and the suggestions from You know other experiences that he’s done with his company and other clients. It all comes together. And I just have to mention, like in one of our last phone calls when we talked about
one of our big wins, it was that we are exploding like a volcano with leads right now. And I have to say that is a direct connection, a direct positive result of Aaron’s coaching style and what he brings to us each week. The biggest game changer that Aaron has helped us with, I think one is accountability. No one else is going to ask us
about whether we tracked our leads or not. Aaron is very deliberate in making sure that we’re progressing leads, that things are not getting stale. If things are getting like left to the wayside, he helps us dig deeper to figure out like what do we need to do different or how can we manage the information?
How can we delegate things within our company? And so I think that accountability each week has been a huge game-changer for us Aaron’s coaching style has helped us Differently than any other books or seminars that we’ve been to because First of all, you’re talking with a real life person each week. And he brings this depth of knowledge that once you talk about it, you’re just like, Oh, I should have thought of that. But he
brings it to the table as a proper solution. It’s not overly complicated, but it helps you move like sort of to the next stage or the next level in a project. That’s very sincere, exceptionally genuine, very encouraging, but he doesn’t baby us like he is straightforward in a really healthy, balanced way. If you decide to not work with Aaron, you’re going to miss out on an experience of a lifetime. You’re going to miss out on the wisdom of a man who’s worked decades within the industry, who
can help you grow your business, you’re going to miss out on expanding your business, you’re going to miss out on the revenue that can be brought in, not necessarily by hiring a tremendous amount of new people, but instead just working a lot smarter within the industry. So if you choose not to work out with them,
you’re missing out on a lot.
Hello, I’m Wes Carter.
I’m one of the shareholders at Winters and King. My favorite thing that Thrive has helped me accomplish here in our firm is thinking a little bit outside the box. They do SEO, they do printing, they help us with a lot of things from the day-to-day marketing for the firm, but they also help us think of things that as attorneys we probably wouldn’t normally think of that help us market our services to our clients. One of the things I love about working with Thrive
is that they make it enjoyable to actually do work with them. It’s not dry, it’s usually fun, but it’s always very enjoyable and practical. They give me things and ideas that I can put into place. It’s not just some theoretical spiel that they give me. We get practical steps that we work on together to do my job better. So me personally, I would easily recommend Thrive 15 services to my friends, my families, I recommend them to my clients. I think they do a good job. They’re passionate, they care
about their clients, and I think it’s actually a valuable service they provide to people that are in the business world.
I’m Glenn Shaw, owner of Shaw Homes in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Started the company in 1985. At that time, it was one employee doing everything, me. I met Aaron Antus in 2007. The top three things that Aaron did for Shaw Homes was he brought in processes that helped us be able to repeat over and over. He brought in unique hiring skills. He was able to find the
right people for the right seat on the bus. And Aaron brought sales techniques that we weren’t familiar with up until that time. When Aaron came, we were selling 80, 85 houses a year. And during the 16-year period, we solved sales, get up over 400. Before I met Aaron, the only sales manager we had was myself, and I was completely unable to perform that job.
And so Aaron brought major changes and great results with them. In the many years that I was building houses before Aaron, I was great at selling if somebody wanted to buy. But they had to be knocking on my door, asking me to sell them a house before I could actually make that sell.
I had no sales techniques and no ability to generate sales. Aaron coming in as a natural salesperson just absolutely transformed that and made the sales experience better for the company and better for our buyers. Prior to Aaron, I would work all week for the company. I’d sit in the model home over the weekend, and I had a salesperson or two, but I was actually out there all weekend working that.
Since hiring Aaron, I was able to take my weekends off, even reduce my workload during the week. I went from working 60, 70 hours a week to almost a normal workload. So I’ve been a member of the Builder20 program in the National Association of Home Builders
for 25 years, 20 years. And during that time, I’ve seen a lot of sales managers with the other companies that have been involved. And in my opinion, Aaron is smarter and sharper than any sales manager of any builder that’s ever been in our grid. Some markets, they don’t have to try to sell, they just sell themselves.
But with the ability to sell and to train and hire, Aaron was better than any of those sales managers that were in my program. Well, I remember when I considered hiring Aaron many years ago, the thought of spending the extra money was a little scary. But in hindsight, it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. It freed my time, increased our sales,
and at the end of the day, increased our profitability beyond my wildest expectations. Years ago, I was concerned that if I didn’t do whatever a customer asked me to do, it might be the last house I sold. And so over time, we were able to move away from unlimited customization to pre-design options.
The problem that we were having in those days is that the customer would tell us what they wanted, but they didn’t really know what they wanted. And we would deliver exactly what they told us to do, and they wouldn’t be happy with it. So, as we became more standardized, we give lots of options, but we don’t customize. And in the end, that allows us to sell more homes for better margins than spending countless
hours trying to customize in just every avenue of the sales process. reports on sales, on profitability, on production, and it provides all the manageable tools that I need to review the company from a 10,000 foot level.
Alright Thrive Nation, on today’s show we’re going to focus on is how to grow a successful company. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to pull up a graphic that is the theory of how to grow a successful company, but vision without execution is hallucination. And so if you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, you can download a book that I have written called A Millionaire’s Guide, How to Become Sustainably Rich.
You can download it for free at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire, but you have to actually implement that which is in the book. And so on today’s show, we’re joined by a very successful person in the home building business, a great friend of mine, a man by the name of Aaron Antus. Aaron Antus, welcome on to The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? I’m doing great, Clay. Thanks for having me on.
Hey, so I’ve got to ask you this for the people out there that want to prove you’re not a hologram. First off, what’s the website for your company so people can verify that you are in fact a real business? You bet. It’s shahomes.com. S-H-A-W-H-O-M-E-S.com. Shahomes.com. I’m pulling it up. Shahomes.com. That’s the website. Shahomes.com. And when you and I met, before we met, you had been already very successful as a home builder.
You turned your dream of being a home builder guy into reality. And so how many homes had you sold or what kind of sales had you done in your career as a home builder guy before you and I even met? Before we met, probably about $750 million in sales prior to meeting you. And then you did the year we first started working together, what were the sales totals that year?
We were at like 19 million. 19 million. And then when you ended 2022, obviously we’re in 2023, and so we’ll see how this year ends, but as far as ending 2022, how much sales did you do last year at the end of 2022?
2022, we were at like 84 million. Okay, so from 19 million to 84 million. So you’re doing some things right here. And we’re going to try to do is kind of demystify the plan here. Okay, so here we go. So establishing revenue goals.
Yeah.
When you and I first started working together, we started off with a 13 point assessment. We went over your goals. I’m not going to ask you to share goals on the air, but why is it important that you have goals? Well, I mean, goals are sort of your guideposts that, you know, you set something
out there in front of you and you start chasing after it. And without that, you’re just kind of floundering in mediocrity. You don’t have any reason to get up in the morning and really get after it. And so, you know, I think goals are, you know, it’s you can have lots of different types of goals. And we’ve talked about a lot of this. We’ve talked about, you know, having financial goals and having fitness goals and having friendship goals and just all these
different areas. I know you’ve got the F6, you know. So that’s kind of something that, you know, we touched on very early on. You asked me like, is the goal, is one of your goals more income or is it more time?
And so I said, well, really at this point, it’s more income. And then later it became more time. So it’s changed over the time I’ve known you since 2016. We’re going on seven years, and the income went up considerably. So now it’s turned in the last couple of years towards more time.
Now the break-even numbers, again, I’m not asking you for the numbers on the show, but you guys have a lot of fixed costs. I mean, if you go to shawhomes.com, you’ve got framers, you have plumbers, you have tile people, you have so many skilled people, you have a full-time sales team, you have an admin staff, and if you don’t sell a house, you still have the service of the land, you still have all the overhead.
Why is it important for every listener out there to know their break-even point? How many deals they need per month just to break even? Well, yeah, because you’re going backwards real quick, and it doesn’t take very long if you’re at the beginning of your business, it doesn’t take very long for you to be in a place where the creditors are knocking at your door and you can’t pay your bills and all of a sudden you’re going to lose all your – for us, all of our trades, all of our suppliers are going to start backing out.
So you’ve got to know what that number is that lets you tread water so that, okay, this is the worst case scenario. Everything above that, at least I’m into the profit zone. So you go out of business pretty quick. Most businesses don’t last more than just a few months if they get below that break-even number.
Now, folks, again, these might seem like simple steps, but they’re all the linear steps you have to take to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And if you want to grow your company, this is how you do it. Box number three, though, is you have to know the hours
you’re willing to work. Now, your incredible wife is here off camera for accountability. So at any point, she could yell like, hey, Matt or boo. But you guys are on the same page with the hours you’re willing to work. And you guys, as a couple, I
want to brag on both you, you guys both committed to sacrificing time and energy and a lot of things to get to where you’re at in life. And then as you had your children, you raised them, you decided to vote to devote time to raising said kids. And now that your kids are older, you’re devoting time to raising these kids. So it’s not like you abdicated being a parent while also
growing a company. You did both well. I’d love to get your thoughts on sitting down with your spouse if you’re watching this today or your significant other and making sure you’re on the same page about how many hours per week you’re willing to work. Well yeah, I mean you don’t want to grow a business to you know make a whole bunch of money just so you can split it in half later. Oh. Because that’s kind of what happens when you don’t work out those details ahead of time.
And so my wife and I have been married 25 years. We’ve been together for four before that. And so yeah, 20, sorry, 26.
Did I just say 25?
26. Real quick, I hate to do this to you. I just got in trouble. I hate to. Your wife just turned 27 on Thursday and what you said is 100% false.
Okay, so the unique value proposition here. Now let’s talk about this. Whether it’s growing a home building company or a dog training business or a haircut chain or a carpet cleaning franchise or whatever business we’re involved in helping to grow, you have to sit down as a listener out there, as a business owner, and you’ve got to figure
out what makes your company unique. Absolutely. So I want to ask you, what makes Shaw Homes unique in the marketplace with other home builders? Yeah, we have more furnished and decorated model homes than any other builder in the market.
So a lot of times people, when they walk into a home and they’re trying to decide if they like the floor plan, the layout, whatever, they, usually most builders in our market have an empty house that they walk into. It’s just kind of echoes when you walk through it, there’s no furniture or anything.
And we completely, as you can see in this little video here, we completely furnish and decorate it, make it beautiful. We are the most award-winning builder in the state of Oklahoma. That’s true. We’ve won like five times as many awards as any other builder in the market.
So definitely that is one of our big takeaways. And I’m going to throw you under the bus real quick, and I don’t mean to do this super passively aggressively. It’ll just be more of a subtle passive aggressive. When I met you, you guys had all these awards, but no one knew.
That’s true. It was like this weird, bizarre thing where you had all these awards. I remember talking to you, and I’m like, what makes you guys different? And you’re like, you know, we do a good job
and you’re, you’re being nice about it. You’re a good salesperson. But I said, well, I mean, tell me about the awards. And you’re like, well, we got this award, that award, this award, like 45 minutes later, it’s like that award, this award, I need to shave now, this award, that award,
I need to go brush my teeth, this award, that award, I want to go mow the lawn now, this award, that award, I’m thinking about retiring, this award, my kids are turning 18, I can see it, this award, and this award, and that award, and so we put those on the website and that helped. The other thing you guys, we needed to change was all these people were saying great things, but we didn’t have video reviews of them saying it on camera.
So it was like your online reputation didn’t match your real world reputation. You had so much good momentum there and so many people love you guys. And now you guys have, would you say, 100 video reviews? Oh gosh, I would say more than that. We’ve got, yeah, we have a lot. And everyone can keep going.
You can just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. I was scrolling. And this is actually all that’s on this page.
If you go to our YouTube channel, we have way more than this.
So again, and this is all the stuff. You’re going to grow a successful company, folks. Step one, you got to figure out your revenue goals. Step two, you got to figure out your break-even goals. Step three, sit down for an hour of power. Sit down with your spouse.
Make sure that you guys are on the same page of your hours you’re willing to work. Step four, unique value proposition. Figure out what it is that makes you unique. And we have an in-depth guide that you can download for free at thrivetimeshow.com forward slash millionaire
if you get stuck. Next box, you got to improve your branding, your website, your one sheet, in your case, model home presentations, business cards, social media branding, everything that a customer sees needs to be first class.
And I was talking to a guy named Ronnie Morales today, and it’s Morales Brothers. I think you met him at a conference. He told me, and I’m not slamming Ronnie. Ronnie, if you’re listening, I’m not slamming you. This is the real thing. Ronnie said he’d listened to our show for seven consecutive years before ever reaching
out.
And now he’s reached out and he’s up 57% in about eight months.
That’s awesome.
And we’re going to put his story on part two of today’s show because he’s in Texas and he’s seven years behind you. But he’s doing a great job. What do you think that thing is where people have bad branding and we’re not aware of it? Someone hasn’t brought it to our attention? What causes bad branding?
You know, the number one thing I hear business owners say is, well, you know, I don’t really need good branding because I sell everything by word of mouth. Oh yeah, baby. I’ve got such an incredible reputation. You do. Everybody just comes to me by word of mouth.
And then it’s like, okay, yeah, but how much business did you do last year? Well, not very much. And, you know, I’m really unprofitable, but I’ve got great reputation out there and I get a lot of word of mouth. So when people switch over to starting to improve branding, I know you helped us a lot with that
in just creating a lot better looking website, creating a, you know, we’ve got an office environment now that is when people walk into our model home, they are blown away. We truly wow our customers when they come to our model homes to one of a kind experience in the state of Oklahoma.
And the process of that, you know, just going through branding it so that it looks really top-notch. And, you know, that includes everything from, you know, marketing to all of your senses and everything else. So it just really brought us to another level. And when the customer comes in and experiences us after having walked through other builders’
homes, they usually come in and go, you guys are just on a whole nother level. It’s sights, sounds, smells, experiences, everything that your customer sees, they’re grading you on. And you might not know that they are even judging you because they’re not filling out the form.
And I have a funny story to share with you that’s kind of sad. I was working with a fitness guy years ago and I’m not going to tell you what studies and what city folks, I know you want to know, but I’m not going to tell you.
And he filled out the form because his wife wanted him to schedule a 13 point assessment. He did not want to. He tells me, Clay, honestly, I’m just doing the call because my wife wants me on the phone. I got to, I don’t really don’t get leads from social media.
I don’t get leads from marketing. I get all my leads word of mouth, like you were saying. And I said, well, let me just do this. Let’s just this first month working together. Let me get all the passwords for your Facebook, your Google, your YouTube.
And I’m just, as the first month, we just with every single client, we optimize your YouTube, your Facebook, your Instagram, your Twitter, all that. We log on, this is a fitness guy, he was spending like 400 bucks a week every week on ads,
and he hadn’t known, he wasn’t aware, that every time a lead came in, it got stuck in Facebook and went to an email address that he wasn’t checking.
So think about this.
And it’s like 15 to 20 leads a week for years this guy had.
That’s not good.
And he didn’t even, so I’m going, you’re spending, you know, 20 grand a year on ads that you’re not getting anything from. And are you aware that the phone number on your site rings to a phone that’s no longer real, a real phone? And I’m serious, this is real. And then he had before and after photos where somebody had had the idea of let’s get before and after photos.
You know where you interview someone before they start working out? Yeah. But then they never completed the thought.
You know what I’m saying?
I do. Where it’s like they interview them about getting in shape, but then they never actually like aired the part where they’re in shape. Oh no. So it’s just sort of like an interview with people
that are not in shape. And I’m like, and again, he’s busy guy, busy entrepreneur, that kind of stuff is very common. It’s kind of laughable if it’s not your company. But okay, next box. You’ve got to determine your customer acquisition costs.
How much does it cost you to get a customer? So Aaron, you guys run ads on Google, on Facebook, on retargeting ads. You have massive signage. There’s a lot of stuff you do. Why is it important to know how much it costs you at the end of the day to get an actual new buyer of a shawhome?
Well because if you want more of those, you know what it costs to go generate more of those. And it’s a cost where it’s like, okay, well, I’m down in sales this month or this quarter or whatever, and I need four more sales to make it a good quarter here before the end of the quarter. And it’s like, I know I can go put money into that and it’s going to cost me X number of dollars per customer to get there.
And so then it’s just a matter of, do I want to spend that money to get to that point? So, you know, for us, it’s, you know, a pretty high number because it’s a big ticket item, but for some people it might be, you know, very small to get that, you know, each customer. But for us, you know, it’s,
you got to know what the number is because ultimately that goes into the price of your product and whatever you sell, you know, we’re doing homes.
That is one of our line item costs in our homes.
That’s a cost, yeah. Now, if you go to any of the businesses that I’m involved in, you go to eitrlounge.com forward slash staff, I put in the password here. Once I put in the password,
I have all of the documents needed to run the company and they’re all saved. So the checklist for the manager, the opening checklist for the assistant manager, the bathroom cleaning checklist, everything needed to grow the companies all in one place.
And therefore, the business, everybody who works there knows where to go to find those documents. This is the kind of stuff that fires me up and it makes other people crazy. Oh yeah. So with the conferences we do,
if we ever do a conference that’s out of town, I have a checklist of stuff I print out. I know it seems kind of crazy for people, but this is real. I print it out and it’s like, okay, socks. I’m gone for four days, I want to have 12 pairs of socks. Why?
Because it could be hot, I don’t know.
Could get wet, I don’t know. I have a list of deodorant and socks and shaving and I have a laptop and a backup laptop and I have patch cables and XLR cables and we bring three… You’ve seen all this stuff but it’s multiple monitors, backup monitors, it’s backups for everything. When you guys build a Shaw home, you’re not moving off a guesswork. There’s blueprints, there’s plans, there’s systems so houses don’t fall down. There’s somebody out here listening right
now that doesn’t have systems in place. They don’t have checklists. They don’t have it. So they have to think about everything all the time, because if not, they forget a step. What would you say is the importance
of having taken the time to have built these systems now? It is the night and day difference between running around like your hair is on fire every day, constantly playing firefighter, or you hear people say, I’m up to my armpits in alligators. It’s because you don’t have systems and processes.
And every time at Shaw Homes, every time that we have a problem come up, we automatically go, okay, what step in our system did this fall apart in? And what’s broken in that step? And how can we fix it? So it never happens again. So we go fix the process.
We address the problem for the customer, but then we go back after that and we go, how do we fix the process so we don’t repeat this problem? And the business owners that are running around with their hair on fire all the time, it’s because there’s no systems, no processes.
Everything is urgent. Everything is hair on fire. And it is a chaos world that you live in. And if you’re going to build homes for a living and build a lot of them, you cannot live in that chaos world. Now this next box, I get excited about all these boxes.
This is what I get excited about. This right here is what I care about. Okay, the next box is management and execution. You have people on your team, and I’m just gonna give some examples, and I hope this benefits somebody out there listening.
You have people on your team, it’s their responsibility, every time that you do a new house, they go out there and they design, or they get the blueprint on the website. They get the new design of the home, because people want to see floor plans. So somebody’s job is to get those up there.
Somebody gets photos of every house that you guys are building. Somebody gets videos of every house. Somebody puts them all up for sale. Somebody answers the phone every day. Somebody calls the leads every day. Somebody cleans the bathroom every day.
Somebody builds the houses every day. Now this is what I find, and I’m sure none of our listeners can relate to this. Some of our listeners fire people and then nothing happens. So work with me on this. There’s listeners out there that I talk to every day because we do free 13-point assessments. So I talk to two or three people a day who go to ThriveTimeShow.com.
They want to schedule a consultation. The other day you heard me talking to Jordan. I said, Jordan, go ahead and keep setting those. He’s set an appointment with someone who’s definitely not a good fit. You could tell he had a little question if that was okay. And I said, I would rather you set an appointment with somebody than not because I don’t know
if he’s a good fit or not. But the idea though is I sit down, I was talking to a guy the other day and he was like, the reason why my team did not get Google reviews or videos reviews this week is because we fired a guy. And I go, because I’m just asking him, you know, where are we stuck?
What’s your biggest limiting factor? I have a big process I go through in my evaluation. I said, who calls the leads? He’s like, well, normally I have a person that calls the leads, but we just fired her. And I mean this, I’m going,
how long have you been in business? This guy’s been in business for over 10 years and he’s reaching out for help, good person. We’re trying to help him. I think it’s going to be a good fit. But so I said, so basically everybody follows the systems
until they don’t work there anymore. And then no one does the systems. And you go back and forth vacillating from things being done to not being done. And one of my favorite things about working with you guys is that you’re honest people. What does that mean? You do your best to do what you say you’re going to do, and you hold yourself and the
employees accountable. Absolutely. But what would happen if every week you, if somebody wasn’t performing, you remove them from the position, and then the houses weren’t built for the week because something wasn’t going well, or because maybe a salesperson wasn’t performing at the peak, you let them go and the next thing you know… What would happen if you managed your company that way?
It would be a disaster. I can’t just fire my superintendent without having somebody already ready to take over all of those responsibilities, because I’ve got materials showing up at the job site today, tomorrow, and the next day, I’ve got trades showing up who need some supervision, need to know what they’re supposed to be doing. If I fire that guy with no warning, somebody else has to come fill in that position.
So for us, we try to never have that gap happen. Sometimes it’s like you know that you’re going to need to fire somebody and you can see the writing on the wall, but you want to get the next person up and ready to go before that happens. And you guys have a weekly meeting, so we talk a lot on this show from an employer perspective, but how frustrating would it be to be an A-player employee and you’re working for a C-player boss?
You know, a boss that doesn’t have a staff meeting, that’s not organized, that doesn’t pay people on time, that’s constantly emotional. I see that a lot. And so management is a learned skill, and thankfully, you know, when I first met with you, you’d already really mastered, in my opinion, managing people. But this next box is where I thought we needed some help, was to build a system for constantly recruiting new people, because certain people work for Shaw Homes for three
years or four years, and then they want to go move, they want to have a baby, they want to stay home, they want to get a new job. And even though you have low turnover at Shaw, certain people get to their expiration date, and it’s time for them to move on to something else. And because we didn’t have a process in place at Shaw at that time to consistently bring in a pipeline of new people, it made it difficult to do the management that was needed. Can you talk about the importance of implementing a human resources program for hiring, inspiring,
training, and retaining good people? It’s huge. I mean, that was definitely an Achilles heel for us. And you helped us a lot with that. You know, putting in a, you know, where every single week I’m seeing, you know, potential candidates that could come work for us and their job shadowing and seeing what it’s like
to work in our company every single week. It does multiple things. It helps the people who work there to know, hey, there’s other people who desire to come
work here.
Here we go. And, you know, if I’m not doing my job, I might get replaced. So there’s a little bit of that. And then it’s also a thing of, you know, the people who are shadowing get to see the job being done by people who are happy doing their job.
And it helps them to want to come be a part of Shaw Homes. I’ve got a very long list of people right now in every single position that would be excited to come work for us if I did all of a sudden find myself with an opening, you know, because occasionally people leave with no notice or whatever, you
know, something happens, family emergency, whatever. Right. And you have that, oh, I need to replace somebody immediately. And the great thing about it is I have a whole bunch of people that I could plug into that position very quickly because every single week I am interviewing. Now the next box here is you got to do your accounting and in order to automate, in order
to earn millions, you have to automate your accounting. What does that mean? You have to have a system in place for making sure you price your products and services correctly and that you pay yourself first, that you set aside a set amount of money to pay yourself and your staff. All these things work together.
What I find is people ask me, often just not knowing, they come from a place of a good heart, they don’t know, they say to me, Clay, what is the most important step in growing Shaw Homes? I’ve heard Aaron on the show. He’s a great guy. Clay, I’ve heard PMHOKC on the show. Clay, I’ve seen Oxifresh on the show. What was the most important thing they did? And to me, that’s like asking a hiker, what was the most important step you took to get to the
top of that mountain? Well, I was the one we took there an hour ago. I took a left step. No, it’s also, I guess, get a baker. What’s the most important ingredient? Is it milk? Is it sugar? Is it eggs? Is it, you know, it’s like asking a farmer, what’s the most important thing, feeding the animals or watering them? What’s the key to your success?
There’s just certain questions that I understand people want to know, but all of this has to work together and nothing works unless you do. So I have three final questions for you. For anybody out there that’s thinking about scheduling a consultation, a free consultation with Thrivetimeshow.com and myself, obviously they’re stuck with me if they fill out the form.
I’m the only person that does 13 point assessments. I believe we, I’ve seen it since 2005. We help people decrease their costs, increase their time, freedom, and profits. What would you say is the benefit of scheduling that 13 point assessment?
Well, actually the 13 point assessment was very eyeopening for me. You asked me a lot of tough questions that I probably should have been asking myself and wasn’t. And so as we went through the questions, I was like, I think at every question you asked me, I was like,
oh, that’s a good question. And I was like, hang on, let me think about that for a minute. So I find that it kind of helps open your eyes to, you know, these are some things that I know I have some areas of weakness.
And then there were, I think a couple of the questions where I was like, oh, I know the answer to this one. I got this one, no problem. But it helps you sort of identify. I walked away having identified areas of strength and areas of weakness,
even though that really wasn’t the purpose of the phone call necessarily, it helped me to see that. And then I was like, hmm, I think I have a need in a couple of these areas and I didn’t really know what to do for myself.
I didn’t have the answers. You know, in part three of today’s show, part two, we’re gonna show the Ronnie Morales story. On part three, we’re gonna do a testimony with Myron. And Myron just bought his first Lamborghini today. And he’s super fired up.
And so Myron’s about six years down the path. We’ve been working with you for about eight years, whereas Ronnie’s been with us for less than a year. And it’s at a certain point that we have to take action. Knowledge without application is meaningless. What would you say to somebody who’s like,
you know, it’s $1,700 a month. And, you know, I’m spending that much right now on random ads and that much money on random regrettable purchases at the gas station. And you know, a lot of iTunes I’m downloading. I’m spending $700 a month on various things. I don’t know if I can afford it because I’ve just bought another vehicle that I can’t afford,
but I’m leasing it. You know, what would you say to anybody who’s kind of on that fence? I mean, I would say you need to do it. I mean, it has made a, it has been a game changer for us. I don’t know why you would sit there and think $1,700 a month is too much money to spend. Go find the money somewhere.
Go empty out your sofa cushions. Go sell the stuff that you have in your house that you’re not using. I mean, go get, you know, whatever you need to do to get to that place, you need to find that $1,700. And I will say this, that cost was very quickly replaced with the extra money we were making. And I’ve seen, I’ve actually seen, because I’ve been around you for a long time,
I’ve seen a lot of your clients come in and right off the bat, they’re real nervous about, am I going to be able to, you know, because maybe they’re a smaller company or whatever. And they’re like, I’m wondering if I’m going to be able to handle this 1700 a month.
And then I see them six months later and I’m like, how’s it going now? And they’re like, man, we’re just hitting record after record. I have referred several business owners to you. And they’re doing great.
That are killing it. And that, you know, I’ll give one example. I won’t name the person, but I did send one of my very good friends to you who was on the verge of losing his business because he just wasn’t able, he had bought another one of the shops of what he does. He opened it and it was not profitable and it was going to take under both of his shops.
And I sent him over to you. And I remember about three months later, I asked him, how’s it going? And he goes, man, we just had a record breaking month.
This was amazing.
And by the way, he said, first he just had another record breaking month, just so you know. Yeah, and I know right now, not only does he have way more income, but he has a lot more time freedom
because he’s been working with you for many years now. And so that was, it changed his life, just like it changed my life. I would say, if you’re thinking about, you know, doing a 13 point assessment, stop thinking, dial the phone, pause this video,
make the phone call, reach out to Clay, get it started right now. Now, final question I have is, I think people look at oxyfresh.com and they go in, there’s 500 locations now. Yeah.
And they look at Elephant in the Room and they go, there’s five brick and mortar locations now. They look at Shaw Homes and they go, you know, these are big success stories. I don’t know that I can do it. What would you say to somebody out there
that just feel like they might not have the, like all this stuff they’re gonna learn is gonna be over their head, too complicated. What would you say? I would say the information, the ideas are easy. It’s the application that is difficult for people.
The ideas that you share, there’s nothing that’s like, oh my God, I don’t have a PhD, therefore I can’t do it. I feel like it’s all very, very simple stuff, but it is a lot of action to get traction. You got to get the action going. I think if somebody has diligence and discipline or can learn diligence or discipline, they’re
going to do extremely well. It’s not about education. It’s about action. Now, Aaron, I got one thing I want to say, and then we’ll wrap up today’s show with a boom, because boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. And that’s what’s required to have success.
People watching this, they’re going, wow, Aaron, he looks like a normal guy. Well, that’s true. I say, well, he sounds like a normal guy. Sounds like an all right guy. You know, that’s true.
But the one thing you can’t quite picture on the show, and I want to just give that gift to you folks who are watching, is Aaron smells tremendous. It’s like, if you had smell-o-vision, if you could just get up there and just smell that, it’s incredible.
And it’s really, it’s his aroma that allows him to achieve massive success. So unless, if you’re out there and you’re going, what’s the secret sauce? It’s not a sauce, it’s more of just a smell. So I don’t know if you qualify to have the kind of success he has unless you smell like he smells.
It’s a really tremendous smell. Okay, let’s do this thing with a boom. Here we go. Three, two, one, boom. Well, Thrive Nation, we have an opportunity all the time.
Clay Clark is here somewhere.
Where’s my buddy Clay?
Clay Clark! Clay’s the greatest.
I met his goats today, I met his dogs, I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy in this. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.
So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right?
His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. Okay, Aaron Antis, March 6th and 7th.
March 6th and 7th, guess who’s coming to Tulsa, Russia?
Santa Claus?
No, that’s March. March 6th and 7th, you’re going to be joined by Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, possibly one of the best-selling business authors of all time. He’s going to be joined by Eric Trump. 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’ve 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 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 for the author the best-selling author of rich dad for that Robert Kiyosaki the guy that kick-started your career Yeah, 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 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, 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. So Eric Trump is here to talk about time management, promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build, I mean everything 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? 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 ten years of him running it, and we get
to tap into that knowledge. That’s going to be amazing. Now, think about this for a second. Would you buy a ticket just to see Robert Kiyosaki and Eric Trump? Of course you would. Of course you would.
But we’re also going to be joined by Sean Baker. This is the best-selling author, the guy who invented the carnivore diet, Dr. Sean Baker. He’s been on Joe Rogan multiple times. He’s going to be joining us. So you’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Eric Trump, Sean Baker. The lineup continues to grow, and this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show. If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always
done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that, is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody. I grew up without money. I totally understand what it’s like to be the tight spot. So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price
you want to pay. That’s how I do it. And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket. Now, we only have limited seating here. But the most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation.
Jim Brewer came here, the legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa and we had 419 people that were here. 419 people. Yeah. And I thought to myself, there’s no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple people had VIP seats in the men’s restroom. Oh no, I’m just kidding. But I thought, you know what, we should probably add on. So we’re adding on what we call the upper deck or the top shelf. So the seats are very close to the presenters, but we’re actually building right now, we’re adding on to the facility to make room to accommodate another 30 attendees or
more. So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to ThriveTimeShow.com, go to ThriveTimeShow.com, when you go to ThriveTimeShow.com, you’ll go there, you’ll request a ticket, boom. Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now. I just texted my number. It’s my cell phone number.
My personal cell phone number. We’ll keep that private between you, between you, me, everybody. We’ll keep that private. And anybody, don’t share that with anybody except for everybody.
That’s my private cell phone number. It’s 918-851-0102. 918-851-0102. I know we have a lot of Spanish-speaking people that attend these conferences. And so to be bilingually sensitive, my cell phone number is 918-851-0102.
That’s not actually bilingual, that’s just saying one for a one. It’s not the same thing. I think you’re attacking me. Now, let’s talk about this. What kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show workshop? So, Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past 7, 8 years, so let’s talk about it. I’ll tee up the thing and you tell me what you’re going to learn here, okay? Okay. You’re going to learn marketing, marketing and branding.
What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? Oh, yeah. We’re going to dive into, you know, so many people say, oh, you know, I’ve got to get my brand known out there, like the Trump brand. You want to get that brand out there.
It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is and make it a household name? You’re going to learn some intricacies of how you can do that. You’re going to learn sales. So many people struggle to sell something.
This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell. So we’re going to teach you sales. We’re going to teach you search engine optimization, how to come up top in the search engine results. We’re going to teach you how to manage people. Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your career and thousands of contractors.
And most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people? Well, because first of all, people are, you either have great people or you have people who suck. And so it can be a challenge. You know, learning how to work with a large group of people
and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re really good at selecting great ones, and we have a process we teach
about how to find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable, they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people all pulling in the same direction. So we’re going to teach you branding, marketing, sales, search engine optimization. We’re going to teach you accounting. We’re going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance.
We’re going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time? How do you get more done during a typical day? How do you build an organization if you’re not organized? How do you do organization? How do you build an org chart?
Everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two-day interactive business workshop. Now, let me tell you how the format is set up here. And again, folks, this is a two-day interactive 15. Think about this, folks.
It’s two days. Each day, it starts at 7 AM, and it goes until 5 p.m. So from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. two days. It’s a two-day interactive workshop. The way we do it is we do a 30-minute teaching session and then we break for 15 minutes for a question-and-answer session. So Aaron, what kind of great stuff happens during that 15-minute question-and-answer session after every teaching session? I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops because here’s what happens.
I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them. And you go in there and they talk in vague generalities and they’re constantly upselling you for something, trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing or this program or this membership.
And you don’t, you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business or your employees or what you’re doing on your marketing. And what’s awesome about this is we literally answer every single question that any person asks. And it’s very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we allow you as the attendee to write your questions on the
whiteboard. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard. And then we take a 15-minute break to stretch. And to make it entertaining when you’re stretching. And this is a true story. When you get up and stretch, you’ll be greeted by mariachis. There’s going to probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone.
I mean, there’s just, you had a crocodile one time.
That was pretty interesting.
You know, I should write that down.
And I can do that.
Sorry for that one guy that we lost.
The crocodile, we duct taped its face. So that, right, we duct taped. No, it was a baby crocodile. And we duct taped. Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody.
But it was really cool passing that thing around. I should do that. We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It’s going to be great. And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs. So there’s not a lot of people in America today.
In fact, there’s less than 10 million people today, according to U.S. Debt Clock, that identify as being self-employed. So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3% of our population that’s even self-employed. So you only have three out of every hundred people in America that are self-employed to begin with, and when Inc. Magazine reports that 96 percent of businesses fail by default,
by default you have a one out of a thousand chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double this. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. I have thousands of testimonials to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back it up. But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically
double the size of the company within 24 months. Yeah. Double. And you say double? Yeah. There’s businesses that we have tripled.
There’s businesses we’ve grown 8x. There’s so many examples. You can see it thrive timeshow.com. But again, this is the most interactive, best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet. And then you add 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, 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 him the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Escovedo’s an incredible Mexican restaurant That’s gonna 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 rustic cuff comments. One says I want more this Give me more. Okay. I’m not gonna mention her name right now because I’m working on it behind the scenes here. But we’ve got one guy who’s given me a verbal to be here and this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma and nobody really knows who he is because he’s built systems that are very utilitarian that offer a lot of
value. He’s made a lot of money in the, it’s the, it’s where you rent, it’s short, it’s where you’re renting storage spaces. He’s a storage space guy. He owns 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. Most people don’t know who owns the mini storage facility. Or most people don’t know who owns the warehouse that’s passively making money. Most people don’t know who owns the railroad cars. But this guy, he’s giving me a verbal that he will be
here. And we just continue to add more and more success stories. So if you’re out there today, you want to change your life, you want to give yourself an incredible gift, you want a life-changing experience, you want to learn how to start and grow a company, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Go there right now. Thrivetimeshow.com. Request a ticket for the two-day interactive event. 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. 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. I think that’s going to change your life? I promise you this will be ten times better than that.
It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.
Don’t do the Smoke Your Way to Thin conference. That is…
I’ve tried it.
Don’t do it. Chain smoking is not a viable… I mean, it is life-changing. It is life-changing. If you become a chain smoker, it is life-changing.
It’s not the best weight loss program, though.
Right. Not really. So if you’re looking to have life-changing results in a way that won’t cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Aaron Antist. I’m Clay Clark reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two-day interactive
Thrivetimeshow workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I promise you, it will be a life-changing experience. I promise you, it will be a life-changing experience. We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.