Cleaning Business Podcast | 14 Clay Clark Client Business Success Stories + In the Following Industries & More: (Automotive Repair, Chiropractic, Cleaning, Fitness, Home Building, Medical Practice, Ophthalmology, Orthodontists)

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

To be successful at anything, the truth is you don’t have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren’t. Consistent, determined, and willing to work for it. No shortcuts. It’s hard when you’re young to wake up in the off -season at 6 a . m.

to go train and work out knowing that all your friends are sleeping in and eating pancakes. It’s hard when you’re on your way to practice weighed down with all your gear and it’s 90 degrees out and all the other kids are at the pool or at the beach and your body is already completely exhausted from workouts in two days. It’s hard to throw, catch, block and tackle and hit kids when they’re way bigger and way more developed than you. Only to go home that night bruised and battered and strained, but know when you have to show up again the next day for just the chance to try again. But understand this, life is hard. No matter who you are, there are bumps and hits and bruises along the way.

And my advice is to prepare yourself. because football lessons teach us that success and achievement come from overcoming adversity. You know, tired body, unmotivated mind and get out there and do it anyway. You know, you better fight yourself because you’re not only winning when things are going your way. You got to figure out how to win when things aren’t going your way. You got to figure out when your body’s fighting you, when your mind’s fighting you.

How do you still, you know, just say, I’m going to beat my mind today. wasn’t even in town the last two weeks.

Let’s hear it for Roy.

Have you had since you and I’ve been working together over these past few years? 3 .45 million.

I got those stats before I got on here.

So you’ve grown by 3 .45 million?

Yeah.

3 ,450 ,000. Would that be like if you took the combined revenue and maybe doubled it? Have we gone up by… About almost three, not quite. Can you talk about just maybe the impact it’s made on you, knowing that, OK, I’m going to pay this guy this amount of money. I’m not going to get a random fee or a random charge, or he’s not going to go, oops, we had two calls, so it’s more, or, wow, we didn’t meet this week, so it’s less.

Can you talk about just knowing in your mind that you got the graphic design, the photo, the video, the web, the search, the ads, all of that is a monthly thing? Yeah. Not too long ago, I looked at what the average percentage of sales was spent on marketing, and I’m like half of the bottom number is what spent on marketing. Obviously, my marketing is working because we’re tracking it, right, and the sales growth. And as far as the SEO, and like I’ve messed up and didn’t send money to the hosting service and crashed my website, Clay had it back up in half a day. It’s really great to have somebody call just fixes it.

I can I can what I do, you do what you do. So it’s very powerful to me to have somebody that no matter what’s going on, no matter what crashes, you can take care of it. And I’m very convinced that it’s a great bargain. I don’t know how you do what you do, as cheap as you do, but it actually is super economical for me. Man, if you want change, you need to change, right?

And if you knew what you were doing, needed to know to change it, you would already change it. So it might be good to get some knowledge. I always say this, you’re stuck at your level of knowledge right now. So if you don’t increase that, you can’t you can’t go anywhere. And especially in the area of business, most startups are technicians, right? A lot of technicians are kind of arrogant, and don’t think they need any help, never even read a book on business.

That was me. And then wonder why you’re having trouble writing one, right? So it is a huge win to actually start learning about business. And I read books now, and I value knowledge. But it was a journey that really opened, took the lid off of me, or I’d be in crisis right now at 65 and having to twist wrenches still and be in that mode I was in when I came came to you. So I would encourage everybody, even for your health, your marriage, fix it.

You need to fix it. Folks, on today’s show, I’m going to tell you about a success story. I’m telling you a success story of a real, diligent doer. Now, he could be a male model. You might say, come on, this guy’s not real. He’s an actor.

He’s a paid model. His website is RC Auto Specialists. RC Auto Specialists, that’s his company number one. Company number two is thegarageba . com. This is a automotive repair business.

And over here, the Ford business is a diesel repair specialty shop. And again, he could be a male model. He could be an actor. He could be an AI -generated example of perfection, but he’s Roy Cox. He’s in the flesh.

Roy, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

I’m happy. Thanks for having me on, Clay. Well, I wanted to have you on the show because I have a client that I’m working with right now. Great guy. And this is not a passive -aggressive testimonial, but he’s in the automotive space. And he’s kind of going, yeah, but my industry is different.

So let’s start off with the success, and then we’ll get into how we’ve done it together. What kind of growth have you had since you and I’ve been working together over these past few years?

3 .45 million.

I got those stats before I got on here.

So you’ve grown by 3 .45 million? Yeah, $3 ,450 ,000.

Would that be like if you took the combined revenue and maybe doubled it?

Or have we gone up by half? About almost three, not quite. got it so almost almost three times yes 275 at least now um what happens with a lot of people in this i’m going to send this show right away to this particular guy is a lot of times we have a bakery a dentistry a law firm a product and i a lot of my clients will say You know, it’s different in my industry because I’m sure you see the same thing in your business. People bring in a car and they say, look, I don’t need a diagnostic. I think what it is is this. Look, I don’t need you to look at my car.

I think it’s this. Could you maybe just talk about when you and I first met, what were you thinking or what was kind of going through your mind as you were being introduced to me by some of your friends? Yeah, you know, I was in a crisis situation on my second business. I was minus 250 ,000. Now my first business went pretty good, but I was a mechanic trying to run a business. I wasn’t a businessman.

And that second one taught me a pretty good lesson.

So a good friend of mine, Aaron Antus, recommended you.

And so that’s why I reached out to you.

And when we first started working, I always tell people, they say, how do I grow a company? I’m a pull out my sheet, or at least how I look at it. I’m going to pull it up. I’m going to go to rumble . com.

I’m going to pull up our recent business videos so people can see this. And if anybody out there, you want to follow along, go to any of my business shows. I always put the proven plan in those notes. Let me pull this up real quick. And I’m scrolling down. And here we go.

So people say, what’s the most important step I need to take to grow my business? I said, there’s 14 steps, but let’s go one by one. The first step is you have to know your revenue goals. Roy, every time someone comes in to service their vehicle, you’re the kindest guy I know. And I know that you do this. If nothing else, you like undercharge for stuff.

And if you’re not intentional and you don’t know your revenue goals, what’s going to happen by default for a guy like you who, frankly, would give the shirt off your back to people? And you do that. What would happen if you’re, or I guess what was happening by default? Yeah, we were just going under, you know, and I was like I said, I didn’t have the knowledge to pull it out because I was a mechanic trying to run a business and this one was going to require a businessman.

So my journey with you was learning metrics, learning all 14 of those steps were foreign to me. I just thought, hey, I can do this. And like I said, the first one just kind of went by itself. The second one was the one that forced me to change. So that is how my journey began with Mr. Clark here.

Now, second step is you have to know your break -even numbers. And break -even is just how much business do we have to do just to break -even? And maybe for the listeners out there that don’t have a context of what you do, could you maybe share about the kinds of services that you provide at your automotive businesses, just so listeners can get an idea of the kinds of solutions you provide before we get into the break -even numbers? Sure. My big store, the Ford Specialty Store, we go from anything from oil changes to putting engines in diesel trucks. And so it’s turnkey all the way across the board.

you can get done at the dealer, you can get done at that shop.

Garage is a little different model. Let’s say the neighborhood garage around the corner. We’ve done a few engines. That’s not really our mainstream would be air conditioners, electrical alternators, things like that, alignments, suspension issues, general auto repair.

And it doesn’t matter whether someone’s a doctor, a dentist, or a lawyer, we have to know our breakeven points. And the breakeven point is how much revenue do you have to do just to breakeven? Could you talk about how you frame that in your mind now that you do know your breakeven point, now that you know how many days a month you have to, how many customers you have to see a month just to breakeven? How does that impact how you run your business? Yeah, I mean, you’re behind, you’re under until you hit that number. And so there’s some urgency to get to that number.

And I’ve found that with my employees, if they don’t have a target either, then they don’t really strive to hit it.

And so I’ve structured my pay plans to where we’re all on commission.

And so we all are going the same direction for the same reason. And it works good for us. But they most definitely know where that breakeven point is when we start making money. At this point, my breakeven point is right at 48 ,000 gross profit per week, shops combined. And you know that. I love how you mentioned the merit -based pay.

Everybody on your team is getting paid based off what they produce, not based on how many hours per week that they occupy space and breathe air. Moving on to step three, you have to figure out how many hours per week you’re going to work. Now, this is one thing that’s been interesting about you and the different clients I work with, is I have some clients that I work with that are 25 years old, and I say, how many hours a week do you want to work? And they go, ooh, 30 hours a week. And you go, really? Then there’s a guy like you who you’ve been working six days, seven days a week for years.

And you’re a Bible believer. You always take your family to church. But you would do whatever it took, and you have done whatever it takes to be successful. And so you did that. But you knew in your mind that you had a vision, that you wanted to get to a place where you could take your wonderful wife on dates and spend time with the grandkids and do that. And so you were willing to put in the work, but you also had boundaries on how many hours per week you’re willing to work and what days you wanted to be free to travel.

Could you talk about the balance of that?

Because I do see a lot of young whippersnappers being unwilling to put in any work at all to grow the company.

Then I also see grizzled entrepreneurs willing to work seven days a week.

Family, don’t even worry about the family. We’re just going to work seven days a week. a week. I want to get your thoughts on how you balance that. Yeah, I believe there’s seasons of life. Starting a business, you’re all in, there’s kind of a, I would call an adrenaline rush for at least the first two or three years where I’m working literally 70 -80 hours and not really even thinking about it.

It’s just what we have to get done here. And after you get some success, I’ve throttled that back some, I’ve got a couple young 35 year olds that are doing the heavy lifting. And I’m actually running it like a business. Thank you, Mr. Clark. And I was a mechanic attempting to do it.

And I was in what I call micromanager hell, I didn’t have systems processes. So I was a fireman and there was always more fires than I could put out. So hence the 70 or 80 hours, not real efficient. So now I can I can take off a week or two and not even get a phone call. But that was after many years of grinding and getting to that point. So powerful.

I want everybody to take notes. What you’re hearing, folks, is a is a real entrepreneur, a real grandpa, real committed husband, a real committed dad, who’s just giving you real information. okay? There’s no BS here, folks. Now, step number four, you’ve got to figure out your unique value proposition. We have to figure out your unique value proposition, and there’s a lot of automotive repair shops competing for business out there, a lot of diesel repair shops competing for the marketplace, and you and I sat down, and I think that was the first area where maybe you and I had some mental friction because I was obsessed, and I said, You and I, every single week, we got to get video reviews.

We got to get images on that website. We got to write search engine content that no one’s going to read. And we got to get more Google reviews.

And then we got to run the same ads every week. We don’t have to change them every week, but keep those ads. So B -I -S -M -D. For people taking notes, it’s video reviews, images, search engine content, more Google reviews, and then run those ads, never turn them off. And I think that was the first time where you were kind of going, I don’t know if you know what you’re talking about. Could you talk about that a little bit?

Well, first of all, Several of those, I thought to myself, well, Clay doesn’t understand my business, and that’s not going to work. But I actually did it because I was going to prove you wrong. And I’m glad I didn’t open my mouth because I actually proved you right. And in my mind, I finally said, look, obviously, I don’t know how to do it.

I’m sinking this ship at minus 250 ,000. So I’m going to go ahead and listen to my business coach and do it even if I don’t think it’s going to work. And lo and behold, it did work. So really, if you’re reaching out for help, maybe you ought to listen to the person that’s trying to help you is kind of my takeaway from that. And even though I thought it wouldn’t work, I obviously did not know, and that’s why I needed help. Now, the thing about marketing and ads, most marketing companies, I’m sure you’ve never experienced this, but I have, they want to come up with a new ad of the week, a new logo, a new ad, a new theme, a new vision, a new brand.

Hey, hey, wow, Mr. Client, look, it’s the spring. We should do new logo. new vision, new promo. And they do that to stay busy. because they want to show, which would be analogous to me, if I ran an automotive repair shop, this is where the analogy would go. That would be like me saying, Roy, I just fixed your truck, but guess what?

I just broke it again.

I’ll be back in there fixing it. I mean, it’s creating problems. And really what needs to be done is just diligently executing those systems. Could you talk about maybe the mind freedom or the time freedom that’s created for you now that you’re following the same system and we’re just doing it as opposed to coming up with a new idea every week? Sure. The franchise system, somebody actually developed a business strong strengths processes, and then they hand you this model and you just keep doing the same thing every week.

Everybody knows what to do. It’s really hard for us entrepreneurs to do that because we had to start out micromanaging, but The transferring out of that is key to having freedom and for the money to scale up. I found that people my age, when they start, they had a big, giant capacity. Well, that capacity shrinks up as you age out. And if you don’t do something about it and install systems and processes, your business is going to shrink with your capacity because you become a giant funnel. And so those processes, what we do weekly, monthly, Day in, day out, we’re getting reviews.

We’re constantly getting reviews. Those reviews drive customers 24 -7.

And they’re my most important thing.

And the website on the videos gets me on the front page, obviously. And so we keep doing what it takes to stay on the front page. I’ve tried all kinds of fancy marketing, and I’ve wasted a ton of money. And I couldn’t measure one customer that came in because of it. That’s so powerful. for somebody out there.

Now, Roy, one thing is when you go into the garage, I’m going to pull it up on the screen here. When we go to the garage automotive repair shop and the RC auto specialists, you and your family, you guys have really taken a pride and ownership into running it in a way where it creates a nice atmosphere. It’s a good place to do business. When you go there, you don’t feel like you’re going to a prison. A lot of automotive repair shops have a prison theme going on. You’ve worked really hard to create a nice atmosphere.

And when you and I first started working together, we went in there, we kind of overhauled that lobby, we did some nice changes to the website, we updated the website so the website looked as good as the location. We did a lot of that, but now we’re not in there repainting the whole thing every two days. We’re not coming up with a new theme every hour. I see these automotive repair people I work with, wonderful people who feel the need to every week come up with a new theme, repaint the whole thing. They’re constantly putting up different, you know, they’re doing different mailers.

They’re doing billboards. They’re doing the billboards. They got the new, there’s local magazines. They’re just putting a lot of work and they’re not getting the results. Can you talk about just tracking the numbers and why that has helped you just tracking the numbers? Yeah, you measure what’s important to you.

And the term metrics, I didn’t know what that meant before I started working with you, but they’re the key performance indicators. I liken them to gauges. on a car or a scan tool. Like if I’m trying to fix a car and I don’t have any metrics, any facts, it’s going to be real hard.

I may stumble across it if I threw enough parts at it, but it’s a whole lot more effective if I can look at some data. The metrics we track every week are the data.

That’s the measuring system.

So I know if my marketing is working or not because I can track it in dollars every week. Super important. So we’re moving on here, folks. Again, if you’re taking notes at home, step number one is establish your revenue. goal. Step number two, know your breakeven point.

Step number three, define how many hours per week you’re willing to work. Step number four, we have to define our unique value proposition. And what we focused on, just to be clear with the garage and the diesel repair business, was you were already doing a great job repairing cars, but we had to get documented evidence that that was true. It’s because everybody’s competing for that dollar, so we had to gather objective video reviews, a lot of them. And by the way, hundreds of them. And not just 200 or 300, but 500 of them per company, per location.

It’s pretty powerful. Next is we had to establish a three -legged marketing stool. So we had to think about who are the ideal and likely buyers, and what’s the most sustainable way for Roy, as the business owner, to reach them. Some of my clients love hopping on podcasts, and they like to be. One of my clients does RV. They sell RVs, and he loves being on commercials, and he loves being the face of the business, and he wants to do all that.

Other business owners don’t want to do that. So what we did is we created a three -legged marketing stool that allowed Roy to say, implement it without needing to be on camera all day or without needing to post on social media every two minutes. Roy, can you talk about that for a second? Because there’s so many marketing strategies that could work, but many of them require the owner to live on social media.

Could you talk about why you and I together have not gone with the, hey, let’s make Roy the viral TikTok king in order to grow?

Well, I’m happy. I’m thankful about that. It’s really not my personality.

But yeah, just doing A company that knows what works, i .

e.

Clay Clark’s company, I don’t know how many you work with, 600 companies? You’ve been doing it for what? How many years? 15 years? 20 years. 20 years.

So after a while, maybe, just maybe, you know what you’re doing, I think.

So with the marketing, I call it the low hanging fruit marketing, the stuff that actually works, best value. I can go on radio, but my ROI goes down significantly. So what we’re doing right now, now, we track those numbers. And it’s it’s amazing how many new customers come in per week based on the same marketing we do week after week after week after week. Now, Roy, you know, I remember this like it was yesterday, and I’ll let you share as much of it as you want.

But every client we ever work with, I always say I tell that business owner, I said, we need to install call recording. Oh, man. I had a fantastic conversation with the dentist this morning. And I say fantastic. It did not go well. And I was on the phone with Mr. Dentist. I said, Mr. Dentist, I know you’re paying me to help you.

I really want to help you. And he says, I just have pushback on the call recording. I said, why? He goes, because if I play the calls, it’s going to create an awkward culture.

And we found out that his daughter is the one answering the phones.

And so I said, can we just go in and just listen to a couple? And they were rough. And it was like, I didn’t want to know. So I said, do we have anybody you’re not related to? He said, well, one more. We got a lady we know from church.

We play the calls. And they were actually not in any way, shape, or form following the script. And she was trying to convince the patients that the dental practice was super busy, and that they’d shut down for the day, and that people should just call back. Wow around three o ‘clock every day she’s going yeah we’re all booked out but the doctor he’s all gone but if you could just call back on monday and so she was trying to make the business conformed to her schedule, which involved leaving early.

Aaron, who you referenced earlier, who referred me to you, Aaron found that people on the phone were using his phone line to poach customers.

So he had people on his phone saying, thank you for calling Shaw Homes. How can I help you? And they would answer the phone, these salespeople, and they would refer the deals over to other home builders that were willing to pay more of a commission. I mean, did you, when you started putting call recording in place, did you discover anything exciting? Wow. I was at a loss of why the garage was struggling so bad and why, um, customers didn’t come back.

And, uh, I listened to three phone calls and went down and fired the manager on the spot. It couldn’t have been any worse if he was, uh, I don’t know that he wasn’t on purpose trying to take my business. It was so. bad. And then I realized he’s representing me. I mean, just a sketchy human bad. So it was a key to turning that thing around, because I remember you said, oh, there’s a couple of rats in there.

I go, no, no, these are good people. And I mean, you better check, because, yeah, these were not good people at all. So I almost, I don’t know, a couple of people stayed, but I had to turn over the whole staff. And that’s when things started getting better. But I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t hear. Now again, Roy’s implemented the scripts.

We talk about installing sales systems. I’m talking about scripts, folks. I’m talking about pre -written emails. I’m talking about recorded calls. We have a whole system for this, and Roy has implemented that. Step number eight, you got to track how much does it cost you to gain a new customer.

So every week, Roy and I, we track those numbers. We look at them. We go, OK, we spent this much on advertising. And just to be clear, this is remarkable. I want people to know this. We’re down right now to spending about $150 a week on ads.

which is incredible for a location where, I mean, there are people that reach out to me. And right now, I’m thinking about this automotive guy that I’m going to send this to. He’s spending right now over $2 ,000 a week on ads.

And you’re now down to $150 a week on ads or less.

Could you talk about just the idea that tracking every single week? I mean, because we’ve been doing it for years now. I mean, how many years have we been doing this?

I mean, because we’ve been doing it for years now. I think 2016, I believe. Yeah, so we’re like, you know, we’re like nine years into it and we’re tracking and you can see that number of years that you were spending on ads. is going down, down. Yeah. Can you talk about that a little bit?

I did the same thing. You know, you get a couple slow days and somebody tells you they could just overwhelm you with customers. And it always takes a little more, a little more, a little more. But if you’re not measuring, you don’t know where they’re coming from. You don’t know if you’re bringing in one. I’ll never forget this, this young man just got out of college, and he had a marketing degree, and he’s all excited about how he’s going to just man explode my business.

And so I think it was click funnels or something. And, and the young man really believed it. I mean, you know, he was passionate, and he believed what they told him. So I said, Well, how much do we got to spend to know if it even works? And he gave me a number. Well, I doubled, I said, Well, let’s double that number.

And let’s do it for a month and see if I can.

And we asked where people come from, because we vet our customers at the counter. And so and I said, Let’s give it a month. So he did all this stuff. And not one customer said, that’s what they heard about after a month of doubling what he said it would take to make it work. But he believed he was sincere, he was just sincerely wrong. So again, working with somebody that actually knows what works is pretty important.

Now, step number nine, I want to brag on Roy for a second, folks, for anybody watching this. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. One thing Roy does really well is he’s organized. And it’s hard to build an organization unless you’re organized. And I would say the clients I work with are not organized. And so when you go to the garage or RC auto specialist, everything has a place.

Everything’s organized.

You can leave knowing that your vehicle is going to be repaired with quality and a focus on quality, taking care of your vehicle.

That’s something Roy’s always done. But if you’re watching today’s show, I won’t mention the name of the company, but there was a bakery I’d worked with for a while. And I’m not kidding. Every meeting, she would take a call. Clay, I got to take the call. What’s going on?

Sorry, I got someone’s call. me and now I’d say what happened She goes all they ran out of eggs. I’m like, okay. Okay next week clay got to take the call real quick Sorry, they ran out of flour Got to take the call. They ran out of toilet paper. And finally, I’m going, hey, hey, hey, we’re focusing on the marketing, and the accounting, and the systems, and the legal, and the tracking.

But your core thing is you make cookies and bakery items, right? How often do you run out of material? She goes, oh, every day. It’s like every couple hours. It’s just like zoo. So again, if you’re out there today, you’ve got to be organized.

We’ll help you with that. We didn’t have to help Roy with that. But most of our clients, we do have to help on that. Next is managing, step number 10. I would argue that managing people is the hardest thing for compassionate people to do, holding people accountable to a standard of excellence.

And Roy, you’ve done a great job of really assembling an all -star team piece by piece, almost like the NFL draft. Every year, if you have a team that’s a loser, you got to go get a good guy, another good player, maybe do a trade, maybe do a different. And you’ve built a wonderful team now. Could you talk about maybe the pain of recognizing that someone’s not a good fit and yet needing to, you want to be compassionate, but you also know that if you don’t fire a bad employee, the customer will fire you. Could you talk about that? Cause you’ve done, you’ve really built a great team now.

Yeah, we have the best humans we’ve ever had, but that was on purpose. And so, uh, one thing I’ve learned is to, uh, hire slowly, fire quickly. If you know, you’ve, you’ve made a mistake. It really affects the whole team, the whole atmosphere of the shop, one bad guy. I don’t care how much work he’s putting out. It is not worth it.

I believe there’s a proverb says, get rid of the mocker and all strife will cease. And I mean, the whole atmosphere of the shop changes. So now I’ve left it up to my employees. I say, if I hire somebody, I stick them in here and they don’t fit our culture, you just let me know. So two of them lasted a week.

It’s not worth it. I won’t do it. And like I said, we do well, but I’ve got good humans, no drama, everybody’s up to work. They’re family guys, but it was on purpose. I’m telling you, I’ve been through a few.

Now, next question I have here for you, next question I have here for you is, or next step, step number 11.

You’ve got to create a repetitive schedule.

You and your wife are really involved in missions and outreach, and I’ll just kind of keep it vague there, but you guys are passionate about weekly going out and sowing seeds and investing time in ministry, and that’s a big part of your schedule. Could you talk about the importance of you and your wife having a schedule that you two agree on? Because you guys have that, and a lot of clients I see, it’s the husband and wife have a very different view of how the schedule should be, and rather than just agreeing to disagree or setting a schedule that works, there’s a constant fight. Could you talk about just the importance of you and your wife having a schedule you both agree on? Wow. Yeah.

How can two walk together unless they be agreed? You know, she’s she’s right underneath the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as far as any success I’ve had and not blown it up three or four times. So I’m very thankful for her. So she’s a high priority for me. And so we we have come to an agreement about how much we’re going to work and where we’re going to be. And we’re and we have determined to be together.

There was a season there that we couldn’t, but we changed that pretty quick.

Wasn’t healthy.

And then I look back behind me and see how many people have been together.

We’ve been at 37 years now.

And I mean, it is a huge win over any of these businesses, but it ties to those businesses. I could not have done what I’ve done without her back behind the scenes. You know, she’s my strength. So we we agree on everything. If we don’t, I’m going to park it till we do, because that’s that important to me. I don’t know if that answered your question, but that’s kind of how we operate. This is big.

I’m telling you, as a business consultant, you start to see people People walk in a different direction, and if they’re married, that gets odd. If they’re business partners, it gets odd. So you’ve really set a great example for that. A final couple steps here. Again, folks, if you’re taking notes, I put all of them in the show notes here. The next step, step number 12, human resources.

We talked about it a little bit, but it’s hard to manage people if you don’t have good people.

So I would just say never stop hiring. That’s one thing I obsess on. Roy, you’ve quickly adopted that. Most business owners will fight me on the idea.

They’ll say, why should I always be hiring if I already have good people?

Roy, what do you say to someone who says, why should I always be hiring if I already have good people?

I’ve lost three people in one week. So you better have some back on the bench ready to come in because trying to find them when you’re in crisis situation, you usually end up getting a bad hire or two just got a desperation to get a human body in there and then you have to back up and punt again. And so we we have a several deep applications, people that we know, and if there’s somebody really good, I’ll make them a spot. I will pay them, and it looks like you’re losing money. I’m not, because there will be a need, and when you need them, you can’t find them. That’s what I found.

Now, step number 13, folks, you got to know your numbers. We talked about that earlier, but you got to know your accounting. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep, and Roy and I We get into it. We talk about it. We look at the numbers every single week.

And I’m telling you, there’s little moves. You can do just a little tweak.

Once you get the business to a certain level, you can do one tweak, just one little tweak. And all of a sudden, the profit, the actual money you can keep, will go up in a dramatic, impactful way. And so, Roy, I mean, what do you say for someone who’s afraid of doing a price increase despite record inflation or somebody who’s afraid to make a tweak or make a cut? What do you say about really knowing those numbers? Yeah, we did 6 million in sales last year. And we did just call it 6 % better.

It was different. Most shops that average 6 % better to the bottom line. Well, that’s $360 ,000 of profit.

for 6%.

That’s substantial numbers. That’s life changing money that is on top of what you were doing before without even bringing in any more cars. It’s being more efficient cutting waste. You’ve had me do several things going through with changing credit card companies and fees and different just going through and checking all the monthly things that are automated that you’re not even using anymore. I mean, and these little percentages add up. at the end of the year to a big number, especially when your sales numbers start going up significantly.

Now, step number 14, I would ask anybody watching today’s show, what’s the purpose of having a business? I would argue that every day that we have is a gift from God, and what we do with it is a gift to God. And a vehicle is simply, a business is simply a vehicle that allows you to give more, be more, make a bigger impact. And that’s how I look at it. And I know, Roy, you’re a Christian business owner. You don’t have a sign that says, Christian business owner, Roy Cogshaw.

But you are. And I know that the profits that you make, you and your wife like to sow seed into good ground. and support missions. Could you talk about what’s in how you view a business? Like, what’s the purpose of a business at this point in your life? Like, what is the purpose of owning a business?

Yeah, at this stage of my life, I was just trying to get some money and get out of crisis. Starting the business, but we have a nonprofit that the businesses fund. It’s closer to a foundation at this point. And I always say you’ll do more for a higher cause than you’ll do for yourself. I work night and day inside jobs for my family. I wouldn’t work that hard just for myself, but there’s a higher purpose.

Now with, I call it doing some 10 ,000 years from now stuff, that’s really what flips my switch now. I’m going to do a third, but I don’t need any more money, but I want to be able give some more money, right? So that’s going to require a third.

Also, I have some really great humans that work for me, and they make really good money. They can work five days a week and enjoy their family. That’s super important for me to have also. I actually enjoy being around these guys. So starting a third will give some room for movement, and everybody can move up and make more also. So that’s what flips my switch.

Okay my final two questions for here we go but a little bit okay all right you know when you pay me i pay we deliver service for you what i know is i know that you and i have a meeting every week and and at that meeting time the purpose of that meeting is to make sure that we identify what needs to be discussed we identify we discuss and we solve what am i saying we identify the biggest limiting factor we discuss the best way to solve it And then we solve it. So identify, discuss, solve. IDS. We do it every week. And so the meeting doesn’t need to be two hours.

It doesn’t need to be 90 minutes. The purpose is to identify what needs to be discussed, discuss it, and then solve it. And for me, it’s peaceful knowing that I’m working with 160 people that I actually care about and knowing that they’re going to go out there and take those profits and do great things with it. Can you talk about just maybe the impact it’s made on you, knowing that, OK, I’m going to pay this guy this amount of money. I’m not going to get a random fee or a random charge, or he’s not going to go, oops, we had two calls, so it’s more, or, wow, we didn’t meet this week, so it’s less. Can you talk about just knowing in your mind that you got the graphic design, the photo, the video, the web, the search, the ads, all of that is a monthly thing?

Yeah. Not too long ago, I looked at what the average percentage of sales was spent on marketing, and I’m like half of the bottom number is what’s spent on marketing. Obviously, my marketing is working because we’re tracking it, right, and the sales growth. And as far as the SEO, I’ve messed up and didn’t send money to the hosting side.

and crashed my website, Clay had it back up in half a day. It’s really great to have somebody call, just fixes it. I can do what I do, you do what you do. So it’s very powerful to me to have somebody that no matter what’s going on, no matter what crashes, you can take care of it. And I’m very convinced that it’s a great bargain.

I don’t know how you do what you do, as cheap as you do, but it actually is super economical for me. Now, Roy, what do you say to anybody out there that’s thinking about going to Thrivetimeshow . com and scheduling a free 13 -point assessment? They’re thinking about coming to one of our conferences to see Tim Tebow. They’re thinking about maybe coming out to a conference to see an Eric Trump or thinking about scheduling a free consultation. What do you say?

Man, if you want change, you need to change, right? And if you knew what you needed to know to change it, you would already change it. So it might be good to get some knowledge. I always say this, you’re stuck at your level of knowledge right now. So if you don’t increase that, you can’t you can’t go anywhere. And especially in the area of business, most startups are technicians, right?

A lot of technicians are kind of arrogant, and don’t think they need any help. Never even read a book on business.

That was me. And then wonder why you’re having trouble writing one, right? So it is a huge win to actually start learning about business. And I read books now, and I value knowledge. But it was a journey that really opened, took the lid off of me, or I’d be in crisis right now at 65 and having to twist wrenches still and be in that mode I was in when I came came to you. So I would encourage everybody, even for your health, your marriage, fix it, you need to fix it.

Roy, you’re the best joke giver I’ve ever seen. You have a delivery. It’s a mastery. I’m not trying to paint you into a corner. I know you have a good joke.

Okay, give yourself a moment to get ready for that joke.

If you’re watching this right now, and you don’t find this joke

there’s something wrong with you folks psychologically.

Roy’s the best joke. Every week he has a different joke.

So, Roy, I’m ready.

What do you call a man with a toe growing out of his knee, Tony?

Yes.

Yes.

Does your wife feed you these jokes? Where do you get this endless source of jokes? She rolls around. She’s not one of my biggest fans on the jokes at all, but it does help me out much. Well, thank you. He’s a comedian.

He’s an entrepreneur. He’s a husband. He’s a great dad.

He’s a committed Christian.

I encourage everybody out there.

Check out his website.

He’s a real guy.

Roy, thank you for carving out time for us today.

I really do appreciate you.

All right. Thanks, Clay. Have a great day, brother. Take care. Bye -bye. All right.

Bye. One of our accountants had said, you’ve got to meet this guy, Clay. So we ended up meeting with Clay. And he’s helped us go from right before we opened the third location now to six locations. And so we’ve more than doubled our revenue.

And these are ground -up build gyms. And so it’s not, the barrier for entry is pretty high. It’s 20 plus staff at each location.

So yeah, it’s been a lot as far as running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when and how, training us on that. Clay’s helped a ton. We would not be where we’re at without him. So huge win. Charles, from an ROI perspective, if someone’s going to look at it and go, return on investment, I pay you $1 ,700 a month. Will I make more money than I’m paying you?

How would you maybe tackle or how would you respond to what kind of return on investment have you seen for the $1 ,700 a month you’re paying? Well, for example, Clay has got, there’s no better business coach in the world that has the way he works, the way his mind works. But he’s also got a team of other business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries. So he’s worked in every industry. His staff has worked in every industry. He’s got videographers, web designers.

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

Graphic designers, web developers, anybody that has that type of knowledge, you know, in your back pocket. And then in the whole thing is run your business with being somewhat conservative, make sure you don’t run it to the edge all the time.

But by doing that, you have that that skill set, you have that you have those.

tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like, it’s just like the cost of doing business. Like, just, just understand it. That’s a, that’s what I think. There’s a, there’s a, sometimes the payment we make, I feel like is peace of mind, even because there have been multiple times throughout the years that we will, we will either be butting heads on something. Um, we’re super confused about something.

We’re fearful about something, something in the markets changed and it’s a quick call to clay. Well, Thrive Nation, it’s a very special occasion because a lot of times on The Thrive Time Show, I get to interview people that I am friendly with or have an acquaintance with, that kind of thing. And I enjoy that. But it’s really an honor whenever I get to interview someone who I consider to be a friend or people that I consider to be friends of our family.

And it’s awesome when we can celebrate a success story because it’s a life -giving thing.

And for somebody watching today’s show, if you feel you need like a checkup from the neck up, if you feel stuck, if you feel like you don’t have the resources to get started but you You have the resourcefulness. Maybe today’s show is the show you need to hear because this is a couple. They started this business together out of their house, and they’ve now grown it into a multi -million dollar, super successful company.

And I’ve had the opportunity to work with them in a consulting or coaching capacity over these past five or six years.

And I am so excited to have them on today’s show. With that being said, Amber and Charles Cola, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show. Amber, how are you?

Great.

Thanks, Clay.

It’s awesome to be on here with you.

Yes, we are excited. Okay, so I got to ask this real quick, because people think you’re a hologram.

How long have we had the opportunity to work with you?

Or how long have we worked with you guys together from a kind of a coaching relationship?

We probably started back in 2017. Yeah, we’re looking at seven, eight years. Yeah, it’s coming up on eight probably, a little over seven. And from that time, I mean, you guys have experienced tremendous personal growth and business growth. I mean, could you, Charles, maybe talk about, I’m not looking for your specific financials, but could you maybe talk about maybe the size you guys have grown over these past seven or eight years at colawfitness . com?

Absolutely. We started off, we were getting ready to open our third location. And one of our accountants had said, you’ve got to meet this guy, Clay. So we ended up meeting with Clay. And he’s helped us go from, you know, Right before we opened the third location now to six locations.

And so we’ve more than doubled our revenue.

And these are ground up build gyms. And so it’s not the barrier for entry is pretty high. It’s 20 plus staff at each location. So yeah, it’s been a lot for us running systems, checklists, workflows, who does what, when and how training us on that. Clay’s helped a ton. We would not be where we’re at without him.

So huge win. Now, I’m going to ask you guys this story, because I want you to be able to encourage somebody. I’m not sure who’s going to watch this show, but I view every show as kind of a message in a bottle.

So somebody’s watching this show, and they’re going to relate to this story.

I’m going to let Amber go first, because I think she’s going have a less rosy view of how it was. But you guys started colawfitness . com doing personal training to individual clients in your actual home. So like your living room was where the squat rack was, or the bench press was in the kitchen. Amber, what was that like when you started colawfitness .

com? Well, I think when you’re starting something like that, you don’t see bigger picture. You’re not thinking that far ahead. You’re just kind of thinking you have to work. You have to survive. You’ve got to make money and you’re doing what you love.

And so with that, it was just it was kind of more as a of a survival. And also we couldn’t afford furniture to go in our formal living room, a formal dining room. And so So, um, we were kind of stuck in a situation where Charles needed a place to train and he had a full clientele. And so we just were, why don’t we find like a big universal piece, stick it in the living room that cause it’s just an empty room. And, um, the dining room became more of the office. And so we bought a big universal piece and threw down some rubber flooring, ripped up the carpet and put some big mirrors on the wall.

And we just started doing what we needed to do at the time with no, I mean, I definitely did not think it was going to be in my house for a couple of years for sure. But yeah, a lot of it was fear of failure. I was like, I want to make sure that, you know, I can provide for my family. And we were trying to just, I was every lead I had and follow up with every client I trained, want to make sure that it gave me good results.

And yeah, next thing you know, we have about 160 clients coming in and out of the door a week.

And it’s me and about four or five of the trainers training out of their out of our living room. And so it became a revolving door of fitness. And then Amber also did some hair. So she had a hair salon in the back of the house. So it’s a like a training studio in the front of the house and then a hair salon in the back of the house.

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

She was so excited. I remember we were driving down Riverside. She was like, we’re going to buy a house? I go, yeah. She’s like, we’re going to build a house? I’m going, yeah, because we’re a young couple.

We’ve just been married a couple of years. We’re right here at 111th and Memorial. I found a builder named Rob Brewer who did a phenomenal job. I would hire him again. And this is a true story. So I built this house from scratch.

And so my neighbor comes by, Wendy, God bless her. I’m not going to mention her last name. Wendy comes by, and she’s like, hey, what are you doing?

I go, what do you mean?

Because I’m having like 40 couples a week that are walking up to my front door, hanging a right at my office. And there’s, not kidding, there’s probably eight DJ vans in my backyard. And she’s like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I’m going, well, what do you mean what I do? She’s like, this is a residential neighborhood.

What are you doing? I said, well, I’m running a business. She said, you can’t run a business here. So I had back here in the backyard. No kidding. I had eight different vans back there.

And then neighbors kept asking me if I was running drugs.

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

Oh yeah. So Charles is, he’s relentless and he’ll figure it out. any hour he can.

And so he would start as early as five a .

m. with his first client. And, you know, sometimes it would last until about ten o ‘clock at night. And so it was it was it was just a revolving door. And we always blocked out the middle of the afternoon at two o ‘clock every afternoon. And him and I and as we added staff, we would all work out together.

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

And this is a real thing. Amber, I’m not looking for anything super salacious, but I mean, did you ever have awkward situations? I mean, because you’re sleeping there, you’re living there. Do you guys ever have just like, I remember with the DJ business, my wife, about once a week there for a while, she would come downstairs and one of my DJs would get, Clay, where’s the bathroom? I’d say, right there. And they would walk into our master bedroom.

And I’m like, get out of there, that’s my bathroom, you sicko. I mean, did you ever have just weird client interactions? Oh, yeah. Totally. Our kitchen became like the staff break room. And so all of a sudden, I’ve got everybody’s lunches in my fridge.

And I remember one day, a guy had went to get the barbecue sauce out of the fridge and just drops it. And it just shatters all over the kitchen floor. But his client was here. So he looks at me kind of like, uh. And I was like, just go. So I’m cleaning up barbecue sauce out of the kitchen.

Um, one morning I had gotten out of the shower and I come out of the bathroom, which is at the top of the stairs. I, and I’m just making that short little jagged over to my bedroom door. And so I had my hair in a towel and a robe on, and I opened the door and right there at the bottom of the stairs, Charles has one of the clients doing calf raises and they just, good morning.

And I thought, get this out of my house. The trainers napping on the couch between classes. And our middle son was in pre -K at the time. And so he’d come home half the day and he’d sit on the couch. He was just so little, his feet would just stick straight off the couch. And he’d try and watch cartoons and there would be someone on like a ab mat on the floor, right in front of the TV doing crunches.

And so he’s just watching his little cartoons and someone’s doing crunches in front of him. So, oh yeah, the whole family was in on it. I just remember when I was building djconnection . com, I would train my DJs out of my house. So we would practice announcements, like, ladies and gentlemen, coming up in just a moment, we’re going to introduce the bride and the groom. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the intro.

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

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

It’s about resourcefulness. Again, it’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness. Look at the backyard. I turned half my backyard into a concrete slab so that we could park all the vans back here. I mean, look at all the trees I planted to block the view.

So now you look at Colaw Fitness and you go, Wow, this is a super successful company. Wow, I want to be the next Koloff Fitness. Wow, these guys are really doing it. I want to be a kolofffitness . com. I’ll get the website to pull up in just a second.

And And people always come to me and they say, Clay, what do I need to do? What’s the most important thing? I just had a guy today, huge ministry, huge ministry, multimillion dollar massive ministry called me and said, what’s the one thing I can do to grow my ministry? And I said, buddy, I’m going to send you today’s show. There are 14 things.

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

And Charles, by the way, you get 60 seconds on the clock for each answer.

So here we go. Box number one, you have to figure out your revenue goals. You just have to know your revenue goals. You have to know your revenue goals. What are your gross revenue goals? What are your weekly revenue goals?

What are your annual revenue goals? You have to know your revenue goals. Charles, why do you have to know your revenue goals? animals.

Yes, you have to know your revenue goals so you know if they’re going to be making money or not. And for us, we want to make sure that we’re staying bankable, that we can open more locations. Our gyms are a ministry for us. We want to make sure that we continue to expand and making sure we got at least a 20 % profit margin off of all of our expenses to income over expenses. And we know how many memberships we have to sell. We know how many clients that we have to service to hit those goals for our set overhead costs.

And yeah, you got to know how many units of items you have have to sell every week, every day. And so we track that stuff. And for us, we have a lot of recurring revenue. But the whole point is that we want to make sure that we have enough of the payable, viable buyers in the system to continue to grow.

And you track this stuff. And so we’ve got wonderful members of our team. We’ve got a young member of our team named Natalie, who’s learning all of this because she’s developing into a coach. When you work with a new client, a lot of times the client’s going to have a bias to focus on just marketing, just branding. But you have to know these numbers. Amber, anything else you want to talk about?

as far as the numbers?

Because I know your husband is passionate about fitness, and you are as well. But why do you have to focus on the numbers and not just marketing, or not just branding, or not just social media? Why do you have to focus on those numbers? Well, I think the numbers, it’s like the steering wheel that steers the ship. I mean, if you don’t understand the numbers, you have no idea where you’re going. And so I think that’s probably the biggest thing, like it just, it, it leads the whole way.

And I think a lot of people tend to do, I’m going to do the marketing, or I just want to perform the service. I think a lot of it because people are scared of numbers. I think they, they feel like numbers are overwhelming and they try to make numbers way too difficult. So I think that’s the big thing. This is such wisdom, folks. I’m telling you, if you’re not familiar with colawfitness .

com, go to their website. These guys give away a Bible. Every time they sell a new membership, they set aside a portion of the funds to give away a Bible to first -time members at their gym. It’s an incredible, it’s a ministry. It’s a business. It checks all those boxes.

Let’s move on to box number three. Define the number of hours you’re willing to work.

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

Your husband is willing to do that. Why is it important for you guys, Charles, to define the hours that you’re going to work?

The hours that you’re not gonna work, block out time for the family cruise, for the family trip. Why is that an important box there, Charles? That way my wife will stay married to me.

Well, I’m like you, I like to just go, go, go. And then we do definitely, we take off and we go to church on Sunday. It’s important for us to hold the Sunday as a Sabbath, as a day off. Other than that, I like to work, like you talked about vacation, to vacate or to leave something. I love to work. I love to build the systems and build the documents and train staff, build the systems and so on.

But we do have to make sure that Once a quarter, we try to look at taking time off. Go ahead. Well, I would say the biggest thing that we always talk about in marriage, family, and work, expectations and boundaries. Those two things have to be very clear all the time. As long as he understands what my expectations are and I need him to fulfill a husband role in addition to working, as long as he understands that these are my expectations and then these are my boundaries, and as long as we communicate that, then we’re good. I’ll say one more thing is that for us, we’ve kind of at the spot to where, you know, we just work on the business, not in the business.

So we don’t actually do the day -to -day stuff, but we work on the bills, business systems, checklists, workflows, training, coaching people remotely, because we do live in Florida. Our clubs are in the Midwest, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Kansas. And so running remotely and running all that stuff, we’ve got to kind of say, how do we want to live our lives?

Like you’d say, Charles, how do you really want to live it? You got to kind of map out and clearly define that. For us, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, those days are just all in on Zoom calls, training, coaching, working with staff. And so those days are really, really full days. And then the rest of the time, like on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, those are all lighter days that we don’t block in a lot of meetings. It’s like no meetings that we plan, but we are still, I’m still working on things that I want to work on, but I’m not leveraged to having to.

So I’ve kind of of created my three day work week, that’s like super long. And then the rest of the time, I don’t have meetings, I don’t get held hostage on a lot of stuff. And people have to kind of have a gatekeeper to get to me. But other than that, that’s how I’ve tried to map that out so that I can continue to mastermind and kind of grow the brand and have some meta perspective on how I want to continue to grow. So there’s just So much, again, for folks, if you want to learn entrepreneurship, this is real people.

If you’re in the Florida area and you’re looking for a job, if you’re in the Joplin, Missouri area and you’re looking for a career, not just a job, Kola Fitness is a company that’s going places. I’m not prophetic. I’m not claiming to have some view of the future. I just see patterns. And I work with clients, and I help them implement patterns that work. And I also know of the clients that’ll work.

Nothing works unless you work, right? So nothing will work unless you work. And I look at the Colaw family, and I look at the fuel that you put into the business and the diligence that you bring. And I’m telling you, folks, this is a brand that’s going somewhere. If you’re looking for a career, check it out, colawfitness . com.

Box number four and five, these kind of fit in together. Box number four is you have to determine your unique value proposition. That’s a unique thing. But what is it that makes you unique? What is it that makes you unique? What is it that separates you from the competition?

If you’re watching today’s show, let’s think about your website, your print piece, your auto wraps, your business cards. Let’s think about everything about your business. Let’s think about the sights, the sounds, the smell, the ambiance, the employees you have. What is it that makes you different from the competition? What is it that makes Chick -fil -A successful when there are many other fast food chicken restaurants? What is it that makes Quick Trip super successful when there are so many gross, nasty, Dirty convenience stores.

What is it that makes Chick -fil -A successful? What is it that makes Quick Trip successful? What is the secret sauce that allows Brad Stevens, the coach of the Boston Celtics, to bring out a winning lineup year after year? Brad Stevens took a dysfunctional Butler College basketball team and turned them into a top four basketball team. Think about this.

He took a college called Butler, the size of Oral Roberts University, and took them to the Final Four multiple times. And then he takes that same recipe and goes to the NBA, and they win a championship, and he’s putting out a winner year after year. What is the secret sauce that allowed Phil Jackson to win year after year? Michael Jordan couldn’t win a championship without Phil Jackson. He played a lot of seasons without Phil Jackson. He only won his championships with Phil.

Kobe Bryant never won a championship without Phil Jackson.

By the way, Kobe Bryant played a lot of seasons without Phil Jackson. What is that magic formula? A big part of it is you have to understand your unique value proposition. So Amber, what is it that makes Kola Fitness unique versus other fitness companies? For us, it’s culture, hands down. It’s culture all day long.

And we worked really hard at our first location to set the culture and make it what we wanted it to be. We wanted a fitness center that everybody could be a part of. And I mean, not everybody, not everybody likes it. But It’s definitely our culture and that was something we knew we had to be able to duplicate when opening other locations. And so that is probably the number one piece that we We train, develop, encourage that we’re the biggest part of the company that we are still a part of is the culture part. Yep.

And that’s the big part. I’m going to just kind of jump a little bit more unapologetic in our Christian component to that. Think of if Planet Fitness is the McDonald’s of gyms, Cola Fitness is the Chick -fil -A. And what I mean by that is We are a strong Christian culture. We hire and we look for people that match that. They don’t have to be a Christian, but they do have to align with those values.

All of Christianity summed up in one word is the word of God.

that’s an unconditional love. We want to make sure that we actually hire people that are into customer service, that likes people. Who’d have thought customer service, we’re going to find people that actually like to serve people.

And so we really vet that pretty heavily on the front side, on the onboarding, with our, you know, like our Christian culture, we play a video, we talk about who we are.

We talk about the Christian values, devotion to God, discipline in living, denial of self, dream great dreams for God’s glory. determination status quo of course so the Christian side of it is kind of strong so either people lean in or lean and lean back and so when we do group interviews this is where you’ve taught us a lot of great systems you see people lean in and see people lean back so when everybody’s on the boat rowing in the same direction and they really match that value set the culture is just it’s just better and when you hire people that actually like people like hire people that like people, they want to acknowledge your presence, close the gap, give them a fist bump, a high five, make somebody feel like the highest, like the highlight of the day when they walk through that door. So we train people on those systems. So we took the culture that we did when we first opened the club, and we defined it into actual ways that we can role play and script it with our staff so that you have not a purple hair McDonald’s perpetually distracted, So that’s where we have to be very, very, very specific on how we do culture differently. than the competition, who’s just, you know, scaling out like crazy. But people like the greatest currency in life is how you make somebody else feel and want to make other people feel like the highlight of the day and hire people that are sincere.

They’re just genuine that truly like people. If you do that, well, you have to lock the doors to keep people out. This is I’m telling you, folks, this is so important. I talked to a guy the other day who applied to work for your business, true story. And he’s kind of a gremlin. I

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

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

Interesting and I knew that you and I met the guy I’m like This guy. I understand why you didn’t hire him, and I didn’t hire him either. And I’m just telling you, you have certain standards. And if people aren’t up to those standards, they can come back and reapply later after they turn that frown upside down. But you have a certain standard there. Now, box number six, the three -legged marketing stool.

At Colaf Fitness, with every business we work with, every business that I work with, what we do is we develop a three -legged marketing stool. Now, I’ll give you a moment, Charles and Amber, to reflect on this. And maybe this is true for you, maybe not. But a lot of my clients that come into my life, I think about Stacey Purcell, long -time client, great lady. I think about Shaw Homes, shawhomes . com.

We helped Shaw Homes grow from $14 million a year to $150 million a year. I think about Satellite Phones, Tina, her company, SAT123. We’ve helped them grow to $100 million a year of sales. I think about Oxifresh, oxifresh . com. We’ve helped them grow now to 500 -plus locations.

And every single time I sit down with a business owner, they have not a three -legged marketing stool. No, no, no. They have a variety of things that might work. And through tracking, we start to figure out what doesn’t work. And so with Stacey Purcell, with her wonderful business, we found out that LinkedIn didn’t work 100 % of the time, thus saving her $8 ,000 a month by turning it off. I just had a client this week.

True story, we found he was spending $4 ,000 a week on YouTube ads, Instagram ads, and TikTok ads. Got a lot of clicks, got a lot of views, no leads.

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

Yeah, well, I would say none of that is my part of the business and I’m so thankful. I hate marketing, but I would, what I would say to that is that has everything to do with like we were talking about your numbers and the tracking. So you’re talking about tracking these things. That’s my side, the financial side. And I want to know that when the money’s going out, that that return is coming back. Right.

And so I do that side of it with we talk about a marketing budget and watching that and holding true to that and watching those numbers and watching, you know, the revenue that comes back from that marketing. And so you may be able to talk more on the marketing. That’s your. Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, we’ve tracked where they come from. Sometimes you do get clicks or you have like sometimes Facebook shows you make it, but it’s really not getting people to walk through the door and convert people into members and convert people into higher ticket items.

And so you really want to make sure that what you’re spending money on is actually quantifying out into dollars.

And so Clay’s really been good with us to track that. We’ve done that for years. And so we can really kind of see in our industry, we market, you know, in a five -mile radius really heavy. That’s kind of our ideal and likely buyers within that five -mile radius or a 12 -minute drive time. We target those, we see what marketing works best, and a lot of times it’s the same proven stuff that Clay teaches with a lot of his clients is really seeing to make sure that you’re dominating on certain platforms.

And I can go into that, but the whole point is, is Clay has done it in every industry.

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

We’ve gone from three locations to six and we’ve more than doubled our revenue. So it’s been a huge win. Well, I think sometimes people want to market in a certain way because that’s the cool thing to do. Like I want to be on TikTok. If TikTok doesn’t pay me, if TikTok is not paying my bills, I could care less. I mean, I can watch TikTok on my off time, but I’m not going to put my marketing dollars into it just because that’s what everybody else is doing.

And I think another part of that is everybody has marketing advice for you. Everybody, everybody thinks there’s a marketing guru because they see ads.

And I don’t think that’s true either.

Now, I’m going to ask you this, Charles. And I’m not ready for your answer yet. I’ve got to mentally prepare myself for this. But you do not have the ability to not be honest here, OK? So a guy called me here today. And I thought, man, I’m going to send this to him right away, OK?

Guy reaches out to me. He’s in the construction space, OK? And he goes, you know what? This happens every day, by the way. But he says, what would a relationship look like if I hired you guys as my coach? If I hired you, Clay, and your team, what does that look like?

And I said, well, we charge you $1 ,700 a month. So it’s less money than hiring a minimum wage employee.

That’s what it is.

We have a weekly meeting. And we follow a proven system. And anyway, and I said, there’s accountability.

So there’s kind of three parts to it. One is we have a team that helps you get your photography, your video, your web, your search engine done for you, all those things. The second is we provide coaching down a proven path. And then the third is we have workshops every couple of months so you can kind of get a tune up. And I said, Mr. Potential Client, who I’ve known forever, I said, Clay Stairs describes me as the ass man. And he’s like, the ass man?

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

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

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

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

You always have continuous training staff. You’re never held hostage because there’s somebody that doesn’t know a skill set. You can always replace somebody. Because if you don’t create a system, you’re going to be a limited resource. And Clay creates the systems, helps you with document creation, file organization, and make sure you’ve got that stuff so you have a proven template. It’s really more like a franchisable prototype that you can handle the lowest skill set.

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

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

But he said, amateurs don’t have a coach. Professionals do have a coach. And at the time, I thought, you know what?

From a legal perspective, I probably need a coach or mentor to help me.

So I hired wintersking . com. And I’ve used that company for, what, 10 -plus years? And it’s really helped me. And I thought to myself, from an accounting perspective, I need probably to have her a coach.

So I hired CCK.

And so in the areas where I want to improve, I really do firmly believe in having a coach. When I wanted to become a better speaker, I hired Carlton Pearson and I worked with Carlton for as long as he would work with me because at the time he was the top televangelist in America and he was a phenomenal verbal communicator and so but it wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t coachable and if he wasn’t willing to coach. And you guys have done such a great job over these years implementing, and I just see the future is so bright here. So when we look at your website now, could you talk about just that weekly meeting and making those little iterations and every week making it a little better? Because I think some people want to get rich quick.

They want to become successful in 10 minutes. They want to ready, set, let’s go. But you guys, every week we go to colawfitness . com. Every week we enhance the website. Every week we enhance the scripts.

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

We get coaching feedback from you on best practices. And one thing is, is that you’ve not just worked in our industry, but lots of industries and having a team of people, a team of coaches that say, Hey, this is what’s working.

This isn’t what’s working.

It’s super valuable. And so, um, like I don’t, I mean, I’ve got an MBA in school, but I’m telling you, like it’s real life is so much more important and having good people that have good feelers. It’s like, it’s, you’re not, you’re only as good as your team. And Clay brings a whole team to your team. Anyways, we have a weekly meeting. Our weekly meeting, we look at like, what are the key things that impact us?

It’s going to be signups, signups over cancels. What are those signups? Which one’s upgraded to higher tier options? Whether that’s membership, higher tier membership options. or whether that’s tearing up into higher services like fitness coaching, like one on one coaching or fitness training of nutrition coaching or group training, but getting people into those things and understanding the scripts, how to role play that over and over again, making sure your staff understands. how to communicate effectively with the customer, role play, role play until that socially awkward, you know, young person can totally get it and they understand how to do it until the cognitive, the critical thinking face has gone away.

They know how to do it.

Now you’ve got staff that knows how to communicate well, how to show the product offering benefits over costs, and then show them that if you don’t do it, this is what won’t happen.

And you want to show them that you’re going to really change their lives and save their life, add years to the life quality to your years by changing new habits. And when people see that value, you’ve got the right staff articulating it, you close a lot of deals, you upgrade things, and you change a lot of lives. Well, one thing, Clay, I think with the coaching is it’s been beneficial. It’s kind of like you’re our blind side, blind spot coach. We, this is what we’ve created. There’s a lot of emotions attached to it.

It’s what we love. It’s what feeds our family. And so we can become very emotionally charged and I think you’re super helpful to kind of bring us back in and go, hey, like So you kind of keep us focused, separating the emotions from it. And I’ve heard a lot of people say to you, or in conversations we’ll have, and they’ll say, yeah, but you don’t understand landscaping. It’s not about understanding landscaping. We don’t talk fitness every week when we meet.

Um, but it’s about, um, it’s, it’s the, it’s about business and it’s about where we’re going and you really help keep us on track. There’s that accountability, like you talked about. You guys are super valuable. Your set of eyes is super valuable. Yeah. Yeah.

I’ll just say this. I mean, colawfitness . com. If you’re looking for a career, folks, I’m telling you. out Colawfitness .com. Now, com.

Now, point number seven, sales conversion. We have to have scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, lead trackers. What? We need to have sales scripts, recorded calls, all the visuals in the store. We call that internal marketing. There’s external marketing, marketing to your ideal and likely buyers.

But internal marketing, letting your current gym members know that you offer personal training or group fitness. Box number eight, you have to have a sustainable customer acquisition cost. What? You have to know what does it cost you to land a new customer. Box number nine, you’ve got to create repeatable systems. When you clean the bathrooms, every day.

When you clean the showers, every day.

When you clean the locker rooms, every day. When you clean the equipment, every day. When you clean all these things, multiple times a day. When you change the light bulbs, every day. When you have to maintain the fitness equipment, every day. When you have to hire people, every day.

You have to build repeatable systems or your head will explode. You’ve got to have checklists and processes. Box number 11, you have to manage people. Manage people, what? This just in, we have to manage people. We’ve got to hire people, manage people.

How do you hire, inspire, train, retain? We have to do it. Box number 11, you have to build sustainable schedule. What is the schedule that your company will keep? What hours will you be open? What kind of shifts do you have?

What kind of org chart? Who’s in charge? Who isn’t? How do you deal with somebody that doesn’t want to follow the systems? Because this just in, a customer will fire you if you won’t fire your bad employees. In box number 12, you’ve got to have a high standard with the A players, the B players.

You’ve got to coach up the B players to become A players. You’ve got to coach those A players to become future leaders.

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

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

Charles Kola and Amber Kola are obsessed with helping you take your fitness to the next level. If you’re out there today and you are in Joplin, Missouri, you’re in Texas, you are in all the different markets they’re in. Go to KolaFitness .

com.

You can see the markets they’re in. I’m telling you, are obsessed with wowing customers. So I’ll go to you, Amber, then I’ll go to you, Charles. Everything we talked about doesn’t work if you scam your customers. Everything we talked about doesn’t matter if you don’t wow your customers. Can you talk about why at the core, even though we’re going over all this business stuff, all these details, at the end of the day, you guys at Colaw Fitness have to wow the customers.

Why is that so important, Amber? Well, I think for us, it’s important because we love people. And everybody needs a belonging and worth. And they need to feel important and they need to feel cared for. And like, that’s our passion. We just love loving on people.

That’s where that’s what made Charles such a phenomenal trainer when that was the initial start of the whole company. It was just his desire to help people and his love for them. And that was the same reason, you know, a million years ago that I did hair. So I think for us, that’s just what we’re passionate about. We’re passionate about people feeling like they are loved and they have value. And if we can pass that on through all of our front desk staff, if we can open more locations and bring in that many more people in these communities to feel loved, And also spread the gospel at the same time, you know, let them know God loves you, you know, and so that that’s really what drives our passion in the coaching and development even of our staff.

And Charles Cole, I got two final questions for you. And your wife can one up you. So here we go, two final questions. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. There’s somebody out there right now, they’re thinking about coming to one of our in -person workshops.

They know Tim Tebow is going to be there. They know Eric Trump will be there. They know that you might be there. But maybe if they haven’t been to a workshop in the past, how would you describe the in -person, two -day interactive workshops? How would you describe them, sir?

It’s just, it’s raw and real.

I mean, if you really want to try to get, if you really, really, really want to build a company, not just get like a, like if you go to school, you get a business degree, you, they would say Clay’s program is, you know, business without the BS. There’s no bull crap. He tells you the proven system, real proven systems, that have grown and scaled hundreds, if not thousands of companies, add millions, like we are millions of dollars more in revenue because of these systems that we’ve implemented. And we’ve been able to scale and not have to actually work in the business. We work on the business, just the business system. So we can live in Florida.

We’re definitely engaged with our staff that runs these locations and they’re great lieutenants, but we have the systems, we have the checklist, we’ve got the workflows, and we have the systems that we can hold people to. We’ve retained the right talent. We’ve got really people in the bullpen for every position. So they were held hostage to happen to do that. But all that to say it’s going it’s funny.

He’s very, very. I mean, Clay’s pretty much like a comedian. It’s hilarious to listen to. If you’re willing to be coachable, if you’re willing to have a humble and coachable heart that’s willing to grow, he’ll show you proven processes. There’s going to be a pathway that you can be successful. And if you’re a diligent doer and you just do one or two action items every week with your coach, the whole thing is, it’s just being a more of a marathoner than a sprinter.

When you’re working with a coach, just do your two or three action items. And that two or three, if you times that by 52 weeks, that’s 150. Next thing you got to work on.

website, you got a way better lead funnel, you’ve got way better staff hired, you’ve got systems, checklists, workflows, all document created into mind -free templates, sales flows, training and development of staff, all that. So you got people in the bullpen for each position, and you’re no longer being held hostage as an owner, and you’ve got a proven system. So that’s Clay and his team. Well, I’ll one -up you. I will one -up him this one time. Like, there’s, there’s truly nothing more exciting than to come to the conference and we’ve been to almost every conference you’ve had for the last seven to eight years.

And it’s, it is completely refreshing. I always get something new out of it.

It’s very practical. You’re not sitting in this huge ballroom with want, want, want speakers that you feel like are trying to sell you something and you’re trying to stay awake.

That’s not the case at all. It’s a circus. There’s a whole lot to take home. Even if you go to the conference and you decide, hey, this is not for me right now, or coaching is not for me, Hands down, you will leave with practical business application items.

Now, final question I have for you guys, just like Kola Fitness, I mean, you put your name right there on the brand, Kola Fitness.

You can’t really go to thrivetimeshow . com without seeing my cranium. And so I take a lot of pride in what I do and wowing our customers. But for somebody out there, in particular, this guy today who’s in the construction space, who’s like, hey, what would coaching look like for me or is coaching for me? He’s reaching out. Charles, what do you say?

What kind of impact has the coaching that we’ve had with you guys over these past seven or eight years made on the impact or the success?

What kind of impact has the coaching made on colawfitness . com? Well, I would say first off, personally, I’ve developed a great friendship with some really great people.

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

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

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

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

How would you maybe tackle or how would you respond to what kind of return on investment have you seen for the $1 ,700 a month you’re paying? Well, for example, Clay has got, there’s no better business coach in the world that has the way he works, the way his mind works. But he’s also got a team of other business coaches that have worked in lots of different industries. So he’s worked in every industry. His staff has worked in every industry. He’s got videographers, web designers.

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

But by doing that, you have that that skill set. You have that you have those two. It’s tools on your tool belt. And I just think it’s just like, it’s just like the cost of doing business.

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

And so that quick call to Clay, and he’s outside the situation, and he has other data points.

I mean, we’ve had times that, Clay, you’ve got a quick response, and you can tell us and direct us real quickly, and we’re right off the phone. And there’s other times you’ll go, I’ll call you right back. And Clay will jump in, and he’ll call his other contacts and get back with us. Sometimes it takes longer. But there are times when you feel that way, when you’re like, Is this worth it? I don’t feel like we’re doing much right now or we’re not growing.

Inevitably, something like that will come up and that’s our peace of mind. You’re like a crucial team player. You know, well, you know, I it’s an honor to serve you guys and everybody’s watching right now. I encourage you if you’re looking for a career. Now, if you’re looking for a job, don’t fill out the form, but if you’re looking for a career, go to colawfitness .

com because if you live in what Joplin, Missouri, Charles, Dallas, Texas, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Amber, we live in Topeka, Kansas.

If you’re out there.

Arlington, if you’re out there, go to colawfitness .

com if you’re looking for a career and not just a job. Thank you, too, for carving time with your busy schedule. And I’m so glad to have you here today. Take care, guys.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi -million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you, and they have a lot of time on their hands. They 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 bunny, Dr. Robert Zilner.

Two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women, 13 multi -million dollar businesses. Yes, and yes, Thrive Nation, it’s a very special occasion because on today’s show we’re joined by a real Thriver. He could be, you might say, this guy looks like a hologram. He looks like an idealized hologram.

This guy could be a male model, but no, he is an actual entrepreneur, a real client. a wonderful man.

We’ve had the opportunity to meet in person during multiple in -person workshops. He comes from the great state of Iowa. Josiah Ragsdale, welcome onto The Thrive Time Show.

How are you, sir? I’m doing great. So I got to ask you, how did you originally come in contact with us there, sir? Actually through Spotify, yeah. Through Spotify.

OK, do you remember what you were doing on Spotify?

Were you looking for business shows, or was it recommended? Or how did you find the Thrivetime Show? I think I was looking for business shows, because at the time, I was actually in school to build custom cars. And then I was working on a dragster, and so I was looking for some more. I’ve never liked listening to music, so I was looking for either an audio book, or a podcast, or something. Ran across your guys’ business show, because I always figured I’d open up a custom car shop.

So that’s kind of how I found ESL. Now, for anybody out there that wants to verify that you are a real person, the website is autoliftserve . com. Autolift and serve, S -E -R -V .

com. Josiah, could you share with everybody out there who wants to verify you’re a real person? What’s your first and last name? And what’s the name of your company? Yeah, it’s Josiah Ragsdale. And then the name of the company is Automotive Lift Services.

And what kind of services or solutions do you guys provide there? I think a lot of people are curious about that. What kind of services do you provide at autoliftserve .

com?

Sure, sure.

So kind of our main niche is obviously fixing lifts. Because we generally will prioritize speed of repair. So like we offer like 48 hour repair times guaranteed. But otherwise, as far as the rest of the equipment in the shop, if it’s in a shop, like in the mechanic side, you know, whether it be exhaust ventilation equipment or air compressor equipment, we service it and sell it as well. But lifts are our main bread and butter. Now what I wanted to do on today’s show is really brag on you and kind of

go through some of the wins that we’ve been able to work on together. Because I think sometimes when people think about a business coach or a business consultant, they may think about a motivational guy. They may think about some sort of motivational, feelings -focused, almost like business therapist. But that’s not what we do at all. We focus on implementing a linear path to help real business owners grow their real companies. So we’re going to go through all 14 steps today.

So step number one. Revenue goals. I’m not asking you to share on today’s show what your yearly revenue goals are, but why is it important for you as a coaching client and a business owner, why was it important for you to figure out how much money you needed to do per week in sales to hit your goals and what your yearly goals actually were? Without knowing our yearly goal, there’s no way to break down into what you need to hit per week. Cause like, that’s a really important thing that we start with every single Monday morning, just between the, uh, my service manager here and myself is like figuring out, okay, this is how much cash we need to break even for this week. And this is how much cash we need to break even or should need to break even next week.

And then this is what we need to make a profit. Um, and, and the, here’s our goal for profit. So, uh, I mean, it’s, I don’t know how you would stay in business without knowing it. So let’s let’s let’s drill in for a second. Are you coming to our workshop coming up here in March? Are you coming to that?

I will not be. Unfortunately, no, we’ve got a two month old baby, so he’s not moving yet. OK, well, let me pull this up real quick so people can see that you’ve been to a workshop, though. So you’ve been to. Oh, yeah. And I’m just going to throw out some ideas for anybody out there watching.

We have Eric Trump. That’s President Trump’s son will be there. Robert Kiyosaki, bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. Eric Trump obviously runs the Trump Organization. They have thousands of employees. We have Robert Kiyosaki, the bestselling author of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series.

We have Tom Wheelwright, one of the most respected wealth consultants on the planet. And people say to me, Clay, man, it’s got to be hard putting together an event like that.

And I say, well, we could define hard, but I’ll just tell you this.

It’s about $175 ,000 for me to put on that event.

And someone says, huh? Real numbers that you put out up front. You say, where does that go to? Well, you’ve got the president’s son here, so you need security. You need great security. We need all the police and all the law enforcement to keep him safe.

You’ve got audio and visual people that work all weekend, and they set up for the event. We’ve got food.

Anytime you try to feed a small army of people, which will be 400 people, think about it.

Even if the average person, if we only invested in $20 over two days to feed them, that would quickly add up. But it’s not $20. So you’re talking about $50 of food per person. You’ve got the security. Then you got the flights, the hotel, the accommodations for the various speakers. And I can go on and on boring people with details.

But you end up spending quickly about $150 ,000 to put on the event.

And so because we only sell 400 tickets, you kind of do the math and you go, OK, that’s what you need to do to break even. And I think everybody out there needs to have clarity on that. You mentioned it. I want to go back to this workflow for a second. The break even point, box number two. Most people do not know how many customers they need to break even.

Why is it absolutely essential for you and for any business owner especially at autoliftserve . com. Why is it important for you to know how much you have to sell to break even? Yeah, I mean, if you don’t break even, you’re going bankrupt, so that’s about as important as it gets, you know?

I mean, I don’t know how else to break that down.

Well, I think a lot of business owners, though, don’t ever think about these things at all.

I mean, I would say 99 % of the wonderful doctors and dentists and lawyers and clients and automotive repair shops I’ve worked with, I mean, of all the clients in our portfolio, I would say 99 % of them don’t know their breakeven point before they start coaching. And I think that’s so important for everybody out there. to really dial into that idea. Now, the third step, we’ve got the third step, is you’ve got to know how many hours per week you’re willing to work. Now, you have a baby on the way.

Is this baby number one or baby number 407?

How many kids do you have? This baby is baby number one. Yeah, and so I remember I first met you.

You were baby free. You might have even been girlfriend free. I think you came to the conference with a friend. And I think one of the work vans stopped working, and you guys helped us fix the van or got it working. So a lot has changed in your life. Why is it important that you and your wife, you and your partner that you guys have, that you’re on the same page with defining your schedule?

Oh, definitely. That’s huge. Like, we want to be happily married and have a good home for, you know, our future kids and whatnot, because we want to have more kids too. But I mean, if I was just like always working, she would not.

we probably wouldn’t be married for very long. So like my curfew moved up from like 6 .30 p . m. and being able to start as early as I wanted until like now I quit at five. And then I don’t get to work all day and all night on Saturdays anymore.

So my Saturdays start earlier and we’ve kind of changed when his bedtime is to kind of make it match too. But yeah, I mean, that’s really important. It’s real stuff. If you get divorced, you lose 50 % of what you built. All right, now pops number four, defining your unique value proposition. What is it that makes your company unique?

So that’s one thing we do with every client. We help you achieve that. But let’s talk about autoliftserve . com.

What do you guys do differently, autoliftserve .

com, from your competition? What do you do that makes you unique in the world of business? Yeah, so we guarantee that we’ll fix the lift within 48 hours or it’s free. We’ll try and get people over to our maintenance plan right away. That’s kind of our biggest thing because most people you go to, you’re going to go ahead and you’re going to call them.

They’re going to come out, diagnose it, bill you for that. And then they’re going to order parts.

You’re going to go through.

It’s like a 30 to 60 day lead time on a lot of repairs. And kind of what we do is we’ll go ahead of that and we’ll go, OK, you know, hey, for, you know, let’s say 100 bucks a month, whatever, we’ll cover your lift. And then if anything breaks, we’ll come out and have it fixed within 48 hours where you don’t have to pay for it that long. So again, you’ve thought through this, and you have a coach that works with you every week. Let’s talk about this here. Moving on to box number five, branding.

That’s the website, photography, video, logo, print pieces, video testimonials. How has improving your branding impacted your ability to go out there and sell in a competitive marketplace? Oh, yeah, that’s, that’s impacted a whole lot. I mean, like, even when I was first showing up, like, we were, like, right after starting up with you guys, like the difference between me going in and Dream 100 marketing beforehand and after it was huge, because, like, before I’d go in, they’d be like, Okay, this is just some guy off the street, clearly. But afterwards, I went in, like, we got into the Davis group here in Iowa. And, and I was talking to one of them there.

And they thought we were part of like a franchise.

They were like, Oh, wow, are you a franchisee for this company or whatever?

And I was like, that was the point that made me think like, Oh, wow. Our brand names like really jumped quite a lot and that’s helped a lot because now they weren’t as worried about like, Oh, do you know specifically how you’re going to fix this or what you’re doing now?

It’s more so like, okay, this is a legit company.

We’re not worried about it. Just book them. I’m telling you, folks, people do judge a book by the cover. People do judge you based upon your branding. It’s so important you nail it down. Box number six, the three -legged marketing stool.

There’s got to be a way that every business owner out there that you can stably, consistently, methodically market to your ideal and likely buyers. There’s got to be a sustainable, proven way for you to your ideal and likely buyers. Can you talk about the impact that it’s had having someone like Andrew, one of our coaches, working with you to make sure that you’re diligently implementing a three -legged marketing stool? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, I mean, just having some accountability because one of ours is Dream 100 marketing.

So that’s pretty big where we like physically show up and keep dropping off doughnuts until they cry die or buy but so that one’s that one’s big. That’s more so just the accountability of making sure we’re doing it.

And then obviously, like getting top of Google is our other main one.

Um, and then we’re kind of, we run a lot of, uh, retargeting ads, stuff like that. We’re cranking that up. So like, those are two boxes that I really know nothing about. And so Andrew kind of takes the whole, takes everything from there.

Um, like we have lucky orange on the website, him and I go through it on our coach calls every, every week.

And we kind of scroll through and see if there’s stuff that could be have people hanging up on or getting caught on and whatnot, but that’s pretty much, I mean, he’s pretty much taking on all that.

Like we write some content too.

You guys write a ton of content.

But yeah, that’d be huge. I would have no idea what to do with that without you guys. If you didn’t have a team helping you get to the top of the Google search results, A, could you do it? And then B, what kind of impact has it made on your business being top in the Google search results? Sure, sure. Yeah.

Could I do it? I probably could. It’d be horrible, though. It’d take me way longer and cost a lot more money, because I would have screwed it up royally many times. And the impact is huge because obviously people find us on Google. We’ve got like several of our largest customers have came from a simple Google search.

And they’re like people that we’ve been trying to dream 100 market to before that for years. And they basically didn’t know who we are. And then one of these days, you know, somebody is just Googling up their company and finds us and they book us in that.

That’s so much easier to when they find us on Google. and they call us to book it like it’s it’s light years easier because now it’s like they’re looking for us. It’s not we’re cold calling them and trying to get them to buy something. So it’s more so like order taking at that point instead of having to sell. So I mean, it’s a huge impact. Now, next area here.

And again, this is all people people always say to me, they always say Josiah, Josiah, people say to me, they’ll say, Clay, what is the most important thing I need to do to grow my company? And I would respond rhetorically, not in a difficult way. I’m just saying, what’s the most important ingredient that makes cookies? Is it butter? Is it eggs? Is it chocolate chips?

They say, what?

I said, well, what’s the most important part of the house?

I mean, is it the framing? Is it the tile? Is it the countertops? Could you skip the footings? Could you skip the rebar? Could you skip the framing?

Could you skip the shingles? It’s all of those things working together. And I think a lot of people really don’t think about business that way because of our educational system and the biases that are presented there. So box number seven, you’ve got to create a sales conversion system. It’s a sales conversion system. You have to have a system that we’re talking about scripts, recorded calls.

one sheets, pre -written emails, lead trackers, tracking the results. How has tracking the results and having a turnkey system in place impacted your business? Yeah, tracking results is absolutely huge. The lead tracker is probably, that’s probably the biggest, most game -changing thing we’ve done is with you guys. It’s because now we’ve got like one spot all of our notes are in and it’s nice and simple. We went through with Andrew, so it’s just like, If it’s a white box, that just means we need to keep calling them.

They haven’t booked. If it’s green, they’re booked. If it’s red, it’s, you know, they said no, but that’s simplified everything. I mean, that’s definitely the biggest one. The script, that’s kind of always a work in progress. We go through that with Andrew relatively consistently too, because there’s a lot of different steps and a lot of different questions that customers have depending on what they’re looking for.

But it’s, it’s huge without what we have now. And I would say our stuff right now is nowhere close to being done. Like it still needs a lot more revisions, but without having it right now, like we definitely would have sold the wrong equipment into many, many shops. And that would have been a big problem. Now we move on here to the next box here. Folks going 90 miles an hour.

This is how you do it. Box number eight. You have to determine your sustainable customer acquisition costs. What does it cost you to get a new customer? You have to know what does it cost to obtain a new customer? Do you have a tracking sheet?

Do you know how much you’re spending on advertisement? You have to know that. Box number nine. You’ve got to create repeatable systems, processes, and file organization. Repeatable systems. processes, and file organization.

Now, this is not a fitness advice to anybody out there, but I’m going to give you an example. One of my clients is unbelievably fit. I mean, this guy is looking incredible. And he made the comment to me years ago. I said, you look great. And he said, thank you.

I pay for it. And I remember he said it like he’d been thinking about it. And I said, man, you look great. And he goes, thank you.

I pay for it.

And I was thinking, so he was ready for that response. And so I said, can I ask what that means? He’s like, oh, I pay for a trainer seven days a week. So seven days a week, I have a trainer, somebody who’s a coach who pushes me. And I said, you look great. You’ve had a trainer.

This is a guy in his mid -40s.

I’m like, so you have a trainer seven days a week? He said, yeah. I said, can I ask why? And I kind of knew why, but it helps to hear it from somebody else. And he said, because if I don’t, I’m going to go to the gym. I’m going to have the workout pants on, the workout shoes on.

I’m going to be there. And I’m not going to work out. And if I do, I’m not going to push myself. And so I have a trainer that pushes me for 40 minutes a day and who pushes me. And I said, what do you pay per session? True story.

He said, $100 a session. I said, so you’re spending per week $700 a week? He said, yeah, that’s why I live.

like I do. I mean, that’s something I’ve invested in. Now, again, I hear that all the time with people that have a great lawyer. They say, man, your legal systems are dialed in. They go, yeah, I pay for it. I have a lawyer.

I see people that are phenomenal in the game of investing. And they go, yeah, I pay for it. I have a financial strategist. I think everybody in any area of our lives where we want to get better, we need to have a coach of some kind. Could you talk about the impact of having a coach, what that’s done for you? Having somebody like Andrew that actually gives a crap about your business, that actually is 100 % focused on how he meets you every week, knowing it’s a flat rate, but also knowing that you have somebody that each week is going to follow up with you and make sure that all these systems are being implemented.

Can you talk about the impact of that? Yeah, it’s huge. I’d say the biggest impact is probably every week kind of pulling me out of turtle view and back up into kind of a looking further out. So like I commonly so like for a long time, especially in the beginning, I was still doing a lot of technician work, not so much anymore, but I was doing a lot of technician work.

So it was like every Wednesday was like, our call. That’s what got me back up to the point of thinking about, oh, okay, I’m actually building a company. Eventually, we’re going to have somebody in this role. I’m not going to have to do this forever, that kind of deal. But it’s big. I’d say a lot of it’s just like, of course, accountability and getting numbers in your tracking sheet and stuff like that, so you know where you are and if you’re gaining or not.

But I’d say the bigger thing is helping you get out of your own head.

And kind of see, at least for me, helping me get out of my own head and see that, Oh, okay, I’m not trapped, you know, and here’s the next step I can do to get us a little bit further down the road.

And he really kind of pulls that out. Cause a lot of times I’ll feel like I have no idea what to do next to keep growing the company. But in our convert, in my conversation with him, a lot of times he can kind of pull that out just through us talking. And then it’s like a lot more clear on how to keep growing. I find it very interesting. that all of the people I’ve met in my life who are very successful, they all have a coach, an advisor, or somebody that pushes them.

The guy that I meet that has the jacked up haircut is normally the guy that cuts his own hair. The guy that I meet that has a really, really nice car typically did not hand make the car. They typically reached out to someone who has proven to be an expert in car making, and they bought the car from the Ferrari dealership. from the Lamborghini dealership.

The guy who has the great haircut typically has a professional they’re hiring. And in business out there, if you feel stuck, you’ve got to implement all these systems.

So box number 10 and 11. Box number 10, you’ve got to learn how to manage people. And that’s not something that’s normal, managing people. Do the people on your team know what their jobs are? And are they being held accountable for doing those jobs? Do the people on your team know what they’re supposed to be doing?

And are they doing those things? Could you talk about the impact of having a coach, how much that’s made on your ability to manage people? Yeah, that’s, that’s another area that’s really helpful. Because, you know, I had no management experience prior to this. I, yeah, I don’t connect with a lot of people very well, either. So I don’t, yeah, it was like, basically, every single week, I just have a problem, we go over with Andrew, I’m like some kind of crazy thing that I didn’t think people did, which is probably the most common thing that’s like, why is this like, like, this is the job, this is all you got to do, like, What’s the problem here?

But Andrew’s very helpful in us helping us figure out how to manage people. I’d say a big part of helping me manage was helping me get the group interview going and rolling properly, because that has probably been the biggest influence on helping me manage people better is maybe kind of moving some people out sooner and or moving some job shadows in, which kind of speeds people up then a little bit, too.

Yeah, but like none of that.

I wouldn’t have figured out any of that without him. Now, we move on here to the final couple of steps here. You have to create a repetitive weekly schedule. You have to schedule a time every week for the group interview, like we talked about, or your daily huddles. And that’s something we work with, teaching our clients how to time block and build a schedule that works for them. Box number 12, teaching you how to hire and recruit great people.

How do you hire, inspire, train, retain great people? Box number 13, step number 13, you’ve got to create an accounting system so you’re actually aware of your money.

Where is it going?

But all of this, the whole point of doing all this, box 14, is so that you can achieve success in the area of your faith, your family, your friendship, your fitness, your finances, your fun, your focus. And so I encourage everybody out there, make a list today.

What are your goals for your faith, your family, your friendship, fitness, your finances, your fun?

Your focus. What are your goals for faith, family, friendship, fitness, finances, fun, focus?

What are your goals?

And then the business exists just to help you achieve those goals. And so my final two questions I have for you, the listeners out there know that we’ve helped you with accounting and branding and online ads and search engine optimization. But my final two questions for you would be this. If you could explain to somebody in 60 seconds or less -ish, what kind of an impact has weekly business coaching made on you and your business? Yeah. It’s made a huge impact.

I mean, like I said, I don’t think we would be anywhere close to where we are right now if even still in business without it. It’s like you guys have really helped just continue growing. Because without you guys, we wouldn’t have our website cranking. We wouldn’t have a bunch of leads. I’d probably be stuck in my own head. I’d probably still be stuck as a self -employed technician and not have really figured out how to get out of that phase.

I really think I’d be stuck there for many years without a weekly call. Final question. There’s somebody out there that is a big statistic guy. They want him to see stats. I’m not asking you for your private numbers, but as far as a percentage, how much have you grown since we met you?

Are you up like 2%, 7%, 10 %? What kind of a percentage? How would you quantify that? Yeah. When we met, we were probably at, I don’t know exactly what the percentage, but you could probably figure it out.

When we met and first started with you guys, we probably had done like maybe $60 ,000 in a year. And we probably now do more like $2 million to $2 .5 million in a year. So you would say, let’s just do some math here. So if I take $2 million and I divide that by $60 ,000, we could say you’re up 33 times? Yep. I mean, that’s an accurate number.

You guys have grown 33 times. That’s powerful. So I encourage everybody, go to thrivetimeshow . com. I have two calls to action for everybody out there today. First off, I want everyone to go to autoliftserve .

com. And even if you don’t know why, share this link on your socials. Because what it does is it helps my wonderful client Josiah. It helps Josiah to rank higher in the search engine results. So if you just share. A link to autoliftserve .

com, it does help him rank higher on the search results. Second thing, if you want to come to one of our in -person workshops, you just go to thrivetimeshow . com. The tickets are always $250 or whatever price you can afford. So we’ve made it affordable for everybody. That’s thrivetimeshow .

com.

They’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. How would you describe the workshops? You’ve been to the workshops. You’ve done the 13 -point assessment. How would you describe the free 13 -point assessment and the workshops?

Oh, the workshops are a blast. It’s like, it’s like you’re in a room with a ton of other people who want to do the kind of the same thing. It’s probably the most I don’t know, it’s just excellent. Like you just got to go like you go in there’s the whole thing is very different. Like I’ve never seen anything like it, you get to see a bunch of people who like I said, are kind of in the same boat as you and meet them and they’re not normally just people who are kind of like, ah, you know, I’m just trying to sell insurance to this small group that you’re somehow a part of in your town.

But no, this is like, these are like people who are like really growing their companies. Like I can think of like Ryan Wells, for instance, grows like crazy. Like he’s a ton of fun to talk to when we go down there. And I always get new ideas from it too. So I’m like, wow, we’re really dropping the ball in this area and these guys are killing it. So it’s awesome.

Well, congratulations on baby number one. Thank you for carving out time for us. I encourage everyone, one more time, folks, if you haven’t checked out that website, it does help our wonderful client, Josiah Ragsdale, to rank higher if you visit that website. So you might say, how do I do it? All you got to do is just go on over there to AutoLift. Let me pull it up again here.

The domain is AutoLiftServe, AutoLiftServe . com, A -T -O -L -I -F -T Serve, S -E -R -V. RV. If you go there, what it does is it helps our client rank higher in the search results if you share today’s link, if you share a link to his website. So make sure you do that, folks. Again, Josiah, thank you so much for your time, sir.

And we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks. Bye -bye. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show. And thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects.

You know what I mean? People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations.

Sean, guess what’s happening June 5th and 6th right here in Tulsa, Russia. We are probably going to have an amazing business conference here at Tulsa, Russia. Yes, we’re joined by Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow is going to be joining us right here at the Thrive Time Show World Headquarters, June 5th and 6th.

He’s a very successful football player, obviously a Heisman Award winner, but he’s also a very successful entrepreneur. Now, when you work with real clients, Sean, real clients you really work with to help them grow their companies. Do you ever hear a business owner tell you that they didn’t have time to get something done? Every day. How often? is not having enough time a problem for business owners.

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

Does it generate getting leads? Is it hiring people? What’s the biggest issue that most business owners have by default before they come to one of our workshops? Well, I think it’s management because time is the most valuable resource for these business owners and being able to manage their time is the first thing. Once they get that under control, then generally the numbers You know, being able to track their business and be able to make the best decisions based on numbers rather than emotions is a big area. And we teach all of this stuff at the business conference, particularly you, Clay.

You love to hammer on time management. It’s my favorite part of the conference. Now, I’m going to pull this up real quick here, because we’re going to go through it. If you’re not excited, I want to get you excited about what we’re going to cover at the workshop here. The two day interactive workshop. This is my 20th year hosting workshops.

So I’m telling you, folks, we’re in rare form here. So one is the idea of establishing your revenue goals. I think most entrepreneurs don’t know their revenue goals. Would you agree or am I off my rocker? No, that’s totally a very important point we do with every one of our new clients that come on board is we have to establish the revenue goals. And generally speaking, we have a vague idea, but not an exact idea that can

engineered down into like the daily goals for sales. And so that’s a really big one. Now, next is the break even numbers. What kind of sales do you have to do to even break even? Yeah. Third is how many hours per week do you want to work?

You know, what is your ideal schedule as an entrepreneur? Box number four, how do you stand out in the clutter of commerce? What makes your company unique from all the different businesses in a world of brown cows, herds of brown cows? How can you be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil? Box number five, branding. How do you improve the perception that people have of you, your business, your brand?

Box number six, branding. How do you improve the perception that people have of you, your business, your brand? Marketing, your three -legged marketing stool. What is a turnkey way for you and your company to generate leads so you can succeed? Because if you don’t have any leads, your business will bleed. If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell.

You’ve got to generate leads. Sean, how often do business owners by default tell you they have a hard time generating leads?

It’s almost all of the time. It’s really a huge struggle. And many times they may be creating leads, but just through word of mouth. So they get to a point where we’ve implemented systems, and then they need to create more.

more leads, but they’ve never had to do it. So there’s a lot of different scenarios where business owners are like, how do you create leads? Something we hammer on at the conference a lot. Box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Again, box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, pre -written emails, lead trackers, all of the sales tools, the sales print pieces, the one sheets, the big screens that you see inside the business, whether you’re a doctor, you’re a dentist, you’re a lawyer, you got to have sales systems in place.

We help you with that. Box number eight, What does it cost you to get another customer? Step number eight, what does it cost you to actually acquire a customer? Step number nine, it’s hard to build organization if you’re not organized.

We’re going to teach you how to create repeatable systems, processes, file organization.

Box number 10, we’re going to teach you how to manage people, real people, on the planet Earth. This just in, we’re going to teach you how to manage real people on the planet Earth. Box number 11, how to create a sustainable schedule that works for you and your family. Step number 12, how to create human resources systems for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining great people. Box number 13, accounting. This just in, we have to cover accounting.

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

Now, the workshop, Sean, it’s June 5th and 6th.

It’s a two -day interactive workshop.

The tickets, we always do it. It’s $250 or whatever price that someone can afford. Sean, why do we let people name their price? Why do we have scholarship tickets available? if somebody can’t afford the $250 general admission ticket? Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it.

You know, you could be at a startup phase or you could be, you know, way along in your business, but we want to make it accessible for everybody.

I think it actually goes back to, to a story of your dad. And like, it goes all the way back to how you’ve always done this as a business coach, trying to make sure that, you know, you’re just, your average people out there have access to the things that work. Now, 7am to 5, Sean, why don’t we go from 7 to 5 both days? I mean, it’s 10 hours a day.

20 hours of training over two days.

Why do we do 10 hours a day, Sean, of back -to -back workshops? We do a 30 -minute teaching session, we do a 15 -minute question -and -answer session, and then we take a break. 30 minutes of teaching, 15 minutes of question -and -answer, then we take a break. Why do we do that format, Sean? That format is so that we can keep people engaged and not just sitting there listening, but also getting involved. We really encourage people to ask questions and that’s really where the juiciness of the conference comes out, is you can put your personal situation and your questions on the board and Clay will tee off and give you direct advice.

Even without being in our coaching program, you can get direct coaching from Clay. It’s really a very engaging format. I enjoyed it a lot. Sean, final 60 seconds, pop quiz here. What date is the conference? June 5th and 6th, 2025, this year.

Question number two, who’s our keynote speaker coming to the conference there, Sean? Tim Tebow is our keynote speaker. Sean, question number three, how much does it cost to come to our in -person two -day interactive business workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma? I think it’s, did you say it’s $250 or whatever you can afford? That’s right, $250 or whatever you can afford.

Sean, how do you spell Eric Trump backwards? P -M -T -R -U -M.

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

Ooh, that took a long time. I’ll have to listen to this. All right, again, that’s Sean Lohman. I’m Clay Clark, and inviting you to come join us at the in -person Thrive Time show, two -day interactive workshop, June 5th and 6th, right here in Tulsa, Russia, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sean, I really am excited to have this event. I’m excited to see you at the event, June 5th and 6th, right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Tim Tebow, baby. It’s Tebow time in Tulsa, Russia. Anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here plate Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy play plays 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 ran from his goats his chickens his dogs So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen right his entire life clay Clark his entire life is marketing I started listening to the podcast, became a fan, and then figured out about the workshop. I own an insurance and financial services agency, and I was hoping to learn from the workshop systems and processes. I’m big on systems and processes and always learning better ways to run a business more efficiently. The atmosphere is great.

Second to none, it’s a high energy, really cool atmosphere to be around. Contagious, I would say. Just something every entrepreneur I think would appreciate and love. I’d say humorous, high energy, and full of substance, which I think is the key. A lot of business coaches or seminars Maybe you’re high on motivation and making you feel good, but don’t have a lot of substance that you could take back and implement, you know, the following Monday. Where his does.

Man, there’s a lot of valuable things. I’m gonna say, like, I came to this, this is my second workshop. The first workshop I took back really the the importance of a group interview. I used to spend hours and hours interviewing people, screening resumes, and that saving my time on that part is valuable. It was that and then the sales scripting that have been two major things just so far. Man, I think they’re missing out on expert advice from somebody who’s been there, done that, built companies, has learned a lot of lessons, You know, that’s what I’m always looking for, is somebody that I can learn from, that’s ahead of where I am.

And I think if you choose not to come, you’re missing out on a lot of good advice that could help your business. Hi, I’m Aaron Antus with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all the time. of a sudden. So I was willing to listen.

In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate. So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay, and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15 -year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing.

I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually, in a four -month period of time, has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month, just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us.

And it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry.

He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry.

I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because The results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental.

It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic. And as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town.

And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with Clay, I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35 -year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way.

I know for me the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1800 % increase in our internet leads going from 10 a month to 180 a month. That would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about, and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it, because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

After being a stay -at -home mom for 12 years, and my three kids started school, and they were in school full -time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide, what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people. I love working with people.

I love the building relationships. But one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things, the processes and the advertising and marketing. I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that work. it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time.

And he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us.

We launched our brokerage our real estate brokerage eight months ago.

And in that time we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions.

Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision.

When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way.

I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer to insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways.

I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63 ,000 investment. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just

a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in.

because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show 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. the accountability of hanging out with them weekly, such good insight, the resources they have. they have for specific business questions. It’s all been really incredible. It’s been a great experience.

So I’d recommend it to anybody. What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system. And it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day -to -day basis. 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 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 to 15 leads a week. I have doubled my number of employees. I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company, week to week it seems like. 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 situation. you know, cleaning houses, cleaning businesses. I have amazing employees now and I get rid of the ones who are not so amazing and bring on new ones because of, you know, group interviews and interviewing every single week. It’s just been great and I don’t waste as much time 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 that’s just great. Worth every penny. I mean, I’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can, and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but I would just say go for it. If it seems like a good fit, just go for it. do what they say, even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous, just do what they say because it’ll work.

You know, people, when they look at my business, you know, people in my town, they think I’m lucky. They think I’m just, you know, things just happen for me. And you know, maybe I am lucky, but It has a lot to do with hard work and you know perseverance and you know working till you cry sometimes That’s just being an entrepreneur which if you’re a business owner you understand that But it’s having this these systems in place of you know, of course, I’m gonna be successful. It’s it’s an absolute Because I I have all this stuff in the background happening and I have Luke and clay and everybody on their team working really hard to make sure that I’m a success and I can tell that they are just so excited every single week when I’m having all these wins and things like that they’re so excited for me. So it just it’s the best thing ever and I would suggest to anybody to work with them. So sorry for the long -winded reply 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. Thanks so much for watching. 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, you know, they eat a cheeseburger instead of hiring a coach, you know what I mean?

And so, I think that’s My coach pushes me.

They’re younger than me. They push harder. 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.

You’re on it, man. You’re on it. You’re on it. Everybody listen to this guy. He knows what he’s talking about. You have the macro picture.

Very few people have that point of view.

Clay, you’re an entrepreneur, I’m an entrepreneur, and as they say in Stoic, the obstacle is the way. And so if you let these pinheads get in your way, you’re in trouble. Hi, my name is Tim Johnson. I’m the owner of Tuscaloosa Ophthalmology, as well as Southern Eye Consultants, two ophthalmology practices in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And I’m a client of Clay Clark. He asked me to answer a couple of questions.

The first question was, how did I hear about Clay Clark? I am a big fan of business podcasts, and his podcast popped up. as a recommended listening so I started listening to the podcast. I was a little suspicious or skeptical because I thought there was going to be like an upcharge or an upsell but the idea of the month -to -month canceling really appealed to me and I kept waiting for the shoe to drop and for the upsell or for the scam to come in but it never did. It’s very legitimate. Since working with Clay, I’ve gotten a much firmer grasp on how business works.

Even in medicine, business is business. I’ve learned a lot about marketing, especially how Google reviews work and how important that is. That’s very important even in medicine. At least Once a week, if not every day, I get a new patient because somebody Googled eye doctor in Tuscaloosa or ophthalmologist in Tuscaloosa. And you’d be amazed how many patients just look for an eye doctor that way. And so he’s really changed our business.

Our business has grown a lot, maybe 15 to 20 % this year. And so, We’re really grateful for the things he’s done for our business and the last question was when did I perfect the the laugh? I would say that you can never perfect the laugh you just keep working at it and Just keep getting better and better each day, but you got to keep working at it. Thanks 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 the use of 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 Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. I established my practice here in Tulsa in 1985.

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

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

I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world.

He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even

avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. Hi, my name is Tim Johnson. I’m the owner of Tuscaloosa Ophthalmology, as well as Southern Eye Consultants, two ophthalmology practices in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And I’m a client of Clay Clark. He asked me to answer a couple of questions.

The first question was, how did I hear about Clay Clark?

I am a big fan of business podcasts, and his podcast popped up.

as a recommended listening.

So I started listening to the podcast.

I was a little suspicious or skeptical because I thought there was going to be like an upcharge or an upsell, but the idea of the month -to -month canceling really appealed to me and I kept waiting for the shoe to drop and for the upsell or for the scam to come in, but it never did.

It’s very legitimate.

Since working with Clay, I’ve gotten a much firmer grasp on how business works.

Even in medicine, business is business. I’ve learned a lot about marketing, especially how Google reviews work and how important that is.

That’s very important, even in medicine. At least once a week, if not every day, I get a new patient because somebody Googled eye doctor in Tuscaloosa. our ophthalmologist in Tuscaloosa. And you’d be amazed how many patients just look for an eye doctor that way. And so he’s really changed our business. Our business has grown a lot, maybe 15 to 20 percent this year.

And so we’re really grateful for the things he’s done for our business.

And the last question was,

when did I perfect the laugh?

I would say that you can never perfect the laugh. You just keep working at it.

And it just keeps getting better and better each day. But you got to keep working at it. Look at this cute baby. What a great baby. Quality baby. That’s a healthy baby.

Thrive Nation, on today’s show, I’m very excited for you to hear this success story about this wonderful couple that, Sean, I would describe them as they are killing the game in the most nonviolent way possible. They’re killing the game in the most nonviolent way possible.

They are blowing up in a good way.

Folks, I’m telling you, these folks are really growing their business. And what makes them great is they’re really kind, hardworking, diligent people. And we’re honored to serve them. We’ve got Jenny and Mike here joining us. Jenny and Mike, welcome to The Thrive Time Show. How are you two?

Hi. Thank you. Good.

We’re doing well.

I’ll start with you, Jenny, because frankly, Sean likes you more. And I’m just kidding. So let’s start with you. So how did you first discover us and the business coaching that we provide? Um, so I was listening to different podcasts about business. I was starting up our business.

Um, and so you were the first one to pop up on our podcast on Apple. I think Apple is what I was on. And so I started listening to you.

I got on your website and I was just a little girl starting a business. And I said, I’m going to, I’m going to ask this guy to be my coach.

And I don’t think I’m going to get a shot, but sure enough, within a week, you caught me. Now, who is this cute, cute child here, but Micah, who is this cute kid here? It’s Lennon Rose. She is about to be 10 months old. I hate to do this to you, but can you kind of hold up the baby to the camera a little bit? Look at this cute baby.

What a great baby. Quality baby. That’s a healthy baby. So Mike, can you tell us, what’s the name of your baby?

there? I think people want to look you up and verify you’re real people that don’t just happen to have a cute baby. Yeah, our website is newconcept . healthcare.

newconcept . healthcare.

So newconcept .

healthcare. I’m going to pull it up right now, folks, so we can all verify that they’re not just a couple who’s taking advantage of the cute baby they have to get a podcast here. This is a real couple, because I’m pulling it up here. So this is the website. It’s newconcept .

healthcare. And can you tell our listeners, what services do you guys provide at newconcept . healthcare? So we offer more functional medicine.

So we offer IV therapies. We offer hormone replacement therapies. We also do acute care. We do pretty much everything, but we’re very much alternative.

So we believe in medical freedom, and that’s what we offer.

And you guys, you reached out. Do you remember that initial consultation there? Do you remember, Mike, that initial consultation? Do you remember what that was like? Uh, yeah, it was actually pretty overwhelming that when we started in this business with absolutely nothing and we had the opportunity to work with five times. Yeah.

Well, you know, the, the one thing I always try to do is, you know, my father, um, great guy, may he rest in peace. Uh, he worked his tail off like so many people do, and there was no real economic, um, results that was achieved from it.

There wasn’t any, you know, he had the college degree.

He’s working two jobs. I remember he’s late thirties. He’s working at Domino’s delivering pizzas, working at Quick Trip. He worked at furniture stores. And I always try to look at every new client we have as though I’m talking to my dad, you know, because like, what would, what would my dad, you know, what could he have learned at the age of 37 that could have changed the financial trajectory of his life? You know, and I try to look at it that way.

And, um, so you guys, I paired you up with Sean, you’ve been working with Sean, I believe Sean, since, uh, October of 2020. Is that correct? I think that’s when they started their business. April of 2021. So April of 2021. And at that point, uh, from, from that point to now, uh, Sean, how much growth have you guys achieved from 2021 to now?

Do you know that number? Yeah. I mean, we’re sitting at 2023 revenues were 821 ,000 and they’re in October of 2020. Like they, they only had a few months. They made about 95 ,000 by the end of 2020.

And then we grew significantly that first year, about 375 % to 588 ,000. And we continued to grow there ever since, all the way up to where we’re getting close to the million dollar mark at this point here, just like three years in. Jenny, how would you describe the growth? Would you say you’ve doubled? Are you at five times larger? How would you describe that?

Oh, no, I definitely feel the growth. There’s been some growing pains, and you guys have helped us through that, too. So it’s been amazing. It’s been amazing to help people, because that’s what I’m passionate about. And you guys have really helped us expand and tell people what we’re about. So step one here, we do this with all the clients.

I’m going to walk people through the steps.

We really needed to nail down your branding. And that’s a big thing, because branding is to humans what clothing is. So as an example, you know, you wake up today, folks, if you run around and you’re streaking through life, you’re probably not going to get a lot of conversations started. So we all have to be intentional about, you know, what are we going to wear? Are we going to wear a tie? Are we going to wear a polo?

Are we going to do makeup? Are we not? So people, they judge us based on our appearance. And so we really had to get a website built We had to optimize the online brand. Jenny, we do it all included for our clients, so we don’t refer you to another vendor.

We do it all. Can you talk about the impact that that has made on the business? Oh, for sure. Just the website itself. it looks so great. We would have never been able to make it look that great.

The way y ‘all optimize everything and keep us with Google, just where people search us and we’re the first people that come up. And that’s actually how we’ve established our business and started offering some of the things that we offer is because of the tags that we have. I didn’t originally start off as doing IV therapy, but due to people Googling healthcare functional medicine, I had three phone calls in a week that said, hey, do you offer IV therapy? And it was very interesting.

And I was like, well, no, but I can. And so it was because of you guys that that kind of snowballed and took effect.

So yeah, there’s a lot that you guys have done for us.

Now, Sean, we’re working with these wonderful clients here. I’ll pick on Mike here.

You always say great things about Mike and Jenny.

What makes them good to work with? Because I want to make sure for anybody out there, if you go to Thrivetimeshow . com, I consistently offer a free 13 -point assessment. I’ve been doing that since 2005. I do it without reservation. There’s no obligation.

But there’s usually about two or three one to two knuckleheads a week that will fill out the form and probably 20 really great people that fill out the form. And then we only take on 160 clients. And so I don’t want anyone to waste their time. What makes Mike so great to work with? Well, Clay, I mean, you, when I first started coaching, you taught me about these, you know, these two types of business owners, there’s the happy hopers out there.

And then there’s the diligent doers.

And I think these guys are a great example of the diligent doer.

They continually apply effort to work on their business, not just in their business. They consistently show up to their meetings. They track all of the critical numbers of their business, and they are, they’re aware of what’s going on with all of their employees. They’re paying attention to all the little things going on. They’re keeping all the plates spinning, and they ask great questions. They actually really do make a great effort consistently to apply it.

systems and help their business grow. And it’s been working. So step one, we get the branding nailed down.

That’s the website, the print pieces, the logos, the business cards.

But then you have to develop that online reputation. Now, that could be a tough thing to do, Jenny. And again, this isn’t a backhanded compliment. I’m just saying, but for people that are humble, and very kind, of which I would put Jenny in that category. Sometimes asking for reviews is more difficult, because you almost feel like you’re self -promoting. I’ve never had this conversation with you.

But has that been difficult for you to ask people to give you video reviews and Google reviews after you provided the service? Or was that easy for you to do? It’s not easy. It still isn’t easy. OK. It’s difficult because you feel like you’re begging for something even though you know you did the right thing.

So it’s difficult for me.

It’s just my personality type, but we get it done anyways. I’ll find this for the diligent, kind customers we work with. It’s very difficult sometimes to ask for those objective reviews from real customers. And I find that from my clients I’ve worked with that are sort of like self -described barbarians. I had a guy years ago I worked with. I won’t mention his name or his industry, but I’ll just say he’s obsessed with physical fitness.

And he told me, he says, I’m kind of a business barbarian.

You tell me what to do and I will slay the dragons.

And I’m like, okay, you need to get Google reviews from everybody you’ve ever worked with.

And he’s like, oh, I’m on it. And this guy’s just shamelessly calling through his phone and just lighting people up going. Give me a review. Come on. Give me a review. Why would you not give me a review?

I’m like, go ahead, dial it down a little bit. So again, you guys are humble, diligent doers. You’re the ideal person here. So I appreciate you sharing that. The next thing we had to do is we had to create a no -brainer. Now, a no -brainer is an offer so good, so amazing, that people simply cannot say no to it.

Now, I won’t mention the name of the company, but I worked years ago, and I still work with this company. They’re a medical company. They’re doing well now. And for whatever reason, they put me on the list. on their website, first initial consult, 497. And he went to one of these like borderline spiritual motivational conference things where Jesus isn’t described, but they kind of talk about metaphysical alignment and getting your woosaw, getting in your groove, alignment, no friction.

And he came back and he’s like, Clay, I believe in the seventh number of completion. I go, I agree.

He says, four is the number that’s urgent.

I’m like, okay, not, and I go, What? He’s like, I don’t, I don’t want tire kickers. So I’m going to do 497 for my first consult. That way I don’t deal with the tire kickers. And I’m like, doc, I love you so much. You’re a doctor.

I love it. You don’t have any customers though. That’s why you came to me. You don’t have any customers. So why don’t you do a first free consult? I’m not going to do it.

I’m going to, I’m going to kick out Sean, the tire kicker. So I’m sure you’ve never seen this with a client. Oh. Never. And so now what makes it worse is his wife also went to the Metaphysical Alignment Motivational Jackassery Festival. And she was like, 497 is the number.

I had a dream about it. I’m like, yeah, you probably talked about it all weekend.

You probably are subconsciously thinking about it.

You’re probably creating a neural pathway related to 497.

And so anyway, after about a year, he finally says, OK, I came to your conference. And I saw a person that did the first consult for $1. I’m going to go with that. And now his business is blowing up. Could you talk about your no -brainer, your first consult for a dollar? How has that helped you having that no -brainer offer?

Yeah, so it gets people in. And so when we get people in, we know that we’re doing a good job and we know that we’re trustworthy and our health care is good. Superior to most. So just getting people in for that dollar because a lot of people are, you know, they’re nervous about going to the doctor or they don’t trust healthcare system. And so they know that they can come in. They’re only going to spend a dollar.

They can figure out whether or not they trust us figure out whether or not we’re the place for them. And we know 100 % of the time we will be so it’s really helped us just get people in and get people to trust us more. Now, once somebody fills out the form, folks, again, there’s a linear pathway here.

I’m trying to give you a visual here. So you establish your revenue goals. You figure out your numbers to break even.

You figure out how many hours a week you’re willing to work. Even though you have a cute baby, you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to get it done. Step number four is you define your unique value proposition. What makes you unique? That’s something you and Sean have worked on together. You improve your branding.

Now you’re coming in contact with humans. Business is a contact sport.

I love this part.

That’s when you start marketing. You launch your marketing. You have your online ads. You optimize your website. to come up top in the search results, you start to get leads. Do you remember what it was like, Jenny, when you first got your first online lead?

Do you remember the first one where you’re like, It’s working. Do you remember that moment? Yeah. It was almost like we wanted to, well, we did celebrate because it finally had happened. And then as soon as the first one came in, the second one came in. And like I said, it was, it was almost a growing pain experience.

We’ve had so many leads so fast. Um, so it was great. And, uh, we still celebrate every lead that we get. Now, Mike, the next step is you have to make sales scripts. Uh, we, we, we recommend to every client that the calls are recorded for quality assurance. You have a sales script.

Calls are recorded for quality assurance. You have a one sheet that tracks your pricing. You have pre -written emails. You begin tracking. Sean’s always bragging about you guys with tracking.

Mike, how has it helped to have tracking in place where you can see?

How has that helped you?

Well, it’s really a good benefit because at the end of the week, you know what your income was. You know what your lead was. So wherever we’re lacking in, we can quickly adjust and make that adjustment to make it work for the next week. Now, if you don’t have tracking, folks, this is a true story. It’s kind of a sad story.

So I’ll speak in generality, Sean.

I talked to a guy the other day. This is a terrible story. Longtime client, and he got motivated. He set up a trade show. He didn’t tell me he’s doing it. It’s fine.

You don’t have to tell me.

tell me but he set up a trade show I think he’s gonna try surprise me with the fruit the trade show So he set up the trade show and he gets on the call.

His energy is kind of off and I’m like, are you okay?

Yeah, dude, fine. What’s wrong? Hi, just I don’t know.

I’m like your lead sheet.

We’re getting, you know, 10 to 15 leads a week. It’s very consistent. Revenue looks good. He’s like, yeah, I’m in a tight spot. We are a tight spot. We’re in a tight spot.

He says, I did a trade show. You did a trade show. Yeah.

I got roped into four. I did a thing where you get the billboard, you get the trade show, you get the magazine ad. And I did the trade show and we got no leads. And I go, what kind of trade show did you do? And he says, well, I went to the whatever trade show.

And Sean, what I find is that there’s the emotional excitement about being on the billboard, being on the magazine cover.

And he got called probably by one of these kind of scam, I call it a scammockery or jackassery. They call you and they go, boop, boop, boop, boop. Hey, is this Sean? Yeah, this is Sean.

Sean, yeah, we noticed that you have an incredible health care company.

And we want to honor you by giving you the yada yada of the region award. It’s the yada yada, it’s a regional, it’s a prestigious award. We’d like to meet with you. Can we meet with you? Yeah.

So now I meet here.

Now, Sean, again, I’m not we’re on the phone, but I still like the phone voice here.

So now, Sean, so because we’re so honored, you know, we’re inviting you to a plated dinner to honor your just your honor, your honor, your greatness, your humbleness.

And it’s going to be a thousand dollars a plate, you know, for you and your wife.

And did you want four seats or eight? Because most people do eight.

Oh, I guess just 440.

And that does include a glossy magazine feature in, we’ll just call it like Missouri local top doctor Jack Assery. It’s a great magazine. And you’re also on the, you’ll be on a billboard. We’ve teamed up with the billboard. It rotates through. You’re going to see her.

Hey, don’t get too excited. And just because we’re honored. We’re not, you know, again, we’re just honored. Now, did you want to do the 440? sir yeah absolutely now the way it works is it’s going to be a four payments of four thousand for a total of sixteen thousand uh and that’s no i’m serious and now they’re in the trade shows and he’s going to the trade show and there ain’t nobody there uh there is nobody there you need to be technical Nobody was at this trade show. I mean, everybody was not at the trade show.

He’s got photos of like him and his wife and his team in an empty booth and he’s got a magazine and no leads are coming. And he was so excited to tell me, um, I’m sure you’ve never encountered this sort of thing. Uh, Virginia, have you, you know, Jenny, have you ever seen a situation where that sort of shamakari advertising has been entered into your world in some capacity? I’ve been there. I’ve been exactly where, what you’re talking about. And I’ve set up everything and paid employees.

And I felt like I was nothing more than a free pin show. The only people that were there were people looking for free pins. Oh, I know. And it feels terrible. And then you kind of have to sell it to yourself all day. We’re getting our name out there.

Sean, can you pass the megaphone back there? Yeah. Cause I would tell people to get your name out there. What you do is you just run outside.

right come visit no concept health care and people go why are you yelling at me i’m trying to shop for my groceries is this effective it’s of course it’s effective i’m getting my name out there that leads to buying frisbees branded frisbees boozies you know what i’m saying branded pin Yes.

All of a sudden, you buy these things. Sean, you know what I’m talking about. Oh, yeah. OK. So now we have to do it. I’m going to show you.

This is kind of the back end of one of my companies, called Elephant in the Room.

And you do a search for eitrlounge . com. And then you go to forward slash staff. I’m not going to give you the password, folks. But you log in. And these are all the systems needed to run the haircut chain.

Now, one thing I thought was very interesting is Truth Social President Trump. social media platform, the other day they were disclosing, Newsweek was disclosing the revenue of it. And I just want people to know this because I think, and just full disclosure, I’m a very conservative person, but I just want people to see this. This is just something to look at. Truth Social, they declared in their filing that they did $3 .3 million of revenue and had $49 million of losses, which, by the way, That’s very normal for a tech startup company. And their users are going up, and they’re having an app.

There’s like a reaction in the marketplace.

People are actually putting more money in.

They’re investing. The stock price is going up. But I don’t know anybody that I’ve met in my life. I’ve never met a client that can afford to bring in $3 .3 million and lose $49 million. So for my haircut chain, we have five locations. We bring in more than $3 .3 million.

And this just in, we don’t spend $49 million. So we have to, we call it a lean startup. You got to keep that thing lean. And so when you go to eitrlounge . com forward slash staff, every document needed to manage the business is here.

So the opening checklist for the manager, you click here, boom.

This is what the manager has to do to start the day. Everything is documented. And that’s kind of where we’re at right now with Jenny and Mike’s business. We’re in the process of building all those checklists. Yeah.

Sean, what kind of checklist have you built so far?

Oh, man, we have a whole page.

Their staff page is pretty built out.

We’re really getting there.

I think more right now, it’s getting, correct me if I’m wrong, we need some managers in there so we can free you guys up from the business. And so we have a lot of the worker level systems. We’re just now working on more of how do we get those manager level systems and find those high quality managers. Now, let me give Jenny a little mentor moment here. This would be helpful for you. I’m going to hop on a flight in about two and a half hours, three hours to go to Denver, right?

And I got to go to Denver to meet with the founder. of Oxifresh .com. com. This is a brand we’ve worked with and helped them to grow to 550 locations now.

550 locations.

Okay. And if you type in carpet cleaning quotes, we’re the world’s highest rated and most reviewed company in the world, in the world.

Okay.

274 ,000 reviews. We’ve been holding this idea in our mind for 15 consecutive years. I’ve been working on this for Sean, before I met you, we just were grinding. Okay. Yeah.

And the biggest challenge that the locations have is managers finding good manager.

And I tell people this and it never goes over well, but hopefully eventually it will. I’ll keep refining it, refining the idea, the kind of person that enjoys conflict, but also likes people. is a good manager. Let me try that again. The kind of person that enjoys conflict but also likes people is a good manager. And I have found it’s not so much trainable as it’s findable.

So as an example, where we’re getting ready to head out to Denver, Sean, you know my personality type. You know that I have to pack all this stuff to get ready to go. You saw my suitcase out there.

Yep.

How many times do you think I followed up with the people involved in the trip so far before leaving? Oh man, it’s, it’s probably on your to -do list and you’ve checked it off like probably at least five times today, I would think. And what kind of things do you think I might’ve put on my checklist to travel to Denver? First off, just making sure that the timing is working, making sure that you have all the stuff that you need, making sure that you have double of the stuff that you need in case something gets broken, making sure that the people who are there know you’re coming and when you’re going to be there and what to expect from you. Do you think I’m checking a bag? Oh, yeah, you’re probably not checking it back.

There is it lost. All right. No. And am I am I getting a flight a lot earlier than I need to be there way earlier?

If I’m having a meeting tomorrow, which I am, I’m leaving today at twelve thirty.

Yeah.

So this is that’s the sort of paranoia that makes management possible.

So I have literally called.

I said, all right, I’m getting on the twelve thirty flight.

We’re meeting tomorrow.

I should be in by like four o ‘clock Denver time.

Our meeting’s tomorrow.

If that flight gets delayed and the next one gets delayed and the next one, I’ll still be there.

I’ve got backup phone chargers.

I have a rule.

Everybody going with me. You cannot check a bag.

I want to check a bag.

Can’t check a bag.

Why?

Because it could get lost.

This is real. I am completely paranoid. And that is the paranoia is what makes the businesses run. Yeah. And I asked my staff every day, guys, elephant in the room, did you guys get a review?

And they say, yeah, we got a review.

You asked me 10 minutes ago.

OK, I’ll talk to you in four minutes.

You heard me say that.

I’ll say, I’ll talk to you in five minutes.

Yeah. And I’ll do it.

And it’s a follow up of, whoa, because I have to make sure that the checklists are being followed, the reviews are being followed.

We’re a licensed business.

People don’t know that. Haircare, you’re licensed by the state.

So we have certain cleanliness standards.

We could have random people from the state show up. So we got checklists. And I follow up. And it doesn’t bother me. to follow up with the same adult who’s in their 40s six times within a 50 -minute span of time, it doesn’t bother me. But most people, that bothers them. And so have you found that, Jenny, that a lot of people don’t like to follow up?

Have you found that?

Or is that just something unique to me?

Um, I found that they don’t like to follow up. No, people don’t like to follow up.

It’s a, almost like an awkward communication thing that people will try to avoid.

Yeah.

And it’s not necessarily that you’re being mean or any type of way, but that’s, I feel like that’s probably the way that we feel when we continuously follow up, like we’re having to step on people’s toes, but really we’re not, we’re just getting the job. My mentorship moment for you is it’s probably the same feeling you have when you ask for reviews. Yeah. It’s probably the same. So, and I’m just saying, and then, and if Mike, did you ever play football or a sport of some kind? Yeah, I used to play soccer.

Okay.

Soccer.

So like when you, what position did you play? Uh, goalkeeper. Goalkeeper. Okay. So is a goal. This is a great, great example.

I didn’t know you were a goalkeeper. but when you’re a goalkeeper and someone’s kicking that ball at you fast, I mean, just the balls coming in there.

I mean, people can really kick a soccer ball fast.

There are certain people that want to be a goalkeeper, but they kind of avoid the ball.

They try to hide from it. They flinch.

You know what I’m talking about? But you actually would lunge into it. Am I correct? Right. I mean, you’re aggressive, right? I mean, you’re like you, and for some reason you enjoyed it.

Yeah. Getting a hundred miles an hour fastball.

Have you ever seen somebody who tried to be a goalie? I’m not looking for a name here, but somebody who would kind of hide from the ball.

Yeah. This is the same thing for management. I guess the manager, you have to want, like, you have to sort of seek out conflict, but like people. So I I’ll say things like, okay, it’s eight o ‘clock. I need to make sure you put out the flags in front of the elephant in the room store today, Mr. Manager, put out the flags that draw the attention by the road, put out the flags. And I’m going to call you in 10 minutes to follow up.

Call him in 10 minutes. Are the flags up?

Can you send me a picture?

They’re like, do you not trust me? Absolutely not. I trust nobody.

Go ahead and send him.

And then I’ll call him back 30 minutes later. Hey, did you get Google reviews? Yeah, we got one Google review. You know, the quote is 10. Yeah, I’ll call you back in two minutes. You know, call him back.

Hey, did you get a review? It’s been two minutes. I know. Oh, hey, I’ll tell you what. I’ll call you back in an hour. And my whole day is just following up.

And then over time, the culture happens where people go, he’s going to follow up. And now the people that like the follow -up like to work there and it’s become a great thing. And that’s where we’re kind of at right now, I think, is we’re getting into the follow -up phase. Do you have call recording in place there, Mike? Do you have the call recording for quality assurance installed yet? Yes, we do.

And are you learning some things? Yes. It is very hard to train people on recording experience. Yeah. That’s something we got to do.

Now we’re just going through the workflow and then the wowing the customers.

What Sean is saying is that your patients are consistently wowed.

Now, I don’t know if that’s because Sean is your hype man or if that’s a real thing, but it seems like people are actually wowing.

They’re being wowed right now.

People, when they come in, this is very, look at the workflow, they buy something. Right here, we have to wow them. You’ve got to create that.

wow moment. And again, if you want to download this diagram, folks, just go to thrive timeshow . com forward slash millionaire thrive timeshow . com forward slash millionaire. You can download it from my newest book called a millionaire’s guide to becoming sustainably rich. You got to create that wow moment.

I mean, amidst the checklists and the tracking at some point here, you’ve got to create a moment that wows people where they go, wow. So I’m trying to get everybody’s creative juices flowing here. So if you have a restaurant, I work with a restaurant in Florida right now, a great restaurant. They say, Welcome in.

Is it your first time? They say, yeah, it’s my first time. Oh, well, hey, you get free appetizers on us today and one free adult beverage. Welcome in. And every time it’s that, wow. And then when you come back later and ask for a review or, hey, what entree do you want?

Guess what? People become generous with how they buy. Another example, I work with an auto auction. The auto auction says that your first time that you buy from the auto auction, you only have to pay $1. more than the actual cost of the vehicle, just to wow people, to get that going. I happen to work with a carpet cleaning business, carpet cleaning business.

And what they do is they say, hey, the first time we clean your carpet, we’ll beat any competitor’s price, and it will be at least half off of our normal price. And they go, OK, great. You’ve got to have that wow moment.

What are you guys doing, Jenny, to wow your customers there? Well, there are things that we do. We will oftentimes like give samples of certain things because we know they work. We have a lot of supplement cells that we do. Again, the dollar console is a wow moment because we will spend some you know, 10 to 15 minutes explaining how we’re different.

And I feel like they’re wowed because of that.

Also, our services are so much different. We spend time in the room with our patients.

We listen to them. They’re not just a number. And a lot of times people have never experienced that. So there’s a lot of wow moments, I think, for all of our patients. I understand that 59 % of your customers are now from word of mouth. Is that accurate?

Yeah. That’s huge. Yeah, well, and with the customer acquisitions cost, too, I’ve heard you say this before, Clay, that if you’re advertising and you’re doing a good job wowing at the same time, they compound each other, and you’ll end up having two to three word -of -mouth referrals from those patients that are wowed for every one lead you have from advertising. We measured and tracked that they had this last year. For every dollar they spent on advertising, they were able to bring back in $4 .61. So that’s a 461 % return on their marketing investment.

It’s incredible stuff. And well, the great news is as we build these systems, If you guys ever wanted to franchise, or license, or open up multiple locations, if done properly, you should be able to scale it. It should be very repeatable, very duplicatable.

Other things you guys have done, you’ve implemented a database to keep track of your customers.

You’re gathering objective video reviews.

You guys are really checking all the boxes. I’d like for you, if you can, Jenny here, to give a word of encouragement for any of our listeners out there that are a little bit on the fence right now, and they’re going, you know, I have thought about scheduling a free consultation, but I couldn’t. I don’t know. I hear it’s $1 ,700 a month. Can you maybe explain your thoughts, what you’d say to anybody who’s a friend of yours or family that asks you about the value about the business consulting?

Oh, well, I would say that The $1 ,700 a month is an excuse not to have someone to mentor you. It’s kind of like being in a gym when you need a trainer. We’re not always perfect and business owning is not easy and you need a mentor. I’ve never missed the $1 ,700 a month, even when I was only six months in when we started with you guys. I’ve never, I’ve never even considered it a loss.

It was, it was scary at first to make that, but that wasn’t an excuse.

I knew I needed someone to guide me through this. And you guys have guided us through this through the entire thing, through employment. through income, through spending, through all of it. And we come through so many problems. There are a lot of problems that are established when you have a business. I mean, you become very overwhelmed, very fast, and you need somebody that you can call who’s successful, who’s been there, that says, you’re not crazy.

This happens to all of us.

Here’s what you do about it. It’s been the best decision that we’ve made. Final question I have here for you, as far as Having a turn, like a one -stop shop. Years ago, I hired a business consultant who was great. And he would say things like, and I’m not ripping him. I’m just telling you what would happen.

He would say, Clay, you got to work on your business and not in it. I’m going, that’s true. He goes, you got to delegate to elevate. That’s true. Clay, your website is not optimized. And I’m going, this is great.

Fresh perspective. I go, Bruce. Could you help me optimize? No, I don’t optimize. Could you help me work on it? No.

Could you help me make a checklist? No. Do you make, do you help me with the print pieces that I need to make? No. Can you make a video? No.

Do you help me with my online ads? No. Clay, and he would used to, he was kind of an Eastern, he’s an Eastern, Northeastern American guy. And he used to say, Clay baby, let me tell you what. I don’t make print pieces. What am I, a print piece guy?

I’m not a web guy.

We know what I am. I’m a work on the business guy. You got to find a good web guy. So every meeting we would have would result in me having to find another vendor to pay another $8 ,000 to build the website, $4 ,000 to make the video, $5 ,000 to do it. So every time you would give a recommendation, it would lead to another cost. Can you maybe explain the value of having a flat monthly fee?

Yeah, I don’t have to ever worry about it. Like it’s, I know if I need the website updated, it’s a text away. I know if I’m having trouble with an employee, it’s a text away. I know if I have need financial advice, it’s a text away. Um, and again, we meet every single week and all our questions are answered and we’re held accountable to what we need to be held accountable for. So it really works for us.

Jenny and Mike, thank you guys for your time so much.

I really do value your time. I appreciate you guys being here today. And I’m part two of today’s show, we’re going to tee up another success story because we want people to know it is possible, despite the financial jackassery plaguing our nation right now, it is possible to become successful and you guys are a living example of it. Thank you guys for bringing your baby on the show.

We’ll talk to you soon.

HealthWorks Chiropractic here in Franklin, just outside of Nashville, and just wanted to record kind of my experience with Thrive over the last 16 months, I think it’s been, almost 18 months with these guys.

They have really helped me turn my clinic around, my clinics around.

I came to Thrive in February of 17.

I could say 16 months later, I don’t know where we would have been without these guys, but I know where we’re at.

The system’s in place that, you know, make the practices no longer reliant on me being there for them to be successful.

That was a huge goal of mine when I first talked to them. We’re working towards our financial goals. We’ll be there probably within six months. My stress level has gone down. I’ll be going on vacation next week, not worrying a bit about what’s happening with my two practices because I know the systems that we put in place is gonna make them run as if I was there. I don’t know what else to say, but thank you guys.

I love, I look forward to my weekly coaching calls and it’s always something that I get out of those that I can plug in or talk to an employee. And it’s just the 2%. You know, they talk about 2 % all the time. You gotta improve by 2%. You can’t do it all at once, but that 2 % over the last 16 to 18 months has made a huge difference for my life, my family, our practices, and again, just the stress level that we were at compared to now. has been life -changing.

So thanks guys, really appreciate all you do and look forward to the next 16 to 18 months and beyond. Thanks. I just wanted to take a minute to talk about Thrive15 and what they’ve done for me. My experience with them started with a weekend seminar. I was just kind of feeling stuck and just needed something to light my creative juices. A friend of mine recommended I go check them out and I did.

Certainly nothing short of amazing, just that weekend seminar as far as what it did for me. But based on that, I wanted to learn more about what they could do to help me.

And there’s no doubt, without their help, I don’t know if I would have got where I want to go and even to the point where I am now.

If you are someone who’s looking to start a business or expand your current business, I highly recommend you give these guys a look, as they will at least give you an idea of what it’s going to take to get you from where you are now to where you want to go in the future.

I’m a guy with big vision and I just didn’t quite know how to get from point A to point B and they’re certainly helping me get to that point down the road. If you look at this board behind you, this is all stuff that they’ve made me think about, if you will.

So yeah, give them a look.

I think it’ll be well worth your time. 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. 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 he really needs to come too.

OK, Thrive Nation, on today’s show, I wanted to share with you a story about a good person who’s growing a good business by treating their customers the way they want to be treated. She’s a longtime client. We’re honored to serve her and help her grow her business. And I want you to hear a great success story. So that being said, Dr. Stephanie, welcome on to The Thrive Time Show. How are you?

Hi, I’m doing great, thank you so much, Clay. Well, first off, I’m gonna pull up your website, so tell all the listeners what’s the name of your website so we can verify that you are, in fact, a real orthodontist. Okay, my website is smileshollywood . com. OK, smileshollywood .

com. Yes. I’m going to pull this up real quick here. And as I pull this up, I’m going to ask you a little bit about your background, because you’re doing really well. You’re based in McKinney, Texas. When did you have that vision to become an orthodontist?

Like, what age were you where you thought, you know what? I want to become an orthodontist?

Well, that had to have been when I was visiting my own orthodontist. Dr. Jim Boley, who’s retired now, but was an awesome, great orthodontist and one of the greats, really. But what’s funny is, is that I actually wanted to be a medical doctor first. And I used to go into his office and he’d say, Stephanie, you don’t want to be a medical doctor. You want to be an orthodontist. And I said, no, I don’t, Dr. Boley.

Why are you saying that? And he started telling me all of the great things about dentistry and why it’s so great because you don’t have to deal with people dying on you. You don’t have to deal with sick people. You get to make people look amazing and beautiful by straightening their teeth and you leave with happy patients. And you know, he talked me into it and I thought, that sounds like a great job. So that’s really how I became an orthodontist.

And you’re in McKinney, Texas, right?

So how long have you been an orthodontist in McKinney, Texas? So I’ve been an orthodontist for 26 years, practicing in McKinney. 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? Absolutely zero. Zero marketing skills. OK.

And so one of the great things I love about working with you is we get to help you grow your business, but you get to be more of who you are. I mean, you get to help more patients and help more people create great smiles. And then we get to do some of the nitty gritty stuff that maybe isn’t your highest and best use. And so I want to focus on some of the things we’ve been able to accomplish together over these few years here. First off, from a branding perspective, I really do feel like your website is first class. And from what I talked to Andrew, 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 does it have having maybe a rebranded or updated website and Google leads coming in? 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 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. I started out with 97 reviews. Now we have almost 600 reviews.

And, you know, it takes a long time to get those reviews and you have to really work diligently. And, you know, Andrew was amazing. My, my coach, he’s fantastic. Really, really had to prod me sometimes because, you know, sometimes I was like an old mule and just stuck my feet in and said, no, I don’t want to do that. And he said, trust me, it works. And I just kept going and he kept pushing.

And I’ll tell you what, it’s really working. We’re getting a lot of patients from Google, and it’s fantastic. Now, as far as gathering patients from the Google search results, there’s a couple of things that have to happen.

I mean, one, you’ve got to have the most content. There’s four variables. One, you have to have the most original HTML content or text. Second, you have to have the most objective reviews from real customers. Third, your website has to be in constant mobile compliance where we’re updating the website to meet the current updated guidelines of the ever -evolving internet. And then we’ve got to make sure your website is canonically compliant, where it basically follows all Google Google’s rules.

How much has that helped your peace of mind knowing that you have a team that’s helping you update your website every month and that you don’t have to do that? It is a huge relief, an absolute huge relief, because I know that these things are being done. The SEO is being done properly. The backwriting under the website is being done properly and increasing and we’re relevant every single day we’re relevant because I know these things are happening. And before I actually was trying to do some of these things on my own.

And you know I’m not the best writer. And then I realized why am I doing this myself. Because honestly, I don’t have the time. And so it’s really a great relief to know that these things are being done and that they’re working. And I saw when I first started with Thrive Time, I was probably 11 or 12. I was working with an SEO company at the time, and I was probably coming up 11 or 12, which is really the second page when somebody brings you up on the computer.

But now I’m, you know, I’m at two, I’m at three, I’m at four, depending on the keywords. So I couldn’t be more happy. And you know, again, if we do a search for orthodontist in McKinney, Texas, we can find you right there in the top three. Also, after you move past the three pack or the top three there, we can also find your site in the search results. And again, it’s not a result of luck. It’s not a result of some sort of woo -woo plan.

It’s specific, actionable processes.

The next thing I want to talk about is just overall lead tracking and Dream 100 marketing. I think a lot of times people Not you, but other people, entrepreneurs, none of our listeners. We might market based on feel. So if we feel like we’re not getting enough leads, we might feel the need to go market. And if we feel like we’re overwhelmed with leads, we might feel the need to not market. But one of the things that we try to teach to our wonderful clients, like yourself, is the importance of implementing a consistent and implementable plan, a consistent and practical plan.

Could you talk about the importance of tracking your leads and then also just consistently doing those marketing systems like the Dream 100 that do produce fruit So the Dream 100 has really been a great addition. We were doing something similar to that, but really not with the concerted effort and doing it on a regular basis. We were kind of doing it a little more haphazardly, and I really have noticed a difference because when you are visiting dentist’s office, and you’re developing a relationship with them, and they are seeing you on a regular basis every week or every two weeks, they, you know, the staff starts to remember you. And so, you know, you never know a patient may come in tomorrow and you just dropped by their office with a goodie today, you know, and then they are going to think of you whenever it’s time to refer for an orthodontist. And that’s really made a big, big change in our practice too.

And we track every single one of those. So we know how many Dr. X sent over and we know how many Dr. Y sent over. So we know our top referrers and we know the ones that we need to kind of get to know better and help them send to us too. There’s somebody watching this right now who’s a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, and they’re going, I don’t know if the Dream 100 works. What do you say to that person who’s sitting down with you right now? And they go, yeah, I just don’t know if that works.

I say it definitely works. And you definitely do have to get out and meet the dentist yourself.

at least one time, even if you just, some of the dentists I couldn’t actually just go meet, you know, to have lunch, they didn’t have lunches. So I just actually went by the office myself. I took a little goodie with me, you know, a muffin or something, and I’d go by maybe right before lunch and just introduce myself. And then when my gal would come by every week or every other week to deliver things to their office, they at least knew who I was. I had introduced myself. And we found that we started getting patients that way.

So it definitely helps.

Now, next thing I want to talk about is hiring. And I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like this. I’m sure you haven’t. It’s probably just me. But whenever you have a garden that you plant, I’ll pull up a picture of a garden so we can all picture it in our minds. Whenever you plant a garden, there’s probably some initial excitement.

You go, you know what? I’m going to plant these tomatoes. I’m going to do it. I’m going to get after it. This is my year. I’m going to get the garden going.

I’m excited.

I’m going organic. Let’s go. Well, what happens is over time, people stop pulling the weeds. They stop tending to the garden. And over time, the garden becomes like an overgrown garden. grown monster garden.

The garden starts to become something that looks like a mistake, something that looks like an uh -oh, something where your neighbors say, are you going to mow that thing?

And it gets bad. And the same thing is true with employees. If you have a team of people that work for you on your payroll and you’re a business owner, it turns out that the average American today, for whatever reason, I’m going to pull some stats here so people don’t think I’m crazy. The U . S. Chamber reports that 75 % of employees steal from the workplace.

What? That’s the U . S. Chamber reporting that 75 percent of employees steal from the workplace. And you might say, really?

Yeah. And 85 percent of employees, 85 percent of employees lie on resumes, meaning that they just make up some statistic on there and they throw it on their resumes. And 85 percent of employees are, again, are lying on their resumes. I’m pulling this up here, folks. But there are There’s a certain group of employees that they just lie on their resumes. Called 85 % of job applicants lie on their resumes.

And 75 % of employees steal from the workplace. So in your business, you have a great staff, and you want to keep it that way. So you can’t hire the thieves. You can’t hire people that lie on their resumes. So that 85 % of the population that lies on their resumes, they can’t work for you. And that 75 % of the population that Steals from the workplace, they can’t work for you either because you want to wow your customers.

Can you talk about embracing the processes? we teach of the ongoing hiring processes and just always recruiting new people? Absolutely. So we have taken on really the task of making sure that we have every single day and at any one time there is going to be an ad out there for any position in our office. And, you know, occasionally we’ll have somebody come in and we’ll have them, you know, just do a little affidavit or something. And what’s really interesting is that even my employees, even when I’m not asked, I’m not needing someone, my employees will be like, are we having somebody come in, do a working interview?

You know, and everybody gets really nervous, but it actually also helps them get on their best behavior again. So, uh, but it’s like, if you always have someone waiting in the wings, then should you have someone come in? that drops off maybe their husband gets transferred and they’re a wonderful employee but it’s just now they have to move and now you’ve got someone that you can hire or if you have someone that’s like what happened in my office where you know it was a inventory day and doctors weren’t there and she decided to go work out and hang out with her boyfriend for five hours and then forgot to clock out you know so that’s called stealing. Yeah, and recently, and these are just real examples I’m sharing with people, I’ve had some of my really, really nice employees, two of them decided to have a baby and start a family. And so I’m not going to hold an employee hostage. I’m not mad that they decided to move on.

But you get to a place where if you’re not careful, folks, you’re going to find yourself in a kind of a defensive posture where you’re not going to be able to cover the appointments, the obligations, the customers that are reaching out to you.

So if you’re out there today, Hiring has got to be a process and not an event. So again, just recapping, the branding, the marketing, the search engine optimization, the hiring, the tracking. I want to talk about retargeting ads. Retargeting ads, whenever somebody goes to your website, we’ve got to have ads that follow people around the internet. So that way, people constantly see Smiles Hollywood, Smiles Hollywood, Smiles Hollywood. And that creates top of mind awareness.

Can you talk about how important it is for you to know that you have a team of people thinking about those kind of things? So again, you don’t have to. Absolutely. And I think just being a Thrivetime customer really makes you feel like you’re taken care of in so many different areas, because I didn’t even know what those ads were when I first became a client. I didn’t even know. I remember thinking, I wonder how you get to have an ad when you’re going to your bank account, and then all of a sudden this thing pops up for some brand of sunglasses that you were just looking at.

I thought, how do you get those ads? How do you even find out about them?

And so these are the ads that you guys fix this up with, and they’re fantastic. And I do know that they do bring in patients. Now, coaching is an ongoing process. Every week, Andrew meets with you.

Every week, and this might sound shocking for folks out there, but every single morning, our coaches have to meet with me at 6 in the morning. And I ask them every morning, I say, How’s your client doing? And I go over all 160 clients. It’s a real thing. I go over 40 clients every single day. I go over the checklist of all 40 clients every day.

And we do that every single morning. So every week, we review the files of all 160 clients to make sure you guys are thriving, you’re growing, you’re not backsliding, everyone’s doing well. Could you talk about the importance of having somebody who, A, helps you track, but also kind of pushes you to be your best?

Well, that has been a lifesaver because honestly well I kind of learned it on myself because Andrew was good about pushing me and he would say okay well did you meet with your staff about this or that and I said oh yeah, I didn’t quite do that.

And so he was really good about reminding me that I needed to meet with my staff once a week or once a day, whatever it was, depending on the item. But I found like, for instance, with my front desk girl, she was fantastic, but she was supposed to be following up on leads. She was supposed to have a lead list. And so every week I would call her and say, hey, How’s that lead list? And I would actually have Andrew on the phone with me and she, and we would talk and she, she kind of would say, yeah, yeah, they’re good. And, you know, and then finally, I think she got it.

She realized I need a list. And so I think she realized Dr. Christ is going to ask me every week and I better get organized here. And so she actually came up with her own lead list in her own little system, which was fantastic, by the way, and it’s helped us tremendously at the front desk. And anytime we go over the lead list, cause I have several, I have about three employees that have lead lists, different kinds of lead lists, and she is fantastic. I never have to worry about her lead list. The other two, I have to check theirs.

And that’s the thing, is I think you start to really hold your employees accountable, and Andrew helps hold me accountable and make sure that I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing, because let’s face it, life gets busy. You know, and I mean, I’m a mom and I’m a wife and have all kinds of other things going on too. And so I want to have a thriving business, but you have to, you have to put the work into your business. And it’s nice to have someone there prodding me along when I get lazy. Now, you’re one of these wonderful folks where most of our clients, they actually come to the workshops. They also do coaching.

And so you’re somebody who’s been to the conferences. You do the weekly coaching. You’ve seen the whole experience.

I guess some people describe our coaching system as life -changing, or they focus on the numbers.

How would you describe how the one -on -one coaching in conjunction with the conferences has impacted maybe you and or your business? 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, I’m 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.

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’m, I think next year I’m going to bring my husband because he really needs to come too. And he’s been He’s been going along with this with me, and he’s thinking, wow, this is really working for you. Maybe I need to come. So we’ve loved it.

So if somebody is watching right now, they’re on the website. They go to thrivetimeshow . com. They’re thinking about scheduling a free consultation, or they’re thinking about coming to a workshop. What do you say to somebody out there that’s on the fence, thinking about coming to a conference, and or scheduling a free 13 -point assessment? Well, I say absolutely do it.

Absolutely do it. And 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. Because I’m absolutely convinced. 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. All right. Thanks so much, Clay. Ladies and gentlemen, a lot of people talk about having success. A lot of people want to have success.

But there is a proven path to achieve success. And about four years ago, I had the opportunity to connect with somebody by the name of Dr. Mark Sherwood. My good friend, Aaron Antus, swore by the results of Dr. Sherwood. My good friend, Pastor Craig Hagan, swore by the results of Dr. Sherwood. And we had a chance to team up. And it’s been an honor to team up with his practice and to help him grow his medical practice.

And if you’re out there today and you want to grow your business, on today’s show, we’re going to talk about growing your business and what happens when you diligently implement a proven plan. And here to talk about it is Dr. Sherwood. Welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir? Yeah, I’m doing well, Clay. Thanks for having me.

And it has been an honor, hasn’t it? What a ride and what a journey it’s been. Now, without getting into the specific financial numbers, you and I were talking offline. And I believe, since you and I first talked on the phone today, I believe you’re about seven times larger. Is that an accurate number? Am I getting that number wrong in some capacity?

No, it’s at least seven, closer to eight. Yeah. And that’s so many people talk about growing their business by 2 % or 5 % or 12%. I want to give people some real facts here. We’re going to go here to Inc. I’m going to do a search right now on Google. I want everyone to do it with me.

Assume I’m making this up. Inc. Magazine reports that 96 % of businesses fail. That’s according to Inc Magazine. That’s not clayclark . com.

96%. Now, if you go to usdebtclock . com, which is, by the way, a great way to get depressed. If you go to usdebtclock . org, you’ll see that in America today, we only have 9 million, 9 .3 million self -employed people in a country of 336 million. So if even 10 % of our country was self -employed, that would be 36 million self -employed people.

But we only have 9 million self -employed people. So we’re talking about, it’s like less than 3 % of our population is even self -employed to begin with. And so if less than 3 % of our population is self -employed, And 96 % of businesses fail. By default, folks, you’ve got, I mean, it’s a very, very small percentage chance of being successful by default. And so what I want to focus on is implementing a proven path and a proven system. So step number one, since you and I have connected, I didn’t teach this to you, but you do it.

You diligently implement a plan. Can you talk about that? Because every week, you and I, we connect every week, in this case, There’s a plan that you do, and I won’t get into all the details, but you do it every single week. You do it in the gym. You do it in your business. Talk about implementing a proven routine every day.

Well, I think the end of the story of a routine is it produces predictability. And so I look at it like this. Good habits done consistently over time provides reliability. which gives you consistency, which gives you faithfulness, which gives you trust. Now trust is a big deal. Does that trust mean you trust yourself?

I hope so. Does it trust mean that your customers or clientele trust you? They do because it’s predictable. The thing that people can’t stand, Clay, is unpredictability or chaos or just anxiety that’s driven in businesses. So we facilitate that culture from the top down, the bottom up. And as you mentioned, every day I get up and I’m very routine.

And so are you. We started working together. I remember you telling me, you get up at three o ‘clock in the morning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I do, you know, I probably wake up about an hour after you, boom, boom, boom. But it’s very predictable. People know where we are, what we’re going to do, what we’re about, and it creates an expectation.

And I think that, among other things, has been a key element to experiencing, you know, the 800 % growth we’ve had, which is, to me, it wasn’t that hard, because it’s a process that works. Now, next question I want to ask you is, Focus on what you need to do, but then say no to the things you don’t need to do. Again, you have to say no to grow. So yes, you’re diligent and you’re consistent, but you’re also saying no to grow. And now there are billboards, there are magazines, there are yellow pages.

Yes, there are still a few yellow pages. There are billboards, there’s magazines, there’s local cable TV. There are so many different ways that you could be marketing your business, but you’ve had to say no to grow. focus on, and you and your wife, you guys do books, you do documentaries, you do podcast interviews. You have a proven path, a proven trajectory that you’re on, but you do have to say no to grow. And sometimes you have to say no to good things in order to say yes to great things.

Can you talk about the importance of saying no to grow? Yeah, specifically in our job, what we do, which is kind of a wellness -based, optimization of health practice, right? So the bottom line is I run everything through that filter and our filter is does it bring healing to the person? Does it bring betterment to the person? And there’s all kinds of procedures, gizmos, gadgets and whatnot that I hear that we could get involved in. But I always look at it from this standpoint.

It’s got to run through that filter and it’s got to pass the test. Is it going to take us more time? Is it going to take us more labor? what’s the expense of it going to be originally, and what’s it going to take for us to recoup the expense of any. And so I run into that filter every single time, and if it doesn’t hash out, it may be a good thing, but it’s not a good thing for us. And people don’t understand

that, but sometimes the greatest answer is no, because it’s a no that protects you from getting hurt. And you mentioned all that advertising mess out there. Clay, we’ve been approached by, as you know, many, many people to advertise in all kinds of markets. But if you don’t know what kind of person that you’re after, what is your target demographic? then you can’t just throw spitballs out there at the different sources, because you will waste your time and money. And again, in that area, advertising, know to grow is critical.

Now, the next area I want to focus on is having a linear workflow, or a mapped out workflow, or a written down process. So many business owners don’t have a written down process. So let me just give people an example. I’m going to go up to my website, then I’ll go to your website, so people can see this. Very predictable. If people go to thrivetimeshow .

com, which by the way, folks, we have about five to 10 people a day that often reach out looking for help growing their company. Now, I only take on 160 clients. That’s not a spiritual number. That’s not a reason. I don’t do that for any spiritual reason. It’s just I have found that with my team, I like to not have more than 160 clients so that I can meet all my clients.

And those clients, they schedule a free consultation. And in order to do that, I have a kind of a call screener that sets up an appointment. They hop on the phone. They find out if they’re a good fit for a free consultation. Then my team books the free consultation for me. And because our average client is with us for six years or longer, if you do the math, we have an opening for a new client about every month or so.

So if you look at TWA Photos, this is one of my longtime clients based in Chicago. Him, and we’re going to hear his success story on part two of today’s show. He reached out. He filled out the form. A member of my team called Tim to see if he was a good fit. I said yes.

coached Tim on the first call, found out he’s a good fit, did my assessment, found out he’s a good fit, coached him through what we’re gonna do, laid out the proven plan. True story, and you’re gonna hear it on part two of today’s show. Tim went on to build a very, very successful company and he sold his business. Well, when he sold his business for a big time exit, guess what that did? That created an opening for another client. And so the process we have over and over and over is you go to thrifttimeshow .

com, you can schedule a free consultation. My call screener vets that person to see if they’re a good fit. If they are a good fit, they do an onboarding with myself. Also, we have conference tickets. We do a conference every two months. And I’ve been doing this since 2005.

So since 2005, I’ve been essentially doing the same process over and over and over. That’s why when you click on testimonials, you will literally see thousands of client success stories, just thousands, not 100, not 50, but thousands. So I want to see if you can walk us through, what does the workflow look like when people go to Sherwood . tv? What does that workflow look like? It’s fascinating.

And again, you and I just kind of hit it off because we think the same way. So we have an opportunity. People visit our website, and we get hundreds of visitors every day. And people can fill out a little questionnaire. It’s like a health assessment question. It’s free.

And they get put through a series of, you know, funnel emails to sort of qualify what they want to do. And sort of kind of vets them at the outset. But if they want to work with us, just like yourself, we have a free webinar that they can go to. At that point, they then have the opportunity to schedule a one -on -one assessment intake appointment with my wife and myself. At that appointment, we determine whether or not they are a good fit. If they are a good fit,

we develop a plan for those and execute the same plan with the same form that’s more personalized for their lives. Much like you personalize that plan with the same general processes for that business, we personalize that plan of the same general processes for their life. Now, when people work with me, with my business, and I’m not a medical business, I have a proven process and a proven system. And so when people go, And they go to thrivetimeshow . com and they look at the different success stories. We have companies like oxyfresh .

com. We’ve helped them to grow now to 570 locations, 570. And I could go on just listing examples all day. We take companies like Shaw Homes, help them grow from 15 million to $150 million of revenue. And we just have so many success stories. It truly is epic.

And that’s why my parent company is called Make Your Life Epic. That is what we do, Make Your Life Epic. Dr. Sherwood, I would say what he does is very analogous to what we do for business. He does for your body. And so, again, I believe what he does, Dr. Sherwood, Sherwood . TV, what he does for your body is very analogous to what we do for business.

We guide people down a proven path. And we actually tell people before they decide to become a client what the path is. We tell people, this is what we’re going to do to get you from where you are to where you want to be. Now, I know a lot of people, I would say specifically Three people that I see on a weekly basis who have lost over 40 pounds since going to Sherwood . tv. So three people that I see on a weekly basis have lost over 40 pounds as a result of going to Sherwood .

tv, learning about the protocols you offer, and then following those. You tell people in advance what the protocol is going to be. That’s very different from a lot of other medical programs that kind of hide the program or the protocol from the potential customer, from the potential patient, they hide it and they say, well, you sign up, then we’ll teach you the protocol. Why are you so transparent with teaching people what your protocol is going to be before they become a patient? I think it produces trustworthiness, Clay, because a lot of times, with what we do, transparency is key, because my wife and I do it too.

And again, I’m not knocking anybody else. I just know that what you just said is very true. It is analogous. to you making someone’s company greater. I want to see their lives get greater. I want to optimize their health, give them the biological aging process of speed that’s optimal so they’re not aging too fast.

And so we live it out, we do it. And then it’s no secret, man, there are some processes that work. And I tell them, if you’re willing to do this, this will work. And they see us doing it every day. We don’t hide our lives and we don’t shield them. We don’t do something tell them do something we’re not doing ourselves.

I think it’s exactly as you said. To your point, we deal with a lot of entrepreneurs that have worked with you and do work with you. The interesting overlap is cool. I can think of a couple of people that we’ve worked with that also are your clients in their business and I’ve watched their businesses explode as their personal lives explode. This energy there is is just astounding to me as I think about that. Now, I want to walk people through this again here, folks.

Again, we’re trying to walk you through that. How is it that a doctor, a medical provider, a health facility is able to grow their revenue by eight times within a period of just a few years? How is that possible when 96 % of businesses are failing? One is you have to have a proven plan. Two, you have to implement that plan each and every week. And three, you have to measure what you treasure.

You just have to measure what you treasure. You have to track or it’s going to slack. And that’s true with health, and it’s true with wealth. You have to track or it’s going to slack. And so any area of our lives, if you’re listening right now, you talk about your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, your fun, any area where we are not achieving at our optimal performance, it’s probably because we’re not measuring what we’re treasuring. It’s probably we’re not focusing on it.

And again, I’m not attacking anybody out there. There’s somebody out there listening right now. You are in phenomenal physical shape, and financially, you’re not in shape. There’s somebody else out there listening. You’re in great financial shape. You’re in great physical shape, but your family’s not in great shape.

Somebody else out there, you say you got your family, you got your faith, you got your fitness, you got your friendship, but you’re really, really in a bad spot in another area. So whatever we measure is what we treasure. that for a second, because you have a way of helping your patients and your clients to measure what they treasure and to track. And I see people all the time coming into my office being excited. They’ve lost four pounds. They lost six pounds.

They lost nine pounds. They lost 20. They lost 21 pounds. They lost 27 pounds. They lost 30. They lost 40.

And you see people gaining confidence every week as they begin to take this massive goal they have, and they start to see success day after day. Talk about measuring what you treasure. Yeah, one thing I forgot to add to the process, we have quarterly events. I mean, and I didn’t, you know, we have those things too, which are kind of cool. That’s kind of a culmination of stuff that people can celebrate. But when we talk about measurables, we talk about this all the time, you know, physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, financial, the five parts of a human experience, you know, and so, and I talk to them, I don’t get into heavy dealing with their their debt, though, but I talked to them about eliminating debt and building equity.

But I use that same terminology within health. I don’t want wellness debt. I want wellness equity. So in other words, if you can’t measure it, don’t do it. I never do a test unless I know what I’m asking, what questions I’m trying to get answered. and why I’m measuring it.

I don’t do that. You mentioned weight loss. We have a unique way to measure that, not just about what the scale says, but I’m measuring their body composition, Clay. I’m measuring their percent body fat. I want to know how much muscle they’ve maintained or grown and how much fat they’ve been able to lose. I want to know their visceral fat level.

I want to know their blood pressure. I want to know all their scores that I can find. We’ve even got tests that can score their biological aging processes and speeds and actualities. It quantifies that into measurable components. We’re actually developing right now, and I haven’t got it rolled out yet, a quotient we’re going to call the FMI age. It’s going to be a little massive thing that we’re going to put together.

Because I think people are aging in a way that is probably too fast, and I think we can probably age better. But to your point, I concur a thousand percent. If you can’t measure it and it’s not quantifiable, don’t do it because then it becomes a distraction. Now, I want to tap into your wisdom on this, let you kind of show off what you do a little bit here. You know, one of my wonderful clients is called Kola Fitness. Kola Fitness and Charles Kola.

He started out doing personal training. He started out doing personal training.

And on part two of today’s show, folks, you’re going to hear his success story too.

So you’re going to hear the success story of TWA Photos. You’re going to hear the success story of Koloff Fitness. He started out doing personal training. And then he decided, you know what? I want to open up a gym. And then he said, you know what?

I want to open up a second gym. And that’s where we met him is as he was scaling the business. And so what he does when people want to lose weight, I’ll tell you his secret.

He tells them, here’s the deal.

I need you to not eat wheat, no sweets. and no alcohol. And people are like, what? He’s like, no wheat, no sweets, no alcohol. We’ll see you three days a week working out. And he starts that process.

He starts small, no wheat, no sweets, no alcohol, three days a week working out.

And over time, they start to add maybe more detail to it, more supplementation, more detail, maybe more vigorousness to it.

But they start off with no wheat, no sweets, no alcohol, three days a week working out.

And then they start to build on that foundation.

I want to get your, just for anybody out there that’s thinking about becoming a SureWood .

tv patient or client, and they’re maybe concerned about what’s going to be required of them, what sort of life changes need to be made in the lives of people that are thinking about implementing the SureWood path? And I know there’s a lot of details, a lot of research that you do into each and every patient, but what are a couple of practical steps that every single one of your patients has to implement right away? Well, I appreciate you know I know Charles is why great people, by the way, and I concur with what he said that’s a great start for anybody right there so at least take that I think for us. Our advice would be simply put, if it’s real food eat it. don’t diet. If it’s an original package, it’s fine.

If you can imagine it being in that package in the Garden of Eden, it’s fine. So I tell people typically to stay away. It’s going to sound crazy. Anything the government subsidizes, don’t do it. That’s kind of what I tell them with food and people can go, oh yeah, I get that because the government subsidizes wheat, corn, soy, dairy, and that kind of mess, you know. So, I tell them stay away from that.

Then I tell them that every day I want you to try to get, you know, somewhere between about seven hours, give or take, is probably if you can get that much. And then I tell them every day that you don’t move is a day you’re dead. So, I want them to move more, sit less.

The days you don’t move are the day that you’re going to be in the rigor mortis. So I make sure I tell them that.

And then I want them to have the last little bit. Speak life over self, man. Don’t speak death over self. Because many times people can walk themselves into a process of oblivion by talking themselves into death every day, saying they can’t do it. Now, for anybody out there that hasn’t worked with us, I mean, you and I have had the opportunity to work together faithfully each and every week now for years. What would you say the impact has been on your business, working with us, you and I working together, for anybody out there who’s maybe thinking about working with us or becoming a client of ours?

Well, without question, people need guidance today, Clay. It’s like a ship without a rudder. You represent the rudder. You can teach them how to drive, but you also shift that boat in the right direction. And I would recommend people do connect with you because you will do a good job. It will be consistent.

It will be predictable. And if people just copy these habits, no matter what business you’re in, you can adapt them to the business, the habits work, and you will see a good return on that investment. And it will exponentially grow. And then the last thing I’ll say with that, When you connect with Clay Clark, you need to set your bar high. He will not let you set that bar low because he’s going to stretch you, he’s going to push you, and he’s going to get the, on a set like this, he will pull the potential out of you and get you believing again in a good way. So, highly recommend it.

I just, working with you has been an honor. It’s a true win -win. For anybody out there that’s looking for health optimization, check it out at surewood . tv, surewood . tv. And again, what you do is so analogous for health to what we do for wealth.

And so for anybody out there, if you’re looking to optimize your health, check out Sherwood .tv, tv, Sherwood . tv. Dr. Sherwood, thank you so much. And again, for anybody out there that doesn’t know the story here, which should be everybody, you and I were just talking offline the other day.

And you were saying, hey, Clay, I just want you to know, since you and I first connected, we’re up eight times.

And I just thought, well, Man, there’s so much discouragement in the world we live in. We need to document this and get this on camera. So thank you for keeping us updated, sir.

And I can’t wait to have you on the show next week.

You’re welcome.

Thanks for having me, as always.

Take care.

Bye -bye.

I’m Dr. Brett Casper.

And I was looking to learn more about business, scaling, sailing, closing.

potentially franchising, growing that business and actually working on it and not as much in it.

Oh goodness, it’s going to take me a little bit of time to process everything I’ve brought in over the last two days, but there’s definitely some things I need to go back and implement immediately. Some with key players, some of our processes systems, some scripting. We’ve been using scripting. I think we can improve on it and that’s definitely one of the first things we’ll do because we’re seeing the patients coming in on a real regular basis. and I think we can capture more of those patients with even a small tweak of some of our scripts. Coming to the workshop today has definitely been helpful in adding to and giving the big picture, the 10 ,000 foot view.

So I would recommend everyone who’s been working with one of the coaches that’s part of Thrive 15 to definitely attend one of the workshops. You network with other business owners, you learn from other people’s questions, If you’re just considering being a part of one of these coaching teams, this is a great place to start. You’ll get that 10 ,000 foot view and then you can work individually with a team of coaches to really hone it in and give you those action steps to move forward.

So definitely, if you’re on the fence, come.

be a part of it.

Welcome to Tulsa, on behalf of me. You have questions? America’s number one business coach has answers.

It’s your Broda from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of Ask Clay Anything on the Thrivetime Business Coach Radio Show. Back to another special edition of Ask Me Anything here on the Thrivetime Show on your radio and podcast. download on today’s show.

Uh, we’re answering the question that has been emailed a lot lately.

People say, Hey, Hey, Hey, I have heard from a friend of mine that you helped their company grow.

I, or I, or I’ve seen a testimonial online about how you’ve helped a company grow. I’ve, uh, heard on social media, how you’ve helped a company grow.

I know your program is month to month. I know there’s no contract. I get it, but, but I would like to know what actually do you do. for your clients? What do you guys actually do?

How do you actually help them have wins or successes? What kind of things do you do?

What kind of strategic help?

What kind of accountability? What kind of deliverables? What kind of back -end support?

What do you do to help your clients? And so I thought what we would do is invite one of my friends and one of our clients, Dr. Breck, onto the show. Doctor, it’s D -R -B -R -E -C -K .

com if you want to look him up here. D -R -B -R -E -C -K .

com.

And Dr. Breck Kasbaum is a chiropractor who has had major success in the past year. And the guy has been in business for over 15 years, but he’s been able to double his business in just the past 12 months. So how did he do it? What did we do to help him? All of these things will be answered on today’s show.

as I interview Dr. Breck about his experience with actual one -on -one business coaching and how we’ve been able to help him double the size of his business in just the past 12 months. Now, Dr. Brecht, talk to me about what kind of changes have you made and how has it impacted your overall profitability or growth?

Well, I’m happy to report that, you know, December of 2018, we had our highest grossing month.

So I’m super excited about that. Ever?

Ever. Whoa, that deserves, you know what that deserves?

That’s a win of the week.

Dr. Brecht celebrating a sales record here. A new year, a new you. How is it possible?

He’s a diligent doer.

So what kind of practical changes have you made?

Oh, man.

Well, we had to look at our price structure.

So, you know, we have to have to be honest with the value and what it costs to deliver services.

And we can’t continue to give away services. you know, for free or losing money on them. And so that was one of the big steps.

We also had to get rid of toxic employees, or even contractors, in our case, the massage therapist, our self -employed contractors.

Little warning about therapists, by the way.

The only difference between the rapist and a therapist is a space. Just think about it. Okay, back to you.

That reminds me of Sean Connery on Saturday Night Live.

So other changes you’ve made this year.

What other changes you made?

You fixed the pricing.

I was non -existent on our SEO. I mean I literally was non -existent. I mean you may have found me. If you put my name in exactly spelled correctly, you might have found me on like 20 pages back. Got it. But now you got all the content, all the tags, all the Google reviews.

So that all started from scratch and we now have like 257 reviews and we’re climbing the Google search engine each day. I was doing a search for you yesterday and I think you were over 250. Let me pull it up real quick. 257, you’re right.

257 Google reviews.

And so are you having people that are finding you online now? Yes. And that’s a nice new thing. People come in and are like, hey, I saw your reviews. Are you up 10 % more than last year? 20 %?

What percentage are you up now? We’re up. So it fluctuates a little bit, but I mean, literally from like a year and a half ago to to now. Yeah, we’re up double, double. Yeah. Now, have you have you fixed yours?

Have you changed or improved your sales scripting or your sales processes? We have? Yeah, we very intensely went over a lot of scripting and things. But then also we do. We do have a no brainer offer. Yeah.

And so the conversion aspect of that to go from, hey, this is all free to, you know, I do expect you to pay me at some point. Getting a better conversion script for me to work from has also been very helpful. And then you, from an HR perspective, hiring people, I’m not going to put words in your mouth, but most people, most clients we’ve worked with, most doctors we’ve worked with before, business owners, before they come into our program have a hard time finding good people. And then after they’re in the program, that’s usually not a problem anymore. Right. Is that the case with you?

Are you doing good on finding people or how have you changed your recruitment process? So just before starting working with Tim, we had some change up and some, you know, Some people left on their own accord and they were about to have that conversation anyway, so it worked out. Nice timing. But yeah, so we’ve brought on some great people in the last year and now we’re operating from a totally different way of thinking about that with not being held captive and a hostage in my own office. And how do you feel now? Do you and your wife, does it feel better?

Do you have more pride about the business now that you’re more profitable? Absolutely. I see the difference in her eyes too. Really? Yeah. I mean, I’ve been a doctor for the last 15 years, but to be a successful doctor is kind of a little better.

Right, right. And so I needed the tangible action steps, like give me a task to do today that I can put my hands to work on doing that. But I mean, I had to borrow money from family members. Thank you, Dad. Big shout out to your dad. Thank you.

I owe you. Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, it was tough on my wife. Uh, she’s a school teacher and we were, we were living paycheck to paycheck every month, uh, trying to rob Peter to pay Paul. Got it. And not fun, not fun at all. And you’re a doctor, you’re a chiropractor.

Yeah, it’s embarrassing. Your business does not have to be embarrassing and you don’t have to feel stuck, but you do have to take action if you want to get unstuck. Uh, Thomas Edison has said, and I quote it so many times on the show, vision without execution is hallucination. So if you feel stuck, you feel overwhelmed, you don’t know what to do, just reach out to us today. Just reach out to us today. Go to thrive timeshow .

com and schedule a 13 point one -on -one assessment with yours truly. And we can see if we can help you. Again, my name is Clay Clark. I’m a business coach. Big shout out to Dr. Breck. And as always, we like to end each and every show with a boom.

Three, two, one, boom. My name is Joe Lye and I’m with Kirkpatrick & Lye Orthodontics. At Kirkpatrick & Lye Orthodontics, we create beautiful smiles by straightening kids’ teeth and adults’ teeth. The services that Clay and his team provide would be something like how to get more customers into orthodontics. business and get the message out that I’m the best orthodontist in Tulsa. He does that by social media.

You get the word out through videos and pictures and being just top -line awareness as he would always say. Also how to reach out and create that bond with my referring doctors.

He helped me kind of get somebody in -house to go out and meet doctors. helped me kind of continue building that relationship while I do the work. Website, the website’s so majorly important. We get several patients through our website. And what he’s doing is he’s, there’s a certain way that you want your website to look and certain content, because you want call to action items in your website. And we didn’t have that before.

So now we get seven or eight new patients just through the website alone. Clay and his team are I would just say they’re over the top. I mean, nothing is too big, nothing’s too grand for Clay and his staff and his team. I mean, he says, boom, he really means it. I mean, they overdeliver, really, to be honest with you. And they come up with ideas that that are just top notch.

And if you don’t like something, great, move on. He’ll figure out something that works for your style and your identity. But I would just say the biggest thing for Clay and his team is they over deliver. Clay and his team help kind of create that culture also for your business that, hey, we got to get things done in a timely manner. Holds me accountable to do the certain tasks so that create things in a timely manner.

So there is a sense of urgency that he creates just in a timely

of it’s just through his enthusiasm. He’s always on the go, so it kind of puts you on that same mindset of, hey, let’s get this done, let’s work hard, but let’s also have fun with it. When I went to orthodontic school, we got zero training on marketing. Actually, when we got out of school, when I got out of school 18 years ago, it was kind of taboo to actually do any marketing. The most you could do is Put your name in the yellow pages. And so now it’s pretty common knowledge and pretty mainstream to go ahead and get your name out there.

Tell everybody your story, who you are, what you’re about. If you don’t do that, it’s a leg of your business that you’re lagging behind. Because you could be the best, or the honest, or the best, whatever. But if people don’t know that, then you won’t get the customers coming in. I meet with Clay and his team on every Friday about 11 o ‘clock. And to be honest with you, at the beginning, I wasn’t that thrilled with it.

Coming in every week just kind of seemed like a lot. But for me, I find the marketing aspect interesting. I enjoy it. I love working with Clay. I think it’s the main reason why. I’ve kind of built a relationship with him.

I think it got to a level now where we’re pretty good friends. And so it’s just been great. To me, it’s enjoyable. I really enjoy the creativity. When you put the energy into it and the work into it, how, you know, everything kind of comes back and it works. I’ve worked with Clay and his team for about, I think it’s about three years, and every year it’s just gotten better and things have grown.

I’ve been trying to get my wife and her pediatric dentist office and our partners on board with Clay for a while. I just saw that they were kind of getting stagnant in their practice and times were kind of getting slow for them and they needed more referrals. And I knew that Clay could definitely help them out by even just one thing, which would be change a website. And just by doing that, you’re going to get patients very easily. But another thing, too, is that they needed to change their culture and their mindset of how to bring in patients and creating a brand as well for them and giving them more of an identity so the whole staff could kind of rally around them. For anybody that’s coming out of school or just starting new with a business of any sort, be it medical or anything of that nature, I highly recommend Clay helping you create that business model.

We’re trained to do what we’re trained to do, but we’re not trained to do the business aspect or the marketing or how to deal with the patient or our staff. So Clay can pretty much do all that. But what I like the most about Clay and his staff is that everything’s in -house. I don’t have to go to one place to do my website. I don’t have to go somewhere to do my videos. I don’t have to go to another place to shoot.

Photographs somewhere else to do web content or team coaching or entrepreneurship Clay pretty much is the total package He’s really a great mentor. So if you’re new and starting a business and you want to avoid all the pitfalls I would definitely hook up with Clay and his team. If someone’s not using Clay and his team to help build their business, they’re missing out on a lot. There’s so many details and so many aspects of creating a business that Clay really makes it simple, makes it fun, and you learn so much in a short amount of time.

that I think he’s the best entrepreneur, business coach, marketer, you name it. The guy’s, and his team’s got it all going on.

Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I wanna tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations.

We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. And Clay’s done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like, running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders.

This guy is just amazing.

This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with like Lee Crockrell, head of Disney with the 40 ,000 cast members.

He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10 ,000 or more people show up to some of these tours on the day -to -day. He does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies.

So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing real -time tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 -step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multimillionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business.

Like one of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, like Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about, where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go and that’s what I like him most about him.

He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time, a coach is actually helping you get to the best you and Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it.

And when we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal. And they were super excited about working with him. And he told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down. Because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. And the guy’s integrity just really wowed me.

It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was do what’s right and anyways just just just an amazing man so anyways impacted me a lot he’s helped navigate anytime i’ve got nervous or worried about how to run the company or uh you know navigating competition and and and an economy that’s like i remember we got closed down for three months he helped me us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns, because our clubs were all closed for three months. And you have $350 ,000 of bills you’ve got to pay. And we have no accounts receivable. He helped us navigate that. And of course, we were conservative enough that we could afford to take that on for a period of time.

He was a great man. I’m very impressed with him. So Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing. And I encourage you, if you haven’t ever worked with Clay, work with Clay. He’s going to help magnify you. And there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps four, maybe six hours a day, and literally the rest of the time he’s working.

And he can outwork everybody in the room. every single day, and he loves it. So anyways, this is Charles Kola with Kola Fitness. Thank you, Clay. And anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay, it’s a great, great opportunity to ever work with him. So you guys have a blessed one.

This is Charles Kola. We’ll see you guys. Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today.

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

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

Transcribed with Cockatoo